When I first saw the flashing yellow turn signal lights in the City of Peoria, my first reaction was that some of our "city fathers" finally realized how stupid it is to set idling your motor at a red turn signal when there isn't a vehicle or pedestrian in sight.
Later, I read the JS article by Terry Bibo, "New safety program has drivers scratching heads and honking horns". Good grief! Scratching head? A driver that doesn't know that yellow means caution; yellow has never meant stop or go but proceed with caution. Always did as far as I can remember.
The person scratching their heads should probably not be driving at all. Too bad vehicles no longer have metal bumpers that could give these "scratchers" a small butt and see if that would release their brains from "d'oh".
Reading further, I found it was IDOT, not the City of Peoria who has been paying for and installing this "modern thinking out of the box" procedure. How foolish of me to believe it was the city public works dept. whose snow plows tore up the edges of my lawn for about the fifth straight year. Whose city roadbeds rank with the worst I have ever seen in over 1,500,000 miles I've driven in my lifetime.
Then I read another JS article, "flashing lights create talk; too early to know impact. Installation began last fall at the most dangerous intersections and will continue into the spring. Bradley University has received an $150,000 grant to study the effects of the program; such lights are expected to reduce crashes by 30%".
$150,000 of money the state doesn't have to give to Bradley ivory tower folks to pocket while their students do the surveying? Like Peoria, with IDOT's 'money' was the first city to install "flashing" yellow lights at turn signals?
Not hardly.
And folks wonder why the country will someday NOT be the leader of the free world. If you are a new reader of my blogs, go back into my archives and then you won't ask me why.....
No comments:
Post a Comment