“Silver? Where?” said one driver.
Photo by Austin Choy
Last month, the Bureau of Accelerating Inland Transportation (BAIT), a recently established California government agency, passed a bill for freeway traffic reduction. The Forks on Roads Bill was proposed to “reduce overall car density” by “adding forks on roads.” Despite its vague description, the bill garnered widespread support from Californians. One supporter commented, “I am incredibly excited that they are finally adding more forks to roads. The traffic on freeways every day really sucks, and I think that can be attributed to factors such as too much distance between exits. By adding more path ways, we can all get to our destinations a little more directly and efficiently, and other drivers will benefit because the freeways will become, well, free-er.”
Despite initial support for the bill’s passing, the following days saw many Californians expressing shock and outrage during their morning commutes. Rather than renovating freeways to maximize driving efficiency, BAIT scattered metal forks, prong side up, across the roads. By 9 a.m., there were at least four car crashes and over fifty more vehicles reporting popped tires.
California residents quickly began spreading the news on social media, with one X user posting, “Happy April Fools Day! Wait… It’s not April 1st???” Another user posted, “I just wanna know how much money was forked over to achieve this.” Some speculated that the forks’ sudden appearance was related to BAIT’s bill; others refuted this notion, with many restating their confidence in BAIT’s promises of efficiency.
Three days after the fork installment, BAIT spokesperson Dextry Finingar released a statement to address the confusion: “After looking at new and innovative ways to reduce traffic, we realized that there were simply too many cars on the road, and so we decided to get rid of some of them.” He further explained that the forks’ tiny prongs would purposefully pop cars’ tires, ensuring that while traffic might initially worsen as cars are towed away, the eventual decrease in drivable vehicles would render traffic practically nonexistent.
This news was met with widespread public backlash, with one man outside a tire repair shop reportedly screaming, “Michelin and Big Fork have bought BAIT out; I forking hate this place!” There are additional reports of Michelin-star restaurant chefs across the state purposefully preparing food poorly as a form of protest in order to have their stars revoked.
In the attempt to traverse the hazardous road conditions, most drivers have opted to drive slower on
freeways, leading to further delays. Others have tried coming up with innovative solutions, such as strapping spoons around their cars’ tires for extra protection.
Last Tuesday, Dextry released a press statement claiming that BAIT will be retracting this previous attempt at a fix: “It appears that recent data shows that traffic has not decreased, but instead increased dramatically. Therefore, we are removing all forks in the road, and we are working to ensure that it happens as soon as possible.” The statement received “expected” support on social media.
