I actually have trouble comprehending messages when they paint them on the road in this idiotic manner. It takes me valuable seconds to decode them.
The Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices specifies:
If a pavement marking word message consists of more than one line of information, it should read in the direction of travel. The first word of the message should be nearest to the road user.
But it provides no justification. Maybe Yoda wrote the spec.
(Courtesy xkcd.)
The rest areas on Interstate 40 in Arizona are closed. The ones both east and west of Flagstaff, and the one west of Kingman, in both directions: that's all of them, except the one right at the New Mexico border.
In the land of John McCain, anti-earmark crusader and former maverick, they can't find the money to pay for the rest areas. Honestly, Senator, bringing home federal money to your state is one of the jobs of a US Senator. It's what Arizona residents pay income tax for. Populist rhetoric fires up crowds who don't understand the system, but it doesn't get the job of government done, and this job is important, as smarter people are pointing out.
Fortunately, Arizona's exit ramps often provide ample room to pull off. Pee in the bushes or the desert and get some sleep. It's what the truckers are doing; it's what I did.
You've probably seen the Dance of Death: the driver of a car pulls out, without signaling, to pass a tractor-trailer. But once alongside the truck, inexplicably, horrifyingly, he matches speed with it and cruises along next to it, mile after mile, a spectacular reminder to all nearby that half the population is below median intelligence.
Does he not ponder the consequence of the slightest mistake? Does he not feel the turbulence conspiring against his steering? Does he not, just for a moment, hope to see the rays of tomorrow's sunrise?
No, he does none of these things; instead he careens down the highway, locked in this horrible dance, doomed to defeat without his opponent noticing his presence: an ant to the truck's boot, a lifeboat to its tsunami, George McGovern to its Richard Nixon.
You hang back, plotting a sudden yet perfect maneuver to avoid the fiery mass of molten metal, like Tom Cruise in Days of Thunder. You plan what you will say to the investigators: He must have been suicidal, officer. It's as if he wanted to die and take us with him.
Eventually, the trucker speeds up, or slows down, or gets the hell off the road, and our friend calmly, slowly drifts back to the right lane without signaling. As you pass him, you can't resist looking, to see what sort of fellow this could be. Regret sets in – you oughtn't have looked! – as you read the sign in the window: “Baby On Board.”
I think this may be the Perfect Car. Currently for sale at Best of Show Automotive, it's a rebuilt and modified 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T 440. This particular model could only be better if it had a 5-speed transmission – but that's something they do, present in this version, which sadly is in a quite unfortunate color.
At nearly $90,000, it's out of reach, and frankly it's a bit too good – so perfect I'd feel bad driving it around. But I would. A cross-country road trip in this thing would be the stuff legends are made of.
I know, Dodge has based their new Challenger on the looks of this model, and that's a wonderful thing. I lust for that car, the first “new” American car I have ever wanted. But having the real thing would be so, so much cooler.
I think I may have a new goal here.
While driving down the highway in the middle of the night, listening to Blondie, an interesting and odd thought popped into my head and wouldn't go away. I now present it as an Axiom of Universal Truth:
Debbie Harry is one of the coolest people ever.
I'm just old enough to remember the “Blondie is a group” T-shirts, but not old enough to have ever had one. Back then (and we're talking elementary school here), just knowing that Blondie was a group went a long way toward making you cool.
Blondie would be shoved under “Alternative Rock,” if that somewhat-silly genre had yet been invented. Up against any of today's “alternative rock,” without handicap, Blondie puts most of it to utter shame. Test of time, indeed.
But this isn't why I find the thought (now the Axiom) so odd. No, the reason is simpler: I don't actually know anything about Debbie Harry. See, for me, being a “fan” of someone means I enjoy their work, maybe read an article, or catch an interview on the Letterman show if I happen to notice it. But I don't go out and look for personal tidbits about the person; that stuff just doesn't matter to me, about someone I will likely never meet in my life. All I know about this woman is her music, and what I saw on MTV, and I heard somewhere that she may have dated Penn Jillette at some point.
So, the truth of the matter is that my Axiom is based entirely on public persona. Someone could come along who actually knows Debbie Harry and tell us that she's a bitch.
But that doesn't matter, either. I have a corollary to my Axiom, which I shall now present:
Even if Debbie Harry is a bitch, she's still cooler than you are.
Of the people who are currently thought of as cool, which ones do you think someone will write something like this about, thirty years from now?
In Illinois, you'll see the signs near most work zones: “Hit a worker, $10,000 fine, 14 yrs jail.” 14 years? Are they serious? 14 years for an accident?
Every time I see these signs I am struck by how astoundingly stupid this law is. In criminal justice there is the theory that penalties must be proportionate. If, for example, you sentence robbers to life in prison, it will encourage robbers to kill their victims to avoid capture.
Here, we're talking about an accident. It's not “14 years if you're driving recklessly and you kill someone.” It's just hitting someone, with no further qualification. If I hit a worker by accident, how would I react? I would back up, make sure he was dead so he couldn't talk, and then take it on the lam.
The worst part is that I'm not kidding. I've thought about it. There is no meaningful difference between a 14-year sentence, a life sentence, and a death sentence, not for someone like me. They could come after me if they wanted, but either I'd get away, or I'd go out like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. And, as with Butch and Sundance, they'd better bring the whole Bolivian Army, because that's the only way I'm going out.
Illinois is well-known for Nazi-like traffic enforcement. Rather than worry about actual crime, they send more revenue agents onto the highways to collect taxes from motorists at the expense of safety. If you look, you can find stories of them setting up actual entrapment stings enforcing “Scott's Law,” which requires you to move to the left lane when a police car is stopped on the shoulder – which is the usual custom, of course, but most out-of-staters won't know it's an actual law here and that the summons requires a court appearance.
But this 14-year thing is way over the top.
Mississippi has passed a law banning red light cameras. No new cameras will go up, and all existing ones must come down by October. Bravo.
Meanwhile, New Jersey, where I live, is adding towns to the list for new red light cameras. Other places are adding them as well. That's not so good.
Laws were meant to be enforced by people, not computers. And they certainly weren't meant to be a source of revenue at the expense of safety, which is what these things are – even more so than the rest of traffic enforcement.
Do you think they make you any safer? You can get statistics to say anything you like, but the overall result seems to be that red light cameras don't reduce accidents, they just change what kind of accidents happen. Let's say I'm approaching an intersection where I know there is a red light camera, and the light turns yellow with plenty of time to make it. What will I do? I'll hit the brakes, of course. Hard.
I can stop from highway speed in a bit over 100 feet. Once I had to emergency-stop from 75mph on I-90 when a pronghorn jumped into the road; I got a bruise from the seat belt. 50mph ain't no thing; I can stop in no time, wet road or not. Can you? Unless you drive a sports car too, and buy really good tires, you probably can't. So, please don't tailgate.
The question to ask when deciding whether to stop isn't “can I make it?”, it's “can I stop safely?” Red light cameras reverse this; drivers answer the wrong question, and safety is not improved.
When law enforcement is turned into a profit center, it's bad for everyone, except maybe the government getting the money. What happens next, after the red light cameras go in? The yellow light times are shortened, of course. If you think you're okay to keep going, you may be wrong now, and then you'll learn to slam full on the brakes next time. In some cases the yellow times are reduced to less than the minimum required by law.
Never mind that increasing yellow times reduces accidents significantly. It also reduces revenue! And that's what traffic enforcement is all about.
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