Davonta Robbins aka “Metro”. Volunteer crossing guard. Some would call him an unsung hero to the city of Houston, Texas. Others might call him a traffic terrorist. Whatever you call him, you’ve gotta give the guy credit. Being out there takes some balls.
In 2021, Metro Robbins was Liz Gonzalesed by a rogue vehicle running from the cops in a high speed chase. His leg was shattered. He spent months laid up in the hospital. From there, most people would have turned their undivided attention to hiring the most cut-throat lawyer in Texas, and suing the boots off whoever they needed to so they could collect a settlement and retire. Maybe Metro did that too. I can’t seem to find any information regarding the fallout from that accident. Either way, most people don’t get their leg shattered by a speeding criminal and immediately think, “I gotta get back out there and stand in front of more cars. I need to make sure this doesn’t happen to anyone else.”
That’s pretty admirable. Houston is about as bad as it gets traffic wise. According to a 2024 study (Global Traffic Scorecard), Houston has the 7th worst traffic among all U.S. cities. And hour traffic is just about the last place you want to cross a person. Bad traffic will turn the kindest of souls into complete fucking lunatics. It causes people (some people) to lose all sense of human decency, and temporarily behave in ways they wouldn’t never dream of outside of a vehicle. While stuck in traffic, people say unspeakable things. They think even more unspeakable thoughts. On a 10 mile commute that takes an hour, people are capable of anything. And the minute they get home, it’s like nothing ever happened. The person they were behind the wheel during that time wasn’t them. They were briefly possessed by the god of cussing out strangers. And the god of really caring about making good time despite having nowhere to be.
So try putting yourself in the mind of a road raging psychopath. Every day at rush hour, you drive home from work in a pissed-off fury. For no more than 60 seconds at a time does your horn go un-blasted. You spend your whole commute looking for someone to blame. Trying to identify the single driver who’s responsible for ALL of the city’s traffic. You fantasize about giving that person a piece of your mind. The whole ride home, you’re just one idiot away from getting out of your car and drop-kicking the mirror clean off the side of their Prius…