Monday, February 24, 2003 7:02:50 PM

"Government even in its best state is but a necessary evil...."

Thomas Paine said that in “Common Sense”.
People often scream, or sometimes cringe, when I quote the foundling fathers.

I got to thinkin' about it watching cops handing out tickets to flustered evil doers on the side of the highway. I've sat there perplexed and embarrassed on occasion. Probably you have too. We become for that brief moment outlaws, or at least ones who have been apprehended by the strong arm of the law.

I always figured that laws and rules were great as guidelines, but as arbiters of our lives they are at best a necessary evil and at worst just plain beastly. Speeding and traffic tickets are by my definition "at worst." Who, for example, sets the speed limit at 15 miles per hour on certain stretches of road? It is damn nigh impossible if you use your foot and the accelerator to meter at that speed. Better would it be to open the door and push like a scooter.

The statistics get trotted out by the high mucky mucks of highway verification. At 65 miles per hour there were 7,000 more fatalities during the year than at the 55 mile per hour. Course, you are never told that the increased traffic on secondary roads caused by slower speeds on main roads has resulted in 14,000 more fatalities. No, those aren't real statistics. See how easy it is to be fooled. But there is some truth to them.

But I wonder would fatalities go to zero if the speed limit was zero miles per hour? Or perhaps we should lower the speed limit to 35 miles per hour on our super highways. At about ten we could abandon the automobile entirely and go back to the Conestoga wagon. Just think of how taxes would decrease. Highways replaced with gently rolling plains and deep passages through mountain gorges.

AHA!

say the lawmakers and givers. Taxes wouldn't decrease at all. Because, they say, in the star chambers of the state, under those conditions, there would be no traffic tickets and revenues would dwindle. And this, it is my suspicion, is the true reason for traffic violations. Increased revenues. In PA you get smacked anywhere from $100 to $180 for a speeding ticket. That is not a friendly warning. That, my friends, is a slap across the fiscal face.

Did you ever read what it says on those traffic tickets? You have 10 days or maybe two weeks to respond or a warrant will be issued for your arrest! If you want to pay the fine you have to plead guilty to the crime by signing your name at the bottom of the ticket. Hard to take, ain’t it when criminals of high degree walk free, less punished. And then in a wonderful week of two you receive an amount of points against your driver's license that threatens to suspend it, most likely placing your livelihood in danger of extinction. To be fair, there is an out. You can also study and take a test lessening the accrued point count to prove that you know the driving laws of the state. I suppose the reasoning of our governors is that those rules must have been expunged from your mind in a vortex of wind when you surpassed the speed limit. The studying and testing will cram them back in tight. This ain't big brother. This is big father coming home after work to mete out punishment for your evil ways.

Perhaps it is just my independent spirit. Was me. I'd give some guidelines for safe driving. Put up some signs where I thought the curve lead into Dead man’s Leap then let the driver figure it out as best they could. Is there some science of speed limitology? Did some highway mavens do empirical testing on their roadways? I figure if they did they would find that their methods of construction were far more "criminal" than people cranking up to seventy-five miles an hour. And those righteous cops who travel the highways at speeds in excess of those allowed us...what's the story...the rules of safety no longer apply. Those who are the law are above the law?

Like old Tom said....

cain't nothin' outrun my broke down V8 Ford...

Or was that Chuck Berry?