I've Been Here 8 Years, but NOW "We've Got to Enforce It"

Everyone loves to start their day with a traffic ticket and I guess today was my day to "love it".  Yep, I got pulled over this morning.  Heck, I got pulled over by an officer who simply WALKED UP to my car and tapped my window.  I was still wondering what he wanted when I rolled the window down until I got the "please pull over there" directive which surely indicated he thought I did something bad.

In fact, as I pulled into the spot he directed me to I also quickly realized that this guy was about to get a bonus at work (that, or he's trying hard to make his monthly quota) as there was about 10 other folks in the same situation as I was.  It seemed the officer had been doing waves of these this morning as he was dripping with sweat by the time he tapped on my window.

You're probably asking what we all were doing that was so bad it warranted ticketing drivers in bulks of 10.  I was wondering the same thing.  The officer tells me that we in violation of Code Section 40-6-40; "DRIVING ON WRONG SIDE OF ROADWAY" as it so nicely reads on my ticket.  That sounds bad, but hear me out...

Heading south on Crabapple Rd (main street on picture) in the morning to to take a left to head east on the major intersection at the bottom of that picture is an extreme pain.  The common pattern for morning commuters is to start getting over to the left once they cross Macy Dr to line up for the eventual left turn.  This procedure also lets drivers continuing south on Crabapple to not get hung up on those trying to turn. On the picture to the right, I was in the yellow ellipse. 

This daily routine helps everyone out a bunch and doesn't cause any real issues as nobody is blocking the northbound lanes of Crabapple Rd and very, very few vehicles turn left onto Macy Dr.  I'm sure most of you have a similar "hack" on your commute where a norm has been established to help the flow of traffic.  So, not so sure why (other than my thoughts about generating income for the City of Roswell) today was anything special.  I've lived here for eight years now and I've NEVER seen this mass punishment of all the dangerously "bad" people.

BTW, these are just regular tax payers trying to get to work so we can pay some of those taxes to help ensure the City, and its police department, can have some money to operate.

Needless to say, I was very frustrated and, in fact, about eight hours later I'm still frustrated!  The officer only frustrated more when he stated, "it's messed up; it's the State DOT's fault, but we've gotta enforce it" after I told him I was going to take some pictures of the intersection to bring with my to my court date. 

Hey Roswell PD, if you want to decide now is the time to educate drivers of all the "unsafe" behavior we've been doing for years, maybe y'all could put up a big flashing sign and/or give out some warnings.  People can change behavior if they understand that either we're doing something wrong, or simply that the local PD is going to make thousands of dollars on a ridiculous money trap.

Oh... and I'm not going to whine that the officer made me wait over 20 minutes while he chatted it up with his officer buddy who drove up just to waste his time with some "water cooler" conversations.  Oops, I just did, but that was VERY frustrating.

My current plan now is to show up to my court date and try to explain to the judge how unfair this is.  Two big problems; technically I broke the law by being in the "wrong side of the street" and my travel schedule is very volatile right now.  I'd feel much differently about it if the officer was actually trying to eliminate a true safety issue, not just increase the PD's revenue. 

I know... I'm looking at it all wrong... I should (and I am!) grateful I live in a community where the cops really have to invent things to do like this instead of deal with actual criminals.  How's that for trying to make lemonade out of lemons?