There are two weird street signs I pass along my anaesthetizing commute, and it's no surprise that even though I've been driving that same route almost every weekday for the past 1 year, 5 months and 1 day, I just noticed one of them today. It says ROAD LEFT. What the hell does that mean? It's a normal sign, yellow, diamond-shaped, whatever, so the DPW or whoever put it there for some purpose, but what? Did the road take off for a while, to have a coffee and a smoke? Is it to alert you that there's a road coming up on the left? There's always a road coming up, we don't need advance notice. Christ, don't give me anything to think about when it's 7:30 a.m. and I am barely conscious enough to process the fact that 93.7 Mike FM just played Ratt and James Taylor back to back.
The other sign is on the way home. I idly think, "What does that mean?" but then I have to immediately turn my attention to the hazard just ahead. The hazard is a policeman whose job it is to periodically halt traffic and allow people turn left out of an office park. It almost causes a pileup every time because nobody behind the first person can see the cop in the road, only the green light just beyond. I can't tell you how many near-misses I've witnessed. And it's a downhill slope which makes it worse. Anyway, the sign says NO JAKE BRAKING. Ooookay, I promise I won't. I finally looked that shit up this morning because I knew I was bored enough to blog about it, and if you care, jake braking is an alternative way for 18-wheelers to slow down on hills without burning out their regular brakes.
When I was young, a sign appeared down the street from my house that said CAUTION DEAF CHILD. I grew up in a nice suburban neighborhood, on a street where everybody knew each other, and nobody knew who the deaf child was. There wasn't one. It was weird. And the sign is still there 20 years later, so the deaf kid who never existed in the first place isn't even a kid anymore.
They're definitely wasting a lot of money on superfluous signs. Do BLIND DRIVEWAY signs actually make anyone slow down? Do NO OUTLET signs give you pause? The only signs I like are the stop signs that have "Bush" spray-painted underneath. Someone in my area is making that their mission, because I've seen a few. Thank you, anonymous left-wing tagger, for making a sign that actually means something.
The other sign is on the way home. I idly think, "What does that mean?" but then I have to immediately turn my attention to the hazard just ahead. The hazard is a policeman whose job it is to periodically halt traffic and allow people turn left out of an office park. It almost causes a pileup every time because nobody behind the first person can see the cop in the road, only the green light just beyond. I can't tell you how many near-misses I've witnessed. And it's a downhill slope which makes it worse. Anyway, the sign says NO JAKE BRAKING. Ooookay, I promise I won't. I finally looked that shit up this morning because I knew I was bored enough to blog about it, and if you care, jake braking is an alternative way for 18-wheelers to slow down on hills without burning out their regular brakes.
When I was young, a sign appeared down the street from my house that said CAUTION DEAF CHILD. I grew up in a nice suburban neighborhood, on a street where everybody knew each other, and nobody knew who the deaf child was. There wasn't one. It was weird. And the sign is still there 20 years later, so the deaf kid who never existed in the first place isn't even a kid anymore.
They're definitely wasting a lot of money on superfluous signs. Do BLIND DRIVEWAY signs actually make anyone slow down? Do NO OUTLET signs give you pause? The only signs I like are the stop signs that have "Bush" spray-painted underneath. Someone in my area is making that their mission, because I've seen a few. Thank you, anonymous left-wing tagger, for making a sign that actually means something.
1 Comments:
Who the hell are the people buying the houses with blind driveways, anyway? I saw a guy on the Cape creeping out of his driveway which was somehow obscured by people coming from both the right and left until you were about to kill him. He needed to inch out, hold up traffic, and wave his thanks to cars on both sides for screeching on their brakes at the last second. Can you imagine dealing with that, every day?
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