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Signs make things
easier?
By Bob Rhoades
The big push a few years back was to make things easier.
Illiterate people, foreigners, and other people who just don’t
understand would have it much better here in the US. Signs, we’ll
use signs, with pictures on them. The big plus was that we would
be like the rest of the world. If we don’t want you to turn left,
we put up a big left handed arrow with a slash through it. The
same for right handed no turns. Pretty simple isn’t it.
Some places here in Greenville that are quite notable for signs like
these are Wagner Ave., and Russ Rd. Both have adequate lanes to
make it a breeze for the motoring public. Unfortunately, not
everyone is creative enough in their thinking to actually read all of
the signs and come up with the action plan for their next 3 minutes on
the road. Take the lady I saw yesterday. She was sitting at the
corner of Imo, Main, Park and Wagner. The lanes are clearly
marked and there is also a sign above. So there she is trying to
turn left onto Imo from the straight through lane. Perhaps she
couldn’t figure out what to do since there was already another motorist
in the actual turn lane with her turn signal on to turn left.
Perhaps getting in behind that lady just wasn’t an option, I don’t
know. I wanted to stay and see the rest of the debacle but common
sense said there didn’t need to be another person in the way of what
was bound to be a major accomplishment getting the lady in the wrong
lane and the lady in the right lane turned off of Main at the same
time………..Can you say “report to the drivers testing station at 9 in the
morning”?
The City has actually engineered that intersection fairly well.
It actually has five different ways you can go and that isn’t easy from
a traffic engineering standpoint. My last thought on what I was
seeing was that I was happy she wasn’t on the Eisenhower Express way in
Chicago during rush hour.
Russ Road at Wagner is pretty straight forward, North, South, East,
West, unless it is 10 o’clock at night and you are headed west on
Russ. The engineering feat that this intersection is was made a
bit worse when it was last rebuilt. You see, the road west of
Wagner headed east is about 2 feet higher than the west bound lane east
of Wagner. Now that doesn’t seem to be too much of a problem,
unless you are headed west. Since that side of the road is 2 feet
higher, by the time you get to go left, you’ve been staring straight
into the headlights of the east bound motorists for about a
minute. So now you are turning left onto Wagner and you are
basically blind for all intents and purposes. This makes
traveling towards town pretty exciting when someone slams on the brakes
to go into KFC. That’s about the time you are getting your sight
back, thank God or not.
Now the turn lane on Russ to get into Mickey D’s or Taco Bell: The deal
is that when there is a lane with arrows in it, the thought was that
you get in that lane to make the left turn. This allows people
who have decided not to dine at either of these fine establishments the
ability to travel on down Russ Rd. This sounds pretty simple
doesn’t it? Unfortunately it seems that a lot of people don’t
know where their rear end actually is and they leave it hanging out in
the driving lane which sort of defeats the purpose of having the turn
lane in the first place.
Come on people, pay attention to your rear. Try real hard and
maybe you’ll be the person on Ellen DeGeneres’s show that actually
knows that Omaha is not a state. You might get on the next
episode of Jay Walking on Leno and actually know who is buried in
Grant’s Tomb or what the President’s name is, or even how many states
there are. You can do it; we sort of have faith in you, sort of.
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