Monday, May 30, 2011

Stupid Is As Stupid Does

This posting could have another title…

Safety Barriers Getting in the Way of Unsafe Driving

On a local road not far from my house, within two mile of each other, there are two sets of Safety Barriers used to control traffic. They are intended to keep the drivers of cars from running into each other.

The first picture below will show you what the barriers are supposed to look like…

Barrier 004

There are five thingies inserted into the left turn lane. They are there to keep our Atlanta Knievels from getting into the center left turn lane and charging ahead at a high rate of speed in order to make it through the light before it changes.

The Safe Driver waits until he gets closer to the light itself before sliding into the left turn lane.

The danger is that the Safe Driver ends up being hit from the rear by the speeding Unsafe Driver.

The next two pictures show the second set of Safety Barriers which have been repeatedly hit and just about completely destroyed by many of my fellow drivers…

Barrier 002  Barrier 003

I guess I don’t need to peck out a lot more words to get you to understand that there are crazy drivers all about me. I know you will take solace that they are around me and not around you.

The late Paul Harvey just walked into my computer room, looked over my shoulder, saw what I was pecking out and told me to tell you The Rest of the Story

The type of drivers that have destroyed this second Safety Barrier are not just crazy and unsafe. They are crazy, unsafe and stupid. On more than one occasion (including last Saturday) I have seen these people swerve to the left into oncoming traffic and make it back into their coveted left turn lane just ahead of a head-on collision with oncoming wide-eyed drivers.

Do you see why I added “stupid” to their descriptive adjectives?

Some of you are probably asking yourselves why the first Safety Barrier is still intact. Could it be that there are better drivers only two miles away?

I feel certain that that is not the answer. I think it is probably much more likely that the Department of Public Safety has just finished replacing that Safety Barrier after it had been destroyed and was looking a lot like the second Safety Barrier above.

I’ll make it a point to drive back that way in about two weeks to see if my speculation is correct.

Would I kid u?

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