As I See It

I have gotten two tickets for “running” a red light. I remember the first time I noticed the ominous white camera sitting to the side of a stoplight I frequently drive by. I grumbled something about the city being greedy, money-hungry fascists, to which my husband surely rolled his eyes. I wasn’t so much shocked by its appearance as I was irritated that my formerly small and artsy North Texas college town had grown so much away from it’s roots.

I am someone who obeys the laws of the road about 84% of the time. Sometimes I speed, but not too fast anymore (I spent a lot of my driving adolescence finagling my way out of speeding tickets). Occasionally I pause at stop signs on a deserted road. I rarely do an illegal U-turn. However, one I thing I do not normally do (whether on purpose or because of impatience) is run a red-light.

 I remember when I was a little girl driving home with my family from Walmart one Saturday, and there was a massive wreck at the light close to our house. It was awful, lots of shattered glass, the twisted body of a Buick. I remember my parents saying one of the cars had run the red-light and gotten broadsided. This terrified me, I imagined being out in the intersection after the red light was like being a knight without armor, totally vulnerable and weak.

My dad owns the title to my VW Bug, he gave it to me when I was a teenager, and I still drive it today. So, naturally, when he called me to say he had gotten a ticket for running a red-light, I was shocked. I racked my brain, I couldn’t envision myself running a red-light. Then my husband reminded me of the incident (I was halfway through the intersection on a fresh yellow-light, and it changed to red suddenly) and that set me off. Would they assume I read the traffic lights mind and knew it was going to change at a pace inconsistent with other lights in the area? I suppose I should have.

This situation did little to quell my frustrations with the city and their blatant design to put more money in their pockets. But what angered me more was these new camera-cops removed human accountability and judgement from the equation of traffic safety completely. Where were the reasoning skills of a cop on duty who would witness an alleged violation and deduce the facts surrounding it? Gone were the days where you could explain your circumstance to a law-enforcer human being and hope for pity, sympathy, or at the least, amusement at the case you lay before them.

The other day I read this article entitled Red-Light Cameras Just Don’t Work. The author of this article goes into great detail about why the camera’s are for anyone’s benefit but that of the common driver. The article says:

“Well, according to study after study, rather than improving motorist safety, red-light cameras significantly increase crashes and therefore, raise insurance premiums.”

Isn’t it so like our government to tout something as being advantageous to us, while really, it does little more than pad the pockets of those in charge or with specified interest? There have been numerous studies done that show a direct increase in accidents in the areas where the cameras have been installed. And, as I suggested earlier, there are an increased amount of yellow-lights being shortened (two of note were found right here in Texas). So, if they have truly been placed atop the traffic lights that govern our roadways for the purpose of drivers safety, why is it that they are causing more harm than good?

It is not for us they have been placed there, that is a thinly veiled lie. I am so tired of  the “for your own good” line being force fed me just so someone can go ahead and do exactly what the want anyway. So, I have a few equitable words for city officials and Big Brother: First, don’t silence your guilt or conscience with a statement you yourself know to be a lie. Second, the drivers of America are anxious, impatient and distracted enough already without you adding one more reason for us to panic and make a fatal mistake on the road. We live in constant awareness that our world is changing, but with this so called progress that is supposed to make us feel safer, we end up feeling more frazzled and unsure than before.

Since the very first comment I ever received on my site ended in a question about the difference between what was placed in the Rants and Soapbox category, I thought I may as well post a little something about the distinction between the two. At first glance the two may appear to not be so different. They both involve a great deal of passion. Both relate to making a kind of speech. However, when examined closely they connote quite different meanings.

To rant, as defined by Webster, means: a bombastic extravagant speech; to talk in a noisy, excited, or declamatory manner; to scold vehemently. When I rant, I have been set off; be it by something I saw in the media or heard in conversation. Sometimes it’s merely a reaction to a lot of pent up energy or the compulsion to have an opinion about everything. Rarely does a rant carry the weight of a social issue or a serious concern on my heart. No, that is reserved for the Soapbox.

I have heard the term soapbox used throughout my life primarily by my mother. Or by my father clearing off the kitchen table for my mom to stand on when she went into one of her orations. For me, this was a term associated with great passion and emotion about a certain issue or problem in the world. Good ol’ Webster defines it as: an improvised platform used by a self-appointed, spontaneous, or informal orator; broadly: something that provides an outlet for delivering opinions. Where at one time we needed a box (table, chair, voice loud enough to be heard over everyone else), now we have the Internet.

So, since you were wondering, there it is, the difference between two things very close to my heart.

      I love animals. Okay, that’s the understatement of the year. Sometimes when I think about dogs in a shelter, I actually feel physical pain. When I read an inspirational story about a heroic dog, horse; parrot even (yes, I’ve read some), my face will certainly be stained with tears.

      So a while ago, when my mom quoted a Rolling Stone article about the treatment of pigs in one of the nations largest pork producers (Pork’s Dirty Secret), I was not only appalled, but I had to see for myself.

      As a normal woman in America I have a sort of love hate relationship with food. I love to sit down to a home cooked meal, feasting not only my taste buds, but my sight and smell senses as well. However, I hate the affect that same full-sensory experience has on my thighs. Nonetheless, other than that minor setback in my relationship with food, I pretty much existed in blissful ignorance. Until I Googled that article, that is.

      The article does not mince words about the living conditions of millions of pigs that reside(if you can use that word) in the Smithfield facilities. Not only do they live in squalor and filth, but that filth is then filtered into the surrounding area by waste disposal. The pigs are not living for the time that they are alive. They reside by the hundreds, sometimes thousands in barn like buildings, often times being trampled to death. They are kept living merely by the administration of countless antibiotics. As the article says (”There is no sunlight, straw, fresh air or earth.”) this is not a life. 

In reading that, I began to think about what I was doing by purchasing their products, by consuming the meat from those animals. I considered that if Smithfield was doing it, likely, most others were as well. I could not, in good conscience, contribute to their revenue any longer. But beyond my desire to withdraw my own consumership of their products, I thought about the bigger issue. Rarely had I considered that the slab of meat I ate for dinner(or the savory bacon I fried up to put on my sandwich or eat with my toast) was a creature that had not only been killed inhumanely, but had not been given a chance to live at all. 

This was not something I could accept, and it set off for me a spiral effect of re-examination at the foods I ate and the companies I supported. When we say we value life, we often mean human life, but why is the life of an animal so different than our own? I am not a New Ager. I do not believe in Reincarnation. When I die, I will go to the Father, I will not be back as a fuzzy chick or fluffy cat. So, because I believe that, I must wonder what God meant when he said for us to be the ruler over the creatures of the earth. And, I really don’t think he meant for us to torture them for our own food.