A Time to Speed, a Time to Brake: Do You Know the Difference?

There's nothing better than getting on the highway, having your favorite tunes playing and hitting the accelerator.

The interstate highways were made for speed. One of the joys of traveling is to find others on the highway who wants to travel the same speed that you do. Whether it is strength in numbers or perhaps some kind of sense of belonging, it's a great feeling to be among a group of cars that all want to get where there going quickly and safely.

Just typing this, memories come back about good driving times. There was the morning coming back from Montreal and a trip to the Chez Paree. There was the day before I got married when I flew across I-40 to make my bachelor tee time. Or the time I was late picking up my buddy Marshall for a trip to see the Portland Sea Dogs and we got to see how fast the 10-year-old Honda Prelude could go. I could go on and on.

But you know what they all had in common? They were on a highway. There's a time and a place for everything. It's very simple. When you're on an interstate highway go fast. When you're driving in a neighborhood go slow.

The street that I live on has a traffic light on one end and a school and a dead end on the opposite side. The speed limit is 35 by my house and 25 down by the elementary school. And we could balance the budget if cops would hand out speeding tickets on my street. Now, I'm not talking 5-10 miles over the speed limit. People regularly travel speeds that are only appropriate for interstate highway travel.

Saturday night, we had a family get together for my daughter's second birthday and had some tables set out under the carport in our driveway. There were a couple of motorcycles racing back and forth that had to be going somewhere around 70 miles per hour.

My brother-in-law had enough. He was standing next to his truck, waiting for the motorcycles to come by again. I walked over to see what was going on and he had one of his daughter's dirty diapers in his hand. He was all set to fire it at the motorcycles when they came by again.

Now, I'm pretty much a pacifist. I enjoy violence on the football field, but have no desire to see it in my everyday life. But I was very conflicted in this situation. I knew full well that if my brother-in-law did chuck the diaper at one of the motorcycles, it would very likely cause an accident.

Yet if the motorcycles were not going over twice the posted speed limit in a residential neighborhood they would have plenty of time to avoid a flying object like a diaper without swerving and getting hurt.

So, I waited with my brother-in-law part out of morbid curiosity and part out of wanting to even the odds should the two guys on the motorcycle decide to jump him.

We waited for about 15 minutes and then I convinced him that they were probably done and that we should go inside, as the others had done to open Casey's presents.

About 10 minutes later we heard them fly by again. I wish you could have seen my brother-in-law's face. Livid does not begin to describe what was going on with him when those motorcycles raced by and he missed his chance to deter them with his diaper bomb.

You have to understand that he is a very easy-going guy. But he has a very definite stance on child safety and cannot stand people who do things to endanger kids.

Meanwhile, my wife is too terrified to let our kids play in our front yard. You might think she's over-reacting based just on the idea of two motorcycles racing but speeding on our street is hardly limited to those two clowns.

People of both sexes and all ages and races fly down our street. And calls to the police are met with deaf ears.

Clearly, throwing diapers at motorcycles is not the responsible response to this issue. But I don't think hiding in the house is the answer, either. So what is the solution to this problem?

I know my readers are fine upstanding citizens who never break the law. But I am using this space to ask you to save your fast driving for the highways. When you are driving through a residential neighborhood, please obey the posted speed limit.

Because you never know when a dirty diaper might be your comeuppance for driving too fast.