Attention Red Phone fanatics! Stuck at work and not able to pick
up the phone and comment to the Red Phone? Well do we have a
solution for you! Now you can sneak onto www.gilroydispatch.com,
click the Red Phone icon and quietly e-mail your comments. Have a
question about the paper? A complaint about garbage on city
streeta? A compliment about your good neighborhood? E-mail the Red
Phone.
Attention Red Phone fanatics! Stuck at work and not able to pick up the phone and comment to the Red Phone? Well do we have a solution for you! Now you can sneak onto www.gilroydispatch.com, click the Red Phone icon and quietly e-mail your comments. Have a question about the paper? A complaint about garbage on city streets? A compliment about your good neighborhood? E-mail the Red Phone.
Dumping grounds: “I’m calling because of the city and it’s dumping facilities and South Valley Disposal. I want to complain about how long it takes them to clean up the stuff that’s dumped behind businesses. We had St. Vincent De Paul but now they’re gone and people continue to dump. … The city has $27 million to put in a new police station, $7 million to put in for each city block, but yet when it comes to picking up garbage, it’s a huge bureaucratic system to get something done.”
What timing! If you haven’t seen it already, take a look at Tuesday’s edition. The Dispatch investigated the problems business owners have with people dumping items around town and what is taking so long to get the messes get cleaned up. For those who dump items behind the old St. Vincent De Paul’s building – stop! St. Vincent’s is no longer in operation. Instead, take usable furniture to the Goodwill store at 845 First St., open from 9am to 8pm Monday to Saturday and 11am to 6pm Sunday (281-1449) or the Salvation Army at 7341 Monterey St., open from 9am to 6pm Monday to Saturday (842-3991).
Huh? What’d I miss?: “I have a home address and I’m just questioning what days you are delivering now?”
The Red Phone is just questioning how long you’ve actually been reading The Dispatch? For those who are a little slow to catch on, The Dispatch is published Tuesday through Saturday, and should be delivered to subscribers by 5:30 each morning. For problems with delivery, contact the circulation department at 842-2327.
Space limitations: “Isn’t there some kind of law about how far you’re supposed to be away from the car in front of you? Like one or two car spaces so that if they brake you don’t end up rear-ending the person? Well my complaint is that I try to abide by that rule but it never fails … it never fails I tell you … when I have that distance in between me and the car in front of me, some fool thinks that space is for them to pull over. So then I’ll slow down to back off, and what happens? Someone else pulls into that space. So, not that I’ve ever known anyone to be pulled over for traveling to close to the car in front, I guess it only comes up when you slam into someone for following too closely, but there are some of us out here who are trying to follow the rules, but it’s almost impossible to travel with that space between two cars because someone else always sees that space as a space opened up for them. But no, it’s not. That really ticks me off and I wanted to vent.”
The Red Phone takes all calls, all complaints, but we hope you didn’t literally blow a fuse … we could tell by the tone of your voice that you’re not just simply a little ticked. Deep breath. Exhale. Deep breath. Exhale. OK, now, onto your call.
The Red Phone contacted the California Department of Motor Vehicles Web site (www.dmv.ca.gov) to find out what the rules of the road are. What it says is this: Most rear end accidents are caused by tailgating. To avoid this, use the “three-second rule.” When the vehicle ahead of you passes a certain point, such as a sign, count “one-thousand-one, one-thousand-two, one-thousand-three.” This takes about three seconds. If you pass the same point before you finish counting, you are following too closely.
Granted, not everyone is going to follow the rules. All you can do is make sure you do the best you can and keep yourself as safe (and as calm, caller) as possible.
