Maggie and the little girl next door were playing. The neighbor asked if Maggie could stay to supper; they were having a small party -- food, drinks, some games and movies. Then she realized that I might misunderstand "drinks." This little 9-yr-old hastened to assure me that they wouldn't be drinking beer and wine, just, y'know, "drinks," not "drinks."
Then she went on to tell me that she is taught at school how bad drinks are. They say if you have even ONE drink, that you'll get sick and end up in the hospital. And that if you have several drinks, you might die from it. But she said that didn't make sense. Sometimes her mom will have four or five beers in one day (I'm assuming that's through the course of a long evening), and her mom never gets sick from beer. And she pointed out to me that, IF what "they" say is true, then EVERYbody would be sick from beer and would've been hospitalized from it, because everybody has beer-butt chicken. (Sorry to say, I have not yet partaken of this dish which I have been assured is marvelous. I'm going to have to remedy this oversight someday.) So here's this little girl, telling me that she doesn't think liquor is so horrible as they keep trying to teach her it is. Her experience contradicts what the school teachers say.
Then there's the speed limits in construction zones. Flashing signs along the road warn us to slow down for construction. Orange signs warn us that there are "Men Working" ahead. Threats are invoked: fines are doubled in work zones. And yet, how often do we see the signs, and drive for 20 miles in a "construction zone" where there is absolutely no construction? If it were in unfamiliar territory, you could rack it up to "They're just putting up the cones and the signs; the trucks and backhoes will be here tomorrow." But when you live there, and for five months the 20-mile-long "construction zone" consists only of men on two bridges, only on the weekday afternoons, well, it gets pretty hard to take seriously the need to drive 45 mph (instead of 65 or 70) on a Saturday morning for the whole length of road.
However, sometimes there ARE "men working." One of our neighbors (working on road repairs) nearly lost his leg and was hospitalized for months when a motorist ignored the speed limits in the construction zone, and smashed into him. Is it the fault of the motorist? Yes, to some extent. But how much is it also the fault of the government which puts up "SLOW: men working" signs when there just aren't any repairmen anywhere around?
About a year ago, a citizens' group in a nearby city got funding to run a campaign to encourage parents not to provide liquor to kids. They just couldn't figure out why parents weren't getting on the bandwagon. They had all these billboards up, telling people not to keep beer in the fridge because it would be too easy for their children to have access to it. (So, let me get this straight. They're promoting drinking warm beer? Or they want the grown-ups to have no beer, as long as there are minors in the home?) This group ran newspaper articles, trying to get parents to support "Not a Drop Till They're 21." And they couldn't figure out why more parents weren't supporting the cause. I called and talked to the group organizer. She couldn't understand why I was "in favor of" parents buying multiple kegs and many bottles of hard liquor for a party for 14-18 yr olds. I kept saying that there's a world of difference between getting other people's kids totally schnockered, and serving your own 19-yr-old a 3-ounce glass of wine with a spaghetti dinner at the dining room table. As long as these folks can't tell the difference, though, they will have no credibility out there in the real world.
If the government were just HONEST instead of insisting that "The sky is falling! The sky is falling!" maybe we'd take them seriously more often. But as long as the sky is falling, we will all be questioning the "need" to give up our incandescent light bulbs, buy ethanol, eat oat bran, avoid cholesterol, repaint our houses too often because there's no lead in the paint, and drive plastic buckets to conserve fuel.
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Wow, common sense! What a concept!
ReplyDeleteMost rules and regulations in driving are just variants on the concept of being careful. If all drivers were patient and used common sense, we would need almost no signs at all - people would naturally drive slowly around tight corners or through residential areas. Since drivers tend not to be, however, we have an enormous amount of signs, ranging from the somewhat arbitrary speed limit signs to such obvious messages as "WATCH CHILDREN." Most drivers live in a state of semi-legality, going over the speed limit depending on how late they are, occasionally running a red light when they're sure they can make it, etc. Because the standard of driving ability is so low, signs aren't placed with the expectation that they'll be followed to the letter, but rather that they can hopefully bend the average driver's fluctuating level of caution into a more usable shape.
ReplyDeleteWORK AHEAD signs aren't different from slow speed limit signs or watch children signs. They're simply a small - but enforcible - appeal to be a bit more careful (or a bit less spacey) in a situation which is somewhat more likely to pose a threat of an accident. What percentage of the times that you see a WORK AHEAD sign is there actually work ahead? Well, what percentage chance of the times you see a WATCH CHILDREN sign do you actually see children near the road?
Nat, in Illinois they were doing some road construction. The orange signs were up, warning of construction for the next 20 miles, or 35 miles, or whatever it was. But they had this nifty thing. There are lights right at the scene of where the guys were working on the road. When the men were there, they'd flip the switch that notified drivers men were working, that we should slow down to 45 (or sometimes 35 or 30, depending on how close the workmen were to the moving traffic), and how close we were to the zone. And then they notified you when you were past the roadworkers, so that you could get back up to speed (even though it was a "construction zone") until you came to the next place where there were actually people working.
ReplyDeletePeople obeyed those signs. They knew there was a genuine reason to slow down -- for the safety of those men who were working near the traffic. But people's patience wasn't pushed to the extreme by being asked to drive 45 mph for 45 minutes. They could get through that construction zone in 30 minutes, slowly down only when it was REALLY necessary.
Besides, I still object to making laws that the govt knows it's not going to enforce, just so that they can hope they'll give people's behavior a nudge in the right direction. That's just manipulative.