Today's Chuck Norris Fact:
In honor of Chuck Norris, all McDonald's in Texas have an even larger size than the super-size. When ordering, just ask to be Chucksized.
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To anyone who still believes that traffic/speeding laws are somehow supposed to keep us safer or make the roads better, consider the following recent examples of how these laws are used:
1. Denver recently turned its HOV lanes (HOV stands for "high-occupancy vehicle") into TOLL lanes. HOV lanes were designed to decrease congestion by providing an incentive for people to carpool. If you have more than one person in your car, you can use the HOV lanes for free and bypass any heavy traffic in the areas where the HOV lanes run. Not bad, eh? Well, Denver has now decided that ANYONE can take the HOV lane, as long as they pay a toll. Oh, carpoolers still get to take it any time for free, but single drivers can now take it by paying a tiered toll via an in-car transponder. The tolls are tiered, higher amounts for rush-hour and other high-traffic periods, lower for other times. So what started as a great idea simply becomes another way for Denver to gouge its citizenry, AND set up a nice class-warfare idea to go along with it (as, obviously, lower-income drivers likely won't pay, while Johnny Beemer and Jane Lexus will happily zip right along through there as often as they can).
2. You may have seen this one where you live: cash-strapped cities have been randomly lowering speed limits without warning, turning these stretches of road into ready-made speed traps. In some cities, it's been so bad that the citizens have turned against their city councils and even threatened to vote them out. More shameless gouging.
3. The city of Edgewater, one of Denver's many suburbs, was recently accused of writing thousands of illegal tickets. The Edgewater/Denver city boundary sits on the center line of one of Denver's main thoroughfares, meaning Denver cops can write tickets on the northbound side, and Edgewater cops can write tickets on the southbound side. Well, Edgewater cops have written many, many tickets to drivers on the northbound side of the road, where they have no jurisdiction. I have no idea if this is due to mere inattentiveness to their own laws, incompetence, or greed, but in any case, you'd think that, since it's their job to enforce these laws, they could do it properly. It doesn't surprise me, though, in this day and age.
Speedtraps have been around forever, and apparently, they're just not enough. So I don't want any of you telling me how important traffic enforcement is. When government and police can enforce these laws fairly, consistently, and honestly, I'll let up on the ridiculousness of the whole effort and the millions our government wastes annually on traffic enforcement.
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I think that if I ever meet someone who's courageous enough to tell me he's a traffic engineer, I think I'll just punch him in the nose and get it over with.
Consider this: traffic engineers have but one job, and that is to make you either a) go slower, or b) make you stop. That's their entire life, their entire career, and WE foot the bill for these people to train and think up newer and better ways to make auto travel as inefficient as possible. I'm sure, if one of them ever read this, they'd send me a long e-mail about how important their job is, and how they're really about keeping the roads safer, and blah blah blah. (People are really mostly very predictable, you know; there's no limit to human indignance.) I don't buy it, though. In fact, I think they figure out a lot of these things just so they can piss people off. Granted, not all they do is horrible; at least they got smart enough to put sensors in lights so that the busier direction stays green unless someone trips a sensor so that they can go their own way. However, thinking of some of the other things traffic engineers have come up with, I think they enjoy their work (i.e., making people stop or go very slow) much more than they let on.
For example, who thought it was a great idea to make lights that only go to yellow, then red, AS YOU ARE NEARLY UPON THEM??? I've seen lots of situations as a driver where I've seen a light 1/4 mile ahead of me, and no one else ahead between me and the light. Maybe there's someone waiting patiently on the cross-street, so I'm expecting it to change. I mean, come on, that person's waiting, and there's plenty of time. So I'm waiting for the light to go to yellow, but it doesn't. I'm now 1/8 of a mile away, still no change. I'm wondering what's up. I get closer, now just a few hundred feet away, and I'm thinking of slowing down, but now I'm so close that I'm certain that it's going to stay green. Just as I get to where the intersection's white lines begin, IT CHANGES. The stinking light had 20-30 seconds to change before I was even anywhere near it, and it didn't change until I was about ready to go through it. Either the traffic engineers want to piss everyone off, both by making me stop at so ridiculous a time AND by making the poor driver on the cross-street wait as long as possible, or they're setting you up to get a ticket running a yellow or red light, thus brining in more money for their town (CHA-CHING!!!).
I have this happen to me at least once every 2-3 weeks, and sometimes even more frequently. Funny thing is, when I meet that guy and I punch him, he'll probably say, "oh, no worries...happens all the time."
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Homestretch time...only 5 days until I'm married to Heidi!!! WOO HOOOO!!! I'm ready to marry her and spend the rest of my life with her, and I'm also ready to get the wedding over with so that maybe our lives can start to settle down a bit.
More good news! I was greatly concerned that I wasn't going to get a chance to head home to Oklahoma over the summer. That really bothers me when I don't, because summertime is the best time to go (well, unless it's on a Saturday in the fall). We're going in a few weeks, and we'll be there about 5 full days. Not as long as I'd like, but I guess I have to make do with what I have. I'm so ready to go back, I can taste it.
Thanks for reading along.
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