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No respect for rules of the road

Drivers not following the basic rules of the road have gotten out of control.

Almost no one stops completely at stop signs, even when crossing traffic is present. Yield sign are not obeyed, either — some will tap the brake, but many treat them like they are not there at all. A block down the hill from my house is a yield sign for the crossing traffic. I approach that intersection with extreme caution every day, as many people don’t even slow down or look my way for traffic. A block later is U.S. 2; I’m generally turning right. A block to the left is a stop light. I can’t tell you how many times I see vehicles come through that light when it is well into being red, which means I have to wait for an extra car or two or three so that I can enter U.S. 2. Recently, I was stopped at another red light for several seconds, and a vehicle,well behind me, in the other lane, blew right through.

A side note to this issue is that some people go well over the wide white stop line, which puts at least the front of their vehicle out into the intersection or in the crosswalk.

Somehow this whole idea you can go 5 mph over on the highway’s posted speed has gone way beyond that. I’m not sure where that idea started, but I will admit that in a 55-mph zone, I will set my cruise at 59. At that speed I get passed by almost everyone, including law enforcement vehicles that are obviously not on their way to an incident or crime scene.

Recently, there seems to be a rash of drivers not stopping for school buses. Seriously? Just in the U.P. lately there has been many incidents where children have been injured. In Escanaba, within the last week, a car slammed into a stopped bus with its lights flashing and stop sign deployed. In the published picture, that vehicle looked to be totaled; it must have hit with quite an impact. How would any of you feel if you injured or killed a child because you were not paying attention or in such a hurry you just didn’t care?

Now there is texting and driving, which may be more dangerous than anything else I have mentioned. Every time I drive, I see other drivers obviously texting. Some are mostly looking out the front windshield and glancing down every so often, others are mostly looking down and glancing up every so often. Just do a quick search on the Internet and you will find all the evidence you need to put that phone away when driving. Although there probably has been some people ticketed for this infraction, I have never meet anyone that has gotten a ticket.

With everything that I have mentioned, why are these laws not enforced? If drivers started to get ticketed for these things, I think that they would start following the rules.

Bottom line is, slow down and follow the rules, and put your phone away, please.

Chuck Winters

Iron Mountain

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