Posted on 08/30/2010 4:36:54 PM PDT by DariusBane
Just because it’s “the law” doesn’t mean it’s 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 doesn’t 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 field’s length before they feel confident enough to make the turn. Since they can’t safely judge the speed and distance of oncoming traffic, we get to wait at the light like morons, too — even if there isn’t 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 that’s 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 It’s 2 o’clock 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 isn’t 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 it’s safe and the way is absolutely clear — it’s 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. It’s 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 – you’re stuck with a red light made just for you – on the assumption you’ve got inch-thick cataracts and the ability to judge the speed and distance of oncoming traffic of Mr. Magoo. You’re supposed to wait patiently for the green arrow — even when there’s no oncoming traffic at all and you could literally get out and push the car safely across the intersection. Like no right on red, it’s 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. They’re 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.
We’ve 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 everyone’s driving. Since most of us routinely drive faster than posted maximums, we’re all either reckless fools — or the speed limits have been set absurdly low for the road. Common sense says it’s 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, isn’t whether it’s prudent to buckle-up — of course it is. Rather, it’s 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 anyone’s 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 it’s really no one’s business but your own. What’s 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, we’ve 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.
It’s wrong to subject people who have done absolutely nothing to suggest they’ve 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 we’re 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 we’ve given good reason to warrant a closer look.
These checkpoints exist only because a large percentage of the population is unable or unwilling to control themselves. A responsible person says "I shouldn't be driving like this, let me call a taxi." An irresponsible person says "I'm just fine, and there is no risk at all." Plenty of innocents were - and still are - killed by drunk drivers. Checkpoints are there to instill some fear into those reckless drivers. They wouldn't be necessary if the vast majority of drivers obeys the law and respects other drivers (by not drinking, driving and killing them.)
I believe I was stopped at one of such checkpoints only once, more than 10 years ago, and in Canada. The officer didn't ask for my DL; he simply asked me if I was drinking and looked for signs of DUI in my response. Then I was waved through; it took at most a minute from highway speed to highway speed.
I don't want to deny that this practice is invasive, and it requires people to prove that they are innocent. Is there a better way of achieving the goal? I don't see one, aside from equipping *all* cars with alcohol detectors. And that won't be enough because some prescription medication (vicodine, for example, which you may get from your dentist) will dull your perception and reaction, but it won't be registered by an alcohol meter. I had some dental work done last year; the dentist planned on some oral sedative, and told me to not drive home while under its influence. I chose to not take the sedative, and then drove home.
Back in the day they might have been, now they’re clearly just about revenue and control. Tucson Police Department recently released a report that shows they only get 1 drunk driver for every 1300 stopped at check points, meanwhile they get a couple hundred “incidental” tickets (repair, seatbelt, improper insurance, etc.) in the same group.
The goal is revenue. Not safety.
How’s this for irritating?
I have lived on this street for 23 years, ranch land, USA. for the first 20 years, I get to the end of my street, take a right, go straight through an intersection that has stop signs on the little side streets (just like the side street I live on) I go straight through, don’t have to stop.
Those people live on the side street, and they should stop because all the side streets enter onto this larger street which has no stop signs.
A couple of years ago, I come home from work, and the stop signs have been moved. The town moved them, so that the MAIN street that all the others enter into has to stop, and the side street there doesn’t. Okay, that is annoying.
But wait for it.
What is REALLY annoying is that I must stop for that sign. The people coming up the side street have no stop sign, but...they still stop. Sometimes, they even try to wave you through.
It irritates the CRAP out of me every single time, and all I can think of is some stupid town bureaucrat lives on that side street, and pulled strings to get the sign directions changed. I think I would be happier if they turned it into the REAL bane of my car driving existence which is, 95% of the time, an exercise in abject traffic design stupidity: The Infamous Four-Way-Stop.
Good training!
Where the hell would they get that? Certainly not in the public schools.
Besides, teenagers and the current crop of tattood, multi-pierced gang banger wannabees already know everything.
How about if you have an accident as a result of DUI it is catastrophic. How about if you are caught driving drunk 1.0, not .8 the results are catastrophic.
Instead what we do is lower the threshold to .8, and make it a slap on the wrist. Instead raise the legal limit to a real number then make the results catastrophic.
Right now it’s low limits and “catch and release”.
Lets punish people for actual damage instead of potential damage.
Some people have the ability to talk on the phone and drive simultaneously. Some don’t. Seems to me that people ought to know their own limitations and act accordingly.
My favorite is the three way intersection, with three way stops.
I work at a hospital, and my office is next to an exterior wall. Every single day at the same time, as I sat there, someone pulled up in a car with that kind of system and parked in the employee lot.
It was irritating as crap. One day, I couldn't stand it anymore, and walked outside, it was some young dipstick guy sitting in his car with the sound cranked up so loud you could feel the thumping through the hospital wall.
I motioned to him to roll down his window, and politely asked him if he could refrain from playing his music like that on the hospital property. He stared at me for a long time, then turned it down.
He only had it turned up once since that.
We could fire half the officials in city, state, county government related to public safety, cash in the extra police cars and use the money for a bang up driver training program.
That's mostly what I'm talking about, the cop can tell if and when the phone or device was last used to text in relation to the crash... But either way, I still think if he catches them in the act they should be able to throw the book at them too. It's only a matter of time before they kill someone.
Rocklobster we are not to far off. But I still hate laws that focus on potential damages as opposed to real damages.
I don’t think we need a vast vast powerful group of armed government employees engaged in transferring money from the private sector to the public sector looking for potential damages. It’s absurd and it’s counter to small government principles.
I completely agree.
I can multitask like hell when I drive without endangering myself or others. I can eat a Taco Bell taco without spilling it, I can change a song on my stereo, and I listen to audiobooks non-stop while driving.
But I cannot speak on the phone. And I know for a fact that there are many tasks that people can do with a good margin of safety while driving, but talking on the phone is different.
I know it is for me. I am on call all the time, so I get paged constantly. I always pull off the road because I know that I just cannot function effectively. The LONE time I decided I would use my phone while driving without pulling over, I was on a two lane country road on the way to work in bumper to bumper traffic that was barely moving, stop and go. I got paged, and thought, geez, I am not even moving, I can take this call. As I was dialing the number, I heard an angry yell. While dialing, my car had veered about six inches to the right as I creeped along, and I had almost run a cyclist off the road who was pedaling on the foot wide swath of pavement to the right of our stalled line of traffic.
The one time! This was winter! On a road that all serious cyclists avoid because of the heavy commuter traffic and the narrow road with no shoulders! Yet there he was, and I almost nailed him because I was dialing a phone. Sure, maybe he shouldn’t have been zooming up the side like that, but that would have been a cold comfort for me.
Now, I can listen to an audiobook version of “The Road to Serfdom” and not miss a single thing the guy is saying, but I can completely stay focused on the road. Completely. But talking on a phone...it does something different in your brain than talking to someone in the passenger seat. And I know I can’t do it.
But who is volunteering for a head-on collision with a drunk driver? Will be the justice done if the DUI driver who just killed a whole family is incarcerated for life?
We have a fairly recent law up here regarding very stiff penalties for driving under suspension called Tina’s law.
Lots of people were doing it, and the incident that sparked the legislation was a multi-suspension truck driver who ran over a car on the interstate driven by a woman (Tina Turcotte) and cruelly and needlessly killed her.
This does not wait for an incident to happen, but gives LEOs an opportunity to get dangerous drivers off the road. They got those prior suspensions for a reason.
Your health insurance rates go up with illegal immigrants using our system, people eating too much, too much fat, too much drinking, smoking, riding motorcycles, homosexual lifestyle, promiscuous sex, playing football, swimming, white water rafting, skydiving, scuba diving....having more than 2.2 babies. Wouldn't it be for the good of THEPATRIOTSFLAG if all unnecessary activities were regulated tightly or banned?
At night when possible I drive on the right lane of the highway. As long as I can see a taillight in front of me, I can be sure that no drunks are coming at me with lights off. It is MY responsibility to take measures to protect myself. I have taught my wife the same trick. Kids to come when old enough.
Checkpoints just are not worth the infringement. They are counter to freedom, they are too expensive, and they give the government to much appearance of power.
I’ve always said if your scared, get a dog! I won’t live in fear. I won’t demand the government to reduce every potential threat.
Yah know, you can get a suspension for an unpaid parking ticket 20 years ago in another state.
I’m pretty sure I’m not even down with the whole license to drive thing, definitely not down with the implied consent thing.
Government is just too powerful. Too expensive. The public is way to reliant. Needs it’s ears trimmed.
“Airline Pilots -
Just look at all that crap in the cockpit! How do they do it?”
Lots of recurring training. I am all for vehicle pilots being required to retrain all the time just like aircraft pilots. People are idiots and drive like it. They need more training than airline pilots. The fact that 45,000 people each year are killed by vehicles proves that point.
Not so much your brain, as it is the other party's.
When you are having a chat with someone riding shotgun, that person is seeing the traffic situation just like you.
And if you are about to enter a particularly dicey stretch of road, or find yourself in the next lane to someone who is driving irregularly, your passenger instinctively knows to shut up and let you drive.
Not so when you are on the phone, the other party has no idea if you are on an open road or not.
I agree with your post 100%, very few on FR are as opposed to nanny statism as I am, but phoning while driving is an exception to my principles which I am happy to make.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.