Slow You Down

Written for https://crispinakemp.com/2024/04/17/crimsons-creative-challenge-284/

Slow you down.

Flowers draped around the sign. Each bouquet was a reminder of a person gone. Their fading colours remained as a symbol to any drivers speeding over thirty.

The bicycle, with a plastic rider, was Elizabeth’s idea.

She thought it would be a visual reason to take it easy. If someone was over the limit, it would flash red. For those motorists taking a moment to read the signs, it would say ‘‘thank you’’ and glow green.

Her sister was riding home from school when a motorist took the bend too fast.

The motorist’s actions resulted in the loss of two people. The girl dreaming of being a doctor; an empty seat in the classroom. The driver, not able to get behind the wheel again, fell into a deep depression.

No prison sentence. He forged his own steel bars. It was months later he contacted the family. No forgiveness there. Drowning in guilt, without a life jacket, his lungs filled with grief. As the weeks drifted into years, he lost the will to be human.

Nobody involved in that day would be the same.

Elizabeth understood, and one simple act saved many lives.