May 20, 2016 at 7:34 p.m.
Speed bumps are a good reminder
Editorial
Oomph! Clunk!
You’ve just run over a speed bump, going a little faster than you should have been going.
The first reaction is, inevitably, to grumble about that bit of raised asphalt, the one that caused the clunk.
But it shouldn’t take more than an instant’s reflection to realize that the speed bump wasn’t at fault. You were.
The speed bump was doing its job, and it was doing it well. The net result is that you’re going to slow down to make sure the next bump doesn’t result in either an oomph or a clunk.
Anyone who has ever driven out of the Jay County High School parking lot via the north exit has — at some time or another — grumbled about the speed bumps.
But anyone who has driven out of the JCHS parking lot via the north exit has gone more slowly because of them.
And that’s precisely the point.
Recently, the Jay School Board has kicked around the idea of getting rid of the speed bumps the next time that section is re-paved. They’re an irritant, the argument goes. They’re a pain in the neck.
To that, we say, of course they are.
That’s why they were put there in the first place.
And for about 40 years, they’ve been effective at slowing down northbound traffic from the high school parking lot. Without them, traffic would quickly resemble, as former JCHS principal Phil Ford put it the other day, a racetrack.
All drivers — but especially young drivers — need the reminder a well-placed speed bump can give. The reminder: Slow down.
This choice seems pretty simple.
Keep the speed bumps. And let those oomphs and clunks remind us to slow down. — J.R.
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