On our recent trip to Alaska, I once again saw the signs:
'End Double Penalty Zone'
You've seen them, at the end of a construction site. Here's the way I read it:
'Sale! Half Price Speeding Tickets!'
It all depends on your perspective.
The sign is wrong, so wrong, on a number of levels. First, if the penalty is doubled for speeding in work zones, why would you tell drivers that it is over? If we're concerned about safety, let the guy drive in ignorance to Topeka, Kansas, going the speed limit.
Next, can't we figure it out ourselves? Like this scenario:
Quilter Girl: "I don't see any dozers and loaders."
Me: "Yeah! We passed that flagger a few hundred feet back. And the highway isn't torn up anymore."
(We ride on for another mile or so.)
QG: "I think we're past the construction."
Me: " Do you think? The highway looks old, the shoulders are covered with grass and weeds, and nothing is disturbed."
QG: "Just great! We could have been speeding all this time, at a discounted rate."
Finally, what a waste of money. I know, it isn't much. A Public Works Sign like that probably only cost the taxpayers maybe a thousand dollars. Multiplied by a jillion construction sites, and it's millions of dollars, a paltry sum. But you add a sign, and another, and other ridiculous add ons and we're wasting cash, friends.
What can the common man, the peasant, do?
Just whine, I guess.
And be careful to speed only when it's half price.
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