Here’s my column from the Sunday paper:

STOP AND SHOP

Alert reader Kelly tells us about a “hot topic” among her co-workers:

A group from my office claims that the stop signs found in parking lots are “optional,” because they are on private property maintained by the mall owners. I never heard of this during my driver’s education, and I even searched through my manual, but could not get a clear answer. What is the Minnesota law on parking lot stop signs?

Roadguy would like to ask Kelly to please call whenever her colleagues head to the mall. I don’t want to be anywhere nearby when they’re flying through stop signs.

The malls might not be too excited to see them, either. “Our expectation is that everybody follow all the rules, including coming to a complete stop at every stop sign,” said Dan Jasper, director of public relations for the Mall of America in Bloomington. “Our own security officers on site do enforce that,” he said. They can’t write you a ticket, but they can delay you a lot longer than obeying a stop sign would.

Statutes specifically about stop signs apply only to those on public streets, says Lt. Matt Langer of the State Patrol, but Kelly’s co-workers could still be cited for careless driving or violating a local ordinance.

“The moral of the story is don’t be thinking that you’re just going to be free and clear blowing through those stop signs,” he said.

Plus, it’s just a really bad idea.

BYE-BYE, SPEED HUMPS

As you know, Roadguy takes questions seriously when he receives them from his alert readers. He takes them even more seriously when he receives them from his boss, who wanted to know why her commute suddenly got smoother:

What happened to the speed bumps on West River Parkway? The new paving appears to leave one gentle one but none of the serious slow-down ones from before.

Many motorists dream of making speed bumps vanish.

The ones on the parkway — which were actually more gradual humps — were removed because they were deemed ineffective by officials at the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board.

A typical commuter would slow down when going over the humps, said project manager Nick Eoloff, but on the stretches of road in between, “the driver would try to make up the lost time by speeding up.” It was, he said, “a win/lose situation.”

So the humps, which were installed in 1998, were removed last month. Will the free-and-clear ride attract more traffic? Eoloff will be watching the numbers — and so will my boss.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 7th, 2009 at 9:45 pm and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.