RED LIGHT CAMERAS & HOW STUPID IS STUPID

Today's Waterloo Region Advocate advises us that red light cameras are a crock. The story by Jeff Outhit is titled "Red light cameras are not making us safer". Oh this is just such a surprise. Our traffic enforcement has been stupid for the fourty years plus I've been driving and I don't expect much improvement before I hang up the car keys. Our idiotic focus on nothing but speeding has always been merely a money grab. Our lack of enforcement of drinking and driving for many decades should have been the clearest evidence and indication that the people in charge of road safety are complete idiots.

How bright do you really have to be? Look around and pay attention while you are driving. Roundabouts are a brilliant idea for the 40-50% of the people who both know how to drive and also know that includes paying attention. I've used the term HUA for decades. HUA causes both minor and major accidents. It's an acronym for Head Up Ass and applies to about 50% of all drivers on the road. They are too damn busy talking to passengers, watching accidents on the side of the road, talking on cellphones or just plain daydreaming while driving. Get our police the hell off the radar guns on dry, sunny days and start watching the idiots in the roundabouts. Watch them literally wandering back and forth between lanes as they drive through the roundabout. Watch the particularily stupid ones do that after having their right signal on at the very start, fooling drivers behind into thinking that they are turning right and immediately exiting the roundabout. Actually hand out tickets to the idiots who put on their turn signals either after they've stopped or as they are making a rolling right hand turn. Watch how pedestrians nearly get hit by these idiots who don't signal their intentions.

So red light cameras are actually causing more accidents and more injuries. Oh what a surprise. They are also making money for companies and governments so don't expect their removal anytime soon. The buck stops at the top and when your politicians are self centred and stupid, count on all your government services to be similar especially police services. Traffic safety is just one more pretend concern of governments and as long as drivers' licenses continue to be handed out like popcorn to the inept and incompetent, don't expect any improvement. Most of these people aren't properly trained in the first place and sure as hell the police won't pull them over and explain things for them. Oh sorry, unless they happen to be doing 62 km/hour in a 50 zone in broad daylight on a dry road.