Several
miles from my house is a stretch of road I drive about once a week. At one
point along the route there’s a stop sign where you really wouldn’t expect one,
at an intersection with a small feeder street that carries very little traffic.
There’s
a story behind that.
Back
in the late 1980s there was no stop sign at the intersection, but there was a
crosswalk across the main road. On a fine May evening, well before sunset, a
pedestrian in that crosswalk was struck and killed by a car.
Our
newspaper reported the story, and if memory serves, the pedestrian was a child,
which added to the sense of shock. The driver failed a sobriety test, was
arrested, and subsequently did a stint behind bars. It was one of those random,
senseless tragedies that leaves you shaking your head at the sheer awful
cussedness of things.
Then
came the aftermath. People who lived in the area felt the need to do something,
which is a common reaction in such cases. Almost overnight petitions were
circulated and presented to the county, asking for a stop sign where the
fatality occurred.
County
public works staff emphatically recommended against the stop sign, arguing that
by every standard of traffic analysis known to man, there was no rationale for
one at that location. I was writing editorials at the time, and went out to the
scene at the time of day when the pedestrian was killed to see for myself.
Approaching
that intersection from the same direction as the driver, I noticed that the sun
was behind me and the visibility approaching the intersection was excellent. There
was no reason a driver going the speed limit, or even ten miles over, should
have had any difficulty seeing a pedestrian and stopping.
A
sober driver, that is.
For
a day or so I thought of writing an editorial opposing the stop sign, but finally
dropped the idea. If you’re going to anger people who are grieving and
emotionally aroused, it had better be over something more important than a
traffic sign. Apparently feeling the same way, the county Board of Supervisors
unanimously approved the sign, and there it is a quarter-century later.
To
the best of my knowledge no other pedestrian has been injured or killed in that
crosswalk since the stop sign was put up, but then, to the best of my knowledge
no one had been injured or killed in that crosswalk before the fatality that
led to the installation of the stop sign. If you want to believe that the stop
sign has made any positive difference, you pretty much have to take it as an
article of faith.
Two
morals can be drawn from this story. The first is that in the wake of tragedy
people feel an overpowering emotional urge to do something, often unaccompanied
by any realistic and analytical appraisal of the effectiveness of that
something. The problem was a drunk driver. We’ve tried Prohibition and that
didn’t work, and the police can’t catch all the drunk drivers, so let’s put up
a stop sign. I have my doubts.
Second,
this illustrates the contradictions of democracy. An elected government can’t
always be run like a business because it also has to be responsive to the
desires of the people, who aren’t always thinking of the bottom line. The
neighbors who agitated for that stop sign weren’t doing any cost-benefit
analysis, but I believe they were sincere in believing a stop sign would help,
and they convinced the elected board. I still don’t think the stop sign is
necessary, but I’m grateful to be living in a country where the people can
demand and get one.
