Traffic director Reggie Northern. Photo credit: Rick Dole for Michelin North America

“Cross if you need to cross,” Reggie Northern says to fans and team members as he holds his hands up to stop traffic.

And then the motion begins again. This weekend at Road Atlanta, it’s on loan.

Reggie isn’t just any traffic director. He might be the most remembered, personable, and friendliest guard you’d meet in a situation where you just want to get where you need to go as soon as possible. It’s his job to facilitate the movements, and boy, is he efficient.

Reggie’s signature motion is a waving of both his arms, one in opposite of the other, to assign cross traffic to pass through his intersection. When lines get long in the ones that are waiting, he’ll put up the stop sign, turn around, and do likewise.

“I just wanted to do a little different motion of directing traffic,” Reggie says. “The waving sign helps move things both ways.”

He knows teams and manufacturers in particular have to get where they’re going pretty quickly. He’s not playing favorites, but he understand the need to keeps things on schedule.

“They have a lot of sponsors and obligations to keep,” he says, “and I can’t hold them up.”

While he has been an institution at the 12 Hours of Sebring for six years, Reggie is here this weekend at Road Atlanta for the first time, and immediately recognizable to the legions of people accustomed to him.

“I don’t know many of the teams and drivers,” he says. “But they know a lot more of me than I do of them!”

If you don’t see him this weekend at Road Atlanta, definitely be on the lookout for him next March at Sebring.