I can't remember how old I was, but I know it was in my elementary school ages when I was riding in a car with my grandfather. We approached a stop sign and he stopped. I guess it was one of those moments for him to teach me a life lesson without me really knowing.
That lesson was not only about stopping at the stop sign, but also to make sure the vehicle in the other lane stopped.
I can't remember exactly the question he asked, but it went something like asking me why you need to stop at a stop sign and why you needed to wait to make sure the other person was going to stop before you proceed.
My answer was if you run the stop sign, you'll get a ticket. I must have added some more to that answer by saying if the other person ran the stop sign, they would be at fault. I'm a little blurry on the first comments in this story about that discussion with my grandfather, but I remember his response as if he told me yesterday.
“It doesn't matter if you're dead wrong or dead right, you're still dead,” he said.
I was probably a good 9 or 10 years away from getting a driver's license at that point, but his conversation continued as we drove down the road.
Basically what he said was that stop signs, red lights and speed limits weren't posted to give the police an opportunity to write tickets. They were placed there for our protection.
I later learned that engineers, not police officers, set most of the speed limits and other traffic signals. Granted, they will ask the police for their input, but it's left up to others to decide the safe speed on certain roads and when and where stop signs should be erected.
At the end of Monday night's Flomaton Town Council meeting Police Chief Bryan Davis handed me a stack of papers with a lot of numbers on them. They were the statistics recorded off that new device the police department moves around telling motorists what the speed limit is and how fast they are going. It's a great tool. Sometimes we don't realize we are speeding, especially on a four-lane road that's marked for 35 mph.
I guess I thought that new machine was simply telling people to slow down with its flashing lights. I didn't realize it was collecting data. That data was in the stack of papers Chief Davis gave me Monday night.
First off, the data started April 12 and ran through June 9 at various locations in Flomaton. I wasn't totally surprised but the data showed that 74 percent of the people were speeding when they got clocked on that new device.
Here are some examples. At Palafox and Roosevelt streets, which is posted at 25 mph, 71.21 percent were below the speed limit with the highest speed recorded from between 46 and 55 mph on one vehicle.
This one surprised me, but the stretch along Highway 31 at the fire station, which is posted at 45 mph, there were 2,088 vehicles driving below the speed limit and 875 above with three motorists clocked between 66 and 75 p.m..
It changes on Highway 31 and Upper Creek Road, which is posted at 35 mph and monitored within a three-day period, 11,582 were clocked above the speed limit and 347 at or below the limit. The bulk of the speeders (6,140) were traveling between 46 and 55 mph, but there were 1,557 between 56 and 65, 87 between 66 and 75, four between 76 and 85 and one fool who came down there driving between 86 and 95 mph.
I won't go through the whole list, but another one that stuck out to me was on Highway 31 near the tennis courts, which is posted at 35 mph for obvious reasons of kids in the area for ball practice.
The sign clocked 2,848 under or at the speed limit and 7,990 over the speed limit. Of those 775 vehicles were traveling between 56 and 75 mph, 36 vehicles were going between 66 and 75 mph and one other fool was traveling between 76 and 85 mph.
The highest speeds on the report were three vehicles traveling between 86 and 95 mph on Highway 31 at Hillview Drive.
If it takes tickets to slow people down, so be it. Just remember the overall goal is to make it safe for everybody either driving on or crossing the road.
