Angry Internet Guy: The stop sign on 5th street must die

Sunday, October 02, 2005

The stop sign on 5th street must die

Ever have this happen to you? You're cruising down the road, you've got the radio pumping, a cute girl next to you, and an ice cold blue raspberry slushee (also known as an icee) being held between your thighs because the cup holder wasn't big enough to accomodate it when all of the sudden, out of absolutely nowhere and for no justifiable reason at all, there's a stop sign in the middle of nowhere? You slam on the brakes, leave half the rubber from your tires on the road in the form of skid marks, the girl beside you hurts her arm on the dashboard, and your slushee ends up all over your car, not to mention your now freezing um, "lap".

Now, it would be one thing if I was simply not paying attention and didn't notice the busy intersection, but I'm talking about the kind of stop sign that comes out of nowhere, sometimes without there even being another road, and in the worst cases, the ones they hide just around a bend so that you can't possibly stop without prior warning (which they are usually kind enough to not offer.)

These things seem to have no reasonable explanation other than the fact that they tend to be right at the exit to the housing plan in which the local city councilperson lives.

My first instinct is, of course, to get out of the car and rip the truly useless signs down, but after the infamous Stop Sign case, I generally decide against it and utter the same mumbled profanities at the same signs time after time.

A perfect example of this is in front of a steel mill a few miles from my house. There is a stop sign in the middle of an otherwise lonely road, and the sole purpose of this sign is to annoy drivers. It is placed at the gate to the mill, and was apparently placed there for the safety of the workers as they cross the street to their cars in the small dirt section on the other side of the road. However, there is only a single two-lane road, with no intersectionwhatsoever, and you can see for a quarter mile in both directions. I'm thinking that an adult should have the common sense to actually look both ways before crossing the street. What really annoys me is the fact that the local police like to sit in that dirt lot in unmarked cars and ticket people who don't know about the dirty and therefore relatively camouflaged stop sign.

There should be a new sign that goes up in some of these devistatingly remote places where you can easily see for 500 feet or more in all directions. It should read STOP-ish, and you should only have to stop if there is actually another car or pedestrian on the road.

I think that if we all just run these stop signs, eventually the police will run out money to pay for the gas required to chase all of us, and sooner or later they'll get the worthless stop signs removed. Of course, the trick is to make sure that everybody does it during the same week so that they run out of money before all of the new money from the tickets starts pouring in. (I never said the plan was foolproof...)

If that doesn't work, we can always get drunk and redecorate every house in the neighborhood with toilet paper (to ensure that we get the house of the councilperson responsible for putting up that stop sign) every Friday night. To ensure that the cops don't get suspicious when they see us carrying 30 rolls of TP with us as we stagger drunkenly down the street, be sure to carry a highly conspicuous bag of weed or your recreational drug of choice with you so that they have something to focus on instead of the toilet paper.

Angry Internet Guy says, "Take down the stupid stop signs in your area or beware the TP!"