Traffic Counters the Criminal Justice System

I expect that you all have seen them.  Two rubber hoses nailed down in the street.  One that runs from curb to curb, the other that only extends to the middle of the street.  And both of them connected to a medium sized metal box.  Typically chained to a tree, metal sign post, or telephone pole.

 

Traffic Counters.

 

As kids, my brother’s and I were fascinated by them.

 

I mean, how can it be that they count cars driving on the street?  And how do they tell which way the car is going?  And more importantly, how do they do it all without electricity?

 

We had “inquiring minds”, we just naturally wanted to know.

 

 

Now-a-days, a kid that wanted to know something like that could just sit down at the computer, heck even the phone, and find out.  But not when we were growing up.  Nope, back then, knowledge came only from personal investment.  And while truth be told we could likely have learned how they worked by going to the library and doing some reading…..my brother’s and I were more “hands on” kinda guys.

 

We used to sit on the curb in the summer, right next to one of those things and try and figure it out.  We’d listen to the thing and see if it whined; they never did.  We’d listen to see if they made any noise at all; the only noise was a quiet “click” as a car drove by.  Heck, in all truth, we weren’t even sure if those were hoses, they could just as easily been electric cords nailed out across the road.

 

Yep, Traffic Counters were a mystery. 

 

And worse.  They were a mystery that came and went by magic.  We never saw one laid out, never saw one picked up.  One morning going to school they wouldn’t be there, coming home later and there they were, all laid out and chained to a big old elm tree. That part we figured was being done by some guy while we were in school, but it added to the mystic somewhat none-the-less. Even questioning the retired people in the neighborhood didn’t help, no one had ever seen a traffic counter put in place.  Just all of a sudden, there it was, chained down.

 

 

Our curiosity got to be too much one time, and while I won’t I won’t say who done it, I will say that one day after school there was a traffic counter gutted like a fish lying on the dinner table.  Metal case open like a clam, panels and parts spread all over the table.  And people were rooting through the internal organs.

 

Pretty interesting device. 

 

Those are rubber hoses by the way. 

 

And the way the thing worked was that when a car drove over it and flattened a section of the hose, it pushed the air down the hose and into the metal box.  The air pressure and volume did two things.  First, it caused a small paper strip to roll forward, and second, it caused a pin to make a mark on the paper.  One mark every time the long hose is run over, a different colored ink mark every time the short hose is run over. 

 

Let’s say blue ink for the long hose and green ink for the short one. 

 

Total up the green marks, and you know how many cars drove down the side of the street that the short hose crossed (say the eastbound lane).  Total up the blue marks and you know how many cars drove down the street either way.  Subtract the number of green from the number of blue, and you know how many cars drove the side of the street that the short hose did not cross (westbound cars).

 

Yep, pretty ingenious. 

 

Oh, nowadays they are probably battery operated; computer controlled, with digital counters, and such.  But you have to marvel that someone figured out how to do that before electronics and computers.  Pretty smart them old guys were.

 

 

But, back to my tale.

 

 

So, spread out on the table is a thousand and one parts.  All removed, although not necessarily gently removed, from the traffic counter’s metal box.  Wheels and cogs; levers and cams; pistons and pens; screws and bolts; nuts and washers; metal plates, and bearings. 

 

It was pretty obvious that there was no way that that thing was going back together.  Certainly it was never going to work again.  And of course there was the little problem of the fact that the thing had been liberated by using a pair of bolt cutters so the chain and lock looked a little worse for the wear.  And then of course, the hose had been torn up from the street, rolled up and carted off too.

 

In broad daylight to boot.

 

 

Yes indeed.  Wasn’t going back, so the only thing to do was to dispose of the evidence.  Fair is as fair does, and so the two boys who had nothing to do with the acquisition decided that it was up to the third to dispose of it.  Only thing that wasn’t taken into consideration was how little consideration was going to be given to disposing of the evidence.

 

Let’s face it, splitting the parts up in to three roughly equal sized groups and chucking those groups over the back fence into neighboring yards isn’t exactly the plan the mob used with Jimmy Hoffa.

 

 

A few days later, and while sitting in class (arguably a rare event) a Vandermolen got called to the Principal’s office.  Well called isn’t really the right term.  Escorted is more the truth of the matter.  By the Principal himself. 

 

I suspect that the principal had previous experience on his side, indicating that the best way to get a Vandermolen to his office was to drag them there personnally.  In any case, there was some discussion in the hall about needing to go back into the classroom and getting a coat, and hat. 

 

A discussion that the Vandermolen both won, and lost.

 

For on getting to the Principal’s office fully attired, there were a couple of cops there, and an eyewitness.  The eyewitness blurted out; “yeah that’s the boy, he’s wearing the same coat and hat”.

 

Now, one could argue “due process”, after all, there was no line up of similar looking suspects, and the witness had been told they were going to get the boy who did it and bring him in for identification.   Yep, no doubt about it, due process was short changed.  But then this was in the days before the Miranda decision, and the Law was more concerned about arresting and punishing guilty people back then, at least more so than they seem to be these days.

 

And while that argument may have broken “new judicial grounds” and may even have held up in court….it would have brooked no headway with our dad, so there was little reason to try and go there.

 

Nope, best thing to do was throw oneself on the mercy of the court….cause there was no reason to expect any at home.

 

Copyright © 2013 Marty K Vandermolen