You can’t help but feel badly for the two families in Garrison Cove who will not be allowed to put their unique Christmas display across a street in that neighborhood this year.
The City of Murfreesboro ruled the display arrayed on a steel cable across a public street is not acceptable.
The display sounds like a really cool, creative observance of the Christmas season.
But …
The city just can’t let us start putting whatever we want across city streets.
The potential problems are endless.
That occurred to me Wednesday night when the winds were just whipping across our city as a front moved in from the north, bringing us more February weather.
What would have happened if those extremely gusty winds snapped that cable across a public street and resulted in some sort of awful accident?
Well, the city would likely be liable because it did not exercise due diligence. And, ultimately all city residents are the city, and we would be on the hook for whatever damages resulted.
Now, it may well be one of the families involved has an engineer who could somehow put up that cable where no possibility of it coming loose or breaking could exist.
But, the city has to treat everyone the same. So, if one neighborhood can have a cable running across the street at Christmas, then anyone can have a cable at any time.
Public access has to be pretty much universal.
So, then the city would have to have some standards for cables going across the street, regulating how strong the cable has to be, how far it can stretch, how it’s attached on either side, whether it can carry a power line, how strong a power line and on and on and on.
Ultimately, you just can’t let people impede upon public thoroughfares, even with a really nifty, well-executed Christmas display.
Because eventually you would have someone, well, like me, come up with a really bad idea.
As soon as I heard of someone putting a cable across a city street, I immediately came up with an idea for my street.
OK, it had nothing to do with Christmas decorations. I leave that to the missus except for basic strong back or high-ladder, high-risk requirements.
Living on a corner lot next to a four-way stop, I envisioned a cable enforcing the stop sign.
The number of people who apparently haven’t figured out what that red, octagonal sign means remains amazing.
Or, they just don’t care.
Whatever the reason, a lot of people run that four-way stop. Some slow down, but some just blast right through the sign at a high rate of speed unacceptable for neighborhood traffic under any circumstances not involving escaping Godzilla.
I was thinking of a strong, steel cable activated by a sensor that recorded approaching vehicles speed. If the speed was too high for a stop, the cable would drop and produce an involuntary stop.
It obviously would also check for seat belt use because those not buckled up would be the ones lying in the road 50-60 feet up the road after their car came to a complete stop upon encountering the dropping steel cable.
If the city found that unacceptable, maybe the cable could just hang across the road and be lifted when, oh, say, the motorist tossed a quarter into a lifting device on my property.
However, the cable would drop unexpectedly should the arrayed sensors pick up that someone in the approaching vehicle had chucked a beer bottle or fast-food bag into my lawn.
That someone in this day and time would just drive down the street and toss glass beer bottles and other trash out the window demonstrates conclusively he/she is an unthinking, uncaring jerk, but it happens regularly.
Since a few people do that anyway, it would be helpful if they were driving convertibles so the top wouldn’t be in their way as they make their ill-conceived tosses.
Now my cable would be a one-time convertible conversion but that’s OK, they made the choice.
My idea certainly isn’t in the Christmas spirit but if you’ve ever run over a beer bottle sunk into the ground by rainfall and not easily seen with a lawnmower and had to deal with the resulting mess and potential health risk, you might understand the high Grinch factor involved.
The city most likely will stick with its ban on private citizens spanning public roadways with decorations, cables and the like, but if it waivers I’ve got a plan to get in on the action.
|
Email
Print
Facebook
StumbleUpon
Google
Yahoo!