Big Brother

Have you ever driven though the great state of Ole’ Virginia and noticed that no one is speeding? Then suddenly, you see it: a great black sign looms along the side of the road. "Speed Limit Enforced by Aircraft" and you do a double take. Is an F-16 going to follow me down the road and drop a smart bomb on me if I go over the speed limit? How does this "enforcement" thing work?

I worry that an Apache attack helicopter is going to sweep out from behind a bank of trees, red and blue lights will start flashing and then it lands right in front of me on the interstate.

And then it hit me. What a great psychological “no speeding” campaign this is. You can’t refute the fact, Apache helicopters or not, in your head you know there’s some orbiting police plane sitting somewhere up in the sky behind a cloud so you can’t see it, and he’s got your number and is radioing some police squad car down on the ground to move in and intercept your ass. It scares the bah-jesus out of me.

Apparently it scares a lot of other Virginia drivers too because not once did I see someone go over 80 miles and hour and I hardly saw people go over 75 miles an hour. Being a driver from Birmingham, you put your life on the line everyday because if you don’t go at least a bare minimum of 75 on the interstates around here you’re going to get run the fuck over. It’s Nascar country.

So I wonder, could the “Speed Limit Enforced by Aircraft” signs work here in Alabama? Probably not. I think part of what makes those signs so scary up in Virginia is the fact that you have the CIA based over in Langley. Who knows what the hell really goes on over there with Big Brother and all; but, maybe it will scare some folk into staying within the speed limit even though I seriously doubt it. Last time I looked the literacy rates were higher in Virginia than Alabama. Go figure.