Traffic Lite
Estes Park didn't get its first traffic light until the late 1940s, and even then, it was turned off and covered up each winter. This was 35+ years after the traffic signal was invented in Salt Lake City, Utah, which housed red and green lights in a structure resembling a birdhouse, and required manual switching between signals.
The yellow "change is coming" light was added to the mix in Cleveland eight years later. While we're on the subject, the blinking green light as used in Russia, which follows on the heels of the solid green light as a warning that the green light is growing "stale" and you should get a move on (or, at the other extreme, I've heard in China the combo "red-yellow" means the light is preparing to turn green, so start revving your engines), is a brilliant idea, and if we borrow nothing else from our former enemies, we should at least consider borrowing this.
The Russian traffic police are notoriously underpaid, and notoriously willing to pull people over for minor infractions, accepting bribes from drivers who wish to avoid the hassle of paying tickets. The classic Russian joke is how the young highway patrolman approaches his boss requesting a raise because his wife is pregnant, a wish the boss sympathizes with cannot fulfill, because the department has no extra money, so he instead loans him a "25 mph" sign for the next few months.
April 1954 saw the first speeding ticket issued based on the use of a "radar gun". Air-fed "deer alert whistles" may or may not help prevent deer-automobile collisions, but the feeling in the 1980s was, since the mass-marketed plastic "spinning type" repellents were so cheap, what was the harm in placing one on your car antenna? I don't know who got rich off of these useless party favors, but they probably rued the day antennas became embedded in car windshields.
Does anyone out there remember those kids at your high school who used a bent coat hanger as a replacement for their broken-off car antenna? One time six football players lifted someone's VW Beetle onto the concrete pad at the top of the stairs in front of the school entrance doors. What a hoot.
This plunge into meaningless nostalgia brought to you by Facebook, eroding American minds one post/finger flick at a time.
The yellow "change is coming" light was added to the mix in Cleveland eight years later. While we're on the subject, the blinking green light as used in Russia, which follows on the heels of the solid green light as a warning that the green light is growing "stale" and you should get a move on (or, at the other extreme, I've heard in China the combo "red-yellow" means the light is preparing to turn green, so start revving your engines), is a brilliant idea, and if we borrow nothing else from our former enemies, we should at least consider borrowing this.
The Russian traffic police are notoriously underpaid, and notoriously willing to pull people over for minor infractions, accepting bribes from drivers who wish to avoid the hassle of paying tickets. The classic Russian joke is how the young highway patrolman approaches his boss requesting a raise because his wife is pregnant, a wish the boss sympathizes with cannot fulfill, because the department has no extra money, so he instead loans him a "25 mph" sign for the next few months.
April 1954 saw the first speeding ticket issued based on the use of a "radar gun". Air-fed "deer alert whistles" may or may not help prevent deer-automobile collisions, but the feeling in the 1980s was, since the mass-marketed plastic "spinning type" repellents were so cheap, what was the harm in placing one on your car antenna? I don't know who got rich off of these useless party favors, but they probably rued the day antennas became embedded in car windshields.
Does anyone out there remember those kids at your high school who used a bent coat hanger as a replacement for their broken-off car antenna? One time six football players lifted someone's VW Beetle onto the concrete pad at the top of the stairs in front of the school entrance doors. What a hoot.
This plunge into meaningless nostalgia brought to you by Facebook, eroding American minds one post/finger flick at a time.
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