Friday afternoon we were driving home. Normally traffic gets a little busy, but only near Keaau High School, a couple of miles from home, where two lanes merge into one. Friday afternoon was different. Traffic was slow on Highway 11. Very slow. Instead of the normal 55mph we were doing 20. And this was all the way back at where Kilauea Avenue merges with the highway, which is a good seven miles from where traffic normally gets slow.
I thought there was an accident, which is the usual cause for these sorts of things. Eventually I saw the tell-tale flashing lights.
But then we got to the “scene of the accident”. There was no accident. There was Gerard Silva and his sign-wavers. The flashing lights were two tow trucks whose operators were there in support of Mr. Silva.
Traffic sped up after passing Mr. Silva and his flashing lights.
It’s ironic that Mr. Silva is running to be the Democratic candidate for Hawaii House District 4 on the grounds of alternative routes to Puna, the district we live in. In a Honolulu Advertiser story Mr. Silva said:
Today the only road serving the area is the Kea’au-to-Pahoa Highway, and “if anything happens on that highway, everybody’s blocked in.”
I don’t know if he was trying to make his point by slowing traffic by fooling people into thinking there was an accident. Personally, I don’t think he even thought about it.
Here’s the problem: if he did think he was going to disrupt traffic, then that’s reprehensible. Hundreds of cars crawling along, wasting gas, polluting the air, making people annoyed. That’s not the way to get people on your side. And if he didn’t think about it, that’s reprehensible too, because it shows that he doesn’t think about the consequences of his actions. A poor quality in a politician.
If I could vote, Mr. Silva, you can be sure that I wouldn’t vote for you.
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