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Don't Get Mad, Trashercise!

Rich Stanton was walking down West 73rd Street toward the B train. Traffic was backed up behind a garbage truck that was making its rounds. A well-dressed man in a pricey car was first in line behind the truck. He got out of the car and asked calmly, "The only way I'll get moving is if this trash gets picked up faster?"

With that, the guy from the car started picking up trash bags and loading them in the truck. The trash man just chuckled as they worked side by side.

From the nytimes.com website. I thought it was a very good example of doing something about traffic frustrations. So is this (from the same source):

As a New York City tourist guide giving a tour recently to a busload of marathon runners from France, I asked the motor-coach driver to turn into a side street without realizing that toward the end of the block was a construction container on one side of the street and two double-parked cars at each end of the container. This meant traffic had to snake around the obstacles, which couldn't be done with a coach.

With a few moments to rest, they managed to clear the street for us to pass, to the applause of bystanders who had gathered to watch.