Consequences

Sometimes I write ahead and post at a later date but right now I'm working on the posts daily.  It keeps me more current with what I'm writing.  On the other hand, I make notes for myself when something strikes me that I might want to write about, and those notes can be from quite a while ago.

This one for instance.  Someone in Carroll County, Maryland should have their head examined.  Well, probably lots of people in Carroll County, but specifically whoever is in charge of the roads.  I drive into Carroll on Deer Park Rd quite often because it's the shortest, least congested way from my house to my daughter's dance studio.  She has classes daily weekdays, plus competition team practice on weekends.  My wife takes her about half the time and I have the other half. 

Anyway, Deer Park Rd intersects Rte 91, where I turn right to get to the studio.  It's a fairly busy intersection and the county is putting in a left turn arrow for traffic on Rte 91.  The thing is, Rte 91 is one lane in each direction, with passing areas on the right so that traffic can go around left turning vehicles.  That works fine when there's no left turn arrow but with an arrow it's a big problem. 

The county put in the left turn arrow lights before changing the lanes configuration.  Turned on the new lights, too.  So that meant the light would change for one direction of Rte 91 to green turn arrow and the other would have a red light, but there was no left turn only lane.  The people wanting to turn left were stuck behind people who wanted to go straight but still had a red light for straight through traffic.  For people making a right on red from Deer Park to Rte 91 it also meant no way to tell if the light for Rte 91 traffic coming from the left was green or red. 

To no surprise, some people who wanted to turn left got impatient and crossed the center line to go around the stopped straight through traffic while the left turn signal was on.  Problem with that is that the Deer Park traffic had a right turn green arrow at the same time, so head on collisions were inevitable.

Fortunately, someone got wise after a week or so and the left turn arrows were deactivated.  Now the county is working on changing the lane configuration, which this week has resulted in a bizarre pair of strips of new asphalt with gaps to the edge of the road and down the middle of the road so that there's a pair of rumble strips, each a travel lane wide, for traffic going straight through on Deer Park.  Highway planning doesn't seem to be a strong suit in Carroll County.