No Longer Ruling by Fear

There's a lot of arguing that goes on about the proper role of government, which just makes sense because there isn't a "right" answer, only opinions. Those who say government should do a lot of regulating assume the government knows best and those who say it should stay out of our lives as much as possible put, I think, too much credit on the humans it is meant to govern. Still, hardly anyone argues that the proper role of our government is to confuse us.



Yeah, that cute little car is mine, but that's not the point.

It used to be that streets didn't have these obnoxious lumps in them, and maybe they're just a southern California thing. There purpose, I think, is to slow traffic down, which reduces the slaughter and mayhem on our neighborhood streets. It also saves gas, so that's a good thing.

Years ago, when I first started seeing these, they were painted with diagonal stripes, which surely caught your eye. Then, a few years later, some more enlightened legislature decided that they might be catching drivers unaware so they added yellow street signs alerting us to the (speed) bumps in the road. Some time after the latest episode of slurrying the streets to make them look, if not function, any better, an even more informed legislature must have decided that while marking the bumps, themselves, with diagonal lines, that cost more than just writing on the street.

Why they chose to call them "humps," I cannot explain. It may have to do with us human's fondness for that which is new, or maybe the world "bump" was too difficult for many of our drivers to grasp. We'd gotten used to speed bumps, so maybe the thinking was to call them something different in the guise of updating or enhancing them, or maybe it was just to draw attention to them as being something new.

Either way, I think it's silly.

I have no idea how many fatal accidents there ever were on that street, but since it's the next block over, I'd think I would have heard the sirens or known about it. The number of lives saved, of course, approaches the infinite, in spite of the damage to done to all the cars that are now lower to the ground to save on gas mileage.

In any case, I guess I should write someone in government a strongly worded letter about this nonsense. If we can reach a consensus, an agreement, on the burgeoning hump-bump debate, there may yet be hope for the more serious issues.

I say, let's start with something small.