By TARMO HANNULA
I live between a stop sign and a speed bump. There’s an official city traffic sign posted standing at the edge of my front yard: “Speed Bump, 15 mph.” No one does that. The stop sign stands as a mere suggestion. I can look out my living room window and watch one person after another roll right through the stop sign, some without braking at all. Others might tap their brakes but then roll right on through without stopping. I have to do a double take when some kind soul makes a full stop.
The speed bump has proven to be an item for broad interpretation. Some motorists seem to be terrified by it, and creep over so slowly — it would be quicker if they got out and walked their car over the bump. Then there are the barreling freight trains, people that hit the bump with full force, no matter what the surrounding circumstances are — kids, bikes, dogs, me.
Every weekday at rush hour, like between 5 p.m. and 6:30 p.m., batches of drivers come charging through like a buffalo stampede. Usually bunches of about 8-10 cars come ripping around the stop sign corner, run the sign and then gun it down our street so fast you’d think they were aiming for a ramp that would launch them to Hawaii. A lot of them bottom out, creating a massive metal on asphalt screeching sound. But that evidently doesn’t matter; they’ll be back tomorrow with equal force, churning and grinding for position like they do at Ocean Speedway.
The surface of that speed bump is a mirror of the times, laced with gouges and deep scrapes that I’m sure make the folks down at the auto repair place happy. Actually, there are several speed bumps on my street and they’re all scarred up.
One day I was driving to work and as I traveled through our neighborhood, where there are more speed bumps, I noticed a woman shrieking and flapping her arms wildly at me as I went over a speed bump near her house. She was so stirred up that I turned around and came back to ask her what was going on.
“Slow down!” she screamed in my face. “The speed limit is 15 miles per hour; it’s posted right there,” as she harshly gestured toward the sign. I rolled past the sign and indeed there it was, 15 mph. But I spoke with one of my California Highway Patrol pals and he told me, no, it’s not the “speed limit.” The CHP told me those yellow traffic signs are “advisory” signs — a suggestion. When that woman hollered at me with enough force to blow the paint off my car, I checked my speedometer and I was going about 18 mph, 7 mph below the “posted” speed limit of 25 mph. The CHP went on to advise me that the woman really shouldn’t be out there distracting motorists as they drive past.
Several years ago a man in a gold Cadillac burned up our street at close to 100 mph. When he hit the speed bump near our house it shook our house tremendously. Then he hit a big dip in the pavement, which must have scrubbed out the bottom of his luxury car. He continued up the street and rammed into a curb where the street bends in a 90-degree angle. The impact launched his car skyward in a mighty arc. He soared over a chicken coop, a firewood pile and a garden before mashing into a towering eucalyptus tree about 30 feet off the ground. As you can imagine the crash killed him on the spot and mangled his car.
It’s not the first time some wild crash has happened on our street. A few years ago a man, who was reportedly blazed out of his skull on drugs, ripped around the corner, yes, through that stop sign, slammed into my neighbor’s SUV and came to a stop. He jumped out of his car totally naked, except for his pair of socks. Crazed, he barged his way into another neighbor’s back yard and tried to force his way through a sliding glass door. The woman inside the home, in her bathrobe, spotted him and called 9-1-1: “Naked man trying to get into my home! Oh, he is wearing socks.”
The cops came right away and hooked him up in handcuffs with him yelling all the way to the hospital.
The few traffic signs I mention are just that, the couple I see from my home. Imagine how people are interpreting such signs all over our county and country. It must be endless what drivers come up with.
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Tarmo Hannula can be reached at 761-7330 or [email protected].
