Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

Raising All the Abuser Fees the State Could Ever Want in a Single Day

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by

James A. Bacon
in

Jon Baliles has an excellent solution for how the state can meet its abuser funding goals and at the same time, teach Richmonders a few basic rules of the road:

Send police to any stoplight in Virginia (especially Richmond) when a storm comes through and kills power at the intersection (or just cut it off for kicks). You can write tickets and issue fees all day long and raise enough money to pave over the entire state.

I saw so many idiots blow through inoperable stop lights yesterday (at just three intersections) rather than do what the law requires, which is treat such a light as a four way stop. People would blow through at regular speeds, some would think about stopping but keep going when Joe Moron flew on by, then the cars behind would keep the train rolling.

Responsible drivers trying to get through waited out the idiots. It was like the last few seconds of a bumper car ride as they tried to nudge through. At Leigh and Boulevard some yo-yo almost T-boned a big Dominion bucket truck at 45 MPH and another intersection there was an accident but didn’t look serious.

This happens all the time because people don’t know driving laws and regulations. And now our leaders say they are going to build roads based on a law that (in part) depends on us continuing to drive like the big final scene in the The Road Warrior.

I saw the same sort of behavior on the way home. At the intersection of Cary and Malvern alone the abusive driving fees could have funded the end-to-end paving of Hanover County (by this morning, someone had placed a single stop sign…pointing only at eastbound traffic).

And it’s ingrained behavior, too. God help you if you were on city streets after Isabel smashed the local power grid in 2003. Crossing an intersection required a leap of faith, nerves of steel and drag racer-like reflexes.

If abuser fees were in place for just that week, the state could have built an eight lane highway to Mars.

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7 responses to “Raising All the Abuser Fees the State Could Ever Want in a Single Day”

  1. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    And yet some cities are reduing the number of traffic signals, in effect opting for chaos, because this is more efficient in moving traffic than an overcontrolled system.

    RH

  2. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    There was a sign too at the west-bound side of Cary but it had been wrecked–it was all on the road in little pieces.

    Becky Dale

  3. Melanie Avatar
    Melanie

    “…rather than do what the law requires, which is treat such a light as a four way stop.”

    HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Have you seen drivers when they come to an actual four-way stop. The entertainment value is comparable to watching a SUV-driving West Ender parallel park Downtown.

  4. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Sec of Transportation
    admits the money grab

    http://ftp.tomdesablashow.com/ftp/Tom%20Desabla%2020070720%201300.mp3

  5. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    well.. you have two kinds.. the ultra-timid and the ultra-get-the-hell-out-my-way (not counting the normal sane folks).

    I pray everyday to not get behind an ultra-timid and then have an ultra-get-the-hell-out-of-my-way on my rear bumper.

    It’s a lose-lose if there ever was one. I’d like to see BOTH of them get tickets.

  6. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    Well.. perhaps the Gov knows something that others don’t know.

    Here’s a news report that confirms what I had suspected:

    The United States ranks 42nd of the 48 countries measured in the
    number of fatalities per capita, according to the Organization for
    Economic Cooperation and Development and the International Transport
    Forum. Australia, Britain, France, Germany and Japan all did
    significantly better.

    And in what many safety experts consider a more precise measure,
    fatalities per distance driven, the United States was No. 1 in 1970
    with the lowest death rate among industrialized countries reporting
    data. It now ranks 11th, with some countries reporting rates that are
    25 percent lower.

    “Here we are, probably the richest country in the world,” said Barbara
    L. Harsha, executive director of the Governors Highway Safety
    Association, which represents state highway safety offices. “Why are
    other countries doing a better job than we are?”
    …
    Safety experts said the reasons were many. One, they said, was
    inadequate driver training. Some countries require that teenagers have
    100 hours behind the wheel before they receive a license, compared to
    about 6 in the United States.

    But expert after expert said the real problem was one of culture. With
    personal freedom being a cornerstone of the United States, many states
    are loath to pass legislation that curtails them, even when it comes
    to road safety. So while the governments of other countries can easily
    pass laws to make driving safer, like a national ban on hand-held
    cellphone use, those laws here are left up to the states to impose

    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/22/automobiles/22SAFETY.html

    so .. we’ve been saying “abuser” when perhaps it should be retitled to say “Dysfunctional Culture”.

    🙂

  7. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    I believe a handful of drivers cause an inordinate amount of trouble on our highways. If I thought that the abuser fees would apply only to those real troublemakers, people who deliberately commit offenses they know to be wrong, and which result in damage, then I wouldn’t have a problem with these fees.

    But I’m afraid it is going to amount to a negative lottery, sometimes applied against those who are innnocent of deliberate acts of aggression.

    Say you encounter a hidden stop sign, and the warning sign was also hidden due to vehicle or untrmmed foliage. You run the stop sign inadvertently and get tagged with reckless driving.

    That’s a whole different thing from deliberately accelerating to crash a yellow light, or passing on the shoulder, etc.

    RH

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