Time for a few mailbag items on topics we’ve covered in Roadguy this week. First up is loyal reader Vicki, who offers this advice to any Minneapolis pedestrians weary of waiting for their neighbors’ ice to melt:

Just wanted to let you/your readers know about a tip — if you encounter an icy sidewalk or a half-assedly-cleared one that makes for a treacherous journey, please do call 311 and report the location to them. They will investigate and issue a warning to the property owner to comply with clearing the area within a set amount of time (the operator I spoke to didn’t have the exact window of time) or else the city would get out there and do it … and charge them for it. And she made it clear that they charge by the minute and by the foot as well. I was only too happy to report the Hennepin/Isles stretch on Lagoon to her after that, after struggling not to fall ass-over-teakettle several times thanks to lazy property owners.

Roadguy checked the St. Paul city website, and they’ve got a similar deal:

To report a sidewalk that’s a safety hazard and needs shoveling, just send an e-mail to snowshovel@ci.stpaul.mn.us or contact the Citizen Service Office at 651-266-8989. Be sure to tell us the address of the property, and check to be certain it’s within city boundaries.

So be sure to look at your GPS unit before dialing.

Speaking of technology, loyal reader Lenny offers another way to keep tabs on teen drivers:

Related to your post about putting cameras in cars, here’s another method to monitor what’s going on: http://www.davisnet.com/drive/products/carchip_products.asp

This device logs various driving parameters which you can then download to your PC. Of interest to this topic, it will monitor speed, hard accelerations and hard breaking. You can see all this graphically on your PC screen. One model even provides an audible alarm if the car exceeds certain limits, which you set.

With the proliferation of high-tech devices, teen drivers may soon be calling their parents “Ma and Pa Orwell,” but Ma and Pa may well decide that the peace of mind is worth it.

We wrap up our week with a little something from alert reader Jerad, who, after reading Monday’s post about roof glaciers, e-mailed this photo, with the subject line “Brushing those hard-to-reach areas”:

I can’t be certain that Jerad didn’t use PhotoShop to plop the world’s largest blob of Cool Whip onto a semi, but even if he did, it’s still a great image — I almost hit the imaginary brake pedal under my desk just looking up at it.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 9th, 2007 at 6:10 am and is filed under Good to know, Scenes and stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.