Driving is not a contact sport

I was crossing National Avenue at Depot Street, getting ready to take pictures for one of our city parades.

A policeman friend saw me and said, “Hey Frank, you need to do a story on driving. Tell people the law says you have to use your turn signals.”

I knew what he meant. Brazil isn’t alone in drivers refusing to signal and even to stop at intersections with stop signs.

I have a theory that drivers who refuse to use their turn signals do so for a good reason (he said, with a grin on his face.)

I think they are a) afraid to burn out their turn signal lights or b) they don’t want anyone to follow them.

I might be a spy and where they are going is a secret. If they don’t signal, they can’t be followed.

The new parking spaces marked on National Avenue have been a challenge.

The extreme right “lane” is not a lane at all on most of National Avenue. If you look, those ‘L”s indicate where people are to park.

One day, I was standing by my car in front of our office, waiting for traffic to subside so I could open my door and get into the driver’s seat when a woman looked like she intentionally pointed her car at me before swinging back into her lane.

On another occasion, I was parked across from our office, heading west. The traffic was very heavy that day and another driver was driving down that right “lane” when she came upon my car. Then she had to set until traffic thinned out enough for her to pull into the “real” driving lane. I keep waiting to hear the crash and come out to find someone has rear-ended my parked car.

Then, there are those “wonderful” souls who stop and wave cross traffic onto the street.

I can see their noble, giving expressions, as they are so kind to their fellow motorists. Meanwhile, there is a line of traffic behind them that would like to drive to their destinations without delay.

The problem isn’t that the police are not doing their job; they surely are.

Chief Clint McQueen gave his monthly report to the Board of Public Works and Safety on Wednesday.

The Brazil Police Department issued 67 tickets, 78 warnings and investigated 15 crashes in August. That was in addition to all the other work they did adding up to 721 calls for police service. Sounds pretty busy to me.

I tried to find other communities and compare their vehicle investigations to those in Brazil in August but have not found the information so far.

Chief McQueen said August was a typical month for his department.

Think about it. There are 31 days in August and we had 15 crashes. In other words, in our little community, someone was wrecking their car every other day. Wow!

Maybe we should go back to driving horses and buggies. The “Amish exhaust” smells bad but the accidents would have to be cheaper to fix and result in less injury.