Crocodile Sympathy On Wheels
By Mitch Berg
I don’t speed.
I mean, I set my cruise control at the speed limit (unless it’s icy or traction is otherwise bad, naturally), and keep it there. I’ve never had a speeding ticket; I can figure many things I”d rather spend my money on.
So in a way,, the latest teapot-tempest exercising the Strib editorial board is only of intellectual interest to me; they’re condemning the idea of allowing people with speeding tickets to pay a premium on their fine to keep their records clean:
Traffic tickets are supposed to serve as both punishment and deterrent for speeding motorists. Unfortunately, a growing number of those lead-foot drivers can buy their way out of trouble.
By paying extra, Minnesotans in some cities can keep speeding violations off of their driving records. Last year, more than 16,000 speeders took that route, according to data compiled for a March 25 Star Tribune story by Pam Louwagie and Glenn Howatt.
That number is alarming. Speed limits exist, not as suggestions, but for public safety.
And, let’s not forget, to try to enforce neighborhoods’ ideas of what life with cars should be like – I’m looking at you, Saint Paul – but that’s splitting hairs.
Here’s the part I thought was hilarious:
The legal system should also be fair in its application of the law. Minnesotans should bristle at any hint of a two-tiered justice system for speeders — one for people who can afford to pay more to make the violation go away, and another for those who can’t.
Now, that all sounds like common sense, doesn’t it? Our justice system should only have one tier to it – right?
Of course, that’s BS. The more serious the crime, the more two-tiered our justice system gets. For anything where you’re getting into misdemeanors and some of the lesser property-crime felonies, among others, the tiers are sharply divided at the point where defendants can afford defense attorneys. Below that threshold, they get squeezed into plea bargains that may or may not be a good idea (or even accurate – not a few defendants who are perfectly innocent but not wealthy get buried by well-funded county attorneys, and accept plea deals just to end the nightmare, or muddle through the best they can and occasionally get lucky.
But I’m getting ahead of myself just a tad.
Anyway – the Strib isn’t being especially daring in saying that there should just be one tier to our justice system.
Which is fine – except that whenever Mothers Against Drunk Driving wants to ratchet up penalties and wheedle down the limits for drunk driving, the Strib is right on board with the most two-tiered, wealth-friendly law in the land. If you set out to design a explicitly designed to skew the legal system against the poor, you could try to design a system more focused than Minnesota’s “implied consent” law…
….but you’d really be polishing a cannonball if you did.
Worse? The Strib editorial board was right on board with the rest of the Minnesota DFL’s chanting points bots in trying to ascribe Tom Emmer’s legislation to reform the system as some sort of unseemly payback for his own careless driving arrests, rather than the bipartisan effort to redress this classist inequity that it actually was.
So, Strib – should our justice system always be one-tiered? Or only when a DFLer gets exercised about it?
It’s hard to keep track with you people.
April 10th, 2012 at 12:45 pm
This post is pretty funny, because as I’m out and about every day visiting my customers, I reflect on all of the Obama/Biden, Obama 2008 and 2012 stickers that I see on the bumpers and rear windows of cars that fly by me! What would their dear leader and their buddy Al Gore think of them?
April 10th, 2012 at 1:00 pm
Of course, and as usual, the StarTrib (aka mouthpiece of the DFL) ignores the root cause of this. You wanna know WHY cities and counties are doing this? If you get hit with a speeding ticket by your local city cop, the VAST majority (I forget the number, but its close to 85%) of the actual fine goes to the State or County. Very little goes to the city, who ACTUALLY PAYS THE SALARY OF THE COP WHO WROTE THE TICKET. Cities are wising up to this and have “adminstrative fines”, which the State hates because it allows ALL the fine to stay with the municipality that actually WROTE the ticket. The DFL trolls absolutely hate it when others figure out the system and do an end run around their idiotic rules.
April 10th, 2012 at 1:50 pm
Hey, let’s let child molesters pay an extra fine and give them a license to run day care centers. They have shown an interest in children, after all. And take that bum Obama has running Treasury out, replace him with Bernie Madoff. Couldn’t be any worse. While we’re at it, Paul Krugman would be a great choice to rewrite US tax code.
April 10th, 2012 at 2:44 pm
Speaking of “two-tiered” traffic laws, the Star Tribune is going to come out in favor of getting rid of the “MNPass” lanes now, right? (and how about those “expedited lines” at the TSA airport checkpoints?)
April 10th, 2012 at 3:00 pm
It has only cost me a tiny tiny fraction of a fraction of a penny for each time I exceed the speed limit.
April 10th, 2012 at 3:53 pm
Expedited lines? When we go to Floridan next fall for my niece’s wedding we’re going to rent a car and drive. It’s going to cost us half what flying will.
April 10th, 2012 at 4:03 pm
You are lucky, Kermit. I can’t get off the Big Island without taking a plane. There isn’t any regular passenger ship service from Hawaii to the U.S. Mainland or from the Big Island to any of the other Hawaiian islands.
April 10th, 2012 at 4:06 pm
How often have you been stopped for 5 miles over and the cop asked if you have a clean record, then let you off with a warning to protect your clean record? That’s what this will promote.
But not everybody can afford the extra “record-cleaning” fee. If we all have a right to a clean record, won’t the government have to provide one for you, like public defenders and rent and food and internet service?
Be easier just to do away with driving records and pay the cop on the spot.
April 10th, 2012 at 4:13 pm
This is just an excuse for the city of Edina to take more people’s money. That city hall won’t pay for itself.
April 10th, 2012 at 6:40 pm
So the Strib is now in favor of treating the population equally?
Gee, I wonder if they’ll extend that ideal to the income tax, too. After all, we can’t be discriminating and unfairly punishing certain classes of people, can we?
April 11th, 2012 at 11:28 am
I believe that the insurance angle of this has been overlooked. Where I’m from, multiple speeding tickets will increase your premium since the dangerous behavior can lead to more or more severe accidents. So, while the government may get more money, the citizens are in more danger. Great tradeoff, huh?
April 11th, 2012 at 1:49 pm
BP: No they don’t want to do away with MN Pass lanes, they just want to go back to the social engineering of HOV only. No evil Richie-Rich single driver should be allowed to pay to not sit in traffic.
Rudy: Speaking of evil insurance, I read several years ago in a Car and Driver magazine expose` on GEICO nightmares, that they used to donate hundreds of laser speed guns to municipal police departments. Nothing like using the local constabulary to increase your potential revenue. After reading that, I vowed the only way I would ever purchase insurance from GEICO is if they were the only insurance company left and had a monopoly on the insurance market.
The only time I drive the speed limit is if the rest of traffic is going the speed limit. My personal rule of thumb for speed limits is 25mph residential, 5mph over on 30-35mph arterials, speed limit on 40-45mph arterials, and traffic speed or 65-69MPH on in-town freeways, whichever is greater. I also move to the left lane as soon as possible and stay there until 1/2 mi before I need to get off. To subdue all the “LEFT LANE FOR PASSING ONLY” cries, I usually go a few MPH faster than the lane directly to my right. The last time I got a ticket was 2005 and that was for 80 in a 55. It was a warm and sunny summer evening, I was feeling my oats and he was well hidden. Before that it was 1993 on a road trip to San Diego in a 5 liter Mustang. Based on the way we drove on that trip, the fact that I only got one and my buddy only got two can only be explained by divine intervention.
April 11th, 2012 at 1:49 pm
The key to getting away with it is don’t attract attention.