The Return of Driving Me Crazy

It's a simple concept: Stop.

Don't be doing any more what you were doing. Cease moving. Wheels no longer in motion. Whatever.

And it's unambiguous. Even a yellow light, which means "safely clear the intersection," is but a prelude to the definitive red light, STOP. The red eight-sided sign has the word clearly printed, and it doesn't say, "slow down pretty good."

Except perhaps in Boston, where the stop sign and other such law delineators are more or less helpful hints for drivers. In Boston, drivers run up on the sidewalk to get around cars which are triple-parked. It's like Istanbul, where two two painted lanes might hold three cars, a bus, a pickup truck, two motorcycles and a bicycle in the first row at the red light, and they only stopped out of normal healthy fearof what's flying by on the cross street.

The complete stop is just another among the lost arts in the decline of civilization that we are dealing with, but it's the one that most irritates me lately. More and more drivers approach the stop sign, or the red light, and slow down to take a look at the situation, but keep rolling at 5 mph or better rather than reach a full halt.

This has to be intentional, and a purposeful disregard of law. We know when we are moving and when we are not. If we are stopped, and let off the brake, we even feel when we begin to roll forward or backward, and reapply the brakes to avoid rolling into another vehicle - well, most of the time. So when we approach a stopping point, we must know that we have or have not come to a full stop.

Lord knows I am among the guilty here: my wife says she'll be glad to throw an elbow into my ribs when I roll through a stop. But I don't do it on purpose. The decision to knowingly keep moving has to be a conscious choice, a disregard for the law, a nod to relativism.

What gives us the notion that, although we love to see the laws enforced when others violate them, we get to choose when to obey and when to kind of wave them off? As Captain Lewis once said, "close only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and tactical nuclear weapons." When a law is clear, you are either obeying it or not. When the intent of the law is the general safety, you had best be clear on why you disagree with the law, and have supporting evidence, before you present your violation as a protest. And if you injure someone, or their property, when you violate, you had better put up and shut up.

Better yet, just stop. Come to a complete stop. Then proceed - but watch out for that other SOB who hasn't read this yet.