Stifling speed demons the easy way

Isnt there supposed to be more than five highway markers beyond this sign?
Isn't there supposed to be more than five equal distance markers beyond this sign?

(Updated below)

I’ve passed these signs a number of times now on the TransCanada highway in Northwestern Ontario. The first time, I was mildly impressed, since the sign was out in the middle of nowhere. At the time, I thought it a rather expensive way of controlling speeders, given the cost of aircraft flight time.

The second time I passed a similar sign, I counted the markers. There are only five — yes, that’s right, five! — daubs of orange paint that proceed beyond each one of these signs. Somehow, I find it hard to imagine that there will ever be an aircraft overhead.

Yes, I know, it only takes two marks, a stopwatch and a cruiser to catch a speeder via an aircraft, but still…

Ontario has this crazy “stunt driving” legislation, wherein all that’s required to seize a vehicle, take a driver’s license for seven days and haul the vehicle off to an impound lot is a police officer’s word that the driver was “driving stunted”.

Of course, one does get one’s day in court, but by then, guilty or innocent, the impound costs amount to several thousands of dollars, and the police are laughing up their collective sleeves at the innocent who still has to pay the costs.

Here’s a good one for you: a motorcyclist was proceeding down the curb lane past an extremely long lineup of vehicles. Obviously, motorcycles are capable of doing that to get around traffic jams. Even though the rider was proceeding safely well under the speed limit, police charged him with stunt driving. When it finally got to trial, the judge threw out the charge, but the driver was still out the thousands of dollars spent to re-claim his motorcycle from the impound lot.

It’s much easier to claim a speeder was “stunt driving” than to actually go out and do some speed enforcement with a cruiser and an actual police officer. After all, the stunt driving charge immediately nets a vehicle, a driver’s license, and a driver. A speeding ticket nets, at best, a couple of points and a fine that the speeder can mail in.

And if you’re not speeding, but rather driving sensibly to avoid delay, what better excuse for rounding up people than a trumped-up charge of stunt driving?

Update August 15, 2009: Here’s a link to a little justice that comes around every once in a while, just to bite police officers and others in the ass. What goes around, comes around, as they say.

And now, back to regularly scheduled programming…

My feet have been itchy for months now as I’ve watched the summer riding season north of 49 hurry past me like closing time at one of my favorite bars in a past life. Now the rush is on to pick up something, anything, before the lights dim for one last time and I am swept out into the street like dirt.

Hell, I haven’t even gone for a ride yet, busy as I have been with other events in my life. Now that’s done, and I’m ready for a little adventure, a little dirt of my very own, that special odor that adheres to me from the road dust and grime that accumulates after hundreds of miles.

Asphalt perfume, I call it.

Wind. Sun. Pavement. Dust. Dirt. Gas. Oil.

It has its own special smell, hard to describe if someone asks.

All I know is, you can’t get it in a car or a truck with the windows open; you can’t get it in a convertible with the top down; and, desperate now, you can’t get it by rolling around on the ground on your favorite stretch of highway.

You’ve got to get out there and ride it.

No surprise, this:

Thousands – yes, that’s right. Thousands! – were beaten and raped in Irish reform schools. And who ran those schools?

Do I really have to ask?

…most leaders of religious orders have rejected the allegations as exaggerations and lies, and testified to the commission that any abuses were the responsibility of often long-dead individuals. –Los Angeles Times via AP

Deny, deny, deny.

More here.

Riding farther, seeing more