Posted on 08/30/2010 4:36:54 PM PDT by DariusBane
Just because its the law doesnt mean its right or even sensible when it comes to traffic law, anyhow.
While we may have no choice but to obey or risk a ticket that doesnt make bad traffic laws any more worthy of our respect than the Prohibition ban on alcohol.
Here are a few current laws that ought to be on the other end of a piece of payin paper for a change:
1) No Right On Red This is a form of idiot-proofing designed to protect over-cautious, under-skilled drivers with poor vision and a weak sense of spatial relationships the kind who need both lanes to be totally clear for at least a football fields length before they feel confident enough to make the turn. Since they cant safely judge the speed and distance of oncoming traffic, we get to wait at the light like morons, too even if there isnt another car in sight.
Everyone else gets to stack up behind the piece of arteriosclerotic traffic plaque clogging up the road, awaiting the fleeting green light thats also timed to coincide with pedestrian right-of-way on the opposing cross street thus assuring only a handful of cars get through before it goes red again.
Instead of dumbing-down the roads to accommodate dumbed-down, least-common-denominator drivers, why not encourage (even demand) better driving? Those lacking the skills to perform basic maneuvers such as safely pulling into an intersection without the aid of a green light ought to be taking the bus.
2) Midnight Red Its 2 oclock in the morning and you come to a red light that stays red for an eternity. You sit and sit and sit engine idling, gas and time wasting even though there isnt another car around for miles. Sometimes, the light even cycles without giving you the green. (A common problem for motorcycle riders.) Of course, if you become exasperated and run the light even after stopping completely to make sure its safe and the way is absolutely clear its almost guaranteed there will be a cop lurking nearby, burning the midnight oil just for you.
In Europe, where sensible traffic laws are more the rule than here, many signaled intersections switch over to flashing yellow proceed with caution after a certain hour, when traffic has died down to a trickle. It is assumed that drivers are competent enough to make a judgment call on their own and it seems to work perfectly well. Its a custom we should definitely import.
3) No Left At Light Cousin to the no-right-on-red rule, this is the one where you find yourself at an intersection wanting to make a left turn across an opposing lane of traffic onto a sidestreet. But instead of a yield to oncoming traffic green light sensible policy youre stuck with a red light made just for you on the assumption youve got inch-thick cataracts and the ability to judge the speed and distance of oncoming traffic of Mr. Magoo. Youre supposed to wait patiently for the green arrow even when theres no oncoming traffic at all and you could literally get out and push the car safely across the intersection. Like no right on red, its a well-intended law designed to protect the worst drivers out there from their own marginal skills and poor judgment at the expense of everyone else.
4) Under-posted Speed Limits Speed limits are not supposed to be random numbers picked at whim by a government bureaucrat or revenue-minded police chief. Theyre supposed to be done according to traffic surveys that indicate an appropriate speed that balances safety with the goal of smoothly flowing traffic traveling at a reasonable pace for a given stretch of road. (The formal traffic safety engineering term for this is the 85th percentile speed.) Yet most posted speed limits are set well below the 85th percentile speed typically at least 5-10 mph below it.
This turns almost every driver on the road into a speeder in the legalistic/technical sense of driving faster than the number on the sign. It usually has nothing to do with safe driving, however. Things are set up this way to give police an easy reason to pull over just about anyone at just about any time and to generate lots of tax revenue by proxy.
Weve all encountered what amount to obvious speed traps the classic example being a broad, two-laned divided road posted at a ridiculous 30 or 35-mph instead of the 45-50 mph everyones driving. Since most of us routinely drive faster than posted maximums, were all either reckless fools or the speed limits have been set absurdly low for the road. Common sense says its the latter; any law that is flouted by almost everyone is probably a bad law like Prohibition.
Roads with under-posted speed limits are designed to be revenue enhancers for the local constabulary. But this sort of thing only creates antagonisms between the otherwise law-abiding public and the police whose motto should be To Serve and Protect, not To Harrass and Collect. Genuinely dangerous drivers should be aggressively targeted; but using the law to extract the motorists tax from unwary drivers over trumped-up BS speeding charges is an altogether different matter.
5) Primary Enforcement Seat Belt Laws This is the name given to laws that give police the authority to pull a motorist over simply for not wearing a seat belt. The question, though, isnt whether its prudent to buckle-up of course it is. Rather, its whether failing to wear a seat belt ought to qualify as a moving violation and give police pretext to pull over an otherwise law-abiding motorist.
Not wearing a seat belt may increase your risk of injury or death if there is an accident. But is that anyones business but yours? Not wearing a seat belt has about as much effect on others as failing to eat right or exercise. It increases your personal risk, perhaps but its really no ones business but your own. Whats next random blood pressure and cholesterol checkpoints? Are they going to begin issuing cops calipers to measure our body fat ratio?
Turning on the flashing lights and pointing Glocks our way for this violation is completely over the top and ought to stop.
6) Sobriety Checkpoints In the name of law and order, weve come to accept the idea of being randomly stopped, questioned and made to produce ID rigmarole that would be familiar to a citizen of Berlin in 1940 or Moscow in 1970. Your papers, please! is not what America is supposed to be all about. The goal of getting drunks of the road is beside the point. Probable cause is or ought to be the point.
Its wrong to subject people who have done absolutely nothing to suggest theyve been drinking and driving to random stops and interrogations. It violates one of the most basic tenets of the Western European legal theory going back to Magna Carta. Until you, specifically, have given the authorities a specific reason to suspect that you have violated (or may be about to violate) a law, the authorities should have no authority to interfere with you in any way. That we have lost sight of this basic, once-cherished principle and are so willing to give it up in the name of safety or getting drunks off the road shows were very far down a Dark Road, indeed.
By all means, stop and check out any driver who appears to be weaving, driving erratically or otherwise giving good reason to suspect he may be liquored up. But leave the rest of us alone and free to go about our business until weve given good reason to warrant a closer look.
I'd respectfully say that there are two extremes for people. You got the "rule-driven" one, but I'd say the ego-driven pole would be those who put self above all.
Rule-drive will sit at the light for 24 hours if the light doesn't turn red.
Ego-driven will run it no matter what.
Folks fall somewhere along that continuum.
Either that or die in a head-on collision.
The other day some talk-show host confessed to texting while driving, it might have been Mike Gallagher.
“As for cell phone yakkers on the road, I dont think it should be outlawed. I just think they should have them shoved up their anal orifice.”
Ghastly job! Let’s give it to Obama when his term is up!
So it’s YOUR DAMNED INSURANCE COMPANY that now enhances revenue for my lil town?
I’d find a new DAMNED INSURANCE COMPANY before I supported a Stupid F’n Law.
Jus sayn
TT
Yup I see a lot of single car Harrie Kari accidents. Has to be cell phones, or something to run your car into bridge at rush hour and stop traffic for hours (grrrrrrrr).
But no laws. Lets teach skills instead. Good drivers don’t seem to run cars into bridges.
LOL! GREAT idea...although you must admit that it wouldn't be any different in concept than what he is doing the the American electorate, only on a smaller scale...
Yeah he shoved a TARP up my anal canal. It still hurts. That’s one damned big species of fish!
Uh...You’re not implying that some people are capable of texting and driving are you?
I concur.
Nah just the cops.
I wrote this account a few months back on a thread about cell phone talking while driving...
I almost get creamed yesterday morning during my commute.
I have a slightly nasty intersection I have to pass through on my way to work. As I approached the t-shaped intersection on the cross of the T, the person on the right was poised to pull out onto a busy road, so I flashed the lights, gave the right to left arm sweep repeatedly, but the vehicle doesn’t move. (my right turn signal had been on for about 50 yards now...)
I am getting closer and can see the driver more clearly now, wondering why she doesn’t go, and you guessed it.
She is talking on her phone while pulling out into one of the worst intersections in my commute. Completely engrossed in the conversation while her face rotates blankly from side to side making it look like she is watching for an opening, but her eyes had this odd blank look, and you could tell one part of her was doing what she probably did every day, but the talking part was overriding her driving. Her eyes were simply not seeing the road, the cars and the traffic pattern. They were seeing something in the phone conversation.
Predictably, she then comes to life and suddenly realizes she should pull out, but has waited so long a vehicle is on her other side coming from her right in the lane she is going to pull into after she cuts across mine.
She jerks her SUV (Frikking huge Lincoln Navigator) into the intersection and the guy coming up the other side slams on his brakes and almost gets rear-ended. She stops, blocking my lane, all the way out.
I had my signal on the whole time to take the right, and now I came to a complete stop wondering what the hell she is going to do. This is now very dangerous.
I decide to cut behind her and get the hell away from that soon to be glass littered intersection (I thought). The less time you are around that, the less time you have to be plowed into.
So I step on it to go behind her, and the person in the opposite lane (BEHIND the guy who had been approaching and had to lean on his brakes) cuts sharply from his lane with obviously the same thought process I had, but...
...I could not see him and he could not see me. The two of us nearly met BEHIND that damned huge Lincoln Navigator, and we stared wide eyed at each other, both in completely the same shocked state. I wave him ahead of me, and he steps on it with excellent alacrity. He is clearly driving.
I look back at the woman driving this stupid Navigator, and...SHE IS STILL EFFING TALKING ON THE PHONE! Still sitting on top of the lane divider, both lanes stopped and traffic rapidly piling up in both directions, and...she is still looking from side to side talking.
Astounding.
They can’t do it either, it’s humanly impossible.
Cops operate a laptop, and a full suite of radios while driving fast... Really really fast. They do fine.
That charge already exists without a cell phone law.
Distracted driving.
I agree on all 6 counts. The red left-turn arrow is perhaps the most insulting.
Midnight red lights - 90% of the traffic lights ought to be flashing anyway. Flashing yellow on the main road and flashing red on the side street.
I know I am going to Hell.
I'm in the same boat. What sets me off is drivers (in front of me) who come to nearly a complete stop to turn off the frontage road.
My other peeve is hiphop baboons with the window-rattling 2 kilowatt woofers.
Oh come on meyer. Do you really think you are smart enough? Do you really think you have your self interest at heart enough to make these kinds of judgments?
Sarcasm toggle ON!
I agree with your other points as well. We have to decide if we want freedom or the tyranny of an overbearing government. I choose freedom.
The radios is no big deal, and the laptop at least isn’t a tiny screen with tiny buttons requiring intense focus for seconds at a time...they know where the keys are.
I seriously doubt any cop is typing away madly with both hands while driving through busy intersections or during a pursuit.
Cops crash once in a while too....ya don’t suppose...
Well I think your point is, that with training the Cop can determine when to use the equipment and when not to.
So good training trumps broad regulations every time.
The distracted driving laws already exist yet folks are clamoring for texting laws. I don’t get it. It’s probably more dangerous to get a BJ while driving than to text. But I don’t see people for clamoring for an anti BJ regulation.
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