Wow, @Bikerman, I have never been able to add more than 10 to one post. What's your secret?! Maybe I'm not posting about the right topics.
Forum's software had a meltdown, I only posted 10 jokes, but when I looked it went AWOL. Guess the software thought they were funny too, and posted them more than once. Well that's my excuse.
My youngest daughter used to work after school and weekends at a farm on the outskirts of town. I stopped in to see her one day as she was leading one of the horses out of the stable. I noticed some scratching on the floor of the stall that the horse had made with its hooves. At first it looked sort of random, but if you stared at it for a bit, you could see there was a pattern. It looked like two spoked wheels with a square box between them and what appeared to be a yoke on one end. It was crude, but you could definitely tell what it was. It was a horse drawn carriage.
I never in a million years thought I'd find myself saying this, but there used to be intersection red light cameras all over Tucson and I hated them. But now I wish they'd reinstall them because so many people blatantly run red lights. Accident counts--and deaths--are way up. I've counted as many as a half dozen cars make a left turn through an intersection AFTER the light has turned red.
Blatant traffic violations are now the norm.I attribute this to two things. First, the new buzz word in law-enforcement is “de-escalation.” I was talking to the Chief of my old department at a party a couple of weeks ago. I was lamenting regarding the Facebook videos that show officers bending over backwards, not to arrest people. Pleading with them 10 times to get out of their car and such. He said, the powers that be don’t want traffic laws enforced vigorously. Rather, officers are urged to de-escalate. Second, in our whining, complaining and litigious society, complaints against officers and lawsuits have skyrocketed. Cops just don’t want to take the chance anymore of getting in trouble on a motor vehicle stop. So, they just look the other way. The result is the free-for-all we see on our roadways now. It's not the severity of punishment that deters bad behavior; it's the certainty of it.
