Grand Cen­tral Sta­tion, NYC, July, 31, 2012, 4:08pm: Ran­dom act of stu­pid­ity cre­ates chaos and pan­de­mo­nium at Grand Cen­tral Station:

The clock is tick­ing, and we can no longer afford to end­lessly pro­cras­ti­nate the com­plex details into the future. The time to act is today.-Stephen C. Sanders

A ran­dom act of sense­less stu­pid­ity brought one of the busiest trans­porta­tion hubs in New York City to vir­tual standstill. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Is it the end of the world as we know it? No, just a ran­dom and sense­less act of stu­pid­ity. A trac­tor trailer jackknife’s at– how can I say this– Park Ave, at Grand Cen­tral Sta­tion!

I don’t know about you but the moment I mis-judge the phase of the yel­low light, I get a vir­tual ticket (cour­tesy of high tech flash camera’s sur­veil­lance cops) in the mail. Or if I park ille­gally to run into the bath­room at a cof­fee shop, a traf­fic cop is there with a ticket on my wind­shield. Or most recently, I try to cut around some slow mov­ing traf­fic, by enter­ing into an unused “shoul­der” before the oncom­ing merge lane begins. and it turns into a a sev­eral hun­dred dol­lar “major mov­ing vio­la­tion” com­plete with points! Don’t tell my insur­ance com­pany because it has not been “com­puter updated yet!

   So, can some­one tell me how in what some call the great­est city of the world, a huge trac­tor trailer ends up on Park Avenue, cross­ing per­haps the only street that actu­ally makes a 90% turn as part of it’s nor­mal pathway? 

For those of you not from New York City, please allow me to explain:

 

How with all the height­ened secu­rity since 911– in a city where three traf­fic cops con­verge on a dou­ble parked car, and minute men in fatigues apear out of nowhere within min­utes of an major “explo­sion like sound”-
How does a four axle trac­tor trailer end up on Park Ave, in per­haps the most unique sec­tion of any street in the world, where cars nego­ti­ate 90% turns and drive right through a build­ing. I sim­ply can’t grasp how such a thing occurred. The sec­tion of Park Ave is ele­vated, and how does such a large vehi­cle, get so far along on a street like this with­out being stopped in the first place. Finally, what about the dri­ver. On a short video clip I have, the dri­ver states “acci­dents hap­pen” which of course is true. How­ever, was this driver’s first day on a job. He must have had to slow down to nearly a full stop to make the 90 degree turn onto the ele­vated sec­tion of Park Ave. How can any­one with even the most basic con­cept of a turn­ing radius, not know that such a turn for such a vehi­cle was impos­si­ble. Is it some­how a basic human instinct to just sort of go ahead and plow for­ward even in light of an insur­mount­able amount of evi­dence that the thing the dri­ver was try­ing to do was phys­i­cally impossible?

I believe I have solved the puz­zle, and it is almost sub­lim­i­nal in the photo which was the pic­ture I was try­ing to cap­ture. It is no small amount of irony in a place like New York City that peo­ple are gen­er­ally highly stressed and feel as if they are in a race against time. The mes­sage stated in the sign to the right of the clock says:

No Stand­ing Anytime.

Such a say­ing is more than just a mere traf­fic reg­u­la­tion. It is a defin­ing prin­ci­ple by which your aver­age New York City res­i­dent lives by. Inter­est­ing that the excuse that the media pro­vides for the dri­ver of this big rig trac­tor trailer gives is that he is not from the area. 

 

The irony of the thing is that if he is not from the area, then really how come this fel­low seem­ingly had no clue as to what he was doing. I have a feel­ing that there are really only two pos­si­ble expla­na­tions to this event. One of them sim­ply being, it is actu­ally what we have already heard about.

Another sce­nario is far more wor­ri­some, so much so, that I do not even feel it’s proper for me to begin to guess what sort of thing actu­ally hap­pened just two days ago.

As has hap­pened before in my blog­ging career, what was to be a brief story, with an ironic twist turned into a full length expose which poses un-answered ques­tions. How­ever I did have the con­cept that was expected to tie in this News Page, with the gen­eral theme of this website.

Events on the ground, often pro­vide point­ers to use who pri­mar­ily dwell in a more lofty posi­tion,  form the point of view of inno­va­tion and intel­li­gent thought. This was one of my take home mes­sages, and trust me when I tell you, I believe there are many, that can be gleaned from this acci­dent at Grand Cen­tral Station:

When you put your­self in the posi­tion of cre­at­ing some­thing which has not ever existed before, along the lines of a New Ven­ture, or a start up ven­ture, you are jour­ney­ing into waters that are unknown to you and to oth­ers as well. The slight­est thing which you might not have antic­i­pated could well throw a great deal of hard work right out the win­dow. How­ever the thing to real­ize is that there is no amount of plan­ning that could pos­si­bly pre­vent that unknown thing from dash­ing your hopes against the shore line of un man­i­fested dreams. That is the first given. 

Time truly stands still for no one. The con­cept I will show you later more clearly both in images and words is that:

No stand­ing– any­time, is more of a uni­ver­sal truth that is well sup­ported in almost any­thing we will ever encounter in our lives. The pri­mary adver­sary which we all face, in actu­ally achiev­ing any­thing great or small is that time marches with or with­out out our per­mis­sion. We can not expect that the vision we had for this grand plan three years ago, will still be such a viable thing today. More an impor­tant then speed is momen­tum. The only way one can truly gain momen­tum in today’s dif­fi­cult envi­ron­ment is to get things started, and to con­tin­u­ously add what­ever is required to actu­ally bring the project to com­ple­tion in a rel­a­tively short period of time. 

The clock is tick­ing, and we can no longer afford to end­lessly pro­cras­ti­nate the com­plex details into the future. The time to act is today.

Stephen C. Sanders

Author owns a few very high qual­ity, un-developed domains such as: CMyPic.com, TodaysClouds.com and oth­ers with more spe­cific appli­ca­tions. Author also has sev­eral  inno­v­a­tive ven­tures requir­ing true “inde­pen­dent” angel investors with cap­i­tal who would be  inter­est­ing in being “Co-developers” with a sig­nif­i­cant equity share.

Inquire to: [email protected] with “angel for equity” in sub­ject line, with full name and con­tact info. All inter­ested par­ties must be will­ing to exe­cute legally bind­ing NDA’s.

August, 2, 2012 at 10:24am