Lessons learned from Heath Deciders

When is 50 mph in a 65 mph zone too fast?
When it’s icy.

When is 40 mph in a 65 mph zone too fast?
When fog, rain, or snow cut visibility to three car-lengths.

When is 70 mph in a 65 mph zone too slow?
When the flow of traffic is moving at 75.

When is 15 mph in a 25 mph zone too fast?
When kids are playing at the curb.

Okay then, how should safe driving speeds be determined?

The fact is bureaucrats can’t pinpoint a safe speed for any street or highway because each short stretch of each highway has its own idiosyncrasies. These idiosyncrasies change with the season, with the weather, with the hour of the day or night. Government’s Great Deciders often cause highway problems by decreeing unrealistic speed limits, as is the case in Heath.

Some drivers will drive at posted limits, even when they are too slow for road conditions or too fast for road conditions, no matter how much of a problem it causes other drivers.

Gary Burbank, a radio-talk-show host in Cincinnati, proposed several years ago that speed limits be set by the majority of motorists on any given street or highway. He’s right. The majority of drivers drive at speeds they feel are safe, taking into consideration the road conditions, weather, and visibility. That’s how you tell where to set the speeds.

People who drive at a great variance from the flow of traffic should be ticketed, too fast or too slow. Do that, take away cell phones, and arrest tailgaters. That would increase safety many times over. Next, let the Great Deciders decide how to better engineer traffic warning devices, to warn motorists of real hazards, and quit hassling drivers by orange barrels and 45 mph limits when there are no hazards.

Hassling motorists is the temporary pleasure of Heath’s Great Deciders. Not just the joy of hassling, but the profit for doing so likely doubles their pleasure. It also doubles the resentment and resistance and anger of people trying to use a state highway.

My number of visits to businesses in Heath since the cameras went active is exactly three. My last visit was when I learned that I can’t get to the mall without exposing myself to the Australian profiteers. My next visit will be whenever they deactivate the traffic cameras - maybe. By then I will have formed new shopping habits in places other than Heath. Likely by then many thousands of others shoppers will have broken the Heath habit.

Heath’s Great Deciders are teaching motorists a lesson. Indeed they are.