Tuesday, August 03, 2010

Why I Hate Speed Bumps

No, not because I'm a speed demon. Nor is it because even at a crawl, my low front end tends to come within a millimeter of being bonked.

I find them amusing at times. Like when I'm on my walk, my neighborhood has a few and the neighborhood bordering mine is lousy with them, and I can annoy Jason by exclaiming, "Mountain climbing!" whenever I walk over one, then (because I am insane, you don't know this by now?) when I am over it, say "Wow, that one was tough, didn't think I'd make down the back slope".

But really, speed bumps in residential neighborhoods simply and plainly say that our society has no self control or respect for either the law or their fellow citizens.

Not only can we not follow the speed limit, which is in place for a reason other than to make you late for whatever you are rushing to do, but we have no concern that our neighbors children might be nearby.

No respect for others. I am serious. If you speed down a road where you know children might be present, you have no respect for a fellow human being.

So people speed. Then this happens: people complain (probably the same people who speed down other people's roads). They get speed bumps. And you know what happens? (Other than people speeding up to the bumps, slamming on brakes, then screeching away once across?)

Um, fire trucks can't get over them. They have to come to almost a complete stop, creep over, then try to get the giant rigs back up to some sort of speed.

How many times do you want a fire truck to have to stop and creep along while en route to your burning house?

Okay, so your house might not catch on fire. Statistics are on your side.

No they aren't. Insurance companies love statistics. They look at things like how long it takes your local fire house to respond to fires. That figures into your bill.

Twosday! Cat nap pile.

2 comments:

jaz said...

I once began writing an essay about how you could judge the maturity of a society by how well alternate merges worked where its roads narrowed but I became too depressed just thinking about it.

Chuck Boyd said...

I just watched a Woody Allen film where he wrote "Automatic toilets were invented because people could not be trusted to flush."