Speed Bumps need to be outlawed, that's all there is to it! Those annoying damn asphalt bumps built into the road to slow traffic are bullshit! Just because some jackass wants to drive over the speed limit, we all have to suffer?
How often are you cruising along on some street only to find a series of speed bumps... you know, those humps built into the road to regulate the speed? Except that you can't actually hit a speed bump at regular speed, or you gouge the bottom of your car, jack your suspension, throw off your alignment or even worse, such as cracking your engine block (that actually happened to someone I know). Most speed bumps I come across are so bad that you can't hit them at even idling speed! I have to slow down to almost a stop and crawl over the damn things! And even THEN there are a few that still scrape my car's undercarriage. I'm not the one speeding, why am I being punished?
A lot of the times there's not even a warning of a speed bump until you see it in your headlights, a lot of times at night it just blends into the rest of the asphalt until your car lights can create a shadow. I don't know how many times I've hit a speed bump too hard because the damn thing was never painted yellow to warn you of it's existence, or the yellow paint had warn off, or there was no warning sign. I wonder how many of those scrapes you see on those pavement humps are from my car.
You usually see them in residential zones, often in trailer parks, but I've seen them all over. I've seen them on actual roads, in one instance a series of them that basically cause what would be a major side route, something that would ease traffic problems, to be virtually unusable. There's several built along the main driving lane of a strip mall near my home. I've even had to deal with the damn things in parking garages. One time in one hospital parking lot, I had to drive over a hump that was at least three feet tall! THREE FEET TALL!
Speed bumps wouldn't be so bad if they were built properly, but almost none of them are. In my life I have come across exactly one speed bump that I was able to drive over at the residential speed limit of 25 miles per hour. I was actually really happy with driving over that one too, because it proved to me it was possible to build one that wasn't a punishment to all motorists, that didn't completely inconvenience me by bringing me to a stop and not having to cringe and worry about the damage it may be inflicting onto my car.
Whenever I see a speed bump, I want to get a sledgehammer and come back under the cover of night and smash the damn thing into pieces. Sometimes I lay on the horn as I creep over a speed bump, just so I can disturb the bastards who put them to be there as much as I am being disturbed! (That's especially fun to do late at night or at the crack of dawn. I recommend everyone do that!) There has to be a better way to regulate speed without punishing every motorist by slowing to a crawl and possibly damaging their car. Consider how much damage can be done to your car by driving in a pothole. Now realize that a speed bump is kind of like a reverse pothole. How can that not be detrimental to your car? The point is to make sure people are driving slow, but if you are making me nearly come to a halt to go over the speed bump, that strategy isn't exactly working, now is it? Hell, what's to stop me from flooring the accelerator in between those speed bumps, huh? Didn't think of that now did you assholes?
If you're going to build a speed bump, at least do it right... build it in such a way as not to inconvenience those actually driving within the speed limit. Either that, or don't build the damn things at all.
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