4 ms·
> "The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly" This is an approach that I like for most bad laws (though noting that its attribution to L
by bmelton 10y ago
> "The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly"
This is an approach that I like for most bad laws (though noting that its attribution to Lincoln is questionable). That said, this isn't a case of the law being good or bad, but about the enforcement being bad. Most people would agree that traffic lights are a net good, and that running a traffic light in a way that causes harm would be a bad act, ergo, laws against running traffic lights seem to be overall good on balance.
Moreover, it is logical to assume that if people were just running traffic lights whenever they wanted to, that the net result would be in mistakes that would ultimately result in harm.
But if you're at a 5 minute red light in the middle of the night with a wife who is in labor and nobody else is around, would you support enforcement of that law against the man who runs that light? Nobody was harmed, no damages were caused, and waiting for the light might potentially have caused a medical issue for which the driver could have sued.
The point of the article isn't that "red lights are bad" or that "running red lights is good", but the more nuanced take that "the enforcement of red light laws as both a civil and criminal act while adhering to the tenets and protections of neither is bad", which is (at least taking the article on faith) correct, as applied.
At its core, the author does themselves a mild disservice by closing with the standing argument. Yes, I can't sue you for harms you didn't cause, and nor can I sue you for harms you might have caused, but didn't. Moreover, it is true that the state similarly has no standing for suits in which no harms were caused, but that is not the core of the wrong he is fighting.
- TheGrumpyBrit 10y agoThere's a counter argument that in a situation where your wife is in labour and you're stuck at a red light, you made a conscious analysis of the risks and decided that a $100 ticket was an acceptable price to pay to get your wife to hospital in time. You elected to break the law and so the ticket should stand.
- bmelton 10y agoWhich may result in a disenfranchisement of the poor. A friend of mine (who is brilliant, but also an asshole) once shared with me a part of his philosophy on life. This occurred as we were staying in adjacent hotel rooms. There was an after-wedding party going on in his hotel room, and he lights up a cigarette. I mention to him "Hey, you know there's no smoking in DC hotels, right?" to which he responds "Yeah -- it's allowed." Pretty confident he was wrong, I kept at it, until he pointed out that it cost $150. Not understanding, I questioned him, until he broke it down -- it's not allowed, but for violating the rule, the fine is $150. For him, celebrating the wedding of our close mutual friend was a festive occasion, and worth paying the $150 for. In short, he had deemed that the fine was not a fine, but the cost, and he was willing to pay it. If laws are prohibitively expensive for the poor, but merely 'a cost' for the more well to do, then we run the risk of jeopardizing the rule of law entirely, and begs the question of whether or not the law needs to exist if nobody is harmed by its selective infraction. Liability already covers means for reliably determining who is at fault, so where there is incident, the person running the light can be considered at fault. Otherwise, it seems to be just a system for generating fees, and largely from the hoi polloi.