Letters for Friday, October 29, 2010

• Driving pointers for the lane-challenged •

Stop blatant speeder •  Let’s not be

selective • Making the journey

Driving pointers for the lane-challenged

I very much appreciated Kerin Rosenberger’s letter (“Wants drivers to be careful,” Letters, Oct. 23).

Kerin asks “What is going on?” in regards to the traffic accidents and driving practices lately. The simple answer is that there are quite a few people on the roads here who have clearly lost their minds. 

If you doubt this, I would like to encourage you (and KPD) to drive Hulemalu Road, especially on weekday mornings. For some reason, a large number of people using this road seem to think the center line simply doesn’t apply to them.

This past Monday, the guy in the pickup truck in front of me was doing what had to have been about 60 mph, driving on the wrong side of the road much of the time, and even while approaching the many blind curves. If he keeps up this behavior unchecked, he most assuredly is going to kill someone.

I’ve really gotten tired of all the people who can’t seem to keep their vehicle between the two lines. It’s not like it is that difficult to do, and if you can’t manage it, you really shouldn’t be driving. Stop driving in the shoulder. Stay in your lane. It’s all very simple.

And a note to KPD, there are still tons of drivers talking on handheld cellphones — would you please step up your enforcement and stop these selfish people? They are a menace along with the lane-challenged twits.

Michael Mann, Lihu‘e

Stop blatant speeder

I live in Wainiha, a few houses off the road. Every morning, well before the sun rises, some obnoxiously reckless person accelerates their car as fast as it will go down the straightaway that passes the cow field and Tunnels.

I am not exaggerating when I say that this person probably passes 75 mph every morning. From the bullet sound the car makes as it speeds by, I might say they even hit 90 mph.

At speeds like this, one could easily lose control of the vehicle and land in the garage or front room of one of the houses hugging the highway.

The reason I am choosing to write this morning is this person has been up and down the road four times before dawn and again as I type this sentence.

I would like to see the authorities do something about this person.

Adrienne Russell, Wainiha

Let’s not be selective

Surely, there must be a better way to be environmentally conscientious and to “honor traditions” simultaneously without having to turn off the stadium lights during football season.

And, to be perfectly honest, if we’re going to turn off the stadium lights, the edict should be applied to all of the night lights at the airport, the hotel and mall parking lights, the street lights ad infinitum.

Why selectively put a ban to a seasonal athletic program and not require the same demand of all other lights that are still left on at the same time? Has anyone taken an actual count of how many shearwater birds plummeted to the ground disoriented during football seasons in the past to justify that the stadium lights were the leading cause of the demise of these birds? Couldn’t a rescue corp be “on duty” during football season to tend to the birds at that period of time?

Let’s not be selective in allowing lights to distract the birds elsewhere while we feel good about saving some of the birds because we turned off the stadium lights.

That simply isn’t fair.

Jose Bulatao Jr., Kekaha

Making the journey

There’s hope for Kaua‘i’s shearwaters, even though it’s true that most people are oblivious, even hostile, to the native flora and fauna (see Kathy Valier’s Oct. 26 letter, “Birds need our help, not our hate”).

Actually, that’s true anywhere, and not surprising. Most people just can’t be bothered with nature unless there is an economic or maybe a spiritual/religious interest in it for them.

It’s hard to make the economic case for these birds that most people never see. Even for fishermen, they are not so useful for locating fish (it’s the sootys and wedgetails that are).

So it appears that only a kind of spiritual reverence or appreciation is left to make this bird a valued vested interest for ordinary folks. Actually though, this should not be too hard to achieve, even if slowly. After all, Hawai‘i is the only state that cherishes its original culture.

Does not each new street, housing project, action group, etc., have to have a Hawaiian name? Are the shearwaters not also part of this Hawaiian heritage — this cultural spirit that entices our visitors?

In a way, these birds even recall the wonder of how these islands were first peopled: consider the Kolea plovers that ride the trade winds 3,000 miles to Kaua‘i each fall; and the shearwaters (and petrels) that, after years wandering the far open ocean, somehow steer to our island, back for their re-birth. The birds make this journey, and so can people.

Dave Au, San Diego, Calif.