Reason Magazine - Topics > Automobiles

St. Louis Cops Turn Forfeiture Policy Into Free Car Rental Service

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 11:03:00 EDT

Seems that the city of St. Louis, like many cities, allows the police to confiscate the cars of people suspected (but not necessarily convicted) of certain crimes. They have a contract with a city towing firm, and said firm was allowing police officers and their families to "rent" confiscated cars free of charge, sometimes for months on end. Officers and their families could also sometimes purchase the confiscated cars at a fraction of the cars' value.

All of that is pretty outrageous. But it gets better. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch stumbled onto the story after investigating the daughter of the city's police chief. She had been involved in a number of accidents with different cars. On several occasions she had wrecked a car, then simply gone down to the towing service to get a 60-80 percent discount on a new one. After one accident, her blood-alcohol concentration tested at .17. She wasn't arrested or charged. The department says it has "no idea" why she was let go.

The police department hired a law firm, which concluded that the towing arrangement broke no rules or laws. The chief improbably claims he was oblivious to the deals his daughter was getting (her relationship with the towing service apparently goes back to 2002). The Post-Dispatch reports that the chief's last public statement on the matter was that, "the absolute necessity in maintaining transparency in the eyes of the public."

He has since declined to comment.

(Via TheNewspaper.com)

Now: Cell Phone Check Points

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 16:22:00 EDT

California's "hands-free" cell phone law had only been in effect a few hours before police across the state began setting up checkpoints to nab gabbers.

I would doubt these checkpoints are legal. The Supreme Court has approved checkpoints to find drunk drivers and fugitives and to catch illegal immigrants or drug traffickers near the border, but has generally said they're unconstitutional for other purposes—including, believe it or not, for random drug searches.

MORE: Per the comments, the newscast may have been misleading in calling these "checkpoints." If it's just a matter of police watching from the side of the road as people drive by, it's not a checkpoint. Which, come to think of it, is almost certainly what's happening. If these were actual checkpoints, you'd think most people would have the common sense to hang up as they approach.

Good Enough for Government Work

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 15:05:00 EDT

When the traffic cameras in Redwood, California send back photos with obscured license plates, officials there dispose of them, lest they wrongly fine a motorist for an infraction he didn't commit.

Wait. That's what they should do. Actually, in some cases they just guess what the obscured numbers might be until they find a match in the database, then stop guessing and send the their best guess a $385 ticket (plus points off his driving record).

TheNewspaper.com notes that Redwood isn't the first city to guestimate infractions. Redwood imposes no penalties on officers who issue false citations.

Drinking and Driving for Public Safety

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Fri, 23 May 2008 13:14:00 EDT

Last month, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration released the results of a report that asked 124,000 adults if they had driven under the influence of alcohol in the last year.

The results were kinda' fun. Wisconsin finished with the worst results in the country, with one in four respondents having admitted to driving under the influence over the previous 12 months. The survey results led to articles like this one, proving the psychology and demographics of the state's residents to explain their risky behavior.

But as the National Motorists Association points out, Wisconsin's highway fatality rate is significantly lower than the national average. Riffing off how government typically manipulates data like this in the public health context, NMA satirically suggests a public health campaign encouraging a drink or two before getting behind the wheel.

What's not exactly clear is whether the government agency that conducted the survey defined "under the influence (and if they did, how they defined it), or if they left it up to the respondents to come up with their own definition. What does seem clear is that the state with the most drivers under the influence (or at least the state that's most honest about it) isn't exactly littering its highways with dead motorists.

In other DWI news, you might want to steer clear of San Antonio this weekend. Officials there announced this week that police will forcibly draw blood from any motorist who refuses a breath test.

Offer a Ride, Lose Your Car

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Mon, 19 May 2008 09:56:00 EDT

Thank God this criminal has been stopped before he strikes again:

A man who said he thought he was just helping a woman in need is accused of running an illegal taxi service.

Miami-Dade County’s Consumer Services Department has slapped Rosco O’Neil with $2,000 worth of fines, but O’Neil claims he is falsely accused.

“I ain’t running nothing illegal,” O’Neil said.

The 78-year-old said he was walking into a Winn-Dixie to get some groceries when he was approached by a woman who said she needed a ride.

“She asked me, ‘Do I do a service?’” O’Neil said. “I told her no. She said, ‘I need help getting home.’”

O’Neil told the woman if she was still there when he finished his shopping, he would give her a ride. She was, so he did.

As it turned out, the woman was an undercover employee with the consumer services department targeting people providing illegal taxi services.

“She said the reason she targeted him (is because) she saw him sitting in his car for a few minutes,” said Ellen Novodeletsky, O’Neil’s attorney.

After O’Neil dropped off the woman, police surrounded him, issued him two citations and impounded his minivan. On top of the fees, it cost O’Neil an additional $400 to retrieve his minivan from the impound lot.

There are no prior complaints that O’Neil was providing illegal transportation for a fee.

“It’s not entrapment because she didn’t expect him to provide her transportation,” said Sonya Perez, a spokeswoman for the consumer services department.

O’Neil claims he was just being kind and providing a ride to a lady in need.

“There’s all kinds of possibilities, but the fact of this particular case, what our enforcement officers witnessed — because we had several on the scene, plus a Miami-Dade police officer — and all the information came back the same, that this was a business transaction,” Perez said.

O’Neil said he never even discussed money until the woman insisted upon it.

“She asked me, ‘How much you charging?’” O’Neil said. “I said, ‘Anything you give me.’ She said, ‘No, I need a price.’”

That's Not the Ticket

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Thu, 15 May 2008 17:25:00 EDT

Whether out of ineptness or malice, Dallas police officers sometimes add charges to a traffic citation after they've handed the driver his copy. The driver finds out after he sends in his fine (for a burned-out tail light, say) and later receives a notice threatening him with arrest if he fails to pay the fine for some other offense he did not even realize he'd been accused of committing (failing to wear a seat belt, say). This is not only irritating but unconstitutional: It violates the Sixth Amendment right "to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation." Although Dallas Police Chief David Kunkle told The Dallas Morning News "he does not believe the department has a widespread problem" with ex post facto ticket alteration, the truth is he has no way of knowing:

Several things can happen when people discover an officer has cited them with a violation that doesn't appear on their copy of the ticket.
Some complain to the courts and the additional charges are dropped, but don't file complaints with the police department. Some pay the fines without complaint, and some can't prove a ticket has been tampered with because they do not save their copies.
These things make it difficult to assess the scope of such ticket-writing practices...
"We write about 400,000 tickets a year," [Kunkle] said. "We don't know the numbers of these [illegally altered citations] because the tickets are going to look normal to us coming in."
"You're only going to see the problem if you try to look at the copy of the citation the citizen got vs. the one that went to the municipal court system," Chief Kunkle said.

Having received a speeding ticket in Dallas, I can testify that it's nearly impossible to decipher one of the city's citations (or figure out how big your fine is) even if the officer remembers to mark down all the charges. Here's a solution that might address both problems:

The department is also working on a long-range plan to move to a system where tickets are filed electronically, with a printout handed to the ticketed person, thereby limiting the chance of any errors or tampering.

The short term looks less promising:

After receiving inquiries from The News, police officials said they plan to issue a memo reminding officers that altering charges on a citation isn't acceptable.

[Thanks to Michelle Shiinghal for the tip.]

Con Law for Nurse Legislators

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 13:29:00 EDT

Tennessee Sen. Rosalind Kurita has a new idea:

Defense attorneys would be banned from advertising their expertise with drunken driving cases under a bill advancing in the Senate.
Sen. Rosalind Kurita, a Clarksville Democrat, successfully added the provision to a bill that would create an online registry of repeat DUI offenders in Tennessee.
Kurita says officials have a hard enough time convicting drunken drivers without lawyers advertising their expertise in the field and offering discounts to DUI defendants.

Hat tip to Rick Davis.

But Officer, the Seat Belt Doesn't Fit Over My Explosive Vest

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 10:41:00 EDT

We must be turning the corner in Iraq, because police in Baghdad have begun enforcing a law that requires drivers to wear seat belts. "Some might say that there are more pressing issues," The New York Times concedes, "like the car bombs that can turn a morning commute into a nightmare of blood and body parts, the daily killings and kidnappings, the political and sectarian infighting." Then again, maybe the seat belt law reflects Iraqis' aspirations to be like the peaceful, affluent countries of the West:

"It is a symbol of civilization," said a taxi driver, Ahmed Wahayid, whose 1993 Hyundai Elantra was stuck in a long line of cars waiting to clear a checkpoint. "Western people in Europe and America have it, so we are like them."

But forcing people to wear seat belts may represent the wrong kind of normality:

Brig. Gen. Zuhair Abada Mraweh, traffic commander for the capital's Rusafah district...said that the seat belt legislation—which applies only to drivers, not passengers—was in effect during the government of Saddam Hussein.

According to the Times, by the way, Mraweh "said that there were no dependable statistics on traffic accidents, but that enforcing the law would reduce them by 70 percent." If seat belts in Iraq prevent crashes, I guess that's why car bombers don't wear them.

As Goes Bangor, So Goes Maine

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 15:21:00 EDT

Last week Maine became the fourth state, along with Arkansas, Louisiana, and California, to prohibit smoking in vehicles carrying minors. Its law, which covers all passengers under 16 and allows primary enforcement (meaning that a driver can be pulled over just for violating the smoking ban), is the strictest so far. The Arkansas and Louisiana bans apply only to little children. California's covers anyone below 18, but a smoker can be cited only if he's first pulled over for some other reason. The main backer of Bangor's car smoking ban, after which the state law is modeled, says next year he will push Maine legislators to raise the cutoff age to 18 and increase the penalty, now a $50 fine. Police can't know the age of people in a car until they pull it over, of course, so the law could provide a handy excuse for hassling young adults who smoke, especially if its coverage is extended to 16- and 17-year-olds. Don't like the looks of that long-haired 20-year-old with a NORML bumper sticker? If he's smoking in the presence of someone who might be a teenager, you've got all the justification you need for a traffic stop.

My previous comments on car smoking bans (and my reasons for thinking they are not justified by the need to prevent child abuse) can be found here, here, and here, among other places.

Petty Tyranny in California

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 09:14:00 EDT

Terrific bit of investigative journalism from the OC Register finds that nearly one million cars in California owned by public officials are outfitted with special plates that make them immune to fines for traffic violations.

An Orange County Register investigation has found that the program, designed 30 years ago to protect police from criminals, has been expanded to cover hundreds of thousands of public employees – from police dispatchers to museum guards – who face little threat from the public. Their spouses and children can get the plates, too.
This has happened despite warnings from state officials that the safeguard is no longer needed because updated laws have made all DMV information confidential to the public.
The Register found that the confidential plate program shields these motorists in ways most of us can only dream about:
• Vehicles with protected license plates can run through dozens of intersections controlled by red light cameras and breeze along the 91 toll lanes with impunity.
• Parking citations issued to vehicles with protected plates are often dismissed because the process necessary to pierce the shield is too cumbersome.
• Some patrol officers let drivers with protected plates off with a warning because the plates signal that the drivers are "one of their own" or related to someone who is.
[...]
Some police officers confess that when they pull over someone with a confidential license plate they're more likely to let them off with a warning. In most cases, one said, if an officer realizes a motorist has a confidential plate, the car won't be pulled over at all.
"It's an unwritten rule that we would extend professional courtesy," said Ron Smith, a retired Los Angeles Police Department officer who worked patrol for 23 years. "Nine out of 10 times I would."

Smoking Bans Kill, Part II

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 12:33:00 EDT

A new study reported in the Journal of Public Economics finds that smoking bans are associated with increases in alcohol-related traffic deaths. "We observe an increase in fatal accidents involving alcohol following bans on smoking in bars that is not observed in places without bans," the researchers report. They surmise that drinkers respond to bans by driving further to find bars where they're allowed to light up, either because the bars are in a different jurisdiction or because they have outdoor seating. That means more time on the road in a less-than-sober condition:

"The increased miles driven by drivers who wish to smoke and drink offsets any reduction in driving from smokers choosing to stay home after a ban, resulting in increased alcohol-related accidents," the study says.
The authors, Scott Adams of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Economics Department and Chad Cotti, currently at the University of South Carolina, call the results "surprising."
"We thought we would see a reduction," Adams said. "Our first thought was, 'Throw it away, it must be wrong.' "...
The 2-year study looks at highway fatality data involving a driver with blood alcohol content over 0.08 in cities and counties with bans and compares it to incidences in surrounding areas without bans. The study was not funded by outside organizations, the authors said.
Results show an increase in accidents in areas after smoking bans were enacted and near the jurisdiction lines.

A Wisconsin anti-smoking activist quoted by Madison's Capital Times seems irritated by the study and reacts skeptically. But the results need not be seen as an argument against smoking bans (the interpretation I'd favor). They could be seen as an argument for stricter bans that forbid smoking even outdoors and for wider bans that do not allow escape to more tolerant jurisdictions. Adams tells the Times "a well-enforced national smoking ban would get rid of the drunken driving increases related to smoke bans."

Your Papers, Please

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 10:20:00 EDT

Looking for a toy to get your kid acclimated to post-REAL ID America?

From the product description:

Pull over! The traffic police have blocked the road to all vehicles. Wearing realistic uniforms and printed emergency vests, they have set up a roadblock with 4 warning lights and 2 pylons. They are also equipped with a map, stop sign, and pistols.

What, no Breathalyzer?

Fred Flintstone Should Stay Out of Toronto

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 10:43:00 EDT

In court the other day, Toronto prosecutor Daniel Lerner was trying to make the case that a 1986 Buick Regal converted into a four-man pedal car by local artists was an inherently unsafe vehicle. He argued that if the operators on the left braked before the operators on the right, the car could swerve into oncoming traffic. Maybe. But as the artists' lawyer pointed out, Toronto allows rickshaws on its streets, and they have no brakes at all. Then Lerner turned his attention to the Buick's headlights, which had been replaced with candles:

"What would happen," Lerner [asked] with pointed conviction, "if a lit candle hit another car?"
As the small courtroom in Old City Hall erupted in giggles, Lerner withdrew his question.

The artists won.

[Thanks to Mark Young for the tip.]

When "Neocon" Lost its Meaning

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 16:36:00 EDT

The Washington Post has an odd but interesting profile today of three officials in the Department of Transportation -- Tyler Duvall, D.J. Gribbin, and Mary Peters -- who believe in, and are actively working toward, the use of market forces in improving the nation's transportation system.

When Democrats took control of Congress and stripped most earmarks from last year's federal budget, Peters took $850 million that would have been shipped to hundreds of municipalities and poured it into Urban Partnerships, a pilot program awarded to five cities on the condition that they test congestion pricing. [...]
[T]he goal is not just to combat congestion but to upend the traditional way transportation projects are funded in this country. They believe that tolls paid by motorists, not tax dollars, should be used to construct and maintain roads.
They and other political appointees have spent the latter part of President Bush's two terms laboring behind the scenes to shrink the federal role in road-building and public transportation. They have also sought to turn highways into commodities that can be sold or leased to private firms and used by motorists for a price. In Duvall and Gribbin's view, unleashing the private sector and introducing market forces could lead to innovation and more choices for the public, much as the breakup of AT&T transformed telecommunications.

So how are they viewed by transit advocates and Democrats?

"Tyler Duvall is a little pointy-headed neocon with grand ideas about the future of transportation, and they all involve tolling," [House Transportation and Infrastructure highways and transit subcommittee chairman Peter] DeFazio said. "He's bright, young, energetic -- just totally wrong, and has a bizarre, neocon view of transportation."

reason on congestion pricing here; on toll roads there.

Study Says Red Light Cameras Cause Death, Mayhem, Acne

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 13:48:00 EDT

Okay, they didn't go that far. But in a study published this month in the Florida Public Health Review, University of South Florida researchers did find that red light cameras are little more than revenue generators, and actually make intersections less safe than doing nothing at all.

"The rigorous studies clearly show red-light cameras don’t work," said lead author Barbara Langland-Orban, professor and chair of health policy and management at the USF College of Public Health.
"Instead, they increase crashes and injuries as drivers attempt to abruptly stop at camera intersections. If used in Florida, cameras could potentially create even worse outcomes due to the state’s high percent of elderly who are more likely to be injured or killed when a crash occurs."

What else they found:

• The injury rate from red-light running crashes has dropped by a third in less than a decade, indicating red-light running crashes have been continually declining in Florida without the use of cameras.
• Comprehensive studies from North Carolina, Virginia, and Ontario have all reported cameras are significantly associated with increases in crashes, as well as crashes involving injuries. The study by the Virginia Transportation Research Council also found that cameras were linked to increased crash costs.

So what about those studies frequently trotted out by legislators eager to install intersection cameras?

Some studies that conclude cameras reduced crashes or injuries contained major “research design flaws,” such as incomplete data or inadequate analyses, and were conducted by researchers with links to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. The IIHS, funded by automobile insurance companies, is the leading advocate for red-light cameras. Insurers can profit from red-light cameras, since their revenues will increase when higher premiums are charged due to the crash and citation increase, the researchers say.

One of those flawed studies credited red light cameras credit for downward trends in intersection injuries that began long before red light cameras were actually installed. Others lumped continuing decreases in injuries at intersections without red light cameras with actual increases in injuries at the considerably fewer intersections with cameras. They'd then come up with conclusions such as, "our intersections are safer since we installed red light cameras," taking care to use words like "since" intsead of "because."

One particularly perverse problem the study didn't address is the temptation among some city governments to actually shorten yellow lights at camera-monitored intersections to increase revenue, despite well-documented research showing that shortening yellows is pretty much guaranteed to cause more accidents.

Retro Hello to Tata Nano

kmw@reason.com (Katherine Mangu-Ward) — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 16:45:00 EST

As the developing world snaps up tin can cars of the future (like the $2,500 Tata Nano) in ever-increasing numbers at ever-decreasing prices, doomsayers everywhere have jumped in with bleak predictions about pollution, traffic congestion, and the decline of mass transit. As an antidote, enjoy a little 1950s optimism about the glorious transportation future, filled with land-to-water RVs, teletype traffic updates, punch card vacation itineraries, fog "dispelling devices," and in-car radar.

Via Bronwyn Hartung

Cross-posted at reason.tv

Freedom of Travel Is So 1988

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 14:50:00 EST

In 1988 the Washington Supreme Court ruled that "sobriety checkpoints" violate a provision of the state constitution that says "no person shall be disturbed in his private affairs, or his home invaded, without authority of law." Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire wants to give them a try anyway, arguing that they might pass muster if they're authorized by a statute that requires Superior Court warrants for specific locations and times. Gregoire also suggests that the unpleasantness of a constitutional challenge could be avoided if Washingtonians would only learn to cooperate with the authorities:

Gregoire on Monday called upon residents to be "team" players in the state's fight to save lives by accepting the proposed incursion on their driving rights, comparing the traffic stops to security checks at airports and courthouses.
"The fact of the matter is it's a different day than it was 20 years ago," she said at a news conference at Lynnwood's Meadowdale High School, where the checkpoint procedures were demonstrated. "It is literally a partnership with every single citizen to make sure our roadways are safe."

In 1990 the U.S. Supreme Court said stopping motorists at random just to make sure they aren't intoxicated is consistent with the Fourth Amendment's guarantee against "unreasonable searches and seizures" (although police at a checkpoint still need some indication of drunkenness to demand that a driver undergo a breath test). According to Mothers Against Drunk Driving, which loves this sort of suspicionless traffic stop, 39 states have them. Gregoire should be proud to be in the minority. Instead she's embarrassed that her state clings to the unfashionable idea that police should not stop and detain people for no particular reason.

[Thanks to Ronald Skinner for the tip.]

For the Voice, You'll Have a Choice of William Daniels or Majel Barrett

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 13:20:00 EST

It doesn't fly, but it still sounds pretty cool. Tomorrow at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, G.M. plans to unveil a prototype of a self-driving car:

The automaker expects driverless vehicle technology to be ready for testing by 2015 and in vehicles that it sells by 2018, a G.M. spokesman, Scott Fosgard, said on Sunday.
"The technology exists right now to move cars without a driver," Mr. Fosgard said, adding that a self-driving vehicle would "know where all the vehicles are around it, dramatically reduce accidents and even reduce congestion."

In a 2007 reason review of Daniel Wilson's Where's My Jetpack?, Katherine Mangu-Ward asked whatever happened to the technological wonders promised by science fiction. On Hit & Run she has called attention to innovations that fall somewhat short of Jetsons-style transportation: an airplane that can be driven on the highway but can take off only at an airport and a hovercraft that's not allowed on public roads. The car that drives itself seems more practical.

Madder Than MADD

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 12:54:00 EST

Andrew P. Thomas, the chief prosecutor in Maricopa County, Arizona, has begun shaming people convicted of driving under the influence by posting their pictures, names, and blood alcohol levels online. A misdemeanor offense is enough to qualify. For those convicted of DUI-related felonies, Thomas has rented billboards that say, "Drive Drunk...See Your Mug Shot Here." At the risk of confusing passers-by who might think he's the guy pictured in the mug shot, Thomas reserves the bottom quarter of the billboards for his own name, in white-on-red letters as big as the headline. To someone unschooled in the principles of criminal justice, these billboards might look like thinly veiled re-election posters. Thomas sets the record straight:

The purposes of the billboards and the Web site, Mr. Thomas has said, are to inform the public about drunken-driving laws, and to serve as a deterrent.
"People tend to like it, and it gets a message across to the offender," said Mike Scerbo, a spokesman for Mr. Thomas, who declined to be interviewed. "We haven't heard any complaints."

Taking Thomas at his word, he is imposing extrajudicial punishment, based on his unilateral conclusion that the penalties prescribed by law for DUI offenses provide an inadequate deterrent. Notably, even Mothers Against Drunk Driving has reservations about his approach:

"Some parts of the Web site are good because they are informational and trying to provide the victim's perspective," said Misty Moyse, the spokeswoman for the group. However, she said, "M.A.D.D. would not want to be involved in calling out offenders. We are interested in research- and science-based activities proven to stop drunk driving."

A local defense attorney, as you might expect, is a bit more upset:

"I just can't believe he's doing it," said Mark Weingart, a defense lawyer in Tempe who has advised hundreds of people facing charges of driving under the influence. "Besides the fact that it is in bad taste, D.U.I.'s usually involve somebody with no criminal history. The downside to this person being published on the Web site is tremendous. I don't see the point. Why doesn't he put sex offenders up there?"

Public shaming of sex offenders? How could you get politicians to support something like that?

Zero Tolerance for Artificial Alertness

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 11:42:00 EST

NORML notes that a study reported in the December issue of the journal Traffic Injury Prevention found that Sweden's adoption of a "zero tolerance" law for driving under the influence of drugs was followed by a 10-fold increase in blood samples submitted for tests by police. Under a zero tolerance policy, which the Bush administration has been urging more states to adopt, it is illegal to drive with any detectable amount of a controlled substance in your blood, even if you're not impaired. Since marijuana can be detected long after its effects wear off, driver tests in the U.S. tend to catch pot smokers, whether or not they're driving while stoned. But in the Swedish study, cannabis alone was detected in just 4 percent of cases, cannabis along with other substances in another 20 percent. By contrast, 60 percent of the drivers tested positive for amphetamines.

Which raises the question: Does the government really want to discourage drowsy drivers from taking stimulants? Since the article isn't available online, I'm not sure how police selected drivers for testing. But even if it turned that drivers involved in accidents were especially likely to test positive for amphetamines, that doesn't mean eliminating amphetamine use by drivers would, on balance, improve public safety. Since sleepy drivers are prone to accidents and people take amphetamines when they're sleepy but need to stay up, testing positive for amphetamines could be a marker for sleepiness. The important question is how many people avoid crashes by taking amphetamines that keep them awake and improve their alertness.

Pay-As-You-Drive Insurance

kmw@reason.com (Katherine Mangu-Ward) — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 16:16:00 EST

A British insurance company has debuted a system in which you pay as you drive for precisely the coverage you need. It monitors your speed, braking habits, etc. and sets premiums accordingly.

By tracking vehicle journeys [with an in-car "black box], taking into account factors such as route, time of day, braking, age of driver, and so on, Norwich Union [insurance company] promises to be able to reward the best drivers with lower insurance premiums. It maintains this doesn't equate to losing customers paying the highest premiums. These individuals tend to call on their insurance more often and lead to lower margins--far better to leave them to the competition.

The system uses an ultra-powerful database that deals with 1 billion rows of data a day. The existence of this database--and the technology to get data into it, in tiny 2 byte packets transmitted from the cars--puts the longstanding libertarian dream of pay-per-mile highway taxes/road maintenance fees in the realm of the possible. Plus it enables nearly perfect price signaling to drivers about the decisions they make on the road about how to drive, where to drive, and how often to drive. And lo and behold:

The U.K. government is eyeing plans for a pay-as-you-drive system to replace standard road tax discs.

Privatize the roads (or at least read about it) here and here.

Stay Off the Tracks and Other Vital Lessons in Driving Safety

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 13:46:00 EST

I am in the middle of a six-hour online "defensive driving course" that will allow me to escape the fine and possible car insurance implications of a ticket I got several weeks ago for driving about 45 miles an hour on a Dallas street where the speed limit (I discovered) is 35. But don't worry: I'm being punished for my recklessness. The state-certified course, which is certified by the Texas Education Agency, is godawful dull, replete with instructional videos reminiscent of the shorts they used to mock on Mystery Science Theater. It was also intimidating at first, since some sections present a lot of statistics, leaving you to wonder how much you're supposed to remember. Almost nothing, it turns out. Pages full of information on traffic fatality trends, for instance, were followed by a single question asking what the leading cause of car crashes is.

Although I learned that I should never drink and drive, last night I discovered that I could take the driving course while intoxicated with no apparent impairment of my performance. In fact, a few drinks made fare such as Paths of Thunder—a 15-minute lecture to people who are tempted to drive around the gates at railroad crossings, despite the warning sign, flashing lights, and clanging signal—almost enjoyable. In my relaxed state, I was also less annoyed at the "correct" answers that are not, strictly speaking, correct. E.g., when asked, "In which of the following circumstances is it acceptable to speed?," you are clearly supposed to pick "it is never acceptable to speed," although one can imagine scenarios, such as rushing someone to the hospital, when it maybe might be OK to go 45 mph in a 35-mph zone.

For some reason, the penance for speeding also includes sitting through a 10-minute video on the virtues of donating tissue and organs. (After the video, I was expected to affirm that the system for distributing organs is "fair and impartial.") Not only is this subject unrelated to defensive driving, but the video's message runs counter to the course's safety advice. Why wear a seat belt or motorcycle helmet if it will reduce your chances of supplying desperately needed organs to people who will die without them? What kind of selfish bastard are you? Tellingly, the one example of a donor cited in the video was a teenager who was struck by lightning during football practice, which I'd guess is a somewhat less common scenario than dying in a car crash.

Another inconsistency I noticed last night: You should avoid using your horn except when absolutely necessary, lest you provoke a potentially deadly outrburst of "road rage." At the same time, you should always use your horn when passing another vehicle, presumably so you can deliver the completely unprovocative message, "Screw you, slowpoke!"

Still, I'm happy to pay the company that supplies the course $25 (the minimum charge required by law) rather than pay the city of Dallas a few hundred dollars and risk higher insurance premiums. I'm just skeptical that I will end up a better driver as a result.

In D.C., No More Due Process for Parking Tickets

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 10:02:00 EST

TheNewspaper.com reports:

In an attempt to stem the loss of revenue from motorists contesting parking tickets, cities are effectively eliminating the traditional due process rights of motorists to defend themselves at an impartial hearing. By the end of next year, Washington, DC's Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) will not allow anyone who believes he unfairly received a citation to have his day in an administrative hearing.

"DMV will complete the phase-out of in-person adjudication of parking tickets in favor of mail-in and e-mail adjudication by December 2008," the Fiscal Year 2008 DMV plan states.

The move is intended to allow automated street sweeper parking ticket machines to boost the number of infractions cited well beyond the 1.6 million currently handed out by meter maids. As one-third of those who contest citations in the city are successful, the hearings cut significantly into the $100 million in revenue tickets generate each year.

Under the DMV's plan, motorists will only be able to object to a ticket by email or letter where city employees can ignore or reject letters in bulk without affected motorists having any realistic recourse.

And this is cute:

In Boston and other cities in Massachusetts, motorists cannot challenge a $100 parking ticket in court without first paying a $275 court fee. If found innocent, the motorist does not receive a refund of the $275.

Private Traffic Stops, Never Mind the Cops

bdoherty@reason.com (Brian Doherty) — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 20:59:00 EDT

Declan McCullagh of Politech provides a fascinating set of links and stories involving an institute--the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation--that specializes in getting government grants to do research that, wouldn't you know, gives government cover to take away more liberty when it comes to alcohol and drugs.

Seems that the institute got the Gilpin County Sheriff's office in Colorado to help them stop drivers at checkpoints to submit to--purely voluntary!--breath, blood, and saliva analysis.

The Denver Post's story on the incident, for which the Sheriff's office apologized when citizens reported feeling quite a bit of pressure to comply when stopped by blue jump-suited people accompanied by cops asking them for precious bodily fluids and the very breath of life itself.

McCullagh's reason archives.

LA Is Number One American City...in Traffic Congestion

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 07:33:00 EDT

The Los Angeles metropolitan area led the nation in traffic jams in 2005, with rush-hour drivers spending an extra 72 hours a year on average stuck in traffic, according to a study released on Tuesday.
The metropolitan areas of San Francisco-0akland, Washington, D.C.-Virginia-Maryland, and Atlanta were tied for the second most gridlocked areas, according to the study by the Texas Transportation Institute.

More here.

There are solutions to such problems, but they all require rethinking the current (public) ways that roads are planned, built, and maintained (or not maintained).

As readers of reason know, "Traffic Jams Are Made In City Hall," and they can be solved, or at least greatly reduced through a series of five improvements ranging from creative construction, smarter management, market pricing for roads, market pricing for parking, and privatization. Read all about it--while you're stuck in traffic wasting as much as an extra 72 hours a year--hey, watch out for that stopped car!--here.