Steve's Blog

Bummer!

You hear it and figure it must be some kind of urban legend. A truck driver makes a wrong turn and ends up with a $17,000 ticket. Well, it’s actually not true. Truck driver William Carroll got lost in the suburbs around Philadelphia and when he got pulled over the ticket was actually for $17,751.50. Philadelphia’s NBC 10 looked into the story and found it to be totally legit, if not tragically sad.

Carroll says he was just following the directions he had gotten from one of the companies he leases his trucks from. He missed a weight limit sign that was leaning and partially obscured, and before he knew it he was stuck trying to turn his big rig around in a residential neighborhood. That’s where the police caught up to him and gave him the ticket. At first he thought it was a mistake, thinking maybe 17 hundred instead of 17 thousand dollars, but when the officer verified it, Carroll says he felt like he was hit by a Mack truck.

A PennDOT spokesman, Charlie Metzger, explained that the fines are so high because heavy trucks can do a lot of damage to certain bridges and roadways. So the fine breaks down thusly: "It’s $150 for the fine, and then it’s $150 for every 500 pounds over the 3,000-pound weight limit," Metzger said. He further rationalized the fine saying the money often needs to go right back into the road repairs. Remind us to never get lost driving a truck in Pennsylvania.

[Source: NBC 10 via Digg]

From Autoblog

Our English language often makes no sense, filled with double-meaning pitfalls and sound-alike quagmires. The fact that most of us master it makes us near-geniuses. If you’re feeling stupid today, improve your mental outlook by reading the points below and congratulating yourself on your language agility. That you can understand this mishmash makes you remarkable.

• We’re told that the English language reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all.
• We have noses that run and feet that smell.
• There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple.
• Sweetmeats are candies, while sweetbreads, which aren’t sweet, are meat.
• English muffins weren’t invented in England or French fries in France.
• Quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square, and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.
• Writers write, but fingers don’t fing, grocers don’t groce and hammers don’t ham.
• The plural of tooth is teeth, but the plural of booth is not beeth.
• One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese?
• You can make amends but not one amend. If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?
• A vegetarian eats vegetables, and a humanitarian eats . . .
• People recite at a play, but play at a recital.
• We ship by truck and send cargo by ship.
• A slim chance and a fat chance are the same, but a wise man and a wise guy are opposites.
• Your house can burn up as it burns down, you fill in a form by filling it out, and an alarm goes off by going on.
• When the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.

Original Source: Mental Giants