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A Highway Menace is put to the Test [Dave Barry]
A Highway Menace Is Put to the Test
by Dave Barry
From the Philadelphia Inquirer
. This past winter I got a note from the Pennsylvania Department of
Transportation suggesting that I take my state driver's test again on
the grounds that policemen have stopped me twice in the past year and
charged me with violating various traffic laws.
. Let me assure you that I was as guilty as sin. In one case, I
made a right turn on a red light at an intersection with a sign that
said "NO TURN ON RED." This was back before I realized that there are
only six intersections in Pennsylvania that do not have such a sign,
and that all of them are in Northumberland County, which is near
Canada.
. In the other case, I was exceeding the speed limit on Bryn Mawr
Avenue. It is very difficult to tell what the speed limit is on Bryn
Mawr Avenue, which goes between Newtown Square and Bryn Mawr and is
lined with many homes you cannot afford. You can rarely go faster
than four miles an hour because Bryn Mawr Avenue is very popular with
the Elderly Persons With Enormous Cars Slow Driving Club. At all
hours of the day and night, club members cruise it at extremely low
speeds, listening to public radio.
. On this particular day, I was driving behind the club president,
who was going two miles an hour, and stopping completely at hazardous
points, such as hills and mailboxes. Behind me were about 600 cars,
and most of us were starting to fear we would starve to death before
we reached Bryn Mawr. So, one by one, we sped up to eight miles an
hour, and passed the president's car. That was apparently too fast,
because we were then waved over to the side of the road by pleasant
police officers who gave us $67 traffic tickets. As they wrote them
up, the president of the Elderly Persons With Enormous Cars Slow
Driving Club drifted by, cackling.
. But I am not complaining about being stopped. As I say, I was
definitely guilty, and the officers were Just Doing Their Duty. But
I'm wondering whether they wouldn't be better off hanging around the
Schuylkill Expressway, stopping those motorists in 1959 Plymouths with
body rot and stuffed animals on the rear deck, the ones who drive at
160 miles an hour and lunge from lane to lane as if in response to
secret traffic signals from the planet Saturn.
. I realize you could not stop these motorists with a mere wave.
You would need bazookas (or perhaps helicopters carrying large steel
nets). And maybe that's why the police were stopping us on Bryn Mawr
Avenue -- to raise money for a bazooka, sort of like selling candy for
the class trip to Disneyland.
. The trouble is that, in addition to paying money, I got these
points on my driving record. You may not realize it, but you have a
driving record, which is watched over by a computer at the state
Department of Transportation. It's sort of like the Permanent Record
that your teachers were always threatening you with in grade school.
Remember? Whenever you did something wrong, the teacher would say, in
the tone of voice you would use to sentence somebody to the electric
chair: "That's going to go on your Permanent Record."
. I have always wondered what happened to my Permanent Record.
When I got out of college and went on job interviews, I expected the
prospective employer to haul it out, look it over, and say: "Mr.
Barry, your qualifications are excellent, but I see here on your
Permanent Record that when your were an eighth-grader at Harold C.
Crittenden Junior High School, you and Joseph DiGiacinto flushed a lit
cherry bomb down the boys' room toilet. Frankly, Mr. Barry, we here
at Amalgamated Consolidated Incorporated value our plumbing too highly
to take a chance on hiring a person such as yourself. Terribly
sorry."
. But this never happened. As far as I can tell, Permanent Records
are just one of many frauds perpetrated on young people by teachers.
Another example is the metric system. At the same time, I do not mean
to suggest that young people out there should rush right out and flush
cherry bombs down school toilets just because I ultimately got away
with it. For one thing, cherry bombs are illegal and very dangerous.
For another thing, you can no longer get decent cherry bombs, the kind
with the fuse that burns underwater.
. Anyway, unlike your Permanent Record, your state driving record
is for real, as I learned when I got a letter from the Department of
Transportation that went more or less as follows:
. "According to the Department of Transportation Computer, you have
accumulated seven points, which means you have to take your driver's
test all over again, just like some acne-ridden adolescent. If you do
not pass this test within 60 days, the Department of Transportation
Computer will take away your license. It knows where you live, and it
knows where you hide your spare house keys."
. At first, I figured the test would be no sweat. I mean, I've
been driving for 18 years, and I've never been responsible for an
accident except for the time I drove into an uninsured tree that
someone had thoughtlessly placed on the side of the road. But just to
be on the safe side, I picked up a copy of the "Pennsylvania Manual
for Drivers" so I could brush up on my traffic law.
. This proved to be a mistake, because whoever wrote the drivers'
manual clearly intended to make driving appear to be too complicated
for anybody except very bright nuclear physicists. Here, for example,
is the way the manual explains traffic interchanges: "Ramp 2
accommodates westbound drivers proceeding north. Ramp 7 serves
westbound motorists proceeding south. Ramp 4 and 5 function in the
same fashion allowing eastbound traffic to go south and north
respectively." Accompanying this explanation is a view of the
intersection from directly overhead, apparently for the benefit of
motorists who are proceeding down.
. The section on passing is even worse. If you were to ask the
average driver how to pass another vehicle, he would say something
like: "Make sure you have plenty of room, then pull out and pass."
. Here is part of what the state drivers' manual says: "If you're
traveling 50 miles an hour and the car ahead is traveling 40, you'll
need about 10 seconds to pass. During this 10 seconds, you'll travel
735 feet -- about 43 car lengths. If the other vehicle is a 50-foot-
tractor trailer, you might travel 53 car lengths while passing it at
50 miles per hour."
. "Now suppose there's an oncoming vehicle approaching at 50 miles
per hour. It will travel 43 car lengths toward you while you pass, or
perhaps 53 car lengths if you're passing the trailer...."
. And on it goes, for several more paragraphs. Now let's be honest
here: Nobody knows how far 43 car lengths is. People don't think in
terms of car lengths. You never hear people say, "My house is just
134 car lengths from the Wawa food market," or, "Mike Schmidt hit that
ball at least 287 car lengths." And how do you know how fast the
oncoming car is going? Or how long the tractor-trailer is? While you
were trying to figure all this out, you'd ram into the vehicle you
were trying to pass.
. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if it turned out that
reading the state drivers' manual is a major cause of traffic
accidents. Perhaps the police ought to start checking on this when
they stop drivers.
Officer: Have you been reading the drivers' manual?
Driver: Just a couple of pages, officer. Honest.
Officer: Just a couple of pages, eh? Then why were you making hand
signals?
Driver: My God, I didn't realize...
Officer: Listen, Mr. Jones, except for people who have read the
manual, nobody has used hand signals since 1953. You could have
caused a serious accident. And do you know what speed I clocked you
at?
Driver: No, what speed?
Officer: Fifty-five miles per hour. Fifty-five miles per hour ON
INTERSTATE 80. Either you set it up to 70 like everybody else, or you
get off the interstate. And if I ever catch you driving under the
influence of the manual again, I'm going to have to run you in.
. I read the manual anyway, because the letter said I had to. It
was snowing on the day I went to take my test, and I was the only
civilian at the state drivers' test place. The three official state
testers on duty obviously hadn't expected anybody to show up. I
imagine they had planned to pass a quiet day seeing who could guess
how many car lengths away various objects were.
. When I showed them my letter from the state computer, they looked
at it in a hostile and suspicious manner, as if it were covered with
venereal disease germs, then reluctantly agreed to give me the test.
. First off, they told me to look into this little eye-testing
machine and read Line 6 on the chart. This turned out to be
impossible, because over the years thousands of thousands of nervous
people had stared really hard at Line 6, and their stares had melted
all the letters into little bacteria-shaped blobs. I could only guess
which letters the blobs had once been and I'm almost sure I got them
all wrong. But the tester didn't seem to be paying any attention.
That's when I started to get suspicious.
. My suspicions deepened when the testers didn't seem to listen to
my answers during the traffic-law quiz. I got the impression that any
old answer I came up with would have been fine with them. It could
have gone like this:
Question: What does a flashing yellow light mean?
Answer: Caution -- Goats Mating.
Question: What is considered a safe following distance?
Answer: Five -- one to hold the pot and four to shake the stove.
. Things really degenerated during the driving test. We went out
on this driving course, which I assume had all kinds of significant
traffic markings painted on it for me to observe. However, because of
the snow neither the tester nor I could see them.
. So we just plowed around in a random manner at about three miles
an hour. It was good practice for Bryn Mawr Avenue, but I can't see
how the tester could get any idea of what kind of driver I was. For
all we knew, the car was rolling over the bodies of pedestrians buried
under the snow. There was no way to tell. After a few minutes of
this, the tester told me I had passed and went back inside. That was
it.
. And then it dawned on me: They weren't giving me the test to see
whether I knew how to drive. They were giving me the test solely to
punish me for getting too many points on my driving record.
. Now I agree that I deserved to be punished. But I disagree with
the state's method, because it takes up a lot of valuable tester time
and causes people to read a potentially hazardous manual. I think the
state should develop a safer, more efficient form of punishment.
Here's my suggestion:
. If you got 4 to 6 points, you'd have to wear a funny hat for two
days.
. If you got 7 to 9 points, you'd have to put an idiot bumper
sticker on your car, such as "HAVE YOU THANKED A GREEN PLANT TODAY?"
or "CAUTION: SHOW DOGS."
. If you got 10 to 12 points, you'd have to appear on a televised
state lottery drawing.
. If you got 12 or more points, you'd have to be lieutenant
governor.
. If Pennsylvania drivers faced meaningful penalties such as these,
they would drive much more carefully. We'd have far fewer accidents.
And it would be virtually impossible to get from Newtown Square to
Bryn Mawr on Bryn Mawr Avenue.
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