We can’t fault COVID-19 for everything that goes wrong these days. Or can we?
Miss a bill payment or forget a name and you can always place blame on the week you had the disease. One White Sox fanatic was semi-serious when he held the lingering effect of COVID-19 for this year’s disastrous season.
If that sounds irrational, some of us contend COVID-19 is to blame for all those scary drivers on the road these days.
Case in point.
Two new stop signs were installed within the last year on Blackhawk Avenue just south of Sauk Trail in Park Forest. They were positioned at both Miami and Suwanee Street intersections with an obvious purpose of slowing traffic on this busy thoroughfare.
Those big red emblems joined similar symbols along Blackhawk on both Shabbona Drive and Indianwood Boulevard. Four red stop signs on a mile-long stretch of road anywhere should alert drivers to potential problems to take it easy.
Well, maybe not.
We recently followed a car whose driver blew past all four on his speedy journey somewhere. Brake lights never came on as he zipped past all four intersections. Hello! Goodbye! Get out of my way!
There seem to be more drivers who may have learned their road skills by mastering a car chase game.
We’ve witnessed a “me first” driver move into oncoming traffic just to get in front of us in an attempt to make that green light up ahead. Often as not, the light turns red, and we experience a tiny bit of joy in seeing those reckless efforts fail when we catch up to the driver. The Germans call it “schadenfreude,” which translates to the joy experienced by another’s misery.
The right turn lanes at stoplights along Western Avenue north of Highway 30 have always been staging areas for drivers attempting to squeeze into traffic.
Were the four cramped COVID-19 years from 2019 to 2023 the reason drivers now seem to be in more of a rush to save a few seconds.
Park Forest police Chief Brian Rzyski thinks COVID-19 may have changed some driving habits early on and notes for the 2020-2021 calendar years, when face masks and fist bumps were in flower, police car stops averaged slightly more than seven a day. For the last two years, it rose to more than nine a day.
The rules of the road have changed over the last decade. High-speed chases are now part of history, Rzyski says. Radio contact with other police departments works better and saves innocent lives. Soon, he says, there will be more electric speed signs on village streets and their flashing warning of “slow down” may be a deterrent to drivers with a heavy right foot.
Sauk Trail
The Cook County Department of Transportation will hold a meeting at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Park Forest Village Hall to explore changes to a 4.2 mile section of Sauk Trail, from Western Avenue in Park Forest to Central Avenue in Richton Park.
Among the proposed changes is a plan to widen sidewalks for walkers and bicyclists, which may reduce the width of the four-lane thoroughfare. This, the hopeful news release states, will “encourage adherence to posted speed limits.”
The final plan (when and if) will affect housing, schools, retail spaces, churches and parks. Better street crossings, and signal light timing are also on the agenda. If you wish to attend, please obey the speed limits, and try not to run me off the road.
Sept. 11, 2001
One year later, in 2002, I took part in a memorable ceremony on the Village Green in which two people at a time each read a page with some of the names of all the 2,977 people who died Sept. 11, 2001 n New York City, the Pentagon in Washington and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Each name was blurred by another voice. In the end, the names seemed to rise and faded away like wisps of smoke in the still night.
Jerry Shnay, at [email protected], is a freelance columnist for the Daily Southtown.
