Using Humour To Make A Point: Road Rage Version

About three weeks ago a man in Saint John made the news because the City of Saint John was threatening him with legal action. Why, you ask? He was so fed up with the unfixed potholes on his street that he took it upon himself to fill them. He filled the potholes with gravel, thus making his road safer and infinitely more car friendly.  People are so appalled by the conditions of our roads that they're becoming asphalt vigilantes.

The City of Saint John was not happy with his actions. There's a law prohibiting citizens from working on city streets, and there should be in my opinion as it would be unsafe for the average Joe to get out on the highways and by-ways to make their own repairs. The City of Saint John made him bring the potholes back to their 'natural' state, which he did in order to avoid litigation.

Personally I commend the man in Saint John for fixing his road. To me he's now a folk hero. He made his point and it resonated louder than a bottomed out shock and a rolling hubcap. He got lots of media attention and hopefully that embarrassed the City of Saint John. I was in Saint John yesterday and the roads are terrible. The roads are terrible everywhere in New Brunswick. I watched a pothole on the road to Sussex grow this spring. Weeks before it was filled, it was so big that I believe it could have lead to a deadly accident if someone hit it when there was oncoming traffic. The Department of Transportation would have known about it, but they did nothing. Perhaps it wasn't in the budget??

A few days ago I had friends tell me about another example where a citizen took action to make a point about the state of our roads. Today's image shows a scene from Route 695. That's the road that I take to get from Cambridge-Narrows to Springfield/Saint John. It's a notorious stretch of road any time of the year, but particularly bad in the springtime. No one seems willing or able to fix it. There's one series of whoop-t-dooze that now has some 'graffiti' painted on the asphalt. Painted among the bumpy surface is a warning to all motorists. It says: 'oh shit!....oh shit!....oh shit!..............oh f__k! painted over a hundred foot-long stretch of crumbling asphalt.

It's hilarious, but it also made a point. People are tired of wrecking their cars on roads that are unsafe. I don't know of anyone dying from hitting a pothole, but I suspect it will happen eventually. Cars are dying in potholes, that's for sure. We're all suffering from a form of vehicular leprosy....parts are falling off that are not meant to fall off. It's weird to think of people driving Porsches and Cadillacs on our roads. No one in this province should drive a car that's in better shape than the roads themselves. If you're looking for a role model, look no further than me. My Ford Focus wagon is on par with the roads. It's a rolling pothole...and clearly I'm proud of it!

In a bit of comically twisted thinking, perhaps our provincial government is addressing the issue of New Brunswick being seen as the 'drive through province'. They've made it virtually impossible to drive through!