When dealing with traffic-law enforcement there are times when one gets no sense of President Lincoln’s notion that the government is ‘by the people and for the people’. It’s time to make traffic laws more fair, just and democratic, and we have the technology to do so. In a fair and equitable system if one breaks the law and is penalized then everyone breaking the law would be penalized as well—or none would be. This is surely impossible to accomplish, but giving this notion credence raises the bar considerably, giving us a worthy mark to shoot for. The system we have is unfair in many respects and insufficiently democratic for this age. Being of a democratic society, the will of the majority must dictate our laws; and just as important, the majority should determine how the laws are applied.
The basis for this idea is simple; traffic law should apply to all people equally, not just those unlucky enough to get caught. If we drive over the speed limit we break the law, thereby we become criminals, but most are not punished. This system fails us. As it stands it’s grossly unfair, not sufficiently effective and makes us all criminals, prosecuted or not.
Traffic law is for the protection of those using, and those affected by others using, our roadways. But we are penalized arbitrarily by it. Furthermore a good, contributing citizen can be treated the same as those who regularly abuse the system.
With our current system there is no consideration for the conscientious driver and no slack for the occasional misdeed, other than the discretion a police officer may choose to use. Even the police officers must be hurt by this system as it it likely they experience some cognitive dissonance because they are tasked with citing others for what they are guilty of doing themselves.
The most careful and considerate of us may drive for a decade with no citations then inadvertently drive five miles over the limit and be cited and fined. This is not a just system as it doesn’t discriminate sufficiently between abusive behavior and honest mistakes. There is a difference you know!
Two vehicles may be speeding past the same point one minute apart and only one is cited. Car after car can make Calif. stops and arbitrarily a police officer sees ‘one’ and one is penalized. A rich person and a poor person fined the same for an infraction will experience a different effect from the penalty. In other words, a fine which could buy groceries for the month for a single mother and baby may be pocket change for another. A police officer can choose which people to cite and which not to, which undermines fairness. The legal system gives no credit to the good driver with the clean driving record; one small infraction and you can find yourself being sucked into the system—at least far enough to end up in court. And if you end up in court you are most likely going to pay a fine.
I pulled out of a store parking lot and crossed the street to park at another store. A policeman saw me and cited me for not fastening my seatbelt. My habit was to use my seatbelts as the law requires, but I didn’t think it would be important that time. Putting this into context, I had driven about 300 feet not exceeding ten miles an hour. Considering the relative insignificance of the infraction and my good driving record, along with the fact that I lived in and employed people in the community—made no difference. When I called the police station they told me they gave no preference to anyone—I had violated the law. There was a couple hundred dollar fine in court. The whole thing has a ‘Kill them all; let God sort them out’ quality to it.
I am not suggesting we do away with the laws or even change them at this time, but that we change the way the law is administered. This is not about making the traffic law better this is about treating humans fairly. We must keep in mind that most of the laws are made for us by law makers, not by a popular vote. It is clear in this case, based on the facts of our driving, that the law is not reflecting the will of the majority.
At some point I concluded there must be much better ways of administering traffic law, and this is why I chose to write this. The chance for an improved system to emerge someday strictly depends on how much we desire to live in a world which is more fair and equitable—a world less apt to exploit our good citizens. If we are going to have a chance at improving we must create and support improved institutions.
If you travel the highway regularly you see traffic laws violated and personal safety jeopardized. It is common to see vehicles tail-gating, speeding or changing lanes in a dangerous manner. At times there are multiple vehicles, which seem to be playing risky games. There is a minority which put themselves and others at unnecessary risk, and these need to be dealt with—harshly. But my focus for this essay is for those operating within the context of normal driving, albeit outside the strict letter of the law, while conforming with the majority.
Consider the facts of our situation; many people make Calif. stops and many drive the freeway at 70 or more, instead of 65. So penalizing for this is at least questionable, and most likely—not rational. To be able to recognize this as a mistake in our system requires that we accept that in a democratic society the ‘people’ make the choices, even if by demonstrating what we choose by the way we drive—this is a ‘vote’. It should be up to the bureaucracy to keep up with the people, not the other way around. If we can understand this we can move on to the implementation of a better system. We need a system which accounts for how most of our citizens drive. If most of us drive safely at 70 then some should not be penalized for doing so. If almost all of our citizens make rolling stops then we surely cannot penalize anyone for doing so. But the system does.
In an ideal system any violation of the law would be recorded. But here is where we must begin to discriminate. Whether violations occur within the context and range of normal driving (including driving moderately outside the limits of the law), or in the range of abnormal driving (including driving far outside the average and far outside the limits of the law), would determine how to deal with violations.
The overall change would include more automation and less enforcement personnel. A change of this sort should be relatively easy because cars already have computers. And as long as the vehicle computer system can recognize and record the driver and the relevant aspects of how the vehicle is used, the records would be valid. These records would provide the data for determining which are normal behaviors and which are abnormal. In this system all infractions are noted, but only those which merit such are penalized. And most of this could be done without enforcement personnel because of technology.
As it is, a grandmother driving home from the nursery on a quiet road on Sunday morning will be dragged into court, embarrassed and fined for allowing her car to roll an inch per second at a stop sign. Even changing the stops signs to yield signs would be a vast improvement.
It is readily evident that the system we use misses most violations of the law. We have the technology to improve this institution. Do we have the will?