Only as drunk as you can prove
The Internet liked the story. Woman smashes $20,000 breathalyzer. The smashy woman from Coxsackie likely got her “aggravated DUI” dropped down to a regular DUI. Or in plain English, got her drunk driving charge dropped down to buzzed driving. Here are the official names for three crimes in New York: driving while ability impaired, driving […]
Some numbers to chew on
Highway funding is back in the air. There’s a new round of the old lie that drivers don’t pay their fair share. This faceless menace called “drivers” is close to being a synonym for “Americans.” In the densest cities, only half the residents. Before painting ourselves as the enemy let’s look at some statistics from […]
Time to purge the NYPD
NYPD Acting Deputy Commissioner for Legal Matters Ann P. Prunty violated our civil rights last week. She said if we reveal the location of police enforcement on a public street we can go to jail. Police pretend to want to inform the public of roadblocks. I call the pro forma announcements of roadblock locations “little […]
A half million dollar lie
A police officer won $500,000 for being falsely accused of writing a bogus ticket. A man claimed his ticket for using a cell phone was retaliation for a complaint about the police officer’s own cell phone use. The dispute made local TV news before cell phone records cast doubt on the accuser’s story. If I […]
Carbo cults
Massachusetts is considering another money grab in the name of carbon. A few years ago the Governor announced higher parking rates, in the name of carbon. This time Boston Mayor Marty Walsh ordered up a report calling for a $15 per day tax on nonresidents driving into the business district, in the name of carbon. […]
Follow you follow me
The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts says using a GPS device to track a car is criminal harassment. The Boston Globe wrote “private citizens can not deploy GPS tracking devices to spy on people.” The court did not limit its holding to private citizens. Judges agreed that a GPS tracker “would cause a reasonable person […]
I can’t drive 25
Do as I say, not as I do. That was the message from Debra Panetta, chair of the Saugus Board of Selectmen, at a public hearing on reducing speed limits to 25. She said 25 miles per hour was too slow. The police chief did not recommend changing the speed limit. A traffic consultant’s report was […]
Many ways to spell “speed trap”
Every five minutes a Massachusetts driver gets an undeserved speeding ticket. Every hour a Massachusetts driver gets a federally-funded speeding ticket. Your state, like mine, gets federal funding to run speed traps. Every year the state bureaucracy generates a highway safety grant proposal and status report and sends it to the National Highway Traffic Safety […]
When is a fee not a fee?
Before the holidays a state judge delayed implementation of a new tax on taxi rides in New York City, part of the Mayor’s congestion pricing plan. Later this month he will be asked to strike the tax down permanently. Whatever the press may call it, it’s not a congestion fee, it’s a tax on a […]
Stop driving properly
Police in Newton, Massachusetts have a new web site showing causes of accidents on city streets. Somebody didn’t get the memo about progressive transportation slogans. First, they use the plain English word “accident” instead of the newspeak “crash.” And they put speed were it belongs, 19th out of 21 causes. Including maps, it’s a useful […]