I may have complained about this before, but I have graphs this time.
There is a Catholic high school near our house, Bishop Shanahan. Every morning around 8am, bazillions of teenage drivers mount their parents’ (or at least one that their parents bought for them) cars and traverse the roads through my neighborhood to get to school. Nevermind that school starts at 8am, and they’re all still on the road at that time. The real issue I have with these kids in my neighborhood is that they’re always nearly running me down while I’m trying to get to work in the morning.
How is my near-death accomplished each morning? I’ll explain.
The road behind my house, and onto which my garage empties, is Acorn Lane. At the end of Acorn Lane there is a stop sign. In this intersection, it is the only stop sign. As a result, if there is traffic coming from any other direction in the intersection, cars at the stop sign end up sitting for a very long time. Most times, there is a line of traffic at this stop sign that reaches from this intersection halfway to the next - often longer.
Instead of sitting in this line, enterprising high schoolers will turn onto Grant Avenue (that’s the road on which my house sits). There is a stop sign at the end of Grant Avenue, but every direction at that intersection also has a stop sign. So if you come to that intersection, you get to take turns, and then immediately pass any fool who is waiting at the intersection of Acorn lane on the way to school.
This whole traffic pattern has several consequences for me. First, since the cars back up on Acorn Lane pretty regularly, they are always blocking my garage exit around the time when I’m trying to get to work. This is really inconvenient, since I can never park in the garage if I expect to get to work on time.
Second, if I park on the street in front of my house, I am in real danger of being run down. You may feel no pity for me, but what about the children? That’s right, there’s also an elementary school within walking distance of here, and these youngsters are all getting ready to walk up there at about this time. So the streets are filled with little grade schoolers, and the cars zipping along the streets are filled with novice teen drivers.
Moreover, I should stress the speed at which these high school kids drive. I drive unreasonably fast sometimes, as I have admitted in the past, but I usually slow down through residential areas because there would be kids around. Not so with these teens.
For example, one day the police set up a speed trap on Grant Avenue. The machine was erected in front of my neighbor’s house. Of the 13 cars that passed while the machine was manned by an officer, all 13 cars were exceeding the speed limit by enough to receive citations. They all did.
The next morning, they were all back doing the same thing.
Today, I had to go pick up some things at the grocery store, and I drove past Shanahan. There were cars parked all over the street - Both sides, on the curb, down near the baseball fields. All of these people had completely ignored the “No Parking Any Time” signs posted on boths sides of the road. This makes me very angry because it actually makes the road (which is heavily travelled by people who live near here) difficult to pass.
There were people sitting out on the hoods of their cars and standing around the road trying to talk and watch the baseball game in progress. It’s typical that all of these people were driving Audis, BMWs, and monster-sized custom gas-guzzeling SUVs - people with stupid money.
These are the same folks that, when everyone is slowing down in the cruising lane to get by one-lane construction, will drive past everyone in the passing lane and then expect to be let into the front of the line that everyone else has been waiting in all that time. They don’t consider that their actions are often what causes the traffic problem in the first place.
It’s no wonder to me that these children of privilege are such menaces on the road in front of my house. This needs to come to an end.
