Earlier this week, I spent the entire day, and a fair amount of the night (blessed be insomnia) doing online research to debate a speeding ticket I got in mid-March.
When A Highway Is Not A Highway
I got my ticket on Hawaii State Highway 139, better known as Old Keaau-Pahoa Road. The posted speed limit on that road is 25 MPH, a fact that is easy to miss when you turn off Highway 130 (the main highway, speed limit 55MPH), drive around a 20 MPH bend (see picture 1), and onto a wide straightaway that looks very much like a busy, mixed-use street in California that would have a speed limit of at least 35 MPH. (See picture 2.) In fact, it is difficult to drive on Highway 139 at 25 MPH. In order to maintain such a slow rate of travel on this road, one must use the brake pedal nearly constantly to compensate for the inherent forward momentum of most vehicles.
A school sits quite a distance back from Highway 139, and is therefore hard to see. The single northbound speed limit sign is small and white, and likewise terribly nondescript. By contrast, there are two speed limit signs in the southbound direction, and they are much harder to miss.
The weather was dry and clear. My time of travel was mid-morning. There was not a pedestrian in sight along the entire corridor. Thus, no one was in danger from my rate of travel, which was commensurate with every other car on my side of the highway.
Of course, none of this common-sense judgment counts when you are cited for a speeding infraction. Issuing a ticket for a non-harmful moving violation is an example of an absolute remedy. (Click HERE to see what I think of those.)
So what we have here is the classic speed trap. Now, most of us have been caught in one of these at some point in our driving history, and we've wished that the attending officer would have a heart and let us off with a warning. No such luck, in my case. I was issued a ticket for driving over 40 in a 25 MPH zone.
And he got me, fair and square, right?
No. It's completely covert, and completely unfair. The whole vehicle industry is in on the chase. It's all about the money. This sad commerce encompasses everyone from the municipalities to the judicial system to the insurance corporations to the car manufacturers to the law enforcement agencies.
You and I, whom they treat as people (i.e., citizens and customers) when they want to sell us their products or collect our taxes, are actually, in spirit, the pigeons in their sights, the dumb clucks in their slaughterhouse, the innocent ducks in their shooting blinds. Pulling over motorists like us, who have unknowingly run afoul of the law, and penalizing to the tune of $172 for a first offense, is unconscionable.
But that's not where it ends. According to my insurer, it will cost me an additional estimated $330 in increased insurance rates over the next three years if I do not fight this ticket and prevail. So now we are over $500 in total losses.
How cold. But them's the choices.
A rather novel option, and an extreme one which I am likely to take regardless of the outcome, entails removing my plates from the vehicle and tendering them to the folks at Hawaii DMV. This allows me to cancel the policy altogether. It also uncomplicates my life yet again, because when I choose this option, no longer will I have to buy gas for this vehicle, pay its annual registration fee, finance its maintenance, or support Hawaii's hefty insurance premiums. I figure that this can save me roughly $1,500 over the next eighteen months. End of the chase.
So perhaps one absolute remedy deserves another. Any tax that is applied absolutely, regardless of income, is a REGRESSIVE TAX. This applies to the issuance of speeding tickets, a great example of how absolute power corrupts absolutely. When the remedy is handed down to us from on high, as if it were our heads on a platter, an absolute remedy is probably the only way to fight back – from the bottom up. Opt out.
But back to the present case. I have spent over twenty hours this week studying various defenses against the court's upholding the validity of this ticket. It would certainly be easier to pay the $172 and the increased insurance premiums, and get on with my life. For "my life," however, the total penalty is equal to one month's rent, which is also 60% of my monthly disability income.
Now, many people could not afford to take the time off work to go to court and fight this ticket, and their chances of prevailing would be slim at best. So perhaps I should be grateful for the "option" of disrupting my sleep over the next five or six weeks while I rehearse my day in court. Well, no. I'm not grateful for yet another "learning experience" that has nothing to do with safety and security, and everything to do with PREDATORY CONTROL
.In fact, I was only on Highway 139 because I was running an errand as a favor for a family member. So much for good deeds, eh?
Nah. I'm not really bitter, just wiser. Society's questionable institutions just keep pushing me further and further beyond the margins of ordinary social reality, and into a strange and lonely limbo. Fortunately, I am content for now to keep my own company. I am also lucky that our family has another vehicle I can use on the rare occasions henceforth when I need to venture out of my reclusive residence here in the forest primeval. So we'll go with that for a while and see how it works out.
Besides, one less car on the road means one less tiny contribution to the oil crisis, and global warming, or whatever you want to call it when GLACIER NATIONAL PARK is well on its way to losing its namesake glaciers and becoming merely a generic "National Park."
But I digress. The real point is, our society will have one less player in the sad game of commerce that passes for our authentic experience. Let the freeze-out begin. May the glaciers prevail
- - - - -1. My related links:
(a) UNCOMPLICATE MY LIFE, part 1
(b) UNCOMPLICATE MY LIFE, part 2
2. Other related traffic citation links:
(a) This page provides an introduction to laser technology, as used to clock moving vehicles. The TIPMRA site is broad, and apparently one of the few legitimate sites to help prepare a defense against a speeding ticket. Surf around a bit and read at least this and the next two pages. (TIPMRA is "armpit" spelled backwards; thus it's a play on the phrase "the long arm of the law.")
TIPMRA has a for-pay section as well. My own opinion is that TIPMRA has its bills to pay; however, if the basic information you need is widely available on the Web for free, then you should not have to pay for it. Buyers beware any emotionally based appeals to your pocketbook. You're in deep enough already, right?
- NOTE: I paid for what appeared to be the best of these fee-based services and was not impressed. I have since requested a refund of my $19.95. Most of these sites will also try to sell you a radar detector, which will do little if any good to protect you against a laser-emitting device. Plus, they can't really keep the information current and locale-specific anyhow, particularly for laser-based citations, as more and more states grant "judicial notice" to laser citations. ("Judicial notice" means: evidence beyond dispute). It's all spy versus spy, it all costs money, and thus it all will complicate your life. So why bother?
(b) SPEED TRAP EXCHANGE is a site run as a service by the National Motorists Association (a fee-based membership organization starting at about $3 per month) where visitors can post what they believe are speedtraps. Check out SPEED TRAP LISTINGS to read up on speed traps in your area, listed by state, then click around on the rest of the site. NMA also keeps a blog, which you can read by clicking HERE.
- Read it and weep -- however, forewarned is forearmed.
P.S. "An ounce of prevention" advice: If you get a traffic ticket, start shopping around for competitive rates on your auto insurance. The insurance industry's databases are connected nationwide, so if one company knows you are looking, they all do. So if your insurer knows you are looking for a better deal, it may prevent them from increasing your rate.
Wishing you a beautiful day,
Bill Brent
[this page last updated: 2008.03.30, 12:45 p.m. Hawaii time]
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