WASHINGTON - It isn't every day that someone says you saved their life.

But the Dean of Washington Traffic Reporters, Bob Marbourg, has been told just that.

In an area as large and as busy as the D.C. region, police chases are bound to happen on the roadways.

And when the drama heats up, Marbourg goes to work.

"Watch your mirrors. If you are not out on I-270, this would not be a good time to get out on I-270," warned Marbourg during a recent police chase involving a tractor trailer. "Look around, get out of the way of the tractor trailer."

It was not the first time Marbourg sounded the alarm in an event like this, and as WTOP afternoon editor Judy Taub recalls -- for one driver in particular -- it's a good thing.

"As soon as the chase was over, I got a phone call in the newsroom. Some guy called me up and said 'Bob Marbourg just saved my life,'" Taub says.

"I said, 'What are you talking about?' and he said, 'I just got out of the way because Bob told all of the cars to get out of the way, and had I not, I would have been plowed into by this car that was speeding by me.'"

There are many people that Marbourg has helped in his time behind the traffic microphone at WTOP, and there will certainly be others.

After 30 years reporting traffic, where does Marbourg see traffic heading over the next few years?

"Straight downhill, but very slowly," Marbourg says.

"You know, there are promises made. Oh, things will get better. Things never get better. You only slow the rate at which they get worse. And worse is generally defined by the amount of time it takes to get from where you live, to where you need to be."

Marbourg says people keep changing their expectations

"We get phone calls from people who say, 'There's gotta be a problem ahead because it is never like this.' But they keep resetting what the expectation is -- where the delays form on a Monday, where the delays form on a Friday. That marker keeps moving as people continue to lower the expectations."

(Copyright 2009 by WTOP. All Rights Reserved.)