Speed Hump
A Morality Tale
Emily and Jasper sat peacefully in their cozy living room one brisk October evening, warmed by the fire that Jasper had gently stoked before going back to his reading. Jasper enjoyed science fiction, and Emily read mostly romance and detective stories. In this one, the heroin was running from the villain, and Emily could almost feel and hear the lady’s heavy breathing. Suddenly, Emily realized the heavy breathing wasn’t in the story.
Jasper had slumped in his chair and was struggling to breathe. “Nitro!” exclaimed Jasper, referring to the nitroglycerin tablet prescribed by his cardiologist to have on hand for a heart-stopping emergency.
Emily ran for the tablet, got it to Jasper and immediately grabbed her cell phone to dial 911.
Marilyn was on the job at the emergency center and heard the familiar panic in the caller’s voice. “Help; my husband is having a heart attack!”
“Where is your location, ma’am? We’ll get help for you right away.”
“I’m in the living room with my husband. He’s lying on the floor and having a hard time breathing. Oh my God; oh my God,” mumbled Emily. Then she came to her senses and realized the emergency center wanted her address, which she gave quickly.
Marilyn confirmed the address and said, “Do not hang up, but make your husband as comfortable as possible. An ambulance is on the way. My name is Marilyn; what’s yours?”
“Emily.”
“Hi, Emily. Did you give your husband any medication?”
“He got his nitro pill, but he’s still hurting — holding his chest.”
Marilyn noted the information; her instructions were gentle but firm. “Stay calm and stay on the line with me.” She checked her dispatch stats and was on the line with the ambulance driver. “The ambulance should be there in about seven to eight minutes according to his GPS. Meanwhile, keep your husband calm while I ask you a few questions to help the medics when they arrive.”
Marilyn asked about the patient’s full name, a brief medical history and some other pertinent facts. She knew from years of experience that as important as this information would be to the medical personnel, it was equally important to keep Emily talking and calm until the ambulance arrived. All would go according to plan if protocol was followed and if Mother Nature was kind.
Mother Nature wasn’t kind.
Thinking it was a normal speed hump, the ambulance driver passed too quickly over an improperly installed hump just minutes from Jasper’s and Emily’s house. Mother Nature knew the score; she had seen this scenario many times before. Jasper’s destiny fell to the hands of municipal planners whose faulty decision months ago had sealed his fate today.
Eight months earlier…
Arlo had studied speed humps for several months now and knew how to respond when the Board of Trustees of the local Home Owners Association (HOA) asked his advice. Joanne had volunteered to be the Board’s contact, and she had been diligent in doing research. Others on the HOA Board of Trustees were loath to spend much time on this trivial decision. After all, everyone knew that a speed hump was just a speed hump, like every other speed hump on the planet, and their property manager Bernie had advised them before on the seven speed humps previously installed elsewhere in the community. Why not just do it the same way again?
But Joanne was pretty new to the Board and not as much biased by prior decisions. She wanted to be sure, and frankly, Bernie didn’t impress her with his knowledge of speed humps. In fact, Bernie had no facts to contribute at all. His whole store of speed hump knowledge came from a road construction vendor he trusted, who said that a five-foot-long parabolic hump was sufficient, even though it forced vehicles to slow to under seven miles per hour. Bernie was less concerned about the high $3,580 price per hump than he was about the need to get this project off his desk ASAP, and if the smaller than typical amount of asphalt gave the vendor a high profit, so what? It wasn’t Bernie’s money; the HOA would pay.
Bernie didn’t even live in the community, so he hardly ever had to traverse the hump himself, and so what if residents of the community didn’t like it or if some ambulance or fire truck could break an axle going over a non-standard hump too fast, a hump that they expected to comply with statewide standards, a hump that should safely allow speeds of 20 to 25 mph?
Did Bernie care? Not really. Did anyone care? Joanne cared.
She cared about kids in the neighborhood who frequently played in the streets or had to cross streets on their way to school. And the rest of the HOA Board cared about the kids as well; they just didn’t care about the vehicles affected by the humps. They didn’t want to spend too much time with what they considered a trivial decision. Besides, they’d made that decision several times before. Why stress over it again?
Joanne appreciated the desire of the Board to be consistent with prior hump installations, but what if those previous decisions were wrong? What if the construction company who did the installs was cutting corners? Joanne wanted to know.
A little online research would probably reveal the facts in minutes. A few hours later, she called the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) and got Arlo.
Arlo told her a 5’ hump was irresponsible. His organization, the highly respected ITE, had done years of research into the matter. Improperly installed speed humps often resulted in large payouts from community associations and their Board members. Yes, even Board members could be personally sued. The number of payouts from suits involving properly installed humps was almost zero. That was interesting, but Joanne was less interested in liabilities than effectiveness.
It turns out that standards set by the ITE for the country and specifically for Joanne’s state required a 12 to 14 foot length hump 3” high and preferably “sinusoidal” rather than parabolic. These characteristics would “calm” traffic to reasonable speeds without unduly posing a threat to cars, bicycles, trucks and emergency vehicles. She had seen diagrams of different types of humps on the web, so she didn’t need to be an engineer to understand that the sinusoidal shape offered a gentler rise but was equally effective in getting vehicles to slow down.
Arlo’s recommendation and warnings seemed real, but just to be sure, Joanne called her municipality’s Fire Chief. He concurred with Arlo and added, “A 10-second delay could mean the difference between life and death, between a house burning to the ground and saving it.” He even suggested replacing all the existing humps. Joanne knew correcting that mistake would be ridiculously expensive — probably around 10% of their annual budget. She could never convince the Board to replace prior humps, but if she submitted a strong report and alternative recommendation, at least they didn’t have to make that mistake again with this new speed hump.
It was not to be. The Board voted to make the same mistake again.
Emily waited for the ambulance with bated breath. Jasper waited with almost no breath at all. They were both afraid. Marilyn informed them of the slight delay and assured them that another medical team would get there in about 15 minutes. That’s exactly what happened. The medical team got Jasper into the ambulance and tried desperately to revive him and keep him stable. Exiting from the community once again brought the ambulance face to face with a 5 mph speed hump, but this time they knew about the obstacle and slowed enough to keep Jasper and their equipment from being overly jostled. Still, by the time they got to the hospital, Jasper was DOA.
If you expected a happy ending, sorry. Emily was now alone but managed to survive her emotional scars. Her lawyer suggested she sue the HOA, the individual Board members and the property manager for knowingly installing improper speed humps. She did and obtained a substantial settlement. It didn’t bring Jasper back.
Life is full of speed humps — obstacles, some of which make life interesting, and others that stop life in its tracks. Sometimes it’s our lives that get stopped; sometimes it’s other people who are punished by our poorly informed decisions, decisions that may seem trivial in the moment — not worth the time to clear our minds of prior judgements, not worth the time to carefully collect and examine the facts and make a good call.
We all do it — take the path of least resistance, follow the uninformed, yield to foolish consistencies. We’re not bad, just human — too busy, too poorly informed or too manipulated by biases, ours and others.
Or… maybe we are bad. Did you hurt somebody today?