Safer driving is key as Legislature nears end of road (New Jersey)

Star-Ledger ^ | December 11, 2003 | ROBERT SCHWANEBERG

[Calpernia]

Driving will be on the minds of state lawmakers as they convene today in Trenton, where they are scheduled to consider bills that would toughen the definition of drunken driving, ban motorists from using cell phones and mandate cleaner-running cars.

[Calpernia]

The bill on distracted driving already passed. I heard on NJ101.5 that this may include smoking while driving; but haven't been able to confirm it on any sources.

[mvpel]

I've noticed that strict enforcement of arbitrarily low speed limits, coupled with an excessive focus on speeding to the exclusion of other more significant but more difficult to enforce violations, leads to tailgating - this is very noticable in Massachusetts.

People seem to be afraid to actually pass another driver, because they're afraid they'll get nailed by a trooper in the process, so instead they ride the bumper of the person in front of them at 64 1/2 miles per hour, out of sight of the trooper's LIDAR gun.

[Calpernia]

I would prefer to see a source for information; but yesterday on NJ101.5, they news personalities said the received emails from people saying they were getting tickets mailed to them for driving violations rather than pulled over from police.

[mvpel]

That's one way to keep the police death rate down - one of the most dangerous things an officer can do is pull someone over.

Jeff Fontana in San Jose lost his life like that.

[Coleus]

I knew these types of laws were going to be passed as soon as the dims took over. They just love to pass laws which infringe on what we do in our day-to-day-lives.

[At _War_With_Liberals]

I hate the pols here.

[Glenn]

That's one way to keep the police death rate down - one of the most dangerous things an officer can do is pull someone over.

I can't believe you said that.

[mvpel]

http://idsnews.com/story.php?id=16941

According to a recent report released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation -- called the Uniform Crime Report -- roughly 55 percent of police officer in-the-line-of-duty deaths stem from traffic stops going bad. This statistic makes traffic stops one of the most dangerous facets of police work.

[Calpernia]

You don't expect them to deal with the hard issues, ie., property taxes, cost of living, et al, do you? They need busy work. Besides, their busy work can do real good; like criminalize the innocent. Can't have people sipping coffee in cars now. That is dangerous. Of course searching for .35 cents on the parkway is safe.