Can't we all just drive smarter?

It seems there has been a rash of deadly accidents lately involving people from our area, and I'm guessing that most of them could have been prevented if people had been paying better attention to the way they were driving. But in at least one of those cases, according to police, a deliberate might have been involved. Two young people were killed last Saturday night when a 19-year-old man driving on Route 50 near Hickory tried to pass another vehicle and struck the victims' vehicle head-on. The teenager passed on a double-yellow line, according to state police. How many accidents, fatal and otherwise, can be attributed to people who decide that the laws and rules of the road just don't apply to them? I travel Route 844 daily, and some of the driving I see on that road would curl your hair. People speeding 15 or 20 mph over the speed limit, tailgating the folks in front of them and them passing them wherever they damn well please, double-yellow lines be damned. Crest of a hill? No problem, they think. What happens when a deer jumps off a bank as one of these idiots is tailgating someone? People are dying because other people are idiots. And that's a shame. Maybe the penalties for these types of violations aren't strict enough. But unless these folks go to jail, it really won't matter. Take their licenses? They don't care. They drive anyway. Perhaps the only way the rest of us will be safe is if those who deliberately put others in peril are put away for a long enough time to make them think twice about doing it again.

He's got a point

Tim James, who is running for the Republican gubernatorial nomination in Alabama, is promising in a campaign ad that if he wins in November, he'll push to offer the state’s driver’s test only in English. Currently, the test is given in a wide variety of languages. James is claiming that it will save the state money. That's a pretty questionable assertion, but I do agree with his central premise. If traffic signs are in English, and if those overhead highway message boards give important information in English, why shouldn't people who want to drive in this country be expected to speak English before they're given a license? But while James is at it, if he really is committed to improving the caliber of driver on Alabama drivers, maybe he could work to repeal the state law that lets first cousins marry. It never hurts to freshen up the gene pool.

If you're driving, look out for Turnpike officials

If you’re involved in a scavenger hunt that has you looking for people who are in trouble with the law in Pennsylvania, the first place to stop might be your county jail. The second place might be the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission. The AP reports that the chief operating officer of the Turnpike Commission was picked up April 5 for drunken driving after he allegedly crashed into a fence in Hershey and then drove off northbound in the southbound lane of the road. It's been over two weeks, and no disciplinary action has been taken against George Hatalowich, who was driving his own car at the time. Police say he blew a 0.137 on the Breathalyzer. This comes just two months after the vice chairman of the commission, Timothy Carson, resigned after admitting to a pair of drunken driving incidents involving Turnpike Commission vehicles, according to a report in The Patriot-News in Harrisburg. And just days after Hatalowich was allegedly running into stuff while drunk, the former head of the Turnpike Commission, Mitchell Rubin, pleaded guilty to felony obstruction of justice for trying to hamper an FBI investigation of former state Sen. Vince Fumo, who is now doing five years in prison for corruption. What a crew. It's no wonder that former Pennsylvania Gov. Dick Thornburg, in an op-ed piece that ran late last year in the Observer-Reporter, called for the Turnpike Commission to be dissolved and its duties taken over by PennDOT. I'll let Thornburg have the last word: “The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission is a haven for those who wish to gorge themselves upon commonwealth tax dollars and load the payroll for political purposes. This type of patronage abuse has no place in Pennsylvania politics. The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission should be abolished.”