The problem is design, not the driving public

After reading Sunday's blame-the-drivers article, I felt compelled to respond. First, why does the Daily Bee feel the obligation to be the police department's mouthpiece for how the public navigates the labyrinth of dilemmas engineered into the roads. It's about time Sandpoint moves into the real world of traffic management.

To come out and try to explain how you should legally maneuver in and out of this mess of conflicting messages is a waste of time. If you look at the demographics of drivers in this town, it's totally unrealistic to try and get the vast majority of people to obey the laws under the threat of a citation.

I personally favor safety over legality every time. Almost all of the legal suggestions in the article fly in the face of what common sense tells you to do. I don't know who comes up with these decisions, but they obviously don't have a citizens advisory committee looking at real life decision making. Somebody needs to challenge these people to look at ways to make our intersections as simple and efficient as possible.

What we have now is a mess and it's only going to get worse. If you're going to use the lead story on the front page of the Sunday paper to try and intimidate the public into following the letter of the law by having the police tell us war stories about how many traffic stops they make, you should spend the same amount of space, holding the feet of the people who sign off on these designs to the fire.

DANIEL MIMMACK

Sandpoint