Thursday, September 29, 2011

Driving out of my way

What’s grinding my gears today is the tendency of municipalities to make it as difficult as possible to get anywhere. Under the auspices of safety urban planners have conspired to make left turns few and far between and essentially ban the U turn. A couple years ago a convenient left turn from my house to a heavily trafficked street was completely blocked off combined with the banning of U turns 100 yards down requiring drivers to drive away from their intended path to get where they are going. More recently at another point of the same popular road (on the other end of my housing development) those same urban planners went the extra mile to completely block off the possibility of making a left turn onto the road leading to my housing development, leaving alternate paths that add a couple miles to the trip.

Certainly in both instances when traffic is at its peak taking either left, and making a u-turn near those locations is difficult and ill-advised but that’s no reason to completely bar traffic at all times. Because irresponsible drivers do irresponsible things sometimes the rest of us motorists have to suffer. Nannyish urban planners may pat themselves on the back for preventing accidents but all they’re doing is providing a clutch for the careless, patching up one by one points on the road where morons get themselves in trouble while inconveniencing the rest of us and forcing us to waste gas and drive around where we want to go to get there. And it will only get worse. You can block off a road but an idiot will always act accordingly.

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