Jan 02, 2009 09:53 am
by Scott Schrantz
Horsesass.org brings to light some of the overlooked victims of all the snow and ice over the last couple of weeks, the poor road turtles that mark lanes on the roads in the area. These turtles are used on many roads because they’re reflective and easy to see even in the rain, and they cause a rumble when you drive over them to let you know when you’re drifting out of your lane. But because they stick up from the road surface, the snowplows are not friendly at all to these turtles, and many of them were damaged, broken, and scraped away, even though in many places they weren’t plowing down to the pavement.
Of course here in western Nevada we have simlilar devices that are plow-friendly. We have flexible road markers that stick up when it’s dry but lay down flat when a plow comes by, and grooves that are etched into the road surface to let you know when you’re drifting. But I suppose there’s no need to change over everything in the Seattle area just for the once-a-decade snowstorm. The poor turtles that will be lost, I suppose, are just collateral damage.
Save the Turtles!
Aurora is a mess right now, since one of the lanes has disappeared completely, starting around Queen Anne. All of the cars kind of mix in these two lanes – some driving in the middle, confident that a lack of lines and turtles means a lack of lane separation. Others stick to one “lane” or the other, their memory of proper lane markings stronger than the current reality.
Here’s a photo of Aurora, at My Ballard. I don’t get how a snowplow could have done that; that paint is not easily scraped off. Maybe the aliens did it to mess with our minds.
The “Road Geek” name for those Road Turtles is actually Bott’s Dots. Washington State is one of the few areas where it snows that actually uses Bott’s Dots.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bott%27s_dots
I’ve been a bit confused by this too — paint is missing all over. Do we use a different sort than is used in the Northeast and Midwest? How did it all vanish so easily?