I’m sure this will have no negative effects: City of Decatur launches “pace car” program to try to slow down motorists and reduce accidents
Let my start off by saying that I’m a fan of Decatur. Decatur is the small town in the big city that has lots of character, good bars and restaurants. The Your Dekalb Farmer’s Market.
More importantly, Decatur will always have a permanent impact on my life, as it is where I got married, at our courthouse wedding.
Needless to say, the City of Decatur will always hold a special place in my heart, regardless of the words that are going to come flying out of my fingertips in the ensuing paragraphs.
Although good intentioned, I can’t imagine any reality where Decatur’s pace car program isn’t going to be met with massive resistance, ridicule, and a general sentiment of resentment. Cars being driven by people who are declaring their intention of doing one of the few things every motorist on the planet doesn’t like, in slowing them down, there’s no way that this goes in the direction that the city really hopes it will go in.
As much as I do love Decatur, the reality remains that the whole place really is a nightmare region to drive around in. Whether it’s on Ponce, Candler, Dekalb, Scott Blvd., or any of the other main thoroughfares through the city, the roads and lanes are narrow, there’s large swaths of street with crumbled, dirt or just plain no sidewalks, and the quality of said roads and sidewalks are often as deteriorated as if the taxes were drained from their funds in Sim City, so they just start falling apart.
Combine perilous infrastructure with the general aggressive nature of Atlanta drivers, and you have the recipe that makes driving around in Decatur as generally risky to the point where they’re always looking for ways to improve safety around the roads of the city, whether from the city itself, or citizens who are trying to take matters into their own hands.
I mean, it’s really kind of their own sword that they’re falling on; as much as I like Decatur, the people within the city are this eclectic mass that takes a tremendous amount of pride in their small town feel, but want to enjoy all the luxuries and benefits that come with living close to a massive market like Atlanta, and there’s a large sense of resentment and us versus everyone from those who live there.
Getting back to the original point of this post, I can’t imagine that people who are taking it upon themselves to be the enforcers of the road; going exactly the speed limit, stopping at yellow lights, coming to complete stops and looking all directions at stop signs, aren’t going to regret it in time. As much as Decatur-ites might not like day-traders and tourists, their little hamlet goes broke in ten seconds without their money. Drivers from Fulton, Gwinnett, Cobb, Tucker, Stone Mountain and Conyers are going to be going to or through Decatur, and there’s little anyone there can do about it.
I imagine that aggro driver A will be aggro-ing down Ponce, and they see the car in front of them with a pace car sticker on their windshield; they now have visual confirmation of a car that must be passed, and has pledged to go the speed limit or less to the griefing of others, and they are undoubtedly going to exorcise their ability to do so.
Road rager B is having a bad day, and they’re sitting through three cycles of lights at Scott and Claremont, and they inch their way up to find out that some dork with a pace car sticker is the one not taking the right on red, and they go ballistic at seeing someone whom they believe is really just using the pace car designation as a means to troll others on the road. Words are exchanged, and because Georgia has looser gun rights than abortion rights, ammunition is exchanged next, and we’ve got our top story on My Fox 5 Atlanta for the evening.
Or my favorite hypothetical, Decatur White Knight C pledges to the pace car program, and although they do god’s work while within city proper, once they’re outside of Decatur, they themselves are driving around like a dick, unleashing all the aggression they suppress while cockblocking motorists on their home turf. Be it through getting into an altercation on their own, or pissed off rager D sees a pace car outside of Decatur and wants to start shit, they get in a massive accident, footage of a demolished car on I-285 is on WSB-TV, but with the City of Decatur pace car sticker still intact and in plain sight.
The point is, Decatur-ites who think it’s their place to be heroes and saviors and enforcers of their fair city’s streets, really are putting their own lives at risk. It’s pretty bold of the city to be willing to throw their own citizens into the fire by basically allowing anyone to volunteer, and I just don’t see a long game where this turns out to be successful.
The intentions are good, but the program doesn’t seem to have been well thought out thoroughly enough, and I don’t have a lot of high hopes for this program not blowing up their face in some fashion(s). And for that, I simply say, oh Decatur.
