No one should ever get a DWI

Yes, I admit it, there was a time, at least one anyway, when I should not have been behind the wheel of a car driving. Thankfully, I didn’t:  get a summons, wreck my car, or kill my best friend.

Those are the horrors of drinking and driving. Can you live with that? So to me, going out for a night on the town and whooping it up, and downing mass quantities is something that I will take a pass on, thank you very much. What I don’t get is why other people can’t take care of themselves better?

Let me assure you, I have nothing against people who drink. Not one thing. While I do not myself drink very much or very often, I have had a beer or two or a glass of wine or a margarita. But never then do I pick up a set of keys.

And, I have for years pushed the no drinking and driving philosophy on my family. Please, please, please call me. Yes, I will be a little annoyed at a call at three in the morning, but I will come and get you.

And I have.

Driving while intoxicated is perhaps the most selfish crime. Typically, it’s not the driver that suffers the biggest consequence. A crashed car or a ticket and subsequent punishment is minor compared to the bigger stakes that affect other people.

As a newspaper reporter for more than 10 years, I covered dozens of car crashes that were related to alcohol and also not wearing a seatbelt. The seatbelt law is another that should just be followed, no questions asked.

But alcohol. One case in particular happened in Chester. It seems this one fellow was trying to purchase beer, but he was already so drunk that he could barely walk. He was refused (big hint there, right?).

On his way back to his vehicle, a Good Samaritan asked him to give up the keys and let him drive the guy home. You can imagine how that suggestion was responded to. The accident came within minutes, the result one person dead as the vehicle rolled over.

Sure, the fellow grabbed a quick 10-years in jail. But that kind of pain, for a parent, for the friends, never, ever, ever goes away. In this case, it was just a passenger in the vehicle.

But many other accidents happen, and often they involve other vehicles and innocent people. When my kids were getting ready to get their licenses, I loaded them up with current stories, nearly daily, of accidents in general and especially those involving booze and seatbelts. Come on, it doesn’t take long to figure those things out, now, does it?

So, when you get to work early on a Monday morning as a newspaper reporter one of the first things you do is touch base with the police departments. It doesn’t matter if it is Chesterfield, Colonial Heights, Petersburg, Hopewell, Dinwiddie, Prince George, Richmond or the Virginia State Police—and yes I’ve called each and every one of them and more than once. Here’s a sample of how those conversations go:

Police:  Yes, we had one accident with a fatality.

Question 1: Was alcohol involved?

Police: whatever response is appropriate.

Question 2:  Were they wearing seatbelts?

Police: whatever response is appropriate.

Question 3: Can you tell us who died in the wreck?

Police:  Waiting to contact next of kin.

Well, maybe you don’t think it’s that straight forward. But I assure you that it is. In fact, if you know a reporter or ever see one, just ask them what the first two questions they ask when reporting on a car crash. Note I said, crash, there are no accidents.

So, when a public figure manages to corral a DWI, all I can say is good luck. There is no excuse. There is no pleading or begging the court. You can get a lawyer and probably ought to.  But if it is more serious than just a crash or a ticket, then you will have to face things that transcend far beyond the law or money. Nobody wants to be involved in a car crash that takes a life, so why would you put yourself into such a position by driving when you can barely walk?

Stay home and drink. If you get tipsy, it’s usually just a short walk to a bedroom, or just fall asleep on the couch.

Teacher Pay Hikes or Quit if You Can

Colonial Heights schools has pushed forward their 2016-17 budget that includes a whopping 2 percent raise for teachers.

Oh wow!

In past years, before my stint as a high school teacher, I might have scoffed at giving teachers a raise. I mean, after all, they don’t even work during the summer, right? But I can tell you from experience, they work in the summer, too. Teaching is one of those professions that never goes away.

I know because I was one.  Also, my wife is one. So how does that work?  It’s simple, whenever we go anywhere, a trip, a funeral, a wedding, a bar mitzvah – no matter. If we are out and about, my wife is constantly looking for something to benefit her students.  Haha, you say, why would you do that?

Well, sitting today in my cush job driving a desk, I don’t have to think or worry about the stuff my students don’t get because the Schools can’t or won’t help provide it.  In industry, it’s called staff augmentation.  In schools it’s called making ends meet.

Teaching is one of the most difficult jobs I ever had. The demands on teachers are extraordinary, and the environment borders on hostile, even in “good” schools.  In most jobs, you can at least develop an us against them sort of mentality and rally to get the job done.  In the words of Pink Floyd, “We all pull together like a team.”

In school systems it is much different. It’s more, us against them, and them, and them. And then, the most gross amount of under paying you can imagine.

Oh, who are the them and them and them?  How about:  students, parents, and administrators.  It’s a delicate balance, but one that can turn just as quickly as a crack in the San Andreas fault. And, you don’t get any no fault insurance either.  Teachers have to worry about the Standards of Learning (SOLs) and yet all the while be aware of the CYA-all y'all know that acronym.

I’m sure that’s not the way it is in all schools. But if you teach for any amount of time, I am certain you have witnessed that equation in action.  It often leads to teachers leaving the practice, or even getting relieved.

Some people think of teaching as baby sitting.  Can you imagine trying to teach a concept to a group of kids when less than half of whom have even the slightest interest in the topic?  And then, when you issue grades, all of a sudden it isn’t the student’s fault for not paying attention or for acting up in class, it’s the teacher’s fault that Johnny or Cathy didn’t do well.

Bleh, SMH!

Isn’t it just so obvious that bad teaching is behind it all?

And yet, it’s not always so.  And I am sure there are a few bad teachers.  But shouldn’t we pull teachers’ salaries up where they really ought to be?  Aren’t the good ones worth keeping?  My experience has been that the ones that are not so good typically weed themselves out of the system.

In one simple statement, it’s easy to see why teachers deserve more money.  When school is in session, their work week is typically 60 hours or more.  Most teachers I know go in early and stay late. And, if they are any good at all, they spend additional hours at home working on everything from lesson plans to grading papers to developing ideas to employ in their classes.

We are talking about professional, college educated, and fully certified teachers.  There is value in that.  Why is it that teacher salaries always seem to be add-ons in a budget? And why are they hauled to the top of the mountain of sacrifice when budget cuts come?

I know of teachers who have gone eight years without a raise. Not even a cost of living allowance. Meanwhile, the insurance industry seems to pump up their cost volume annually. It seems every year, some school panel has to review a variety of different insurance programs to see what is “affordable.”  And, with a new decision made, teachers end up either paying more for insurance or having higher co-pays and deductibles.

But wait! That applies to every industry, now doesn’t it?

It just seems to me that, having been a teacher, I understand what they are really being paid.  If there is any “industry” that is grossly undervalued, it’s teaching.

It’s getting any more where a teaching career sort of resembles a career in the arts.

My advice:  quit if you can.

Whirligig-a-Go-Go

Okay so what’s your opinion on the proposal for the new I-95 exit onto Temple Avenue? I know you all have an opinion, I’ve heard the rumors. Oh well, maybe they aren’t just rumors.

I, for one, think the darn thing will work and would be an improvement, but I understand how it is for others. My wife, for instance, assured me that she will be getting off the Interstate at Walthall rather than trip the drive fantastic and attempt even the simplest right hand turn exit onto Temple Ave.

Others who live south of Temple Avenue, I have been assured, will simply take the South Park Mall exit ramp and head back to Temple by the old Holzner house on the corner. You know the Holzner house, where Santa used to hang out with his sleigh and reindeer during the season.

From there, you can go right to the mall or left to the older parts of the city and the middle school. In fact, those driving patterns will be beat into our heads over the next two years while the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) dusts up the exit to make it even better, smarter, modern, sort of like Common Core, right?

But believe me, with my wife at home, I have heard the woes of the BIG CHANGE. And to some extent I can understand the angst. The intersection, when working properly, ought to be a dream. But knowing how people are, and how they tend to drive, it looks more to me like a figure 8 race track.

No matter what VDOT does, making the roundabout work relies totally on the drivers applying a smidgen of common sense. The problem is obvious. Just parse that last statement.

People, oh sorry, I meant drivers come in a number of varieties. There are those who will be overly cautious and sit at the entrance to the circle of death when they ought to be pulling out and there will be the other people, like me, who will be zipping in and out of the circle as if it were the Daytona 500.

I am certain it will fix the accident problem at that nasty intersection, which resulted in more than one accident a week over the past year. But here’s the rub with that, there’s only one spot that an accident can occur and that’s where west bound Temple Avenue traffic attempts to make a left turn onto the Interstate across the east bound Temple Avenue lanes. As witness, in most cases the feat can be accomplished with ease. Again, making it work relies on the skills of the driver trying to get to the other side, ala that famous chicken.

With the roundabout, in order to fix that accident problem, we open up two additional chances for someone to smack someone else due to bad driving skills. The roundabout has three entry points:  off the Interstate, east bound Temple, and west bound Temple. Let’s not look at the merge issues for everyone coming off the Interstate and heading to Soutpark.

That’s the problem that my wife, and numbers of other Colonials, see. To them, I think, the roundabout is nothing more than a grownup, real-time version of the Frogger game: Nissan, Ford, Kia, open space-go… To me, this is merely a problem for timid drivers. And perhaps I am a bad judge, since when I grew up and was learning to drive my dad told me:  “the pedal on the right is the gas and the disc in the middle of the steering wheel is the horn.” I asked, “What’s that fat pedal on the left?” He said, “You don’t need that, just hit the horn real hard and punch the gas pedal.” Such is the driving life in the state of New York.

So, Wednesday night I took a minute to check out the Pardon our Dust tour VDOT was putting on at our wonderful and new Courthouse. I walked in and asked to speak to one of the engineers, because I had an epiphany (good idea) about how to remove two of the potential accident spots. Most of the time when I get these crazy ideas I’m smart enough to ignore them. Don’t believe me, just ask my wife Jackie-yes she’s on FaceBook.

But this one made perfect sense. Instead of creating a roundabout, why not just lift the eastbound Temple Avenue lanes over the Interstate exit, thereby eliminating any interference from Temple avenue traffic.  The only potential accident spot would be where the westbound Temple traffic turned onto I-95 and where the I-95 exit ramp emptied onto westbound Temple.

So when I got to where the display was, I asked to speak to one of the VDOT engineers involved with the roundabout. They put me in touch with a person, who I cannot remember his name. I told him about my idea, and he said, “I can see how that would work, let me introduce you to Darrell Fischer.”

Turns out Mr. Fischer is the design guy for the roundabout. I told him about my idea, and he said, “I wish we would have seen it sooner.” He said he would take an honest look at it, even though he felt it might add $500k to the $13 million project.

Alas, there are some technical issues that may make the Llloyd Goddard overpass impossible. VDOT, it seems, has standards when it comes to building highways and a bridge would have height restrictions, and then other potential problems because of the length of the roadway and entrances and exits. Perhaps this is one of those ideas that die on the planning board, but either way, at least it presents a potential fix for a highway improvement that not everyone is in favor of.

Here’s Mr. Fischer’s response to me:

David,
As requested and promised, I have evaluated the overpass option that you discussed with me on Wednesday evening. There are several geometric issues/concerns that I cannot overlook or overcome. The first is the profile. As we discussed, in order to make the option feasible, it would have to tie down prior to the two entrances on either side of the roundabout - proposed Kroger entrance to the west and Hardees to the east. Every option I looked at took me back prior to the Kroger entrance and honestly too close to Hamilton Avenue for my comfort. Another serious issue would be the required width of the roadway. Once we elevate the roadway we would be required to widen the roadway for shoulders to accommodate accidents and breakdowns. This additional width would be between 12 and 15 feet (including the bridge). The footprint of the current design has no room to get wider as it would impact Ridge Road and/or the Kroger site. A third concern is the sight distance. As the road elevates, retaining walls would need to be constructed which would cause sight distance issues for the Hardees entrance. Finally, I looked at the cost of doing such an option. Between the bridge, the retaining walls, the added roadway width, and the additional impacts to the adjacent properties, the cost would be in well in excess of $2 million. In actuality, it could go significantly higher given the visual impact that it would have on not only the Kroger site but also all of the residents along Ridge Road. Although I suspected the cost was going to be significant, I don't feel that cost alone is enough to deter this option. Unfortunately, there are design/geometric issues that I cannot overcome which make it infeasible without cost even being considered.
All of this being said, I like your innovative spirit which is why I gave it my personal attention to evaluate. Should you have any other questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to me.
Thank you and take care.
Darell L. Fischer, P.E., DBIA