I read with amusement the ahah! rhetoric regarding the ostensibly startling statistic that 60 percent of the speeders recently ticketed on Point Dume were Malibu residents, “most of whom live on Point Dume.” Duh!
Councilman Barovsky even wanted this newsflash to be deconstructed further to delineate which Point Dume streets harbor the various percentages of these violators. As if this kind of specificity would perhaps engender a shame solution, slow-down or face the finger wags of your Point Dume neighbors. Anything but that.
Of course the fault, dear Brutus, lies in our selves. (And yourselves too.) But is that a reason to denigrate the concern or imply hypocrisy on the part of those Point Dume residents who seek a practical and cost-effective solution to this persistent problem? Yes, I’m talking about humps, or as we say in polite Point Dume parlance: tables. If we cannot prevail upon our own neighbors, maybe even our own spouses, or, like Jimmy Carter admitting lust in his heart (let me take a deep cleansing breath), our very selves on rare occasions of absent-minded haste to slow down, with our homemade signs and constant attempts to create awareness of the problem, how can we hope to deter strangers, with much less of a vested interest, simply by stationing enhanced sheriff presence at “strategic” times and places?
It is the intransigency and cross-pollination of the problem that cries out for a solution that refuses reliance on the higher moral fiber and attentiveness of friend or foe. The so-called silent policemen. Defensive driving is not a sign of paranoia, and neither is a speed table a device of Orwellian dictatorship or the dreaded demise of rural Malibu. It’s simply the lowest cost, most practical measure to mellow the masses of Malibu mach-1s. Too bad that council members Hasse, House and Barovsky weren’t open-minded enough to at least attempt the proposed (temporary) fact finding experiment, to evaluate firsthand the potential of this approach, and instead chose to appease their perceived supporters who just don’t like humping, period.
Norma Levy