Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 14, 1991 TAG: 9104140037
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: D1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The construction is welcome.
But there's this orange construction-area sign there - and to be fair they're everywhere - that warns drivers: "Be prepared to stop."
Sound advice, that.
Disconcerting nonetheless, though, because it implies that there is another species behind the wheel.
Are there people with their feet on the pedals who are not prepared to stop?
It worries me, and I keep it in mind as I concentrate on staying between the white lines.
That task isn't always easy.
As respectable motorists who have only one ticket marring our records - and as you and I both know there is no way you could have been clocked at 68 in that 15 mph school zone, that cop was just jealous of your 280Z - we rely on government to erect responsible signs along our roads.
They serve as reminders. As advisers. As warnings, road maps and helpful hints.
There is a notable exception, a nefarious road sign that could, given the right inexperienced motor car operator and the wrong road conditions, lead to some very serious problems.
It is on Gainsboro Road in Northwest Roanoke, just a few hundred yards - about half an hour's ride on Valley Metro - from downtown.
As you putter north, your trunk toward downtown, your hood toward Orange Avenue, you cannot help but see the ominous warning. The road is going to square-out to the right, then dog leg back to the left - the old staircase shape, which is more 90-degree angles than a round-wheeled car should face in a day.
It would be a nasty par 4 on the back nine. It is even nastier in a Datsun with a shimmy in the front end and some snow tires on the back which, were they wine, would be extremely valuable because of their age.
And so you, responsible citizen you, gird. You clench your hands on the wheel. Perhaps you slow, if you are over 65 or a wimp, you tap the brakes.
The sign has warned you - 15 mph and no more. This outrage of a street will fling you into orbit if you attempt it any quicker than that.
Ready to veer to the starboard (that's the right for those of you too mired in poverty to be regulars at Smith Mountain Lake), you inch up over the incline.
Surprise!
The road curves gently - not starboard (right) but port (left). The turn can barely be detected by the naked eye.
Then it ends and the road straightens out.
There are flagpoles that would be trickier to negotiate.
There's no square-out. No post pattern. No dog leg, no par 4 and certainly no need to ruin perfectly good brake shoes.
You try to be a responsible pilot and what do you get?
Hoodwinked.
Some road department workers must have had a jolly good time putting that sign up. I'll bet they still watch that stretch of Gainsboro with binoculars on their lunch break, just to watch the out-of-towners get nervous.
None of them has, I pray, believed the sign and not the road.
Their vehicles would end up enshrined forever on the altar at St. Andrews Catholic Church. Which is starboard of the ex-Hotel Roanoke.
by CNB