Thursday, March 5, 2009

I Simply Can't Come up with a Title for this Post...

I ran into my first post-inaguration Obamanaut today.

Before the inauguration, or before the election for that matter, every black person you stopped would say something to the effect of "When Obama is the president, y'all ain't gonna git away wit this shit." Shockingly, we do still "git away wit dat shit" because there was nothing wrong with what we were doing in the first place. After the inauguration, people stopped saying such things to me. I'm not sure why.

Today, I was driving on our main drag and I saw a car in the left turn pocket that had stopped for the red left turn arrow signal. After traffic in the opposite direction cleared, I was appalled to see the vehicle make a left turn against the red arrow signal. So, of course, I caught up and stopped the car.

As I spoke with the driver, she told me she had seen the red arrow (Thank you for that admission. It went into my notes.), but that the light for thru traffic was green, and she had waited for traffic to clear before making the turn. She felt it was perfectly safe to run the red arrow signal because there was no opposing traffic.

For those who are interested, this is the cited section:
21453.  (c) A driver facing a steady red arrow signal shall not enter the
intersection to make the movement indicated by the arrow and, unless
entering the intersection to make a movement permitted by another
signal, shall stop at a clearly marked limit line, but if none,
before entering the crosswalk on the near side of the intersection,
or if none, then before entering the intersection, and shall remain
stopped until an indication permitting movement is shown.
I had to explain to the driver that just because she made the turn without getting hit by another car, did not make it safe or legal to do so. She told me she thought it was ridiculous that I was issuing her a citation for making a mistake. She didn't mean to do it, after all. She referred to it as "human error". What she said next is what caused me to label her an Obamanaut.

"One of the things Obama is going to do is introduce tolerance for human error."

Ummmm..... what?

Based on her explaination, it sounds as if this nut, errr.. woman, truly believes Obama is going to make mistakenly breaking the law perfectly legal. As in, if you didn't intentionally do what you did, somehow we won't be able to cite you for it.

I had to explain to this woman that the causative factor in ninety-someodd percent of collisions is human error. Excessive speed, driving while talking on a cell phone, illegal turns, failing to obey a sign, not yielding to a pedestrian, all are human error and all have caused traffic collisions.

She still proclaimed her belief that Messiah Obama will fix it all for her.

Maybe he'll sign off the ticket for her...

8 comments:

It's me said...

This comment isn't about Obama, but it is about the "it was an accident" defense and just how many people accept that excuse.

http://www.anymommyoutthere.com/2009/03/not-that-different.html

You will be amazed at the comments on this one, even AFTER I pointed out the charging documents that added to the story. :(

Murphy's Law said...

LOL. Wonder if she knows the guy that I cited a few years back who told me to write him as many tickets as I wanted because he worked for the State Department and Colin Powell would just get them all dismissed.

I was getting ready to cite him for one violation and warn him about two more, but he wound up going away with three citations.

There's no fixing stupid.

Anonymous said...

It sure sounds like she drank the Kool-Aid. - Officer

Berserk said...

Obama!

Unknown said...

Wow. If I were in your shoes I don't know if that statement would've caused me to burst out laughing or crying uncontrollably, but certainly one of them. What a moron.

Ten 80 said...

We're getting the same stuff here. It's all over the place. I'm hearing "I'm writing Obama," and "I'm calling Obama." I'm gonna tell them to pray to him because he get's it faster.

Anonymous said...

My buddy "Traffic Nazi" had one almst immediately. I think I may have posted about it. Disgusting.

ccpdfsd said...

I smell a presidential pardon coming...