Driving laws too complicated for DMV
We’ve known for a long time that our tax laws are so complicated that even the IRS can’t reliably advise you about them. That’s not the only place where we can’t know if we’re following the law. Its become a truism that motor vehicle laws are so complicated that nobody can follow them: that any police officer worth their training can cite anybody in order to justify a stop after the event.
Now it turns out that we can’t even trust the Department of Motor Vehicles.
The Republican governor’s lack of a motorcycle endorsement--or an M-1 or M-2 designation--on his license came to light on Monday, a day after the motorcycle he was operating with a sidecar collided with a neighbor’s car. On Tuesday, Los Angeles police and state officials were at odds about whether Schwarzenegger illegally operated that motorcycle.
California Highway Patrol spokesman Tom Marshall and Department of Motor Vehicles spokesman Mike Miller said the law is different for motorcycles with sidecars attached. They said the Class C license Schwarzenegger holds is enough to legally drive that type of motorcycle, and the DMV motorcycle handbook backs them up.
But a spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department, which investigated the accident, said the governor needed a motorcycle endorsement to legally operate the motorcycle - even if it did have a sidecar attached.
Lt. Paul Vernon cited the vehicle code, which includes a motorcycle with a sidecar under the definition of what is a motorcycle.
When the law becomes so complicated that even those charged with enforcement--in this case, the DMV and the Highway Patrol--can’t get it right, how can the rest of us be expected to comply with it? The law becomes little more than a tool used to harass whoever an agent of the state charged with enforcing it wants to harass.
- Governor ‘never thought’ to get license
- “The CHP and L.A. police disagree about the rules for motorcycle permits.”
More California
- California never had a free market power failure
- California’s experiment in free market power generation has become mythological in how it is remembered. The left is desperate to tar it as a free market failure. But California’s experiment wasn’t free market. It was a massive government-managed exchange practically designed to cause high prices.
- Can Californians drink a train?
- The meme goes that even if we’re wrong about global warming, the money spent will still make the world a better place. That is only true if you can drink a high-speed train.
- California threatens Amazon, kills affiliate programs
- By this time, California had to know that its new law would not bring in new tax revenue. The tax headaches aren’t worth the trouble of maintaining affiliate programs. The only reason to pass the law was to kill affiliate programs at places like Amazon and Overstock. I don’t understand; what is it about affiliate programs that states don’t like?
- Tax event horizon
- How close are we to a tax event horizon, where so many people’s income depends on complicated tax laws that they can never be reformed?
- Sometimes you wonder, other times you expunge the vote
- California state assembly so proud of vote they… erase it from the public record.
- 10 more pages with the topic California, and other related pages
More reigning in bad laws
- A one-hundred-percent rule for traffic laws
- Laws should be set at the point at which we are willing and able to jail 100% of offenders. We should not make laws we are unwilling to enforce, nor where we encourage lawbreaking.
- A free market in union representation
- Every monopoly is said to be special, that this monopoly is necessary. And yet every time, getting rid of the monopoly improves service, quality, and price. There is no reason for unions to be any different.
- Bipartisanship in the defense of big government
- We’ve got to protect our phony-baloney jobs. Despite their complaints about Trump’s overreach, Democrats have introduced legislation to make it harder for them to block his administration’s regulations.
- The Last Defense against Donald Trump?
- When you’ve dismantled every other defense, what’s left except the whining? The fact is, Democrats can easily defend against Trump over-using the power of the presidency. They don’t want to, because they want that power intact when they get someone in.
- The Sunset of the Vice President
- Rather than automatically sunsetting all laws (which I still support), perhaps the choice of which laws have not fulfilled their purpose should go to an elected official who otherwise has little in the way of official duties.
- 20 more pages with the topic reigning in bad laws, and other related pages
More traffic laws
- A one-hundred-percent rule for traffic laws
- Laws should be set at the point at which we are willing and able to jail 100% of offenders. We should not make laws we are unwilling to enforce, nor where we encourage lawbreaking.
- Speed—and safety—winning over the traffic ticket lottery
- The double-entendre from the eighties was that speed kills, but speed—at least the traffic kind—is winning. On a straight highway, until the speed limit hits 70, most drivers ignore it.
- Bad laws cause crime
- “Honestly, the level of apathy I’m dealing with is maddening.” Bad laws make it easy to get away with breaking them.
- Speeding and budgets: Conflict of Interest
- Obviously, the money generated by speed laws creates a conflict of interest for state lawmakers, who will need more “lawbreakers” in order to meet budget numbers. But the conflict of interest doesn’t always stop there.
- Targeting critics of the law
- When Canadian journalist Kerry Diotte criticized red light cameras in Edmonton, Edmonton police started looking for a reason to arrest him.
- Four more pages with the topic traffic laws, and other related pages