Quit Passing Laws That Are Not Enforced

Driving south on Route 9 through Court House last week, it hit me like a 25-foot wave: We send folks to Trenton and Washington to make laws, and don’t obey or enforce them. Do you realize just how much money we could save if we were not so enamored with passing laws to prohibit people from doing, legally, what they are going to do anyway? Think about it, the 112th Congress just started on Jan. 5, and what was the first thing they did in the House of Representatives? They read the Constitution, bit by bit.
Don’t get me wrong, that’s not a bad idea, but Congress was not sent to Washington to read that document. I would have assumed (dangerous thing to do, because when you break that word down, what does it spell?) those people would already have at least perused the Constitution before being settled in their new seats.
What really got me going was seeing another driver blabbering away on her cell phone, not with wireless device, not with a wired piece, just holding the phone up to her ear yakking away, as if she was on the back porch.
We all see it day after day, that same scenario, we want to point a blue ray gun at those people, and perhaps immediately glue the phone to their ear forever. That would be a fitting punishment, but we will never really know how many accidents were caused by people who felt the overriding need to chatter away while they are driving, which is supposed to be illegal.
Trouble is, the law gets little or now respect. Why?
Every day, the police scanner (the cheapest form of entertainment and information) is loaded with reports of accidents caused by drunk drivers or reports by other drivers of people whose driving is suspected of being impaired.
Drunken driving penalties are stiff, but that does not deter at least half the drivers on the road. I honestly would be mortified if I had to pay the fines imposed for drunk driving, yet that doesn’t stop them, early in the morning and late at night. Is there an answer?
For various infractions, the courts will revoke driving privileges. That means the person is not SUPPOSED to drive, but, like those cell phone flaunters, how many vehicles are being operated, this minute as you read this column, by unlicensed drivers. Is it only illegal when you are caught?
Laws that are not, or cannot be enforced, ought to be removed from the books. That would make it a whole lot easier for legislators. They could actually focus on ways to make our tax dollars stretch farther, and now waste their time on inane revisions of laws that no one will obey.
I hear the uproar, “Give us more police and we will enforce the laws.” Be honest, there are not enough police in the entire world to enforce half the laws that we have on the books.
If anything, we are a society that places emphasis on the goodness of each person. It is left to each of us to “voluntarily” pay income tax. It is left to each of us to ensure our children are educated, either at home or in school. It is left to the person behind the wheel to adhere to posted speed limits, to stop at those octagonal red and white signs, and not pass when there is a double yellow line.
Have we all obeyed every law every day, since we first knew right from wrong? No. Have the majority taken it as their personal responsibility to obey those laws? Yes, because they can see the benefit of them.
Regardless of my speed on the Garden State Parkway, others will pass me. If I go 65, they pass me. If I am doing 70-75 (as in being pressured to pass a string of slower moving vehicles when there are others about six feet from my rear bumper) they will pass me. I believe if I was on the Autobahn, and I did 135, that someone would pass me doing 145.
Remember when the NATIONAL speed limit was 55 mph? Good grief, the screams and howls from big rig drivers and ordinary passenger car operators were just amazing. (For you younger folks, we were supposed to do 55 mph to save gasoline. Honestly, that was the intent. I can hear you laughing at the very notion.)
To put a face on laws, in order to try to get people to obey them, such get such titles as “John’s Law,” which addresses, or is SUPPOSED to address drunks driving.
Here is a paragraph from the Hero’s Campaign website: “On April 19, 2001, New Jersey Acting Governor Donald DiFrancesco signed “John’s Law,” making it the first law of its kind in the country. John’s Law requires police to impound the cars of those charged with drunken driving for up to 12 hours, and issue responsibility warnings to those taking custody of the DUI offenders.
The law, which went into effect on Aug. 1, 2001, has been hailed by law enforcement officials as an important new weapon in their efforts to reduce drunken driving accidents and fatalities.”
I can only hope that the law has saved many lives. Is it rigidly enforced? Who will ever know?
Along with limiting municipal budgets to 2 percent increases annually, it should be a rule that state and federal legislators would be limited to sponsoring new laws to 12 a year, one for each month, and even THAT would be excessive, since there are so many on the books now that mean nothing until it’s too late.
Fewer laws would mean less time spent trying to get them passed, and more time back in the home district listening to voters and solving real life concerns.
Until that day, let us each take responsibility to obey the laws that are on the books. If they are not worth obeying, or cannot be enforced, we ought to work tirelessly to have them erased from the books. Law enforcement officers have enough to do without adding more useless regulations to the fray.