Category Archives: What? Are They Nuts?

18 Mile Boondoggle

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Two people were airlifted to hospital last week after a police chase ended in a crash and gunfire that closed the one and only road into (and out of) the Florida Keys for nearly a day.

ABC News PhotoOur section of U.S. Route 1 — the Florida Keys Overseas Highway — opened in 1938. The 18-mile long easternmost segment of the two-lane road that connects Key West at mile marker 0 to the United States has been the site of uncounted (by me) head-on crashes and a worrisome bottleneck for hurricane evacuation planners. When traffic flowed, it was an All-American Road in the National Scenic Byways program. When traffic stalled, the entire island chain would shut down.

Construction on the Florida Department of Transportation 18-Mile Stretch project began January 3, 2005, right at the height of tourist season.

The FLDOT has converted the Overseas Highway from an open two-lane road to a divided two-lane road with a concrete barrier separating northbound and southbound traffic. They replaced the Jewfish Creek drawbridge with a 65-foot-high fixed-span and added an elevated causeway over Lake Surprise. It also includes a new C-111 bridge, two new smaller bridges, an emergency evacuation shoulder along the northbound lane, new turn lanes, and a repaved and re-striped road surface everywhere else. A fence on both sides of the roadway now prevents wildlife getting off the road when they wind up in front of you.

Under ConstructionThe project took six years and cost $330 million and is said to have come in “on time and under budget.”

18 miles. $330 million. Why not? It’s only a skoch over $18 million/mile. $289.35/inch. Heck, my beach is worth more than that!

And a beautiful road it is with its tropical green barrier and smooth, comfortable, wide lane each way.

Back to the chase. And the shoot-out. And the road closure. The DEA, ATF, ICE, FDLE, 17 other alphabet agencies, plus Homeland Security and Miami-Dade police had run a drug sting on a criminal gang they knew pretty well; the sting did not go quite as smoothly as they hoped. The suspects took off in an SUV. Officers gave chase. Cops pursued the vehicle southwest through Miami-Dade County into Homestead, and on down the 18-Mile Stretch.

Note to the bad guys: when the cops are chasing you, driving to an island with only one road in and out is a really really bad idea.

The chase ended when the driver of the SUV lost control and the truck flipped.

Accidents that close our road are common. One person died in an afternoon crash on the Long Key Bridge on December 12. U.S. 1 was closed for a couple of hours. The highway was completely blocked.

Same bridge. May 19. Traffic stalled after two vehicles collided head-on on the bridge. That one included a vehicle fire and significant injuries; at least one person was airlifted to Miami. The road was closed for only an hour or so that time.

Florida DOT made a boondoggle of the 5-year, $330-million redesign of the 18-Mile Stretch. Accidents there CLOSE THE ENTIRE ROAD.

What on this green earth do they think a fender bender will do to a hurricane evacuation, especially since they installed the concrete choke point down the centerline?

Random Scribbles

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Over the weekend I happened to see a commercial for Audi’s new handwriting recognition pad in the center console.

Handwriting recognition pad?

In a car???

It’s no longer breaking news that texting while driving is a bad idea. A 2009 Virginia Tech Transportation Institute study reveals just how dangerous it can be. The VTTI examined the behavior of truck drivers over more than 6 million miles and found that people who send text messages while driving are 23 times more likely to be in a crash (or what they call a “near-crash event”) than undistracted drivers.

The study used in truck cameras to capture where the drivers’ eyes were looking as they drove, dialed cell phones, talked on the cell phones, reached for objects around the cab, and texted. Not surprisingly, the tasks that took a driver’s eyes off the road caused ramped up the risk.

In crashes or near-crashes, texting took a driver’s focus away from the road for an average of 4.6 seconds. That’s more than three times the average reaction time to jam on the brakes when a tree — or a kid — jumps out in front of you. It’s enough time to travel the length of a football field at highway speeds.

I crashed my mom’s Comet convertible when I was a teenager. I didn’t have a cellphone. I couldn’t text. But I did have a car radio. I took my eyes off the road just for an instant and a culvert jumped right out in front of me.

Mom was not pleased.

The VTTI agrees. Avoiding any task that takes your eyes off the road avoids taking your car off the road.

Last month, Audi announced a national initiative to have drivers across America take the Audi “Driver’s Pledge” to make the road a more intelligent and presumably safer place. They encourage all drivers to take a stand exemplifying responsible driving:


pledge
I added the final promise, the one in italics, to the list. Audi apparently forgot that one.

Jack of All Trades

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The lizard is affronted, annoyed, slightly choleric, exasperated, fierce, vexed, and more than a little disappointed.

On her Monday Peeve over there, she wrote, “I’m not even gonna get into dual-language packaging and how the employees at stores always put the Spanish side out when stocking the shelves.”

So I will.

Packaging is part of the issue. After all, having the same descriptions in two or seven languages on the box is more irritating to those of us who don’t wear our readers all the time but including a user manual in those same two or seven languages means either even smaller print or a lot more paper in each and every box.

Most manufacturers shrink the print and quadruple the paper. More for the waste stream.

This is an issue that not only could help Congress take its mind off important actions like renaming post offices and their vacation; it can also increase liberal schizophrenia.

We need a law, see, that bans multiple language packaging and user manuals. And forms. We do, after all, place the environmental impact of the waste stream above all else.


In our effort to become Jacks and Jills of all trades
We have become the Masters of Baiters.
We can do more.We can save money and go green if we just reduce, recycle, and reuse the lingua franca of the United States.With 14 million Hispanic residents, California has the largest population of people who self-identify as Hispanic or Latino. That’s about one-third of the state population. (Florida is number three, behind Texas, with 4.2 million or not quite one-quarter of the population.)On the other hand, there is no accurate count of the number of Muslims in the United States, because the U.S. Census Bureau does not collect data on religious identification. The Council on American-Islamic Relations reported 7 million people nationwide self-identified in 2011.

“Press 3 for Arabic?”

[Image]California’s Muslims make up some 3.4% of that state’s population or 20% of the national total. Michigan’s Muslims appear to be 1.8% of the Michigan population, less than half that state’s Hispanic population. Recognizing the extreme need to cut down the vast northwestern forests, the California Medi-Cal Eligibility forms may be available in more than Arabic, including Armenian, Chinese, Farsi, Hmong, Khmer, Korean, Laotian, Russian, Spanish, Tagalog, and Vietnamese. And English. The State of Michigan Public Assistance also offers help English, Spanish, and Arabic.

“Now on top of all the paper, the state offices have to have 17 different writing systems?” Rufus said. “Bleeping morons.”

Here’s the bait: all you environmentalists reading this? Isn’t it time to cut this kind of waste from our government, our shelves, our stream?

Premte Peeves

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The Journal of Animal Ethics says calling the family dog a pet is simply derogatory. And don’t call rats, raccoons or any other woodland fauna “wild animals,” or “pests.” The Journal asks people to call all those untamed animals “free-living” or “free-roaming.”

The Journal writers say owners should call their dogs and cats “companion animals.”

What’s the matter with these wack-a-doodles at the Journal, promoting slavery like that? Don’t they know we cannot own another being? These companion beings choose to live with their human partners to bring comfort and cheer to us.