While I was on vacation this August, there was a controversy here in Virginia over a new program to impose Draconian (named after Draco, the first man to write a constitution in ancient Athens - I guess it was kind of harsh) fines of up to $3,500 for speeding tickets. Some have argued that the fines are too severe, while others have pointed out that the tickets are only given to those who drive more than 20 MPH over the speed limit, which legally constitutes “reckless driving.”
This law is crazy. It’s the latest example of Republican willingness to do anything – anything – to avoid raising taxes. So, in order that their rich constituents won’t have to pay more for the public good, or their ideological simpletons won’t have to re-think their stupid anti-government philosophy, they have instituted a grossly unfair system for raising money that the state needs. Here’s why they’re unfair:
- The writing of speeding tickets is random and capricious. It’s one thing to impose high penalties on wrongdoing if people have some assurance that the punishment will be meted out relatively consistently, it’s another when that punishment is meted out so seldom and so inconsistently, as is the case with speeding, that it becomes effectively random. Why should a budget gap be filled by random losers in what amounts to a reverse lottery, rather than by everyone evenly through taxes?
- Speed limits have an inconsistent relationship to genuine safety. It is entirely possible for a person to be driving along a road at a speed that is perfectly safe for the conditions – and yet be in violation of the speed limit, even by more than 20 MPH. Americans, especially in the suburbs, are fond of building overly massive, super-wide, straight, four-lane roads, which look and feel as if they're built like an autobahn -- and then slapping a 35 MPH speed limit on it. Missed the sign that the limit just dropped 20 MPH? That'll be 20% of the value of your car, please.
- It gives too much power to individual police officers. Be REALLY nice to that cop who's pulled you over. Certainly don't dare to intimate he did anything unfair or unprofessional. Police already have wide discretion in how they treat civilians. (Many are fair and professional. Some are not.) Now they will have the power to impose or refrain from imposing fines that for many citizens will be literally ruinous.
- The tough-punishment approach doesn’t work. There’s nothing worse than some jerk driving recklessly fast or just recklessly, endangering the lives of children and everyone else on the roads. I certainly want people like that punished when I see them. But this punishment is too loosely related to genuinely bad behavior, and the "tough" punishments that conservatives always love so much never work -- especially if they're not scrupulously fair. What we need are police that use good judgement to catch people who are genuinely posing a threat to others, not capricious revenue-collection agents, making up the Republicans' budgetary gaps through this unjust anti-lottery.
Several of these points can be illustrated by something that happened to me in 1998. I was driving along Route 29 through central Virginia from Charlottesville to DC when I was pulled over at a spot in the road where I hadn't noticed that the speed limit suddenly dipped. I had been driving at a speed that was perfectly safe for the long, straight, empty road I was on. Later I mentioned to my graduate advisor that I’d gotten a speeding ticket, and he said “let me guess, you were clocked at 59 MPH.” He was right! How did he know that? “They’re always for 59,” he explained, because if the cop had written me up for 60, it would have been wreckless driving, and I (and the officer) would have had to go to court, etc. Instead, it seemed, Fauquier County preferred to just take my money & run.
Comments