There must be a light under the bushel!

Road Hazards Ahead

I was under the impression that the intent of those little orange construction signs was to serve as a warning for drivers. You know, Men Working: don't swerve and hit them. Flagger Ahead: you might have to stop. We all understand that those signs are an easy ticket zone, so you need to pay some attention, but what happens when you don't know what the sign means?

Attenuator Damage Ahead. I consider myself a fairly literate person, and I had no idea what an attentuator was. For some reason, seeing that sign caused me a little panic. What if an attenuator was something important, like the left lane, the one I was driving in? How was I going to know until I went flying into an abyss?

Granted, the damge signs usually don't have any real purpose that I can see. Guardrail Damage Ahead. Is that supposed to help you if your car is rolling towards it, just so you know that you're going to fly over for sure?

But, what if this was a sign that mattered?

As I drove head in to danger, I think I figured out what an attenuator is, those big barrels full of sand that are placed sporadically on the freeway, often around those big concrete columns that hold up an overpass. I just don't understand the term.

attenuate: to make or become slender, fine, or small, to weaken, or to lessen in density, dilute or rarify

So, what? They're supposed to weaken the impact of your crash against the concrete?

I hate it when the construction workers jack with my head this way. I liked it better when they just whistled at you and left the intellectual mind games to someone else.