Saturday, May 10, 2008 Covington: A traffic cop's paradise (and the zoo) By Gary Covington Looking In
HERE'S something I'll bet you didn't notice -- tucked away in an item on Saturday, an item reporting on our councilors' current workload, was the news that the honorables are contemplating setting up a city zoo.
I hate zoos. Aquarium, concrete pen or cage, I hate them all. Wild animals should be exactly that wild. In the wild. Not mewed up, endlessly pacing a few yards this way and that; not birds fluttering from one aviary perch to another, listening to the calls of their free-as-the-air cousins; not sea-roaming mammals confined to a pool and prodded and poked until they jump through a hoop.
Can you believe it? That our honorables -- they who endlessly beat their chests over how fauna-friendly they are -- are proposing to set up what must be the most fauna-unfriendly institution there could possibly be? A zoo? A prison for animals?
Traffic now and answer me this -- why is that when the filter lanes at traffic signals -- left or right -- are blocked by a road hog waiting to go straight ahead, any traffic enforcers around seem unwilling to enforce?
The number of times I've seen the filter lanes at traffic lights jammed. The number of times I've noted the traffic enforcers assigned to that junction leaning against a wall in the shade. Isn't it their job to enforce? To pull over erring drivers? Read them the riot act and send them off to a seminar? Apparently not.
Still on the roads and here's another trend, which should be stamped upon and quickly -- television and video screens mounted on auto fascias. There's getting to be quite a few about -- usually in luxury SUVs and RUVs of the tinted window variety. Sooner or later, if it hasn't happened already, folks are going to be maimed or killed whilst a driver watches the screen or fiddles with the controls.
But there's a clicker. So what? If the clicker's anything like those lying about Casa Covington I never quite know if I'm changing channel or ordering a chicken dinner.
Lastly, someone tell motorists that double yellow lines painted in the middle of the road are not to be crossed under any circumstances. Not to overtake, not for a short cut and not to jump the queue at traffic lights.
If I were a traffic policeman short on my weekly quota of bookings I'd go and hang about at the J.P.Laurel/Cabaguio junction where motorists coming up Cabaguio routinely cross the yellow lines to jump the queue and turn left. A guaranteed two bookings every time the lights change. At least. A traffic cop's paradise.
