Saturday, February 9, 2008

Speed = Fulfill Someone else's Greed?

9:30am on a Friday morning, I am driving to work and looking forward to the weekend. The road approaches a downhill curve while I pass on a slow rider in front of me. As I make a pass, I see what appears to be a traffic cop. Alas, it can't be..not again god, please.... Too late my friend, my fate has been sealed. The cop pulls me over and asks for license and registration.

With a sorry face, I plead to the cop to not give me a ticket, but rather just let me go off with a warning. No respite. He forgets to listen and lectures me on how drivers like myself contribute to the high fatality rate on the roads. Come again? In other words, you're telling me that my driving style is fatal? And what makes you believe that ticketing me will reduce the number of fatalities on the road? Do you have any data to prove the correlation of # of tickets issued --> reduction in road fatalities? Why don't you put on some honesty and tell me that I've just contributed to your salary and that the reason you're handing me a citation is not to reduce the number of fatalities but rather to meet your budgetary requirements. Better yet, why don't you tell me that you wish for me to repeat this offense again in the future such that your budgetary requirements continue to be met.

The cops that are dispatched to patrol against speeders are most likely the low performers of the department and therefore don't get assigned to more complicated cases. To this, I ask myself, what is the point of trying to reason an argument with someone that is on the bottom of the meritocratic chain in the police department? Doing so would be analogous to asking a second grader to explain the sociological challenges in society today.