Friday, January 9, 2009

Friday Festivus: Carter Barron Speed Trap


That would be, the airing of grievances. In the absence of anything insightful to say this morning, I thought I would publically gripe about something that bugs me daily.

The speed trap on 16th Street southbound near Carter Barron amphitheater. I drive through it every day. It is so obvious and familiar, I am about as likely to receive a ticket here as I am to spontaneously combust on any given day. No, my complaint is not the speed trap itself.

It is the moron drivers who feel compelled to slow down to 18 miles per hour in order to successfully navigate this trial.

The speed limit is 30. I know you can go that fast, because you were driving 45 -- like everyone else -- fifteen seconds ago. I am pretty sure you are also capable of reading a speed limit sign. And I am also quite certain that you understand what the relationship between the large "30" and the needle on your speedometer should be during periods of surveillance.

So why the hell do you fell compelled to come to a nearly complete stop every day in the middle of 16th Street?

On those rare occasions when there isn't a clusterfrack here during my commute home, I will gleefully cruise through the speed trap at the permissible 30 miles per hour, leaving some Honda Odyssey or Toyota Camry in the dust. The driver will invariably stare at me, aghast, as I willfully blow through the white horizontal lines at the speed limit. They seem to be thinking, what kind of man is that? What horrible, heinous maverick would dare drive a single mile per hour faster than 15 in a 30, while being clocked by radar? Who is that psychopath that would dare to stare straight down the gullet of an automated speed trap, consequences be damned???

I live on the edge.

Yeah.

It's good to be a gangsta.

2 comments:

lacochran said...

Ha!

Damn it feels good to be a gansta! :)

I go through the exact same thing on 295 South. Everybody slows way down as they oh-so-casually go by the trap. Stoopid.

Unknown said...

I noticed this kind of behavior all over the US and now in Brazil. In Maine when I was a teenager, I would generally stay at the speed limit (55 MPH) on the Turnpike. When I started passing the same cars that had been blowing by me before, I knew I'd be seeing a state trooper soon.
These days, the same people that do 80 KPH in a 70 zone suddenly slow down to 30 when there's one of those radar things that even shows you your speed and sends you a ticket if you're over 50 KPH. I hold right at 50 through the radar and blow by people who have just passed me before the radar.
It seems like a lot of idiots in the world think they'll get extra credit if, when being monitored, they slow down to a good 10 MPH (or 20 KPH in places where the metric system is used) below the speed limit. I imagine a cop stopping one of these idiots and saying "well, you were over the limit here, but since you went a good deal slower than you had to in a place where you were told there was radar, I'll just apply your credit from that to the speeding here and let you off."