Alarmed Officials Often Alarming

    In case you haven't noticed, all public officials worth their salt have, for years, been opposed to traffic accidents.

    They're against drunk drivers, speeders, reckless drivers — any individuals who endanger the lives of other people when they slide in behind the wheel of an automobile.

    And while I admire our elected and appointed representatives for taking  a  forthright stand on such  a controversial issue, I occasionally get the sinking sensation that they're mouthing hollow words.

    That they don't really care whether their constituents get a dented fender, or something a little more serious, now and then.

    It's nothing that they do or say that gives me this impression.  It's the things that they don't do.

[On the jump, “Lucy” Finale Brings Tears]

    Usually, eventually, they get what they want.

    But too often, they get the official brush off until they can present some stark, dramatic evidence of their need.  Like statistics to show that two or three of their children have been needlessly slaughtered.

    In more than one instance, a little foresight and common sense on the part of some official could have prevented tragedy.

    But they insisted on statistics before they moved into action.

    Today, I'm going to use my right as a  private tax-paying citizen and offer them a couple of suggestions of my own.

    My first complaint concerns the combination of darkness and our freeways and rain. 

    I can't see the white lines which divide the lanes.

    I've asked other people if it's just me, or if it's the lines themselves.  Four out of five have admitted that they particularly have to push their noses through the windshield to figure out if they're straddling lanes.

    There must be a type of paint which can be readily seen at night when it's raining.

    My second gripe — one that I've secretly harbored for years — concerns the street signs in this town.

    It's particularly impossible for anyone to read them at night.

    If you're traveling at night on a street where it's impossible to pull over to the side to read them, you risk a rear-end collision every time you slow down and try to decipher a street name.

    With taxes at an uncomfortable high today, I certainly wouldn't recommend that we go to the expense of yanking down all the old eligible signs at once.

    But it seems to me that some kind of a program could be worked out, at little or no additional maintenance expense, whereby the worn or damaged signs that are being replaced every day, and the signs being put up on new streets, could be replaced with easily readable signs.

As I said, these may be small matters.  I have no proof, no statistics, to show that they're costing lives.

    But believe me, if I ever get them, I'll be the first to shout "I told you so!" at the state and local officials who so conveniently pin the entire rap for our high traffic slaughter on us "careless" citizens.