Speed Bump

A kid got hit by a car on my street this evening. The car wasn't going fast, the kid wasn't injured as far as I can tell. Maybe scared half to death.

The posse was out in force, but these are the people who took at least six hours to figure out what to do about a tank of anhydrous ammonia the size of a gas grill's propane tank. They're good people, but this is Mayberry in many ways.



When I bought my house, the guy I worked for at the time lived down the street. He said what the neighborhood needed was slow drivers and I chuckled. And he said, no he was serious. Thing about that guy, he was always serious. I swear I saw him at World's of Fun with the same grim determination he had when he passed through the cubicle farm he owned. He had a light side, I saw it a time or two, but it was something you'd miss unless you knew him a few years.

But he was right about the slow drivers. We need them. Including we need me to be one. I don't speed wrecklessly down the street, but I'm as guilty as anyone of getting in a hurry. I'll bet I've done 40 more than once, and 30-35 pretty routinely. Despite the posted 25 mph speed limit.

There's no natural reason to slow down except that there are a lot of young families in the 'hood, with honyocks that haven't had a chance to learn about bolting into the street.

I almost got in an altercation with a neighbor one time escorting my daughter and her friends home at dusk. They were on bikes and I just knew some asshole would come flying up the street oblivious to small cyclists who were equally oblivious to speeding cars. And I wasn't wrong, because a total asshole in a 4x4 pickup ran up my tail pipe blaring his horn and cussing me that I had kids on the street he needed to speed down. I think I cost him almost two minutes of Monster Truck highlights on cable or something and he was about to get me into the first physical fight I've had since junior high over it.

So anyway, I've got to thinking about speed bumps. I hate them, I wouldn't be cheerful about it, but it would slow my ass down. I doubt it would do anything for the asshole up the street with his jacked up truck, you'd have to make a speed bump taller than a hay bail to slow his gas guzzler down, but it'd work for those of us who don't have to make up for tiny genitals with enormous vehicles.