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Huge red flag

Huge red flag

What, you didn’t get new sidewalks too?

From reader “9th District Neighbor”:

I though you would enjoy the photo I’ve attached of a street crossing near a park in Evanston, IL–home to Jan Schakowsky. The sign was a recent addition in a series of “improvements” to this crossing where, to my knowledge, there has never been a mishap. Note also the bike lane, which nobody ever uses, but was paid for with Federal transportation dollars. I’m still speechless about this sign, nanny state run amok….

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Comments

Anyone want to take a guess at the total cost of this program? Allow for Research, design, production, installation, and training.

Doug Wright | March 6, 2012 at 7:29 am

But, what about the bad guys? Is this too a gun free zone, where one may walk safely, whilst keeping one’s self safe and free from harm, regardless of gender or of personal orientation?

    herm2416 in reply to Doug Wright. | March 6, 2012 at 8:47 am

    Gun free AND nuke free! Because you never know what the Northwestern students may be up to! I don’t even like to DRIVE though Evanston, cant imagine living there!

here (Maine) we have crosswalk laws (well not in my town…no crosswalks) where if pedestrian avoids crosswalk driver isn’t responsible.
would love to see someone strolling across street carrying red flag….nice target.

All this needs is a “Bull Crossing” sign.

And I thought the marked bicycle lanes here (mid-South, average size metropolitan city) were asinine! You wouldn’t want to walk along the very busy city streets where the bike lanes are painted here, but the administration wants to see higher gas prices and wants the proletariat to use bicycle transportation as they zoom by in the 20 SUV motorcades)- “to save the environment”!

Great pic, which illustrates the future under Central Control!

I’m shoked there isn’t a SEIU member to hold your hand while crossing.

So seeing this gave me an image of someone of less than average intelligence picking up the red flag and start crossing the street, then while crossing, they ask themselve how they return the flag back to the sign after they cross, so they turn around in the middle of the road to go back and are hit by a car.

There’s a federal employee somewhere with little productive to do who got a bonus for this idea-box suggestion.

It’s only a matter of time until that flag blows off the hook, distracts a driver, and causes an accident.

But at least the aftermath will create more government jobs.

Red is not a safe color, it is ‘black’ at night. A safety-centric city streets department would use yellow or white flags.

    BannedbytheGuardian in reply to Hurricane. | March 6, 2012 at 8:19 pm

    You are correct.

    I think the yellow Gadsen flag would be perfect.

    Day & night visibility & empowering too.

Midwest Rhino | March 6, 2012 at 9:48 am

“look both ways before crossing the street”?

That is COMPLETELY inadequate.

How ’bout telling me to remove headphones.

How far away should speeding cars be if I want to cross?

If I carry a flag, and a car is still speeding toward me … should I wave the flag harder, and give a stern look, forcing him to stop?

Do I need to look both ways again when in the middle of the street?

This is astonishing.

The boyscouts are affected the most. So many merit badges unearned.

nordic_prince | March 6, 2012 at 10:16 am

A pedestrian starts on the east side of a 20-ft wide street and heads due west at a rate of 4 feet/second. At the same time, a car that is 100 feet due south of the pedestrian’s path is driving north (in the middle of the street) at the rate of 44 feet/second. If the car is a Hummer, will it hit the pedestrian if he is not waving one of the stupid little red flags?

    BannedbytheGuardian in reply to nordic_prince. | March 6, 2012 at 8:23 pm

    I believe the Hummer would have to stop at a signed Pedestrian Xing iif a pedestrian was crossing with or without the flag.

    Do you hate pedestrians? Don’t you yourself ever x a road?

      nordic_prince in reply to BannedbytheGuardian. | March 7, 2012 at 3:52 am

      Relax, I’m just using the topic of this thread to spoof a typical algebra story problem, which problems tend to give the average person a fit of “math anxiety.”

      The issue that I have with these (and other so-called safety regulations) is that they seem to do a better job at giving people an illusion of safety, resulting in people being less diligent, which in turn leads to a decrease in safety. Yanno, the road to hell and all that.

Do they also have the warning in Spanish or do they not care if Hispanics get run over? In braille? And if they have it in braille do they change the text to “Listen left and right….”?

The really funny thing is this: after you use the flag to cross the street, you have to back, put the flag back into the bucket, and then cross again without it. Or are you supposed to throw the flag away once you’ve crossed the road?

So in the interest of safety, you cross the road 3 times instead of 1. Seriously, I’m sure there’s a bucket on the other side, but then who did they hire to go by on a periodic basis and reistribute the flags evenly between the buckets, and replace the ones that were stolen?

Henry Hawkins | March 6, 2012 at 10:29 am

I, for one, welcome our new Nanny Overlords.

Maybe this will stem the rising tide of dead voters.

[…] red flag Legal Insurrection has this absolutely hilarious photo, from Evanston, IL: (From Legal Insurrection) Posted by Tom Elia in Humor at 12:55 | Comments […]

They’re going to wait for the next round of stimulus dollars and then the sign will also be in Spanish.

Of course none commenting here actually recall these things, but the “carry a red flag” requirement is eerily similar to early motoring laws circa over a century or so ago when the operator of a motor car entering many villages had to ensure he was preceded by a man on foot carrying (and waving) a red flag, giving warning in the event any horse and wagon teams were out and about. Are we certain this is not a tongue-in-cheek reference to our dearly departed heritage? Or are these simpletons that simple?