The Chris Moeller Archives

Keeping the streets safe from the likes of me

Sorry for my blogging absence, I was out of town attending Sunday night's game in St. Louis between the Cardinals and the Cubs. I won't say much about the contest except that one game doesn't matter much when you have bragging rights for the weekend series, the season series, the standings, and have won 10 World Series Championships since 1908.

But I do want to say this today in regards to the rules of speeding in motor vehicles on our nation's highways: Laws against speeding are probably the most archaic we have on the books. What backs this statement? How about the fact that nobody obeys them? Like Prohibition, nobody respects the posted limits. The speed maximums posted are treated as minimums by what I would estimate to be about 95% of the drivers on the road.

Am I spouting off on this topic today because I received a speeding ticket over the weekend? No. I'm spouting off because I got two speeding tickets over the weekend: One in Hazzard County, Missouri, and one in Hazzard County, Iowa. The only economic development program that exists today in rural America is speedtraps. Was I speeding? Of course, I was. So was everybody else. There was little traffic on Sunday morning in Mount Pleasant, and even less during mid-morning Monday south of Hannibal, Missouri. Visibility was unlimited, and I was not driving 15 miles over the limit either time. I don't care what they say, but then I can't see the radar gun, and I can't fight it in court because I work for a living, and I live in Polk County, Iowa, but then you both know that, don't you? You can see that on my license plate. (I'm talking directly to the patrol officers now.)

In Iowa, on Highway 218, the state patrol had a helicopter out on Sunday morning, one I paid for through my numerous tickets over the years. They were clearly out to nab post-game revelers from the football game the afternoon before in Iowa City. In Missouri, a state in which it was once legal to own black people, they went with the simple sting operation, one in which the patrol vehicles line up and they pull over every 10th car exceeding the limit, making their choice of which one by color of vehicle, whether it's foreign or domestic, visible age of driver, etc. I'm not sure how they do it. It's an internal calculation that allows the officer to freely discriminate.

As I recorded these thoughts during my drive home, on cruise control at 65, with vehicles racing past me, in and out of the blind spot of 18-wheelers passing me on the left, I got to thinking: Patrol officers also look really stupid in those hats. What's with that hard flat brim? Every traffic officer looks like that guy in the Curious George stories, except that the hat is a putrid grey, the guy's always sporting a crew cut half a century out of fashion, and he's never been to "the big city" his entire life.

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Great strategy: Invite the President of the United States to throw out the first pitch at the All-Star Game, and you've recruited yourself a new fan. President Obama is predicting a World Series painted Cardinal red.

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You've really got to give "props" to the long-running soap opera "Guiding Light," which went off the air Friday after 72 years on television and radio. The program turned out to have a lot more staying power than the Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy Show.

posted by CM @ 4:18 PM