One day about a decade ago, Roadguy parked his car outside headquarters, walked into the building, and headed up the stairs toward his desk. Coming down the stairway was a guy whom Roadguy had not seen before, or at least did not remember having seen. (A couple of thousand people work here — or used to, anyway.)

The guy stopped me and said he happened to be looking out his office window right when I was parking, and he noticed that my brake lights hadn’t gone on when I’d stopped. “Really?” I said, and thanked him for telling me. He continued down the stairs, and I continued up.

I later tested the brakes, and sure enough — no lights. I was planning to head out on a road trip in a few days and was able to get things repaired in time. For all I know, the guy saved me from being rear-ended or even killed. And I never saw him again to thank him.

This story crossed my mind this past Super Bowl Sunday, when I found myself behind a van that had brake lights that never went off:

(Apologies for the blurring. CrapCam does not like dusk.)

The van went as slow as 25 mph and as fast as 45, but no matter whether it was accelerating or decelerating, the brake lights were blazing bright, confounding everyone. I wanted to somehow let the driver know, but I couldn’t figure out how to convey “your brake lights are stuck on!” with hand signals on a darkening freeway.

This reminded me of another communication gap. In many parts of the world, if a car is coming toward you in the dark with its headlights off, you flash your headlights at ‘em, and a second or two later, the driver switches on the headlights. My experience in Minnesota, however, is that the other driver thinks, “Huh, that guy just flashed his lights” (or maybe “There must be a cop ahead”) and keeps on driving with the lights off.

What do you do when you see a problem with a stranger’s moving vehicle? Write a message on your steamed-up window? Flash your high beams? Spell things out in sign language? Get as far away as possible? Add your thoughts and tales from the road in the comments below.

Today’s theme is politics, so let’s start with a bit of roadside campaign advertising. This photo was taken by alert reader Froggie last fall in Louisiana and sent to Roadguy yesterday:

Few things could make Roadguy happier than seeing his last name in large letters next to a street sign and an orange barrel. (The sign touts Charles Foti, former attorney general of Louisiana and no apparent relation to yours truly.)

Closer to home, I spent a little time yesterday poking around the websites of the four leading candidates for president (Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney) to see what they had to say about transportation-related issues, but I didn’t find a whole lot. The two Democrats are calling for higher fuel economy standards, but none of the four sites had transportation as a separate category. The nation’s infrastructure problems, seemingly quite urgent after Aug. 1, aren’t so high on the political priority list these days.

If you’ve had better luck than Roadguy in figuring out, say, McCain’s positions on gas taxes or Obama’s feelings on toll roads, please add a link or two below. And be sure to let us know what mode of transportation you’ll be taking to tonight’s caucuses. (The Minnesota secretary of state’s caucus-finder is here.)

I spent much of last week working on this story about the Dodd Ford Bridge, a 1901 truss bridge about 25 miles southwest of Mankato. (Click on photos to enlarge.) It was interesting to go down there, drive on the bridge, take a bunch of pictures and meet a few of the people involved. There wasn’t room in the article for a lot of what I experienced — standing on the ice with a half-dozen snowmobilers who had stopped for a beer, meeting the mailman who drives across the bridge every day, speaking repeatedly with county officials about the project’s origins and specifics, learning that some locals flip up the “low clearance signs” so that they can take larger vehicles across.

I probably won’t ever get to write that stuff down in detail, but now’s your chance to write: If it were up to you, what would you do with this bridge? I’m pretty sure I know how the bicyclists will feel, but all thoughts are welcome as Minnesota tries to figure out the fate of its many old bridges.

Ramp meters rarely make news these days, but they managed to grab a headline or two yesterday when MnDOT announced that some meters might be used for longer hours (Strib story here, KSTP-TV version here). The news reminded Roadguy of an e-mail he received from alert reader Eric. Half of the e-mail was talked about in this post; Eric’s other question is here:

My wife and I have lived in the Cities for just under a year. Needless to say, there are a few things we’ve had to get used to in the realm of driving. One is the stoplights on highway entrance ramps. Never seen those before, and between the two of us, we’ve lived in about eight states. I’m sure you’ve addressed this at some point before, but what is the history of those things? Whose idea are they, and if they really work, why don’t they have them elsewhere?

Roadguy’s first instinct was to refer Eric to the massive ramp meter study, but Eric seems nice and doesn’t deserve to wade through a pile like that. So, lacking the time to come up with my own ramp meter dissertation, I’ve decided to open it to the floor: How do you explain ramp meters to an inquisitive out-of-towner? I’ve heard them called everything from a civic duty to a variety of unprintable words, so share your thoughts below. (Prose, haiku, sonnets — all are welcome)

As yet another indicator of how exciting my life is, I’ve been staring at numerous aerial photos of Twin Cities highway trenches this week. Then, last night on the Web, I happened upon these images of a plan to cover a stretch of freeway in California with a 24-acre park. (More and bigger images can be found on this page.) It’s hard to guess how much of a chance this has — the estimated cost is $200 million, and one can only imagine the challenges of decking over a highway in an earthquake zone.

I love driving on the freeway, but I wouldn’t want to live next to one, and just about everyone with a noisy view of 35W in south Minneapolis, the I-94 trench through St. Paul, or even the new 212/312 in the southwest suburbs would probably prefer to look at quieter greenspace. At the same time, thanks to a lot of foresight, we’re not generally desperate for neighborhood parkland. And who wants to drive through a dark tunnel in the middle of the day?

Setting aside the fact that Minnesota couldn’t remotely afford such a thing right now, share your thoughts on where you’d cover a freeway if you could, or whether you think this is another wacky Hollywood concept that should stay where it is.

We already knew that, of course — fracture-critical is never really the way to go with a major bridge. But today the National Transportation Safety Board got more specific and said that plates in certain spots on the old 35W bridge were “underdesigned” — and they can’t find the calculations that the engineers used back in the 1960s. Inspections also wouldn’t have revealed that the plates weren’t strong enough from the get-go. Strib story here, NTSB news release here, your comments below.