December 22, 2008
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i have been meaning to write this entry for a while, but things kept getting in the way.
there is road construction going on by my house. a pair of railroad tracks bisect two of the busiest roads in the area, and when a train is lumbering across one or both of them, obviously traffic grinds to a standstill. it’s not uncommon to see a line of cars stretching down for at least three blocks in both directions. the construction aims to alleviate this problem by separating the cars from the railroad – on one street, the traffic will go below the railroad. on another, traffic will go over it. the budget for this project got finalized a while back and almost immediately the crews started digging. the road by my house is closed and traffic is running across a temp road until construction is done. on the opposite road, the overpass is starting to take shape. as a result of the construction, the intersection near the overpass has been reworked.
one of the train tracks runs about seven feet away from the intersection. before, there was enough space in front of the tracks for two small cars or one big car. ever since the overpass changed the shape of the intersection – and since people apparently never figured out stopping on the tracks is a bad idea – the area in front of the tracks is now off-limits, and there is a hash-pattern on the ground for about five feet back from them. there is also a big sign near the front of the pattern that says “STOP HERE.” and yet, despite all of the obvious clues that stopping on the tracks could kill you, at least once a day i see someone scream down the road and stop right in the middle of the train tracks.
this isn’t like “oops i went too far” or “oops i stopped short.” this is people actively driving down and stopping in the middle of a set of railroad tracks. they don’t even try and pull forward to get off the tracks, they just sit on them without a care in the world. i look at them and they don’t even seem to notice.
it makes me wonder what goes through their heads.
also Kara no Kyoukai 4. fucking awesome.
