Seat belts for all? Not quite. Plus, disappearing lines
Posted on May 19th, 2008 – 6:05 AMBy Roadguy
Here’s my column from the Sunday paper. If you’ve already read it elsewhere, please skip on down to the comments below. Thanks.
BUCKLE UP — OR NOT
Alert reader Dennis sees a lot from the window of the bus, including police officers and taxi drivers who aren’t wearing seat belts. “I didn’t hear that there are exemptions to the law,” he said.
For those groups, there aren’t.
Sgt. Jesse Garcia, Minneapolis police spokesman, said officers are encouraged to use seat belts, but not all do. He estimated that he himself buckles up 75 percent of the time.
Crash protection is important, but Garcia said that officers need to be able to get out of their vehicles quickly, and that seat belts easily get tangled with guns and flashlights. So it’s left to the officer’s discretion, he said.
And while taxi drivers may know it’s illegal to do their jobs without a seat belt on, they may also know that they can’t be pulled over for that reason alone, so it’s easily gotten away with. (A bill to change that rule died this month in the Legislature.)
LIGHTS ON?
Speaking of law enforcement, an alert reader named Chub from Truman, Minn., has a question about daytime running lights:
While I believe it is a good, safe practice to run with lights on, I do have a question: If it is really a safety issue, why don’t our highway patrolmen use this practice? … In this case shouldn’t the gander do as the goose does?
State Patrol spokesman Mark Peterson said such lights aren’t legally required, and there’s no policy on them. He said that troopers switch on their headlights when weather or light conditions warrant.
Garcia said that Minneapolis squad cars don’t have daytime running lights, and he noted that when officers want to be noticed by other drivers, they have much brighter (and louder) options.
WHERE THE YELLOW WENT
Dennis had another concern: He wondered about the seriously faded yellow stripes that run — or used to run — diagonally across the light-rail tracks in downtown Minneapolis to help keep drivers off. “Tell ‘em to get out the paint,” he said.
Metro Transit commissioned the stripes, and Julie Johanson, an agency spokeswoman, said they were painted by a contractor in May 2005 at a cost of $29,000. They “frankly didn’t last very long,” she said.
Johanson said there wasn’t enough evidence of their effectiveness to justify repainting them. The numerous “do not drive on tracks” signs and the “mountable curbs” — raised concrete on either side — will remain.
So will the clueless drivers. So grab the kids, find a nice spot in the skyway over 5th Street and watch the cars drive where they aren’t supposed to. The best part is the moment they realize they’ve made a dangerous mistake.
4 Responses to "Seat belts for all? Not quite. Plus, disappearing lines"
I used to try to always drive with my lights on , but the problem was turning on the headlights dims the radio and compass making them hard to see in the day. I investigated getting a DRL relay that the Canadian version of my Jeep has, but apparently they didn’t even include the socket in the Canadian version. So I got an aftermarket kit that makes the front turn signals double as DRLs. More efficient and less glare than high beams at half brightness. Many GM cars use this setup.
The stripes aren’t very effective because they are far too spread apart and they faded in about a month. They need to space them very closely and use a very bright, longer lasting color.
The problem with the GM setup is that it doesn’t turn the tailights on during the day. So when it rains, I still turn on the headlamps. The radio and gear selector lights are bright enough for me.
I’ve been riding the Hiawatha line on and off from the very opening, and I could see that the paint wasn’t going to last very long. When your budgets are tight though, you set your priorities. Someone always thinks that some things are more important than you do, of course. The next manager of that dept may well agree with alert reader Dennis and redo those. Perhaps the contractor used cheaper paint than agreed to and pocketed the difference. I’ve seen other yellow street markings last a lot longer than these did.
Lights on is a rather subjective subject. I’ve got a beige car that seems to become invisible to other drivers on cloudy days and at dusk, and I’ve learned to turn my lights on to make myself more visible. The thing with the GM DRLs is that only the front lights turn on, not the rear. So in rainy and snowy weather, to adhere to the letter of the law, the primary headlights should still be turned on. That way the tail lights are on also.
Well, I still turn on my headlights when it’s raining or snowing, that’s a state law and DRLs aren’t designed for that. Ditto if it’s really dark outside. My general rule is I turn on the main lights if I can if it’s dark enought that the dashboard lights become noticable when switched on.
