Years ago, I worked very hard to get speed bumps installed in my community. Or as they are referred to here, a “traffic calming device”. Initially, one of these “devices” was installed in front of my house and I was pleased.
That first day, my sons took their lawn chairs out on the front yard and watched all the unsuspecting motorists fly up my neighborhood street, hit the speed bump and bottom out. If sparks occurred, the boys would hoot and holler and give a score to the vehicle. Needless to say, the hump was doing a good job of slowing people down to a reasonable speed.
The county, for some reason, came by not long after the initial installation and shaved the speed bump, reducing it to not much more than a mere whoopdeedoo in the road. Still the mentality of most drivers is to swing their cars as close to the curb as possible to avoid the tallest (PAH!!) portion of the hump. Did I mention you can easily do 35 over this hump and it’s no big deal, so if you are sliding to the side to avoid bottoming out, you certainly aren’t doing anything less than 35 mph.
Before the hump, people had slammed into a Chevy Nova parked in front of my house and had come up into the apron of our driveway and hit my hubby’s car. We thought the hump would help with this problem.
Not so.
In the fall of last year, my daughter parked her car in front of our house. A neighbor called us to come home from a party after someone who was trying to dodge the speed hump, couldn’t swing their car back into the middle of the road quick enough and ended up slamming into the back of her car with enough force to crush the back of the vehicle and propel it up over the curb and halfway up the slight hill of our front yard. Since their vehicle was damaged, they couldn’t go anywhere, but told the officer that it had been “slippy” out. It was a beautiful day with bright sunshine.
Tonight, I came home from rehearsal to see my son in my driveway with a pile of rocks at his feet.
This time, someone tried to avoid the speed hump and clipped the curb, drove up through my yard and over a flower bed I have on either side of my driveway apron. Each of those flower beds are raised beds, built out of stone blocks and professionally landscaped. When they came down on the other side of the flower bed, their vehicle took out the whole front of the stonework and left blocks strewn all over the apron and the road in front of my house.
Arrrgh!!!
That speed bump has become the bane of my front yard, or more likely, the traffic up and down my road has become so heavy – and fast – that nothing is safe in my front yard.
I’m annoyed. Harrumph!
Snippets and Tidbits 