Slow Down

By Beth Hanning

I have lived on Newport Avenue since 2010 and since I have lived there, I have noticed many things. The main thing I have noticed: people cannot drive. I have seen this with the multiple accidents that I have heard and witnessed. People breeze through stop signs onto Newport Avenue without looking both ways. Sometimes as I try to get out of my driveway, I look both ways and then I accelerate, and the alert system goes haywire. The car that is now almost hitting me was not on Beach 120th when I looked. That indicates that they did in fact plow right through the stop sign.

The thing that has really gotten me infuriated is the racing through high tide-flooded streets. This past Saturday, my neighbor called me to alert me that the tide was rising on Newport Avenue. The sun was shining but the tide was high and moving fast, as were the cars.

I am not sure where everyone was in such a rush to get to, but people were racing through the tide. Do people not realize that when they do that, they create an actual wake, like a boat would put out, after passing? If you are not aware, there is a boater speed limit in many areas, so the wake of a boat passing does not damage other boats or docks. There is an urban legend that when the ferry began, a local restaurant owner drove his boat out in front of the ferry and caused it to stop to inform the ferry captain that he should in fact slow down when passing! And after that day, during the boating months, the ferry does in fact slow down while passing the dock!

The same science goes for driving. When you plow through a high tide, the wake is going into people’s cars and homes. The water came up to our bricks, but we had to wait until the wake receded with the waves and wait for no cars to be passing through, so we could get to our car to leave our home. (PS: If not for a funeral mass, I would have stayed put.)

Now every time flooding comes up in the media, and it did last week, one of the things the news reporters inform the public about is to not drive through those puddles because your car can stall and you can get stuck. Now, I did not see anyone stall this past Saturday, but I have, in fact, seen a large delivery truck stall before. And then even after his large truck indicated that the tide was too high to pass, drivers attempted to go around him! And in doing so, created that wake which made his truck worse!

So, people, the moral of the story is slow down: 1) Speeding can be dangerous for you; 2) It can cause additional damage to other people’s (most likely a neighbor’s car or home); and 3) It can cause you to lose a car as well!

Have a great week everyone. Stay warm.