Chuck Altman, you are an idiot

There's this guy in our town that's creating a program called "Keep Kids Alive Drive 25."

He's stupid. I also think he lives in my neighborhood.

A couple of months ago I complained about someone in my neighborhood who drove 10 MPH during school zone hour, even though they were nowhere near a school zone. I'm pretty sure that a couple of weeks later I ended up behind this person again. This time it was a guy in a Chrysler 300. I was stuck behind him when he was going 30 in a 40 MPH zone, and then he drove 20 in the 30 MPH zone. I did something I've NEVER done before, which was lay on my horn behind him for more than a block.

Geez.

I'm not ever going to advocate speeding, particularly in my own residential neighborhood. However, just about any cop or traffic engineer will tell you that it's just as dangerous to drive substantially slower than the speed limit (25% and 33%, respecively, in regard to the Chrysler, and SIXTY-SIX FUCKING PERCENT during the non-school zone incident). When there is a posted speed limit, people expect others to be driving somewhere near that speed, when conditions allow. In Texas, that's about 98% of the time. People who are turtling set up a situation in which cars get rear-ended, and often it isn't the person driving slow who gets into the accident; it's the guy behind him who has to break suddenly that gets hit by the guy behind HIM because the third guy couldn't see the road turtle.

At which time the road turtle will think his turtling is justified because, "See, those guys behind me were driving too fast and got into an accident." (When they were actually driving the speed limit and breaking no laws. Jerkoff.)

So now this asshole wants to encourage people in our town to drive 25 so that the town will change the residential speed limit to 25. The effect this will have, is that a bunch of self-important older men who need Viagra and have nothing better to do and nowhere to get to with any kind of expediency, will all agree to drive too slow. And the rest of the people will not have heard about this stupid idea, and will be driving 30, because THAT'S WHAT THE SIGNS SAY THEY CAN DO.

Say they did drop the speed limit to 25. How are they going to enforce that? Because if these guys want patrol cars to ticket people, I'm going to have to take issue with that. I'd much rather have the cops out actually preventing--oh, let's say--driving behavior that is actually dangerous.

Besides, it's not as if they'll actually catch any speeders with half a brain. Their usual M.O. is they will place one of those speed monitoring machines at one of the major streets that enter a neighborhood. Then the following day they'll set up a speed trap in that exact spot. So if you see a speed monitor one morning, the following morning you make a point to not speed.

Duh.

Some people will always speed. Since I try to "Drive friendly, the Texas way," when these people get behind me in my neighborhood and start tailgating, I pull over and let them pass me. I do this because there is a chance this person has an actual emergency, and also when they see me do so maybe they'll appreciate it and it adds to my good karma, or maybe they'll realize what a jerk they're being.

Whatever.