By Tom Crosby

Each year decisions are made in the Carolinas and events occur involving transportation and traffic that have a major impact on our daily lives.  Many of those decisions invite evaluation due to their brilliance, absurdity and, occasionally, stupidity.

Here are AAA Carolinas’ picks for 2007.  Green light is praise for a good decision or outcome; red light indicates a bonehead, or at the very least, questionable decision.

SOUTH CAROLINA

Red Light
To the state DOT for spending $14 million for two new rest areas on I-20 East in Kershaw County. That is almost twice what the state spends on all its 24 rest areas and nine welcome centers annually.

Green Light
To the state legislature for restructuring the Department of Transportation after an audit found $50 million in mismanagement issues (1.5% of its annual budget) and naming a businessman/politician, H.B. “Buck” Limehouse, director.

Red Light
To Hardeeville and other local police officers who accept cash bonds from drivers they pull over and ticket for traffic violations. Out-of-state motorists who pay the money just think it is an officer on the take. The practice tarnishes the state’s image.

Red Light
To Anderson County Sheriff David Crenshaw who drove 14 months on an expired driver’s license and then failed the initial driving test to get it back. He succeeded on the second try. His excuse: he didn’t receive a renewal notice.

Green Light
To Gov. Mark Sanford for his efforts to bolster the number of state highway patrol officers and his support for tightening the state’s weak drunk-driving and repeat offender laws.

Red Light
To insurance companies who cancelled costal homeowner policies, including that of newly appointed state insurance director Scott Richardson of Hilton Head. Richardson, like others, had to seek insurance from the state-regulated Wind and Hail Underwriting Association, which just raised rates 35%. No hurricanes hit South Carolina this year.

Red Light
To the state legislature for its failure to adequately fund highways and bridges (deficit: $1.5 billion), ban cell-phone use by teenagers learning to drive, improve its lax drunk-driving laws and require helmets for motorists.
The state’s fatality rate per thousand miles driven remains among the nation’s worst.

Green Light
To the Florence Police Department for a its Summer Highway Enforcement of Aggressive Traffic Advisory (HEAT) campaign aimed at summer drivers who sped, tailgated, cut other drivers off and failed to wear their seat belts.

NORTH CAROLINA

Red Light
To North Carolina’s Department of Motor Vehicles for allowing more than 26,000 invalid Social Security numbers to be used to get a driver’s license and using a flawed process for titling antique cars. George Tatum resigned as DMV chief after a friend obtained a vintage title for a 1937 Ford truck.

Green Light
To the legislature for laws banning teenagers (under 18) from talking on a cell phone while driving, requiring back seat passengers to buckle up and insisting that prosecutors and judges handle state-wide drunk driving cases consistently. Dismissals or reductions must be explained in writing.

Red Light
To the legislature for its continued failure to address its highway and bridge transportation needs. One study ranked the Tar Heel state 47th worst in the nation for congestion. The state needs more than $1 billion in funds just to catch up. This year legislators gave at least $60 million in business incentives to private companies.

Green Light
To Charlotte, which was dubbed the Tar Heel state’s most “pet friendly” city after AAA determined it had 53 lodgings that would accommodate pets. Maybe it has something to do with the city’s banking industry. Asheville was second with 26.

Red Light
Speaking of lights, how many DOT workers does it take to change a light bulb? Approximately 70 percent of the 2,400 lights on Charlotte’s Interstates are out and DOT says they can’t fix them because the system is too old, leaving Charlotte drivers in the dark at a time, often at crucial interchanges. There have been at least two-wrong way driver deaths at night on the same Interstates.

Red Light
To Graham County for its continued high ranking as one of the state’s most dangerous counties for motorcycles, which are involved in one of every three traffic crashes in the county. Businesses promote the “Dragon”, a dangerous 11-mile stretch on U.S. 129 with 318 twists and turns.

Green Light
To the state Department of Transportation for its willingness to have an outside firm audit its policies and procedures. The study found plenty of problems, which Secretary Lyndo Tippett has promised to address.

Red Light
To DOT Secretary Tippett for initially failing to fully release publicly the results of the study. Taxpayers paid more than $2.5 million for the study. They were entitled to know the results, which were eventually made public.

Red Light
To the State Highway Patrol for counting the time officers drove through work zones as “patrolling” them for safety so as to not endanger a $1.6 million work zone safety grant from the federal government. The “drive throughs” helped boost the number of reported work zone patrolling hours.

NATIONAL

Red Light
To all motorists who somehow felt that a “gas out” would lower gas prices. Cutting back on miles driven on a daily basis for a year by all drivers would reduce demand. Skipping one day of buying gas is meaningless.

Green Light
To the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for changing the way it calculates highway and city mileage for new vehicles.  Such ratings were done under ideal conditions and overstated mileage by as much as 36%.
The new calculations will seek to replicated real world driving conditions.

Green Light
To EPA for debunking the urban myth that keeps resurfacing that a magic pill will improve gas mileage. The MPG-Cap claimed a 14% fuel improvement. “A little pill can’t change the amount of energy in a unit of fuel,” said an EPA spokesman.

Red Light
To the U.S. Passport Office, which couldn’t figure out that, it would become inundated with passport requests once they were required for travelers returning by air from Canada, Mexico and Bermuda earlier this year. Thousands suffered long waits, some paying hundreds of dollars to get an application “expedited” – clearly a process favoring the wealthy.