What is the deal with the six-way intersections in Midwestern cities? They absolutely baffle me. Four years in New England gave me an intimate understanding of roundabouts and other bizarre traffic artifacts, but these six-way intersections creep me out. For those sadly unacquainted with this phenomenon, it’s what happens when you shove a random diagonal road through the compulsive grid that is Chicago’s streets. Suddenly a perfectly respectable four-way intersection becomes a tangled monstrosity that bears a frightening resemblance to that thing above the number ‘8′ on your computer keyboard.

Yesterday I was subjected to not one but two of these traumatic experiences. Now, when you’re going straight through and not turning, I suppose it’s not that bad. You just cruise through and ignore the fact that there’s an extra stream of traffic cutting through at a disturbing angle, sort of like those surrealist photos you see in the Museum of Modern Art. But if you’re unlucky enough to need to make a left turn, as far as I can tell it requires trigonometry and some special surveying equipment.

The worst part is that you can never tell which turns you’re allowed to make. If there is some complicated set of rules about this, I haven’t been informed. It certainly wasn’t on the driver’s test I had to take to get my Illinois license. From any branch of the road, you can conceivably make two right turns or two left turns, some of which would send unbelted passengers hurtling out the window, and others of which would get you in deep trouble if another car happened to be making certain other turns at the same time. Sometimes there are even “NO LEFT TURN” signs which are angled so that you can see part of the sign from every direction, and you can never quite tell WHICH left turn they are talking about.

Anyway, after about half an hour of driving back and forth through a six-way intersection last night looking for parking (all of which was taken within about a twenty mile radius) I’ve reached my snapping point. I say we stop putting up with this nonsense. Boycott six-way intersections. In fact, let’s get rid of intersections entirely. All north-south roads can be 100 feet below ground, and all east-west roads 100 feet above. If you want to switch directions, tough luck. You can take the train.