It’s Saturday, February 6, 2010 and we in Billings woke up to even more snow.
Yeah I know it’s February in Montana and it snows in February in Montana. It’s also supposed to snow in November in Montana (hunting season) but how much of that did we get? Yeah, I’ve a right to gripe. The weather forecast calls for more snow tomorrow, followed by 18 degrees and some ominous looking blue stick on Monday:
I had long thought that I would eventually move to Oklahoma to “retire” but my cousins down that way are likewise reporting dreadful weather. I want to find one of these global warming idiots and make them roll in the snow at gunpoint. I know Spring is just around the corner and in a few months, I’ll be griping about the heat, but come on! Enough with the snow!
Snow makes Billings drivers even dumber (yes, it’s possible) and more dangerous. On my drive in and back to fetch my shirts from the laundry, I counted 4 wrecks and two vehicles in the ditch. What’s so hard to figure out here? If it takes n feet to stop your vehicle on clear, dry pavement, what horribly misunderstood laws of physics makes someone think you can stop on snow in the same distance?
Both vehicles that were in the ditch were four-wheel-drive SUVs. I’m wondering if 4×4s should come with warning labels saying something like “If you are using four-wheel-drive, you really, really should be going a heck of a lot slower. No, we’re not kidding! Slow down!”
The other four wrecks were all at stoplights and all were rear-end collisions. I attribute a lot of this to the Billings driver’s predisposition to run red lights. You’re following along and the light starts to change. You assume the driver in front of you will run the light, just as you intend to. Only they decide to stop and since you’re following too close (and probably going too fast to boot) you have to slam into the back of them in order to stop.
Last year, Billings was considering installing red light cameras to ticket red light runners. Worried about infringing on people’s rights, the Montana Legislature passed a bill outlawing the devices. Now, you know I’m really big on individual liberties, but I can’t find anywhere in the US Constitution that says we have a right to run red lights. Not to put too fine a point on it, but perhaps someone can tell me how often the word “privacy” occurs in the US Constitution.
So we live with it. There’s not enough cops in Billings to do (what I consider to be) proper traffic law enforcement, so it’s just not a priority. I will admit to seeing more and more people getting pulled over on Main for whatever reason and I heartily applaud this. Morning and evening rush hour traffic on Main Street is a case study in douche bag driving.
But then there’s the opposite end of the spectrum; the overly-cautious driver. These careful folk get out and drive a good ten miles under what is safe. While these people will probably never be in a wreck (except getting rear-ended at a stoplight) they do cause a good deal of frustration and cause otherwise prudent (and imprudent) drivers to take unnecessary risks. All things considered though, I’d rather be late from getting trapped behind one of these than by getting hit or run off the road by one of the doofusi who thinks they really must get to their destination before anyone else.
In other news, some of us spent the day involved in tasks more useful than cleaning up a blog:
This just in from our “Why Does Anyone Care About This? Desk” — Seems that a bunch of anti-whaling yahoos again collided with a Japanese whaling ship off the coast of Antarctica. I’m wondering why anyone would care enough about whales to go to all the trouble of buying a ship to go around and interfere with other people who are engaged in legal activities.
There’s international treaties that let the Japanese do this. These are agreements between governments and I have to wonder where these pests get the moral authority go try to interfere with Japanese whalers, in international waters, exercising their treaty rights. I wouldn’t blame the Japanese one bit if they sent a frigate or two down there to put this “Sea Shepherd” on the ocean floor.
I know they had a TV show on one of the cable channels and I watched it a couple of times, but other than a bunch of whining and drama-queening (is “queening” a word) I saw nothing that told me these dipshits had a right or even a compelling interest in screwing with Japanese whalers.
Maybe someone could explain it to me?
That’s pretty much it for this Saturday edition. Enjoy the rest of the weekend and if you’re in Billings and have to venture out tomorrow, please pay attention. Especially whenever a big, blue, Ford pickup is around.
