When did traffic signs become optional?

Frustration doesn’t even begin to describe how I feel about this. Every day I get in my car and follow the same route. I go in and out the end of my road on my way to school or work and immediately get tense. I was taught, back in the ice age, that you stop at stop signs, hence the name. That you stopped at a stop light before making a right turn. And yet every day, numerous times a day I watch people come off the parkway at White Plains Rd and not even pretend to try and stop. Some of them even accelerate off the exit.

At the intersection of White Plains and Church Hill right turn on red has become “how fast can I get in front of the oncoming traffic without getting hit”? I followed a car, recently, from Madison Ave. to the White Plains Rd parkway entrance. It didn’t stop at one stop sign, not one.

There is a sign in front of each fire house and in front of the EMT building on Middlebrooks Ave. that says, “Do Not Block Driveway”. No one pays attention. Every day the cars line up in front and block them. In the case of the EMT building there is no other way to get out. I wonder how those people would feel if because of their ignorance of the law, and lack of common sense, they delayed help from getting to someone and caused their death. Do you think they would even notice? Somehow I doubt it.

If you happen to live on a “cut through” street, you take your life in your hands every time you leave your house. I live on a 25mph street and I will guarantee you that never happens. I have had people nearly ride in my back seat up my street and when I pull in my driveway they speed past me. Every child on our street is at risk.

Add to that, cell phones, coffee and eating and it’s an accident waiting to happen. We live in a hands free society when it comes to phones for a reason. And don’t think it’s just kids. Moms are the biggest offenders I see and men lots of men! I thought men hated the phone. You could have fooled me.

In the ever increasing busyness of daily life, people have gotten more and more oblivious to others around them and more inconsiderate in the process. They have turned the road into an obstacle course, only failure on this course could mean injury or death.

I ask you all to take stock in your driving habits and ask yourself whether or not you are considerate of others.