The News and Observer from Raleigh, North Carolina • 18

18A- The News Observer Raleigh NC Friday Aug 9 1991 Editorial The News Observer I advise and enjoin those who direct the paper in the tomorrows never to advocate any cause (or personal profit or preferment I would wish it always to be "the tocsin" and to devote itself to the policies of equality and justice to the underprivileged If the paper should at any time be the voice of self-interest or become the spokesman of privilege or selfishness it would be untrue to its listory JOSEPHUS DANIELS Editor and Publisher 1B94-1948 Brakes on the Beltline SOLVID The crews are working 24 hours a day to improve the newly numbered 1-440 to make commuters' lives a little easier Yet several workers had to dive over a guard rail the other morning to escape clobbering when a vehicle hit several barrels did a 180-degree turn and whammed into the rail The next crew may not be so lucky Nor has the recent rerouting through downtown of through traffic on US 70 and NC 50 and the diverting of US 1 to the loop's southeastern segment cut the vehicle load by much A real tragedy is almost bound to happen before the widening is finished in 1998 unless the City Council tells the police department right now to heavily beef up Beltline patrols and to throw the book at speeders If that doesn't work within a fortnight or so the council and the state transportation department must get speed bumps laid down Some drivers won't learn until their wheels are thrown out of line a time or two But even for Beltline Bandits that should do it especially if the city warns it has an even tougher last resort: closing the road AT MlPHBW IN kWtf VQWFfi RUNNING AROOND Whatever extra attention Raleigh police say they're giving speeders on the northwest Beltline it's clearly not enough The speed freaks have had more than a month to slow down since widening work began on the northwest part of the busy commuter loop Since they're still causing a safety nightmare for road workers and other drivers City Hall needs to invoke a crackdown up to and including speed bumps Already there are warning signs rows of orange "buddy barrels" and even flashing verbal messages made of light bulbs One says "Please donl kill us" and another linked to a radar gun says "Slow down now you are speeding" None of this gets through to the accelerator addicts An officer of the contracting firm who took a recent turn with a radar gun found 60 percent of the traffic going over 60 mph on a road whose normal limit is 55 and whose posted limit during construction is 45 A state project engineer who also clocked traffic found cars routinely zooming at 65 70 and even 75 down lanes narrowed by rows of "buddy barrels" He called police who caught 17 speeders and one alleged DWI in the next eight hours They deserved it but so do hundreds more Either they're wholly without conscience and courtesy or it hasn't occurred to them that they're risking more lives than their own and their passengers' the most of a beach weekend Ferrel CuIory 1 3 vs IWW PH01O1MEN A WW OF Trying to make Here's a way to relax: Go near the edge of salt water position yourself facing surf and sea breeze put your feet up and place a book in your lap It's OK to read it Two days on Bogue Banks don't quite suffice for a complete unwinding Nor were they quite enough for me to finish reading the last half of an advance copy of a Huey Long biography that LSU Press will soon publish Actually I might have gotten to the end of the Long biography had I not also picked up the current issue of The Atlantic From the magazine's cover story I learned that what I was doing enjoying a "weekend" was partaking in a central ritual and right of our society Indeed writes the article's author Witold Rybczynski we have adopted a "rigorous division of our everyday lives into five days of work and two of play" and the weekend has become "the chief temporal institution of the modern age" Professor Rybczynski of McGill University in Montreal has a book coming out titled "Waiting for the Weekend" and he sees the institution of the weekend as appealing to deep yearnings both functional and sacred Of course the setting aside of one day out of seven has roots deep in Christian and Jewish traditions A day for worship serves as an anchor to the establishing of the weekend Still Prof Rybczynski points out the 18th Century workweek ended on Saturday evening with Sunday the only weekly day off In Britain it became customary to schedule sporting events fairs and other recreational activities on Monday But in response to religious groups and social reformers seeking to combat drinking and otherwise tone down the Sunday behavior of British workers preparing for Mondays off a new custom arose: the Saturday half-holiday with factories and shops shut- Quayle's suspect reforms it VTfW CAPTURE CIRCLES- relaxation The weekly rush to the cottage is not leisurely nor is the compression of various recreational activities into the two-day break The freedom to do anything has become the obligation to do something" While Americans wait for the weekend they also plan for their more extended time off from work And some insight into vacation comes from another magazine The American Enterprise which dutifully pulls together polling data on all manner of topics political economic and cultural About half of all Americans the magazine reports now take a major trip in June July or August The average duration of a summer trip is 51 nights 39 percent of trips for 2-3 nights 34 percent 4-9 nights For 30 percent of Americans who planned to take a vacation this year the preferred destination was the ocean following by small towns (14 percent) mountains (14 percent) and cities (13 percent) National parks draw slightly more than commercial theme parks Asked the primary purpose of a summer trip 42 percent of Americans say visiting friends or relatives 31 percent entertainment or sightseeing 20 percent outdoor recreation "Most vacations" says The American Enterprise "still center around kin: seeing them staying with them traveling with them" So there I was at the beach a fairly typical American traveling with family responding to the powerful allure of salt water trying to make the most of a "weekend" I was also a perfect illustration of the tension that many of us sense in coming to terms with the relationship of work and leisure a tension that Prof Rybczynski says "leads to the nagging feeling that our free time should be used for some purpose higher than having fun" So there I was facing the sea breeze trying to relax and thinking about what I was going to write this week If this is any insight on how the station will be presented to the viewers it is a sad commentary on their organization PAULA LARSON Raleigh Traffic-stopping lights I am in complete agreement with the July 24 letter titled "Turn out Up-church" with particular respect to the comment about the traffic light control system The system should aid vehicular movement and this it does not do in Raleigh Many times you approach a green light with nothing else about and it changes to red against you Mayor Avery Upchurch might care to go to England to see how vehicular-controlled lights really work and to see the advantage of roundabouts traffic circles If such a circle were formed around Crabtree traffic would move with little hindrance SR WILTON Raleigh The Far Side Humor- U-I3yi Dog ShaxK 'i-Zyn Elephant: -t yrs Awkward ages 1 53F PA 7 The People's Forum Good Morning West Virginia's Jay Rockefeller says he's not running for president because he has no coherent plan for running the country but since when has that stopped anyone else? council for example screens things like the administration's weak-willed wetlands preservation policy While Mr Quayle's proposals would apply to a small group of cases civil rights suits and environmental suits would not be affected they would be a bad precedent And big business knowing there were caps on damage awards would have less incentive to correct carelessness or wrongdoing A business' insurance company could drag a suit out in court with staff lawyers knowing that plaintiffs would become frustrated and might be willing to settle for less than they might otherwise receive Just as wrong-headed as the limit on awards is another council proposal to make the loser in some kinds of cases pay all legal fees That's obviously a tremendous disadvantage for the poor client whose lawyer works on contingency If that client lost he would have to pay all those high-priced defense lawyers and the fer of that might discourage his suit before it began Certainly there's room for reform in the legal system And not all of the council's ideas are as seriously flawed as the one to limit punitive damages For one it urges more use of mediation and arbitration as ways to settle suits instead of court action But Mr Quayle no great legal and constitutional scholar after all will come to the ABA convention representing a council without much of a track record of trying to protect the average citizen Any reforms he urges deserve a healthy dose of salty skepticism Publisher FRANK DANIELS JR Associate Publisher DAVIS JONES Executive Editor FRANK DANIELS III Managing Editor MARION GREGORY Associate Editor STEVEN FORD General Manager FRED CRISP Chief Financial Officer MELVIN FINCH JR Sales and Marketing Director DICK HENDERSON Circulation Director JEFF BURCHAM Advertising Director JIM McCLURE Production Director DANNY COLLINS Classified Advertising Director DURWOOD CANADAY ting down at noon on the sixth workday The half-holiday became common in Britain by the 1870s writes Prof Rybczynski but it did not become common in the United States until the 1920s In 1926 Henry Ford announced that his automobile factories would close on Saturdays giving his workers two days off Other American capitalists did not rush to imitate the carmaker "What finally consolidated the five-day workweek was not altruism or activism or paradoxically prosperity" writes Prof Rybczynski "It was the Great Depression of 1929 Shorter hours came to be regarded as a remedy for unemployment: Each person would work less but more people would have jobs" The New Deal enacted the 40-hour workweek into law and that in turn solidified the weekly cycle of five days at work and two at leisure However says the professor the less-work more-free-time trend has reversed By 1989 24 percent of the 88 million Americans with full-time jobs worked 49 hours or more per week Even as workdays lengthen Prof Rybczynski detects an unsettling "enslavement" on the weekends Given two days off Americans are increasingly driven to fill up those days with something other than idleness "The weekend or what's left of it after Saturday household chores is when we have time to relax" he writes "But the weekend has imposed a rigid schedule on our free time which can result in a sense of urgency ('soon it will be Monday') that is at odds with size of the Triangle needs a third local news program to better serve the public Mitch Lewis Joan Murray Chris Thompson and Mike Fuller provided those of us who watched them an excellent news broadcast Do the new owners really think that reruns of "Cheers" (for the umpteenth time) and another syndicated entertainment news program will do better in the ratings than the news? What they need to do is bring back the news at 6 pm every day of the week as well as try something different like a 10 pm newscast while shifting the NBC shows from 10 pm to 10:30 pm Newscasts at 10 pm have been doing very well in other cities why not give them a try here? In addition they need to work on improving reception to areas that currently have trouble and to make themselves more visible The new owners should not shortchange the public they owe it to us as a network affiliate to provide local news coverage BARRY SHAFER Cary Bad news at WPTF I am appalled to learn of the instant decision by the new owners of WPTF-TV to terminate the local news program As an educator for the past 18 years I am distressed by their apparent belief that news and current events are not important for educated viewers Additional reruns of "Cheers" and a glitzy entertainment program will not serve to enlighten the citizens of North Carolina As a dedicated viewer of WPTF news I am also upset by their shoddy treatment of the news staff Granted changes can be expected when businesses change management but transitions can be made more gracefully Published reports say that their decision to kill the news program was made because of lower ratings against the competition Their actions show that their business ethics and class rate much lower as well Beware Dan Quayle bearing "reform" The American Bar Association should stock its convention with many grains of salt when the vice president arrives next week to propose caps on certain punitive damage awards in lawsuits and other changes in this country's legal system The general idea behind the changes is to streamline reducing the number of lawsuits and the huge damage awards sometimes granted The current system says the President's Council on Competitiveness which Mr Quayle chairs hurts American business in its efforts to fight foreign competition One figure the vice president cites is that the United States has 70 percent of the world's lawyers and 200 times the number of attorneys in Japan where business is thriving So clogged are courts with litigation the argument goes that big business can't flex its competitive muscle Trial lawyers have long opposed limits on punitive damages which are designed to punish rather than just to compensate They argue that any cap on damages is unfair to plaintiffs and would fail to discourage others from committing similar offenses Of course those lawyers generally work for contingency fees When they file million-dollar suits they know they'll take home a fourth a third or perhaps more of the bounty if they have a winner or get a settlement But this is the same presidential council that has as its mission greasing the skids for business including relaxing rules that project people and the environment to bolster private profit margins The The News Observer "The Old Reliable" THINK! Lj YOUR ip)igir Weed wins in NC In response to your July 23 editorial "Not just blowing Having recently moved to the beautiful state of North Carolina and I do mean that sincerely I have come in contact with the die-hard smokers who until now have only been envisioned in my worse nightmares I have up to this time in my life been able to keep myself isolated from the effects of smoke through daily diligence on my part Having transferred to North Carolina with a corporation that has a very large relationship with the tobacco industry I find it is no longer possible to do this Presently the choice must be made either to stay with this company that I have given 11 years of my life or leave in order to be able to breath normally again So far this year it has cost me and my insurance company over $3000 in medical expenses that would not have been necessary if I were in a smoke-free environment and the year is only half over There isn't any excuse for people or companies to be uninformed or uneducated in this matter but ignorance is a choice that is promoted by dollars from the very industry that will in the end kill those who support it He who has the gold has the power Certainly the gold leaf of which North Carolina is so proud has the power I have nothing but ill health missed time from work and medical expenses Surely the weed has won and the irony of this situation is that I as a taxpayer am supporting the demise of my health and career Where else but in North Carolina! LINDA HAYES Rocky Mount WPTF newscast needed How terrible it is that FSF TV Inc of Nashville Tenn the new owner of WPTF-TV decided immediately to cancel the local news programs An area the HEAR MOTHER!.