Road Warrior

The in basket: Do you ever wonder about:
w How the widening of Mile Hill Drive affects the requirement to stop for a school bus with its red lights flashing?
w The difference between a merge sign and a yield sign?
w Your chances of getting the county to pay for a windshield broken by a piece of gravel thrown up from the sand spread on the roads when they are icy?
w Why sheriff’s officers can enforce disabled parking rules in private parking lots?

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The in basket: Glen Adrig, the assistant state coordinator for the AARP Driver Safety Program, said in September, “I noticed today that the gore lines separating lanes at the southbound Highway 304 (Navy Yard Highway) and the Highway 3 merge point have just been repainted for the winter season. 
”Why doesn’t the Department of Transportation put at least a few cross hatch lines between the gore lines, to keep the southbound traffic from illegally crossing over the lines before it is safe to make their merge,” he asked.

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The in basket: Dave Dahlke of Port Orchard asks, ” What is the law pertaining to a school bus with its stop sign out and there is a two-way center turn lane between it and oncoming traffic? Is the oncoming traffic required to stop?

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The in basket: Pete  Bookwalter of Bremerton and Mike, no last name given, noticed the Dec. 11 Road Warrior column about parking enforcement by Citizens on Patrol (COPs) , the cadre of Kitsap County Sheriff’s volunteers who write tickets for violating handicapped parking regulations, often in private lots.
“Surely our Kitsap County Sheriffs Office doesn’t patrol the parking lot of the private Wal-Mart,” said Pete. “ Or maybe that’s some sort of incentive from the city or  county to get Wal-Mart to locate in East Bremerton?  

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The in basket: Neil S. e-mails to say, “On Highway 3 just south of North Mason High, there is sharp curve that has a 30 mph sign going south and a 35 mph sign going north. They are both yellow signs, one with a black 35 and one with a black 30. Is this normal or a mistake?”

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The in basket: A reader who asks to be known as Invisible in Poulsbo, writes, “There is a problem that I face daily on our local roads: traffic lights
won’t change for me! I drive a 4WD Ford pickup which has high ground
clearance and when I approach a traffic signal it’s like I am wrapped in an
invisibility cloak.
“Is this a common complaint or just something unique
to me?”

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The in basket: Retired State Sen. Bob Oke was riding with one of the courtesy drivers from an auto dealership, getting a ride while his car was being serviced, and the man asked, as Bob put it, “why the signs at the Port Orchard roundabout say ‘yield’ when ‘merge’ works all over the rest of the country.”

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The in basket: Leslie Varner reacted to the recent Road Warrior column about ice on Newberry Hill that formed from water leaking from a Qwest manhole by writing, “maybe the
county and Qwest would like to take care of some of the window damage that has resulted from the excess gravel that was put down on Newberry Hill. Window replacement was not in my budget.”

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The in basket: Ronda Armstrong of Central Kitsap called to say she was in bumper-to-bumper traffic, working her way down Highway 16 toward the Tacoma Narrows Bridge on the east side one weekday afternoon recently, and saw a car with just one occupant entering on the Jackson Avenue on-ramp that is off limits to single-occupant vehicles that time of day. This car was a Tacoma Police cruiser with just one man in the driver’s seat. He was in civvies but had a uniform on a hanger in back. Was he violating the law, she asked.

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The in basket: Last summer, I wrote a Road Warrior column exclaiming on the number of cars I see on the roads without the legally required front license plate, and relaying a reader’s similar observation about a lot of them in the Silverdale Whaling Day’s parade.
I was inundated by e-mails from the antique car collectors telling me that the cars in the parade were probably collector cars, which are exempt from the requirement for a front plate. Jurgen Brian, Hank Rausch, Ron Muhleman, Hugh Lewis, Gary Moen, Terry Dielman, David Sagdahl, Dick Gallaher, P. Petrinovich and Deanna Goins all set me straight on that score.

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