These Are The Worst Traffic Jams Our Readers Have Ever Been In

Traffic sucks, but some traffic sucks worse that other traffic. Sometimes, you just get slowed down, and it’s a little annoying that you left on time and still showed up late. Other times, you end up parked on a freeway for so long, you find yourself Googling “external catheters” as your hair grays, and your stress level climbs to the point that even your Apple Watch gets concerned. 

Since most of the U.S. requires you to drive everywhere, even if you just want to pick up a few things at the convenience store, and C-suites across the country have decided working remotely makes their employees too happy, the former can be an almost daily occurrence. 

On Tuesday, though, we wanted to hear more about the latter — the traffic jams you still remember because they were just that traumatic. Venting can’t necessarily change what you went through, but it always feels good to get something like that off your chest. And now that you’ve had time to share, let’s take a look at some of the most popular answers.

DC beltway south. Took 4.5 hours to get from the Alexandria, VA exits (i495s) to just south of Newington, VA exits (i95s). That is 10.8 miles. This was a Sunday morning between 9am and 2pm.

Suggested by: Cluck

Houston to Austin in 17.5hrs (normally about 2.5 hrs). Trying to escape Hurricane Rita. That was the same storm season as Katrina, so everyone was on edge about any storm. Rita peaked as a cat 5 as it headed toward Houston. Had friends in Austin, who also had extra tickets to Austin City Limits, so figured lets evacuate to there and go to the concert. This was before Houston established hurricane evacuation protocols. Made it maybe half hour outside of Houston and it was gridlock. Turned into Armageddon scenario. Trailers overloaded to the gills with all their worldly possession. Overturned trucks in the medians trying to get to the frontage roads. People driving into oncoming traffic. We decided to exit and take the backroads. Big mistake. Everyone and their brother had the same idea. Sat in the same spot for over 2 hrs. Made it even worse was driving my manual 05 WRX. Plus my friends couldn’t drive manuals. Made it to Austin. ACL was awesome. To top it off, Rita made a turn and never hit Houston.

Suggested by: Gudmundur

Oh boy, I have a good one. I was living in Ventura County, near Simi Valley, CA at the time. Went out to Phoenix over Easter weekend to visit some friends. Had to head back after dinner and got a late start. When I got to the LA area, taking the 210 was my way home. It was after midnight and I got stuck in a 44 mile traffic jam. It was now after 2AM and traffic still wasn’t moving much. Needless to say, I didn’t sleep that night. Finally made it home after sitting in that for over 4 hours, cleaned up, and went right to work.

The worst I’ve suffered through on a daily basis, however, always involved the Capital Beltway around DC, especially around holiday weekends. If we ever had to leave NoVA during that time, we normally waited until after 9PM to start our drive just so we wouldn’t lose our minds not moving on 495. There are times the entire Beltway was gridlock.

Suggested by: Xavier96

I’ve been in plenty of traffic jams that lasted a long time, but the worst one was the one where traffic came to a halt directly in front of me. I stopped my lowly grad-school-era Cavalier safely, and so did the Explorer behind me. But the Kia behind that guy definitely did not apply the brakes. He hit the Explorer so hard that he pushed it forward into my car so hard that the second impact blew out virtually all the glass in my car. One of the Explorer’s driver’s kids got an ambulance to the hospital. I was more or less fine, thanks to the existence of that Explorer. If it hadn’t been there, I probably would not be. And when I was digging the few things I really needed out of what was left of my car, I actually found the Blue Oval in my back seat footwell.

So that kind of reset my concept of “worst” traffic jam.

Suggested by: Give Me Tacos or Give Me Death

In my beater ’69 GTO halfway through my 1000-mile drive to college in August 1989, stuck in traffic outside of Chattanooga with the outside temps in the upper 90s. It had a history of overheating, so I’m stressing out bad. I had the heater cranked up as high as possible and all the windows down so I didn’t die. I even had the my door open when we weren’t crawling. It was only half an hour, but it was really tense.

Suggested by: 6thtimearound

During the flood of June 2006 in upstate New York, I thought THAT would be the best time to travel from Binghamton to Utica to pick up my new car (’04 WRX). Well, wouldn’t you know that the state police shut down interstate 90 while I was on it. Traffic stopped dead, and myself and my fellow interstaters all just turned our cars off, got out, and walked and talked for a few hours until they started opening up the exits again. I’ve never seen anything like that before, or since.

Suggested by: L.F.M.

I live in Wisconsin, My family lives in Indiana. For thanksgiving, there was an ice storm in central Illinois and what was usually a 5 and a half hour drive stretched into 11 hours.

At a certain point you realize that traffic isn’t actually moving, it’s just compacting.

If you didn’t experience the world pre GPS, pre-google maps, pre route alert and automatic rerouting, a world with just paper maps and remembered directions, you have no idea how bad a traffic jam can be.

Suggested by: Buckfiddious

Full solar eclipse, August 21, 2017. My neighbor and I planned to go to a small town not near any major cities on the line of totality. The nearest in a straight line from where we live, Granville OH, was Hopkinsville, KY which was also supposed to be peak duration of 2 min and 46 sec at about 1pm. Normally a 400-mile 6-hr drive. The weather forecast at 5 am was for no rain and 50% chance of clouds, good enough. So at 6am we boogied down there. Traffic was not too bad until we got a bit closer in. At first we targeted the Walmart but that was packed, but found another shopping center parking lot on the other side of the freeway. Got there with about 30 minutes to spare. The eclipse was awesome. It was like a religious experience. I’m hooked. By about 2:00 it’s all over and we head back, along with approximately 50% of the rest of the country. We got back at 5:30 am, the next morning, in stop-go traffic the whole way. About 15.5 hours for a 6-hr drive, 24 hours total round trip. I did all the driving in my just acquired 2013 Fiat 500 Abarth. After we got back I had a shower, a big breakfast, and then drive 160 miles to a meeting in Toledo. One weird detail: about halfway to the eclipse we drove alongside two guys with sunglasses and shaved heads in a red Corvette convertible. They peeled off toward Bowling Green. On the way back, we found ourselves driving alongside the same two guys in their red Corvette. With all of the cars in movement over that time, what were the chances?

Suggested by: Michael Rosenfeld

I was young so I don’t remember all of the specifics but I know we were going to Hershey Park in Pennsylvania in the early 90s for a family vacation that happened to coincide with giant concert that was going on at the same time.

Our timing was terrible and we got caught in the concert gridlock. We waited for hours and as the concert start time approached people began ditching their cars in the road to walk to the concert which made matters worse, obviously.

We actually didn’t make it to Hershey Park that day. We waited for hours and eventually just grabbed some food and headed back to the hotel for the night.

Suggested by: HiMyNameIsJayAgain(Again?)

Several years ago it was the week before Thanksgiving (Thursday I think because that was my last work day before going on vacation) and there was a bad snow storm. I don’t remember there being a ton of snow but I think there was a lot of frozen precip and ice. It was 11 miles one way between home and work and usually would take 15 minutes or less. The trip turned into 2 1/2 hours. All I can say is thank goodness for adaptive cruise control. Saved my leg from falling off.

Suggested by: Jeffro3

Evacuation from New Orleans to Tampa for Hurricane Gustav in 2008. Getting out of the New Orleans metro area was a nightmare. Bumper to bumper all the way to Mobile. Mad Max like atmosphere to find gas. Took 22.5 hours to make what is usually an 11 hour drive.

Also in the car : cranky wife recovering from surgery, elderly father in law, two yappy dogs, and three cats. Fun.

Suggested by: FloridaMan

I lived Southern California for almost 45 years and thus have had my share of unforgettable traffic jams over the decades.

One that stands out in my mind took place in the mid/late 80s. I was working in L.A. off La Cienega and the 10. I was living in Fullerton about 35 miles away. Normally it was an hour+ to get to the office where I worked. On this day I took my usual route and when I go to the 5 freeway, just past Buena Park I came to a screeching halt. It was 7:00am and this was the days before cell phones and google maps/Wayze, just the good old Thomas Bros maps.. None of the surface streets were moving either. After sitting in the morass for a couple of hours I was able to exit and get to a payphone. I called my boss, and told him that I’ve been sitting in non moving traffic for three hours at that point and am turning around to go home, since by the time I got there, that’s what it would be time to do anyway.

Luckily most of my work was able to be done by dialing in via modem to the company mainframe/minicomputer and I didn’t lose a day’s pay.

there’s been others like that, but that sticks in my mind 35+ years later.

Suggested by: Saabster