There ought to be a law, such as…

Stopping for School Buses

That is, discontinue this lame-brained death trap. It goes like this: a school bus stops to pick up or deposit its human cargo. Lights start a-flashing’, a stop sign slaps the wind on the traffic side, and sometimes a big yellow gate thingie juts out the front like the bus was in heat.

All traffic screeches to a stop, making busy people late and late people later. Blood pressures rise, knuckles whiten, and the onset of coronary disease is one step closer to taking away your neighbor’s husband and father.

For what? To keep these little dweebs from running into oncoming traffic? Hasn’t anybody told them this could be dangerous? Aren’t their keepers there to see them on and off the bus?

And what are they being taught? Just this: you can cross the street any time you want without looking either way and you won’t become road kill. You can saunter into any road with impunity. You never have to regard traffic as dangerous, and you never have to imagine that a driver may be distracted by some lame radio ad (see below) and come plowing right into your thick skull.

Haven’t you ever heard the expression “thinning out the herd?” If a kid – and I’m talking about those old enough to use fake IDs to get into bars and score drugs and beat homosexuals to death – is too stupid to look both ways before crossing a street, why should society be burdened with him?

Sniping for Jaywalkers

Trained by years of school bus immunity (see above), they blindly step out into oncoming traffic. They dawdle as if they actually owned the road. They increase stress levels in people who are driving 2-ton bullets. They slow down traffic, causing massive traffic jams and contributing to smog and global warming.

If your brakes are good enough to avoid flattening them, they give you anything from a dirty look to a screaming tirade. And if you’re forced to use them as a speed bump, their surviving family get all indignant and litigious.

I’d like to see a law legalizing the shooting of jaywalkers on sight. Imagine how fast they’ll change their idiotic habit when a bullet can fly from any rooftop the moment they step into traffic. At the very least it might make them move faster.

Responsible Car Radio Ads

It’s happened to all of us. You’re driving along and your cell phone chirps or rings or blurts out whatever electronic noise you programmed into it. Despite any local hands-free law, you start grappling with your purse or digging in your pocket or reaching into the back seat to catch the call.

After nearly sideswiping the car next to you or narrowly missing an abutment, the cell phone stops and you realize that it was a sound effect on the car radio.

Not cool. Way not cool.

Same goes with radio ad ambulance sounds. You end up looking everywhere but where you’re going so you can do the legal and responsible thing and get out of the way of the ambulance, but again it’s some lame ad designed for maximum distraction. BAN THESE SOUND EFFECTS!

Jim Lawter

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