(Good) drivers wanted
Where did you learn how to drive? Yeah, you, the guy in the black Camero that skidded around two lanes of traffic, veered left and cut everyone off, then sped up the N.C. 54 on-ramp scraping the curb along the way.
And you in that gray, beat–up Tercel — what the heck were you doing running red lights all the way up Smith Level?
Traffic around here is crazy enough without idiots like y’all masquerading as daredevils, and it’s going to get less forgiving as the town floods for a while with U-hauls and people who quite honestly don’t know which way to turn.
And with a new high school, it’s going to take patience, practice and a lot of defensive driving to get around.
Oh, and one more thing — get off the dang phone and pay attention.
Traffic jamming
Contractors are facing a mid-August deadline to get a new traffic light and turn lanes in place at the entrance to Carrboro High School. We wish them godspeed, and judging from progress so far and the condition of the project this week, it may take an unearthly power to get things to completion.
As noted above, the south side of town is going to see a serious crunch as the new school opens and hundreds of parents and teens find their way to and from the school.
Getting the light in place is essential to opening the school. But beyond that, getting the work completed ahead of the coming crunch and not in tandem with it should be a top priority.
Blood sport
It’s hard to pass the Michael Vick dogfighting story by, not because he’s a well-known sports celeb in trouble, but because Orange County is a hot spot in a state that, as the Vick indictment shows, is a hot bed of dogfighting.
Several of the incidents mentioned in federal charges against the former Virginia Tech quarterback involved fights in or with dogs from North Carolina. Though there is no mention yet of where or with whom in North Carolina Vick and his partners are alleged to have conspired in their fighting enterprise, concerns about dogfighting are well founded here. Over the years, raids of breeding operations and work by animal activists have unearthed Orange County connections to the fight business.
It’s one of the main reasons the county is considering ways to eliminate or reduce tethering of dogs.
Already, it’s hard to watch Vick’s apologists try to spin this cruel and bloodthirsty “sport†as a simple pursuit of status akin to a fast car or plenty of bling. We can only hope that as the case unfolds, more of the public becomes aware of the practices of a truly barbaric industry. Perhaps we may also come to understand what possibly motivates anyone to consider the torture and killing of another creature a good time. For the time being, that is difficult to fathom.