Автор призывает полицию Саранак-Лейк патрулировать центр города на электровелосипедах для улучшения безопасности

I was halfway through what I optimistically call my "speed walk," huffin' and puffin' my sad old culo up Lake Street hill, when I heard a low-pitched whirring sound behind me. I recognized the sound immediately — an E-bike. When I turned and looked, I found not only was I right — I was TWICE as right. For there, cruising up the hill were two of Saranac Lake's finest. And when I say cruising, I mean it: They were rolling at about 8 mph, and doing it with maybe 10 pedal rotations a minute. There were only three ways they could get that much speed with that little effort: 1. They were the two biggest studs in the Lower 48. 2. For breakfast they'd had a six-egg omelet, washed down with a 40 ounce steroid shake. 3. They were getting a major electric assist. I didn't know which was the answer, but in such situations, I try to think like a smart gambler and go with the odds. In this case, I voted not for their power, but for their power ASSIST. But that didn't matter to me. What DID matter was the bikes were being ridden and not gathering dust in the bowels of the cop shop. Speaking of the cop shop: I figured that's where the cops were headed. I also figured that once there, the bikes would again be stashed in the basement and put on full dust-gathering duty. And if that's the case, it's a bloody shame because those bikes, if used as both God and I intended, could be a great asset to My Home Town. For one thing, they could solve our very own version of Where's Waldo, which is ... Where is the traffic and pedestrian control in downtown Saranac Lake? And where is that control? Well, unlike Waldo, you can't find it. And you can't find it because it's nowhere. Don't believe me? It's easy enough to prove. It only requires two steps. Step One: First, drive around town a bunch of times. Since this is a scientific study, we need an adequate cross-sample. So drive through town, east to west, west to east, north to south, and south to north. Then repeat each leg 10 times. While I'm not a gambling man, once again, I'd go with odds. And in this case, the odds favor your finding out people are crossing the streets all the hell over the place and everythehellwhichway. Sure, some are actually using the crosswalks and obeying traffic lights, but I'd bet most are not. Is this because SL is a town full of anti-authoritarians, political dissidents and mental incompetents? Read on, Bunkie, read on... NDE's in the crosswalks All right, so you've seen from the driver's-eye view how little attention pedestrians here pay to crossing our streets legally, safely and sanely. Congrats! Now park your whip and walk around downtown. Be sure you cross all the streets repeatedly and legally; that is, you will do it only in the crosswalks. I don't know how that went, but I can hazard a guess: A lot of the drivers paid no nevermind to the New York state law that clearly states pedestrians in crosswalks have the right of way. Instead, they cruise through the crosswalk you're standing in, their eyes straight ahead, peripheral vision apparently hors de combat. Beyond that, it seems some drivers believe the purpose of crosswalks is to give pedestrians Near Death Experiences, and the least the drivers can do is help it along. A lot of drivers complain about pedestrians ignoring the crosswalk law. And while they're right — what's interesting is they're consistent about who's to blame. All the locals say the jaywalkers are damned tourists. All the out-of-towners rant about the eejit townie scofflaws. But both of them are hopelessly wrong. Luckily, I'm right. The crappy drivers and the spaceshot jaywalkers are neither locals nor tourists — they're BOTH. Maybe its something in our local air, but the fact is, once people are within our town limits, whether afoot or behind the wheel, many of them act as if Herroner just declared every day is Ska-roo the Traffic Laws Day. So now that we've identified that — a la Professor Harold Hill, we've got trouble — the question arises: Can anything be done about it? The answer is Yes, and it was how this column began: It's the cop bikes. To further clarify, it's the cop bikes, with the cops on them, patrolling My Home Town. The wheel deal First, their presence alone would effect what cops' presence does everywhere: It turns everyone, even the most la-abiding, into fear-driven weenies, terrified of an arrest, strip search, beatings with rubber hoses, followed by a one-way trip to Dannemora's Big House. As soon as the bike cops were spotted, all the pedestrians would sprint to the nearest crosswalk, and all the drivers would model the manners of Victorian gentlemen.l The whole town would resound with "After you," "With your permission," big smiles and gallant gestures. But what if that didn't happen? What if the cops mere presence alone didn't solve the problem and both drivers and pedestrians still acted like scofflaw jackasses? Well, then the cops would have to up the ante and actually enforce the law. First, they'd have to turn on their lights, sirens and body cams and nab the offender. After that? I'd go for giving them a first-timer's break: Give them a written notice of the offense, have it be a warning, not an actual ticket, but keep a record of it. Hopefully, that'd clarify the issue and put peeps on notice that the traffic laws were going to be enforced. But what if someone got popped for a second offense? Then it's time to drop the hammer. A hefty fine would be mandatory, with no exceptions. Because let's face it: People stop breaking laws (people of normal intelligence and healthy social behavior, that is) once they get punished for breaking it, or they see others get punished. It's exactly what happened with DWI. The laws were on the books, but people routinely drove drunk — until they started getting busted, fined or imprisoned for breaking them. The price to pay for breaking the law was just too steep to keep doing it. Aside from cleaning up the downtown car/jaywalkers traffic mess, there'd be other benefits to having our boys and girls in blue doing the bike thang. One is, they'd be getting exercise and lots of fresh air, something they sure can't get sitting on their dupas in their squad cars. Second, they could also stop the bikes, E-bikes, E-scooters and E-skateboards from either riding on the sidewalks or tear-assing all over the streets. And finally, if the cops were downtown on their bikes, we could actually meet them. Instead of them being graven images wrapped in a cocoon of glass and steel, they'd be real people. We could talk to them, learn their names, see them as personal allies, not just job descriptions in uniform. Believe it or not, cops used to actually WALK around town. Thus we got to know them, they got to know us and I'm sure as a result, they got to know what was going on in town much better than they would if they just cruised through. From early childhood, I knew all the cops and talked to them. Now, I know the names of only two, but know nothing else about them, and don't even know any of the other cops. Will my suggestions about what should be done about our screwed-up downtown traffic ever be implemented, or even considered? I doubt it. But they should, because the fact is we have nothing to lose if we give them a try, but maybe a serious tragedy if we don't. My friend Ed Woodward made a sign that hung on the side of his house forever. It said: "Any plan, even a bad one, is better than no plan at all." I'm reminded about it now, with my plan to end our downtown traffic mess. It may be a silly plan, a fanciful plan, even a stupid plan. Or it may even be all three. But let's face it: Right now, and for far too long, the only plan we've had is NO plan.