Archive for January 29th, 2010

But where does it end?

I can’t help but view the image above and think of 2001, with some impenetrable black slab tilted horizontally and laid upon the city. The sign, which comes from Toronto, has been the source of some puzzlement over its origin or purpose — maybe someone in actual authority can provide the final answer as to what this signage means and why it needs to be in place (although, I will admit, the sign gains in strange, mythic stature the less one knows about it). It seems to have something to do with plowing — and monolithic refers to its construction — but are sidewalks plowed by trucks? (and if it’s plowed in the way the above image suggests, wouldn’t that dump a bunch of snow on that very sidewalk?) Why only a monolithic sidewalk there, and not anywhere else? What’s a non-monolithic sidewalk called?

And as reader Bruce notes, the sign has even prompted a searching inquiry into self-effacing signage and Canadian national identity.

Reader Richard sends along a link to this article, from the Raleigh News and Observer, on distracted driving:

“Sometimes I will zone out and forget I’m driving,” said Tyler, 23. “If I’m on the phone talking about something that takes up all my focus, I’m looking straight ahead - but not even seeing what’s there.”

(as an aside you can read in depth about this phenomenon, and others, this spring). But to continue:

Her dad, Buckley Strandberg, worries that she will never curb her dangerous habit.

“And if I run off the road, there are rumble strips that divert me back onto the road. That has happened occasionally. They seem to work, those rumble strips.”

Apart from the irony of an insurance executive engaging in risky behavior (I suppose the A.I.G. fiasco showed that insurers are hardly immune from not properly anticipating risk), I was particularly intrigued by the last sentence in the excerpt.

I had long taken shoulder rumble strips (the so-called “Sonic Nap Alert Patterns” debuted on the Pennsylvania turnpike) as a passive, essentially invisible safety device that one would only become aware of in moments of emergency and wouldn’t actually influence one’s self-selected level of what they considered safe driving activity. In other words, people’s driving wouldn’t change simply because of the presence of rumble strips (unlike other forms of risk compensation, say, driving a vehicle in which one is seated higher), and that SNAPs made people safer without making them feel safer — an important distinction, to my mind, in traffic safety.

But I may have to reconsider this.