one of the things that makes my wife sigh in slight annoyance is something that happens whenever we're driving though any sort of mall parking lot. i hate speed bumps. not just because they're annoying - no, i hate the very principle of speed bumps. punish everyone for the sins of a few. it's kinda like in grade school when a teacher threatens to punish the whole class if she doesn't find out who put a tack on her chair (which i really did in 5th grade, but i digress).
and something i hate even more than speed bumps are stop signs. i hate to break my momentum and stop signs are the antithesis of momentum. it's not like stopping at a store to get something done. it's not prolonged like a stoplight where you could actually use the time to change the radio station, send a text message or just look around at the other drivers who you will momentarily challenge with some sort of suburban drag race once the light turns green. but ya know, stop signs are stop signs. they serve a valid purpose....well, kind of. get this - in many European cities (specifically, cities in Holland, Germany and England) traffic planners have been testing a new theory about traffic for the past couple years with good results. they are tearing down stop signs, removing stoplights and getting rid of lane lines. apparently accidents in these cities have gone down dramatically as a result. when people rely on lights and signs, they are lured into a false sense of security and let their judgment lapse and get into accidents. but with no lights or signs telling them what to do, people are forced to be aware and to watch out for other drivers. it's interesting how a laissez-faire approach works even beyond economics.
anyway, it'll probably be a while before American cities start tearing down stop signs and lights so for the time being i just have to deal with it. EXCEPT in mall parking lots. those stop signs at malls are bogus. they're imposters. frauds. fakes and phonies. they were not placed there by city ordinance. no, they were placed there by the owner of the mall which means we aren't obligated by law to obey them. don't believe me? well think about this. real stop signs must be a certain height and oriented at a certain angle to be valid. if you get a ticket for a stop sign violation, you can actually get out of that ticket if you prove in court that the stop sign was turned around a few degrees or if the sign was bent over and therefore the incorrect height. now think about mall stop signs. they're about 3 or 4 feet lower than real stop signs and are hardly the right size. sooooo, much to my wife's chagrin, whenever i'm driving through a mall parking lot and there's no traffic or pedestrians or good reason to stop at a mall stop sign, i drive right through it in perfectly good conscience. it's those instances where i declare said stop sign to be "stoptional"
