Ahoy there! It's been awhile... and as much as I'd love to say the reason is a sudden onset of deep inner peace, this is not necessarily the case.
Traveling up the 2 recently to the far-flung Highland Park section of Los Angeles, I was struck by this sign as I pulled off the exit ramp:
To me, this is a chicken-or-egg situation. Do people not know what to do without signs such as these? Or do signs such as these in fact negate needing to know what to do?
Do the people driving the freeways of Los Angeles genuinely have no idea what to do in the event of an accident? Were there just legions of people getting into fender-benders on the 2 unclear of how to proceed afterward? After getting golfed, did they just slam on their brakes, airbag deployed against their noses, arms aflail, and sit in the middle of the passing lane, simply waiting to be crashed into again?
Or do nanny state signs such as these telling us what to do make us stupid? Does the knowledge that an LED road sign will appear before us providing instructions for any and all possible adverse circumstances that could arise plunge us into a blissful reverie wherein we don't need to even consider having a modicum of preparedness at our disposal?
My frustration at this binary is that either option is equally horrible, but I think, in this case, necessity must be the mother of invention.
I appreciate road signs informing me of something I didn't already know. "X amount of minutes to a certain destination"... "Caution, a flaming tanker truck awaits you in three miles" etc. But road signs telling me what to do - especially if it's something involving the barest minimum of logic - make me seethe in anger - at myself, at my fellow citizens, indeed, at humanity. I have plenty of opportunities in my day to day life to be patronized - a CalTrans LED sign on the side of the 2 need not be one of them.
Happy New Year,
Dear Crabby
