Dystopia is Upon Us!

We often feature theme music to go with posts, today it's a movie line . . .

 

On my commute this morning I encountered America's decaying infrastructure.

 

I, as an American people, want this to stop right here and right now =)

The story behind this is pretty simple, but for those not familiar with winter behavior in the Northeastern United States, let me enlighten thee. When it snows here, the Department of Transportation dumps salt all over everything.  I'll go out a limb and say that I think it's likely that the impact this practice is likely to have on ground water, animals, and plant life was not a high priority in the decision making process. 

This mixed use path sits right next to a major road in Boston, that is heavily salted in the winter. The cars splash the salt onto the path, the light post is metal, salt corrodes metal, winter storm with high winds comes through and here you have the result. I certainly hope no one was near this thing when it went down, and it's actually quite lucky it did not tip into the road as I'm quite sure speeding cars might not have had time to react and there might have been deadly consequences. 

If you have death defying commuter stories, please feel free to sound off in comments. 

Comments

[Korina]

For commuting along a busy highway, I don't. Best I can come up with is random eucalyptus limbs that I stopped and moved off the shoulder, and once I came upon a bike pileup that resulted in a skinned knee(the youngsters learned; when you're riding in a group, don't let your attention wander). My most exciting near misses were on foot; I suppose I should be glad. :-)

Were you able to move the lamppost over?

[Fredrik]

Road salt might be a reasonable cause for that falling lamp post, but dog urine can cause the exact same effect. Just google "lamp post dog urine" for some real world examples.

A mix of sand and hot water are used an alternative to road salt in bicycle lanes around my parts.

[Steve]

The best I've got is a few small falling branches while is was riding my bicycle, which was a used women's bike with terrible tyres, in Denmark.

Good times.