Safety Options

A terrible thing happened yesterday at a California High School. A 17 year old boy brought a gun to school. It accidentally discharged, and the bullet hit another boy in the neck, as well as a girl in the head. As a result, the school and the local police have decided to increase security.

This has been going on for years ... decades, actually. Long before Columbine occurred, security in public schools was a hot topic. I remember being surprised when I started high school (many moons ago) and found we had two campus security guards and one local police officer (armed). A few years after I started high school, we heard about the installation of metal detectors on some campuses in the LA area. At that time, my school went from "open campus" (we could leave school for lunch) to "closed campus" (no one was allowed to enter or leave other than at the start and end of the school day (unless they went through the administrative office. After I left, they took the lockers off campus (for fear students could store/hide weapons and/or drugs therein). Still, violence increased.

I remember when RoboCop 2 came out: the murderous drug lord in that was a 13 year old kid, and we all thought, "Oh, my gosh, that is so ridiculous!" Last year a 14 year old boy was arrested in Mexico and charged with being the most ruthless hit- ... um ... boy? person? employed by a drug cartel there. Life imitating art?

So we're going to, as they say, "hell in a hand-basket." What to do about that? How do we make schools safe again?

Option 1: Tele-commute. There are no schools. Everyone stays at home and has to log into each class live, via webcam (imagine the scene in Real Genius where all the students were just tape recorders recording the lecture being given by the reel-to-reel left by the professor, but substitute webcams and monitors). If a student disappears from their monitor for more than 30 seconds, they are considered absent, and absences are charged at $5 per class. Teachers get paid $1.95 per minute per student, but on the up-side, hospital stays are very short when you've been hit by a virtual bullet.

Option 2: Build 20 foot tall concrete walls around all schools, with doors that would make a bank vault jealous. Nothing is allowed to be brought on-campus. The official school uniform is a bikini for girls and a Speedo for guys. I know, it will suck in Denver in the middle of January, but that's the price of school security.

Option 3: Give up. Realize all security measures can be defeated (after all, a really determined thug going to the school in option 2 will learn to clench his or her butt-cheeks around that 9 mm). Any student using a weapon on campus is shot first, after which they are handcuffed and taken to wherever their medical condition requires. And isn't the fact that they are gunning each other down just part of nature's plan? It's just survival of the fittest, after all.

Hope some of this made you laugh, but I also hope it makes you think about what needs to be done, not in reaction to, but rather proactively for the safety of our children in public schools.

Until then, I think I'm putting my kids in Hogwarts. At least there the only one using Avada Kedavra is You-Know-Who.

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Bad Communication Between Cars

No, I’m not talking about that middle finger. I’m talking about doing something other drivers don’t expect you to do. Like passing an exit at 90 MPH and then deciding you need to zoom over the median and jump onto that exit you almost missed. I got news for you: you missed it. But don’t worry, there is another one a mile or so up. You can take that exit and work your way back.

It’s even more stupid (and dangerous) when you’re in the carpool lane of an 8 lane freeway and decide you need the exit that is 500 feet away, so you make a right turn on the freeway without using your blinker, moving out of the carpool lane in a non-designated area, crossing 7 lanes of traffic and running over the $500,000 Highway Beautification Project to take the H Street exit…only to find out you needed the J Street exit anyway. Nice going, Mr. Wheeler. Why can’t you be more like Mr. Walker?

Source: Dallas Transportation Blog

So use your blinkers to let others know what you’re intending to do. Change lanes safely. And when you see someone turn on their blinker, that doesn’t mean speed up so they can’t get in front of you! Share the road with others. Leave enough room between cars.

Don’t drive like there is someone waiting for you at your destination, drive like there is someone at your destination waiting for you.

The Motorcyclist with a Death Wish

Let me qualify this by saying that my dad rides a motorcycle, and I wish I had the guts to ride one, but I like my guts on the inside, thank you very much. I’ll stick to riding out in Glamis. Bikers are hard enough to see and easy enough to smear all over the road when they are driving safely. If they drive like idiots, they’re really asking to meet their maker.

Brad Pitt during unsafe

lane splitting (Examiner)

Bikers: you are allowed into the “carpool” lane, and you are allowed to “split lanes,” but you must still do both safely. Lane splitting is legal for a biker because their engine is air-cooled (with no radiator, they rely on air flowing over the engine to keep it from overheating and seizing up), but just because you can split a lane does not mean you should. Only split lanes when traffic is moving slower than 35 MPH, and never go more than 10 MPH faster than the cars you are passing (if you do something stupid and startle me, it may legally be my fault that I ran you over, but that doesn’t change the fact that you have to order off McDonald’s I.V. selection and have a nurse change your diapers for the rest of your life).

Enter and exit the carpool lane only in the designated spots (see more tomorrow).

Unsafe Lane Changes

Just because you want to change from your lane into my lane doesn’t me you get to change into my lane. Not because it’s mine and I won’t let you (that’s a$$h0li$h), but because you have to make sure you have enough space to make that move. If I have to slam on my brakes to let you in, you’re doing it wrong. My James Bond solution: hit the missile launcher and blow you into a million pieces that rain harmlessly onto my car as I pass through where you used to be.

Change lanes safely. Make sure you are moving into the middle of that 3 second cushion between the cars next to you, not 2.875 seconds behind the car in front, putting you a scant .125 seconds in front of the car you just cut off (who now has to slam on his brakes – look out for that missile – 0.125 seconds is not enough time to see it going into your tail pipe!).

I’m trying to be funny here, but 0.125 seconds is an exaggeration in the opposite direction you would think! I have had people cut me of with literally less than a yard between me and their car. I have had people so close behind me that I cannot see their headlights! At 70 MPH, 3 feet is 0.03125, or 31 milliseconds! I don’t think brake lights have time to light up that fast; there is no way a person could see and react to brake lights, let alone actually slow a 3,000 pound car down that fast.

Tailgating

No, I’m not talking about the barbecue in the football stadium parking lot, I’m talking about driving too close to the (idiot who is also tail-gating) in front of you. You should always have at least 2 to 3 seconds of empty lane in front of you. I say 2 to 3 seconds for two reasons: the exact distance depends on your driving speed (at 10 MPH that would be 30 to 45 feet, whereas at 70 MPH it would be between 205 and 310 feet), and most people find it difficult to jump out of their car and run up to the car in front of them dragging a tape measure at 70 MPH (it’s so much easier just to watch the car in front of you pass something then make sure you don’t pass it until you count “one thousand ONE, one thousand TWO, one thousand THREE!”) My James Bond wish? I need the Oil Slick button to send you spinning off the freeway.

If everyone maintained the proper distance, the vast majority of our traffic would disappear. Why? Everyone going at 70 MPH with plenty of space between them and the car in front of them allows people to change lanes and merge onto or off the freeway without having to fight for space. If you don’t leave enough room between cars, lane changing will always cause people to have to slam on their brakes, and that is how our freeways end up being parking lots.

So Cal Traffic

You know, I’m really not a violent person. I swear! But sometimes I wish I had James Bond’s car; I would use it to eliminate all the stupid people from the road.

About 10 years ago I was driving on the 15 out of San Diego. I was headed toward my dad’s house and had to pass through the Corona area. Traffic started to slow about 8 miles south of the 91 when some idiot decided he was the most important person in the world and didn’t need to slow down like the rest of us, so he floored it and swerved into the emergency lane doing about 80 MPH. Since this was Corona, there was a lot of gravel off to that side, and at that speed, he threw gravel into the air, showering all the cars in the two right-most lanes. Of course everyone had to slam on their brakes: some out of fear or surprise, others to avoid hitting the people slowing in front of them, and some out of caution because they saw brake lights and didn’t know what was going on.

I’m sure 99% of the US would agree with me when I say that the driver of that car was an ass; he intentionally did something illegal to save time, putting everyone else in jeopardy as well as making their commute both slower and more aggravating. But there are also a lot of people who do things they think are totally acceptable, but that actually lead to massive freeway slowing.

Despite what you may think, a gajillion cars on the road is not what causes traffic; driving like an ass is the number one cause of traffic. Yes, “a lot of people” are necessary for traffic, but simply “a lot of people” will not cause traffic. While driving like an ass on a 6 lane freeway with 3 cars on it will not cause a traffic jam, neither will a bajillion cars on the same freeway if they’re all driving safely. Some of those cars have to be driving like idiots to cause the slow-down. Over the next four days I'd like to blog about the most common errors that lead to traffic jams.