The Stop Sign Mystery

It turns out that the streets in the town of Cranston, Rhode Island, have 692 stop signs that the city government never approved. The signs are there because the state government of Rhode Island wanted them there.  And that’s only the beginning, because there seem to be even more signs on state roads in Cranston.  We are told that the “city’s legal staff was researching the legality and enforceability of those signs installed by the state without city approval.”

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Some of those signs are at intersections with state roads (Rhode Island has a law requiring motorists to stop before entering a state road).

What’s so interesting about that? You may well ask. Actually, it interests me quite a lot, because out here in the wilderness of Washington, D.C., we have an incredible number of stop signs. Being a lover of the chaos of Naples, Italy, I hate stop signs (I hate red lights too, but that’s a subject for another blog), and consequently I have long wondered about the proliferation of the stop signs in our neighborhood and in the city in general.

If you think that the stop sign pandemic is the result of thoughtful government officials who care deeply about the safety of people in automobiles, you are reading the wrong blog and should report to the nearest reeducation facility as soon as possible.

I have a theory, based on the solid hypothesis that many mysteries can be explained by asking: “Is there money to be made?” There is certainly money to be made by manufacturing and installing stop signs. So I always assumed that somebody in the city government had a relative who makes the stop signs, and, since governments around here are always in the hands of the Democratic Party, the installation work is invariably turned over to the unions.  So the annoying forest of stop signs makes money for the family and for “the base.”

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One will get you seven that the same explanation works up there in the suburbs of Providence.

One more reason for the conservative resurgence.

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