DRIVER EDUCATION IN FLORIDA
🚔 S.C.U.D.S. (FLORIDA DRIVERS) 🚑
Our Senior Citizen Unrestricted Driving School
(S.C.U.D.S.) just graduated another class. Florida roads and highways are
the largest demolition derby in the world. You don't go to see crashes,
they come to you. You think Gators got poor eyesight, some of our citizens lost
their sight years ago and drive by sound.
🛫 COUPLE THINKS CAR CAN
FLY
Several
years back an older tourist couple from Eastern Europe left Tampa in a
rental car trying to get to Sarasota. They missed the exit to I-75 south,
which goes direct to Sarasota. Instead they drove on the I-275 south
highway to St. Petersburg for the Skyway Bridge to Sarasota
and missed that exit. They got off at the last downtown exit.
This exit ramp becomes the road which enters the Coast Guard Dock and Air Station, St. Petersburg. They thought the Coastguardsman in the booth was a toll gate attendant. He thought they were looking for the commissary. He waved them through. They thought the taxiway was the entry ramp to get back on the highway.
They did access the main runway at Albert Whitted Airport where
the tower guys were frantically trying to radio the Red Chevy Cavalier
to “get the hell" off the runway. 
Unfortunately, the Chevy comes with FM and music and the tower was on another frequency band yelling some explicative.
Alas, our brave couple accelerated to 65 miles per hour, about the rotational speed of a Cessna 150 and proudly flew off the end of the runway into Tampa Bay and started to sink.
THERE IS A GOD? YES, HE
WAS ON DUTY
This proves
it, no coincidence. That day, of all of the 365 days in the year, the St.
Petersburg Fire Department - Marine division was
conducting rescue exercises off Albert Whitted Airport in case an aircraft
didn’t quite make the runway. These are the two luckiest visitors in the
whole world, I could just see the guys in the Zodiacs and larger Fireboat
commenting, “ Wow, how realistic these exercises get year after
year!” The folks survived the ordeal probably thinking maybe they
should have taken a cab or paid the toll. Then as if that's not enough!
"ELDERLY WOMAN
CRASHES INTO DMV BUILDING"
Deerfield
Beach, Florida (AP)- Officials say an 80-year-old woman crashed into the DMV building
in Deerfield Beach when she went to take a state-ordered driver's license
retest.
The Florida Highway Patrol says Therese Smith accidentally drove
her car into through the Department of Motor
Vehicles building literal "stopping at window six", Wednesday,
injuring several people.
An FHP spokesman says she apparently stepped on the gas too hard. The car went over a concrete parking block, onto the sidewalk, through a metal parking sign and through the windows of the office.
Fire rescue officials say seven people in the waiting room were taken to the hospital with minor injuries. Four others also were hurt but did not need to be taken to the hospital.
They were injured from flying glass and from falling on other people, but no one was actually hit by the car. Smith was cited for careless driving. Her test was postponed. (Hopefully till her 100 birthday)
🇨🇦 CANADIAN DRIVER DISCLAIMER
We Welcome
our Canadian Friends: I love our snowbirds and many are friends of mine
BUT the once a year migration of the slightly dyslexic Canadian drivers who
love to make right turns from the left lanes, left turns from the right lanes
and think signals are a waste of battery power in their cars keeps me on the
alert. They add a certain challenge to the driving here in the winter
months.
REMEMBER : RIGHT TURN LANE = RIGHT TURN LEFT TURN LANE = LEFT TURN
It's OK though, they help our community, give new meaning to the off-neglected letter "A" in our vocabulary and still try to convince our Senior Professional Shuffleboard Players (S.P.S.P.) that Curling is a far more physically enduring and intriguing sport. (Yawn) Try Curling on sand…
Next time I hear how Cribbage is more exciting than Mahjong, I'll scream. And they don't tip! SOLUTION: Some restaurants now offer American and Canadian menus, with the Canadian one higher by 15%.
🏛 NEW ! WRONG WAY ON TAMPA HIGHWAY =
DUI-COURT
In February, four University of South Florida fraternity brothers died after a
wrong-way driver slammed into their car on Interstate 275. Two weeks later, a
man driving the wrong way in the same area killed himself when he smashed into
a box truck. In August, another man died in a wrong-way crash on the same
highway. Four more people died in two crashes the following month.
The deadly collisions on Tampa Bay area interstates, six so far claimed 11 lives. It drew national attention and much speculation as to causes. Experts weighed in with theories. Law enforcement stepped up patrols in an effort to prevent them. But the wrong-way drivers keep coming four more were stopped since October. And that shouldn't be surprising wrong way driving is an astonishingly common phenomenon in the Tampa Bay area.
In the past seven years, troopers have responded to at least 70 incidents of wrong-way drivers on limited-access highways around Tampa Bay. That tally does not include nearly 700 wrong-way incidents that occurred on local streets in 2014 alone. But among the data the Times collected, one pattern stands out: drunken driving. In almost all of the wrong-way driving cases that resulted in a crash, and in all six of this year's fatal wrecks, the drivers were legally impaired. That, law enforcement officials say, is the real issue. And that's what makes it difficult to stop.