Opinion/Streetalk

This MoDern WorlD by tom tomorrow

Asked in downtown Reno

Cheyenne Dunham

Traveler Generally, I try to. I haven’t lately. I’ve been out of state. But I like to pay attention to what’s going on. Anything that personally affects me and my friends I try keeping up. My friends run a nonproft and I try to keep up on that stuff.

Daphne Cosby

Delivery driver No. I’m not into politics. It affects me, but I’m more focused on my family.

Traffic offenses Did you follow the legislature?

We hear constantly about drivers who let themselves be distracted by the radio or cell phones or texting. Overlooked in all this attention to the way drivers let themselves be distracted is the way government distracts drivers. Recently, digital reader-boards have been erected over local highways. Among other things, they are used for public service messages urging people to drive safety.

Public service messages belong on other media, like radio and television, not on public highways. Drivers see flickering letters over head and, expecting something like “Chains required” or “High winds” or whatever, they glance up. How many times have we heard that it takes only a moment for an accident to happen? Unless there’s a message of immediate importance on these boards, they should stay dark.

The same thing goes for the more elaborate digital reader boards that tell drivers how far they are from some local landmark at the moment. Is it really all that useful for a driver going through Sparks to know that he or she is three minutes from the airport? How much did these units cost in order for us to have such little tidbits of minimal information?

Another overlooked problem fostered by officialdom is the hazard of people driving too slowly on freeways. On surface streets, too much speed is dangerous. But on freeways made for speed, a lack of speed can be lethal, which is why every state in the union has a law making it a crime to drive too slowly. In this state, it’s Nevada Revised Statute 484b.623.

A driver doing 35 miles an hour who tries to insert a car into 65 mile-an-hour traffic is a hazard to all drivers. Yet government keeps putting drivers in these risky situations, particularly on the ramps. When transferring between I-80 and I-580 through the spaghetti bowl, for instance, signs tell drivers to slow down when entering the transfer ramps—but never let them resume speed so they can safely blend into traffic at the end of the ramp. That brings us to the stoplights installed at the end of on-ramps during I-80 expansion a couple of years ago. When the construction period ended, the lights unfortunately remained. Drivers halted by the lights cannot get up to freeway speed fast enough to safely merge. These lights are accidents waiting to happen.

And there are related hazards. Take a look at the photo here. It’s a police car with siren sounding and party hat flashing trying to get past drivers on the Center Street on-ramp, held in place by the idiot lights. Drivers heard the siren. They froze in place with nowhere to go. So the police officer is on the left shoulder trying to get past the two rows of immobilized cars. These lights need to be deep-sixed. Ω Jessica Brazzau

Barista I don’t. As of right now, I work six days a week, two jobs, and I’m going to school full time so I’ve been focusing on my studies. When it comes up and I see it in the news or online, I read it, but I’ve been really focusing on school lately and paying my bills.

Anthony Bruno

Commerical fisherman No. No, I don’t. I just don’t read newspapers. I watch TV, but I’m not going to watch anything like that. I have other programs that are more interesting than that to me.

Raymond Ellis

Job seeker Yes. It’s the government. It runs the country. I’m especially interested in the economy. I’m not working right now, trying to get Social Security. The way things are going, it’s kind of slow. I’m normally a warehouse worker.