Last week I was riding home down Mackenzie. It was pretty slick out after raining all afternoon, and I was taking the lane to play it safe. After the left turn at River Des Peres, where the right turning motorists don’t really pay attention to oncoming traffic, Mackenzie is the most dangerous part of my ride.
After a good strong headstart, I can usually get going up to 30-35MPH going downhill, but can’t maintain anywhere near that because the incline is so drastic. I’m usually almost immediately impeded to a 12-15MPH steady pace.
Motorists on Mackenzie are flying past me at about 45-50MPH usually, which is very dangerous. Coupling that with the wet roads, and I find myself taking up as much of the lane as I can, just to ensure that I don’t get buzzed too closely, loose control and get killed.
Sure enough, some jerk felt the need to throw a full taco bell cup at me. He missed, and I missed his license plate number. I was pretty upset and called the police when I arrived home.
The officer that answered the non-emergency line seemed pretty bored. I had time to calm down, and knew that I didn’t have any information to help him, so I plainly informed him of the situation.
His reply was, “Sir, you’re asking for a perfect world. We can’t control the fact that some people are going to break the law by speeding. As much as I’d love to give them all tickets, we have bigger problems.”
I was pretty surprised that he was so defensive, but realized that he must be very annoyed at all of the Affton calls about barking dogs, unfriendly neighbors and loud music all of the time. I could tell this guy was a bit disappointed in what police work was like in south Saint Louis County. I’m sure he already resented the fact that he has to meet that unspoken quota of speeding tickets every month instead of doing real police work like catching crooks.
Rather than arguing with him, and getting absolutely nowhere with him, I expressed that I appreciated him taking my call, and simply asked if he’d make note of my statement, and try to get a shift on Mackenzie during rush hour. I hope he would prefer this to scraping me from the street when I actually do get hit by a car.
