Save money, kill your drowsy drivers: Rest stops closed to cut state budgets

[thatcrazycajun]

Remember how your parents used to say "You should have gone before we left!" whenever you complained about needing to use the bathroom on a long drive as kids? That's going to be more true than ever, according to this report:
Are State Rest Stops Becoming Extinct?
Thanks to singingpatient for passing along the link via Facebook. And it shames me (but doesn't terribly surprise me) to learn that my own home state, Louisiana, is leading the charge on this short-sighted bit of public policy, having closed most of its stops already. Yes, you'll save a few million bucks in the short term...but end up paying far more in lives lost in the long term, due to the increase in auto accidents you'll cause by depriving exhausted drivers of a place to rest. And that doesn't even count the extra money for state troopers, firefighters, paramedics and the vehicles and equipment they use to respond to crashes. (This is an especial danger to long-haul truckers, which is why their national trade group is lobbying states against the idea.)

And there's still more extra cost to clean up the pee-filled bottles, soiled diapers and other defecatory trash from roadsides as people get desperate. Gas stations and restaurants can't be placed everywhere along the roads to take up the slack, nor should they be..nor can they all operate 24/7. Talk about being penny-wise and pound-foolish...as in thousands of pounds of poop.

Comments

[kayshapero]

Sounds like downtown - remove all the publicly available restrooms and then complain when the homeless pee in the alley.

[maedbh7.livejournal.com]

Amusingly, this makes me nostalgic in a sick sort of way for the roadside rests of my childhood. Today, you walk in, every place is well-lit and fully automatic. Back in the day, it was pit toilets, woodsy, and the attendant's hour was posted on a sign. If you really lucked out, some Boy Scouts would be selling coffee and donuts.

There are ways to have roadside rests everywhere....if we just throw-back to the '70s again :) -H...

[robin-june.livejournal.com]

Like i mentioned over on FaceBook, the Massachusetts that I grew up in was famous for their rest stops with no rest rooms. Men had the option of racing for the tree line to get some privacy, although sometimes that tree line was up a steep slope two stories above the parking lot. Women and girls . . . not so lucky.