The good and caring folks at Metro are handing out free bottles of hand sanitizer at select rail stations as a way to, in their words, "raise awareness of easy ways to reduce the chances of passing germs as the fall flu season begins." The handouts actually started yesterday but will continue today and tomorrow on the following schedule: beginning at 4 p.m. on both Wednesday, October 29, at Franconia-Springfield and Braddock Road and Thursday, October 30, at Forest Glen and New Carrollton.
There will be a total of 2,000 bottles to hand out so don?t be surprised if you are left to wash your hands on your own dime. In addition, Metro will set up a number of information booths where it will dispense health information such as: "Good health habits include washing your hands often, covering your mouth and nose with your elbow when coughing or sneezing, avoiding touching your eyes, nose or mouth, avoiding close contact with those who are ill and staying home when you are sick."
I think I like the "stay home when you are sick" advice the most. The funny, interesting thing to me is that my sister, a bit of a germaphobe if there ever was one who never passes up the chance to use one of these hand sanitizers, has already had two colds this season, one of which lasted for two weeks.
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Even though the terrorist attacks of 9/11 happened more than seven years ago and the subway bombings in Rome and London occurred several years ago Metro has decided that now is the time to start checking bags. Officials say, in carefully worded statements that have probably been checked through the legal department a number of times that they will not be profiling passengers but will be selecting them at random. Once again passengers are having their civil rights challenged all in the name of a show that "something is being done to fight terrorism." In my humble opinion I feel like that's all that this is... that the bad guys would be able to find out which stations have the searches and would simply go elsewhere. I'm all for safety and for doing what we can to fight against the evil doers but really don't think that this bag search policy is going to do anything.
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Here's an argument against the argument against red light cameras: In Montgomery, Alabama the number of traffic accidents have gone done since the city installed red light cameras. The city installed seven red light cameras this past Spring and has found that the number of crashes across the entire city has gone down by almost 800. Of course the police Captain who released the numbers says it's hard to pinpoint the exact reason for the reduction. He also says that numbers can be made to prove any point you want to make but, lacking anything different that's being done in the city to reduce crashes, thinks that the reason must be because of the red light cameras. Fair enough although it's not too scientific.
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Speaking of cameras... those clever people across the big pond in the United Kingdom have developed a camera system that can track driver's speed for a distance of up to 30 miles. Apparently the cameras communicate with one another after reading the tags on a vehicle and can calculate the time it takes a car to go from one camera to the next. That means that if you know where the cameras are and slow down when approaching them that you can't make up time by speeding until you get to the next camera. It's probably a better deterrent in the long run than single cameras it just seems so... so... sneaky.
Steve Eldridge is a long-time reporter, observer and commentator on the Washington region's transportation issues. You can contact him directly by writing to: Steve@SprawlandCrawl.com. Unless otherwise requested, letters or portions of letters can be used within future columns. Letter writers will be identified by their first name and city/neighborhood.
These cameras are everywhere in DC. Just look at the map. It's out of hand.
http://www.redlightcameradetectors.com/patriot-east.html
Posted by: AndrewZela | October 30, 2008 at 01:14 AM