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Driving with the Entitled
Few things irk me more than people who drive in a manner that suggests that they believe themselves to be The Chosen One. Though I confess to not being the world’s most faithful speed limit adherent, I try to be courteous in my driving. But like many, I am subject to the impulses that underlie road rage. My hackles get up when encountering cell-phone abusing drivers, cutters-off, and generally oblivious drivers dangerously weaving about as if they were the only people on the road. But while my temperature rises and my language becomes more colorful — unless there are kids in my car — I can generally avoid seeing red.
Except in school zones.
Yesterday, I was passing through one on a 4-lane, divided road when some lady drove right up to my rear bumper, swerved around me — cutting off someone else — and dove back in front of me before speeding away. Fortunately, there were no kids around at the moment; unfortunately, however, neither was the cop who occasionally monitors the area.
For a split second, a massive rage of righteous indignation sprang up inside me. I wanted nothing more than to hit the accelerator, follow her all the way to wherever she was going, read her the riot act, take a picture of her car tag, and otherwise shame her for putting other people in danger. In that split second, the world was colored blood red through my eyes.
Luckily, I had the presence of mind to remember that I was still in the school zone. I kept the rage in check, and before long, she was gone and out of sight. But a day later, my anger still simmers.
I am painfully aware of my own fallibility and susceptibility to emotion. But is it that hard to be courteous? Is it that hard to not lord oneself over others, putting oneself at the head of the line with no regard to the chain reaction that occurs in your wake?
It’s a school zone, for crying out loud! An extra minute or two isn’t going to cost you that much. The alternative could be much worse.
Published in General
You need a dashcam. And a YouTube account.
Then you could record stuff like that, put it on YouTube and let it go viral.
Plus you can get her licence plate through playback.
Perfect revenge that will not harm your karma.
Seawriter
School zone speed limits, like almost all speed limits are absurdly low.
The few seconds lost at each of several school zones on my daily commute mean a minute or two lost because, statistically speaking, those few seconds have a nontrivial chance of causing me to miss a green light later on.
Multiply this by 365 days and you get a couple of hours lost. Multiply that by my billing rate and you get a couple of thousand dollars a year lost to the economy. Integrate this across all drivers and add in the costs of brakes and fuel from slowing down and speeding up and you probably get billions of dollars without any appreciable savings in lives.
That in itself presents a conundrum, as I am a bit of a privacy advocate. Alas.
I agree and disagree. Agree, because most vehicles can’t even idle at 25mph, and so I agree it is bothersome to ride the brakes.
But I also disagree, because especially at crossings, there is a guard present. I have actually seen a guard get hit by a car going well over the posted school zone limit.
With all the time that is wasted in the average work day – billed despite the lack of actual productivity – a few extra minutes driving time is extremely negligible.
Those who draw attention to themselves by breaking laws intended to protect others forfeit a right to privacy.
If the dashcam captures a picture of someone slipping on ice as they cross the street, posting that would be a violation of privacy however funny the video.
If the dashcam captures someone mugging another person posting that would be a public service.
Someone speeding through a school zone, zipping around other cars with a disregard of the safety of both pedestrians and other drivers? You tell me which category that belongs to.
(Let me throw in the obligatory “if it is illegal it is not necessarily wrong.” If it is illegal to shelter Jews from Nazis it is not wrong to hide them. I feel the right to privacy is waived if what is being done is both illegal and wrong.)
Seawriter
“well over” as opposed to “slightly over” just confirms my position that the speed limits are unreasonably low.
One does not lead to the other. As my calculations scientifically demonstrate, it is non-negligible and not worth the alleged benefit. There may be other non-negligible things in the world…
Math doesn’t always work well when you factor in human behavior. Raising the school zone speed limit 5 miles an hour will not necessarily result in time saved, and it may very well result in even faster speeds through those zones by those who feel their time is so precious that the limit doesn’t apply to them.
Wide street. Clear visibility. Fenced off playground. 9 am.
People.dont even let their kids play outside anymore. I cant remember the last time I saw kids in a crosswalk on my commute.
I am not going 25.
I slow as conditions require. On narrow Residential streets with lots of cars blocking visibility and front yards without fences I go like 5 miles per hour.
In Ohio school zones are 20 MPH, Texas too. In Hawaii entire towns have 20 MPH speed limit. Hawaiians never seem to be in a hurry.
I don’t know how it is where you are, but around here the school zone speed limits are only in force for about 45 minutes in the mornings and afternoons (sometimes 30 minutes depending on the school).
Just add in partial differential equations .. that should fill in the gap.
At the risk of offending some here most people’s driving skills are pretty basic. They can start their car, they know how to put it in gear and then they can generally keep it within their lane. As far as being prepared for an emergency or reacting to an emergency they rely on luck. If due to luck they avoid a collision, whether with a pedestrian, another vehicle, or a tree they consider themselves a skilled driver. The reason speed limits are low for a school zone is not because drivers do not have skill it is because children act on impulse. Children live for the moment and they see the other side of the street and run across the street without regard to risk. Unfortunately in that moment they sometimes meet the driver who has confused luck with skill.
Traffic laws are generally so easy to comply with the only (non-emergency) reason I can see for disobeying them is acting like a selfish jackass, which is generally a leftst trait. I obey the posted speed limit (not +/- any number) for my own moral vanity and the joy of those behind me. I’m a carrier of road rage, not a sufferer.
The signs say “when children present.”
I’m not sure exactly what that means, but I assume it means I will be ticketed anytime if caught.
I don’t understand what everyone is in such a hurry for exactly.
HURRY UP AND DRIVE! I GOTTA GET TO WORK SO I CAN GET SOME COFFEE AND BAGELS AND TALK ABOUT MY FANTASY FOOTBALL TEAM! I HAVE A CAREER, YOU JERKS!
In PA the school zone is 15 mph so y’all are speeding around the racetrack at 20 and 25 mph. Yes, Yes, yes, those zones are annoying. In PA you can’t even set your cruise control to keep the lid on your foot.
With that said, school zone laws seem designed to protect our precious little ones, who are learning impulse control, to look both ways, from those who have supposedly mastered such skills. Yet Jim’s anecdotal story demonstrates otherwise.
Kids deserve a chance to survive an error in their developing judgement. And grown-ups driving vehicles ought to give that, every single day.
I don’t believe there is one person on earth, if they hit a child with a car, wouldn’t trade a grande from their pocket or tardiness to work, to change the circumstances.
School zone laws seem built on the foresight of that regret. It just is not worth the risk or the heartbrake for the kids, the driver, the passengers, the friends, the family to ignore a school zone speed limit.
Just. Not. Worth. It.
What I gather from this post and most comments is that Parents are no longer responsible for Their kids crossing the street. Everyone else is.
Jim didn’t state that the driver ran a stop sign, red light, or plowed around a crossing guard at an intersection where the kids should be crossing the street.
What? To see someone speed and swerve? They see it all the time. Hell, They even play video games emulating it.
That statement implies that some child or children would have gotten hurt or even worse if standing on the sidewalk. I expect more from You, My Friend.
and btw, I cry when people in our neighborhood hit rabbits, because those rabbits could just as easily have been kids partially ground into the pavement.
So, yes, I am that woman, when you tail me going 27 in a 25, or give me the finger in a school zone, I set the cruise control or use my pinky toe instead of my lead foot.
A driver behind me seething with rage or being P’O’d because I’m paying attention is F.I.N.E with me.
I’d rather watch the daisies grow, the rabbits hop, and the children live.
But it has nothing to do with the kids living. It’s political theater. If you want to watch the daisies grow, you should stay home.
Ironically, given the nanny state takeover of public schools, my local school zones are the one place I can be guaranteed not to encounter a kid crossing the street.
The thread is interesting. I find it most interesting that people will decide which laws they will obey and which laws they won’t obey. Yet when Eric Holder makes the same decision they start screaming foul. Somehow the standard they demand of Eric Holder does not apply to them.
All I can tell you is that I have cleaned up messes that have resulted from unintentional mayhem on the road. I have radioed a dispatcher more than once and asked that a Police Bureau chaplain come to the ER to meet a family that lost someone in a traffic accident. The one thing that two families have in common is, the family of one who hit someone, and the family that lost someone is a desperate desire to make a clock run backwards. The laws of physics do not allow for that.
Nice try, but the difference is that the “laws We decide to not obey (for the most part)” doesn’t affect anybody, whereas the the laws Holder decides not to obey affects millions. If only Holder could be as discreet.
So you say, but my experience with people tells me a different story. Now I’ll grant you that most people are not truly evil, but please don’t take this the wrong way I found that most people do not have enough dignity to be truly evil, they are just stupid. Since I have never cited or arrested every human being there are exceptions.
And being stupid ain’t against the law… yet.
It’s only a matter of time before Y’all will cite and or arrest every human being.
Yes, people do that because law is not the same as legislation.
Legislation tends to grow out of the rules we all agree upon.
When legislation counters the rules we agree upon, we get problems.
Personally, I struggle with deciding when to obey legislation because I respect the rule of law, and violating legislation on purpose because some laws are stupid and I should be willing to accept the consequences for violating them.
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2006/12/boudreaux_on_la.html
Actually everyone can rest easy my time as a police officer is over.
Not as long as there are police officers.
ctlaw: But it has nothing to do with the kids living.
From materials for learning to drive, emphasis mine. I think the physics of car vs. child could be put into numbers related to weight, height, speed, and related forces expected in their collision.
Of course, every driver has the freedom to disregard the laws, but what that disregard costs is not always minutes or dollars, and it certainly is never ‘planned,’ but usually unexpected.
I hope and pray that your faith in partial differential equations and your ability to manage the unexpected while driving near a school is never challenged by an accident involving your own family or yourself.
I stand by my comment that the school zone laws are built on the community’s natural regret occurring when a child is injured or killed in an accident with a moving motor vehicle. And their agreement that the value of a child is not calculated by or comparable to the cost of brakes, fuel, minutes, or aggravation.
While the changes in statistics below are not directly attributed to school zones specifically, data shows that
Anecdotally, I have to say, I remember my grandparents complaining bitterly about the new slow school zone in our town and a very expensive ticket, back in 1976.
But, alas, it appears what may be more useful than school zones for promoting safety and life might be establishing bar zones, since
Hey, maybe the bar zone speed should be 75 mph? So we can reset the gene pool more quickly.
Again, where are the Parent(s)?
The physics of car vs. child with responsible Parent?