I just want to ram this thing off the road.
On one hand, I'm an admitted speeder. I race around town like a fox with its tail on fire. Berta would call it reckless, but I call it wreckless. In spite of driving "so fast", I am a pretty cautious driver, and I would like to think that as I get older and my observation skills decline, I would compensate by driving slower to be more careful.
Nonetheless, nobody drives 25 miles per hour through town. Nobody. It would be like walking. What would really be the point in driving? I'm not the only violator. Usually traffic moves thorugh town at an easy 35, if not 40. So this new sign has me all up in arms.
The Downingtown police have got this mobile speed limit sign with a radar gun attached. The gun points at cars as they roll toward the sign, and the sign displays the car's current speed in a big light-up display underneath the speed limit for that stretch of road.
So if you're on one of the main roads through town, you should be travelling 25 miles per hour. The speed limit sign on this towable rig will read "25 MPH", and just below it you will see how fast you are going. Indeed, if you go 10 miles per hour faster than the limit, the sign does this weird flashing thing to try to alert you to your transgression.
What issue do I have with this sign? Several.
First, everyone who would normally be driving through town at 35 - which has been the pace of driving through town probably since a week after our streets were littered with speed limit signs - sees this sign and slows down to try to match the limit on the sign.
Ok, fine, they're obeying the law. But they only do it in the one spot where this sign is located. What kind of weird technology-inspired hypocracy is this? As a result, a perfectly routine and speedy morning commute can become a traffic nightmare caused by a blinking speed limit sign five miles ahead.
Here's the kicker - what I find really irritating. The sign is not accompanied by police. Nor has the sign ever been followed up with a police presence.
This is what I would expect. The police would tow this ridiculous device to a place where they are likely to inform the most violators. They would allow the sign to site there for a reasonable duration as a warning for behavior change. After that duration, they move the sign to the next target location, and they set regular speed traps at the first location with actual police cars and speeding tickets.
But no. No cops. No tickets. No follow-up at all. And this sign appears everywhere. It's like the police are too lazy to do any actual speed monitoring and just put this device out there to do the work (poorly) for them. All that I am left to believe is that we have fired a bunch of cops, and the ones that are left fit into the following categories:
- Guy who drives the unmarked police car, which is now very easy (for me, at least) to recognize. (It's a dark blue Impala. Actually, pretty cool-looking. This cop must love his job.)
- The two guys who drive the two squad cars that I always see parked in parking lots facing opposite directions so that they can talk to each other out their windows. (I can only imagine two reasons for this: 1.One is just going off-duty and is telling the other what to watch for on patrol, or 2.They're being social on paid time.)
- The woman who drives that meter-maid golf cart. (This cart deserves a whole article on its own, and I'll admit to being the first suspect if the thing ever spontaneously explodes.)
- The guy who drives the DARE van. (I don't know what this police van is for, but it has police markings and lights on it. I've only ever seen it parked, always in the same place. There may not even be a driver.)
- The guy who tows the stinking speeding sign.
So that's 6 cops. There's probably a guy back at the station to take calls and watch all of those prisoners in the jail.
To me, the radar sign is just another speed limit sign. I'm amused to watch the lights flash as I speed by, and I expect that other people may start to figure out that all of this local tax money has gone to waste, too.
