Posted by 757HR in Politics
It seems as if the General Assembly has once again voted down the bill to repeal Virginia’s unique ban on radar detectors. Their reasoning? “Speed on the roads of the commonwealth is a major problem,I don’t think we ought to be passing laws that make our roads less safe.” Well, that was Del. Manoli Loupassi’s (R-Richmond) reason. I wonder if that is the same reasoning behind raising the speed limit to 70. If they are, however, trying to make our roads safer, why have they not passed other laws. That might include banning cell phone use while driving. Or making a stiffer penalty for the guy I saw shaving, eating, and trying to read the paper a while back on the interstate. I would have taken a picture, but I felt the irony of crashing while trying to take a picture of a distracted driver would be too great.
Here is my list of activities that I have seen that should be banned while driving:
- All phone use
- shaving
- eating anything that requires two hands or a table
- any kind of sexual activity
- reading books, newspapers, reports, etc.
- photography
- applying makeup
- looking at other accidents
- actually programming your radio
- watching TV/DVDs
- Smoking (ban smoking because you can’t just ban dropping it in your crotch)
- writing
- searching the internet
Have I touched the tip of the iceberg yet? I won’t claim that I have never done at least one (or five). I will say though, that it is decidedly riskier to attempt one of these actions than it is to simply drive over the speed limit. There are many roads around (especially in Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, and Suffolk) that were actually designed for speeds as high as 65 mph, but their speeds are lowered due to residential areas, schools, etc. It is not the speed that causes the accidents, it is the combination of other activities with the speed. The only speed that contributes to accidents is the low speed of slow interstate drivers. They themselves are rarely involved, but the drivers going the speed limit have to pay extra attention (that they may not have due to other activities) to avoid them.
Come on General Assembly. Allow radar detectors. Work on actual problems. I will file this story with the one about Norfolk trying to ban low riding pants awhile back.
Our new governor made his first speech to the General Assembly yesterday. His major issue was, of course, the budget deficit that Virginia faces. He promised to make the cuts necessary to balance the budget without raising taxes. To lead this charge, he promised to take a pay cut and his most of his staff take pay cuts and decrease the number of support staff. Once again, he also swore to privatize the ABC stores, asserting the more than $500 million could be raised with the proceeds. He promised to push for off-shore drilling. Amidst all of this, very little was actually mentioned about our transportation problems. Aside from raising the speed limit and reopening rest stops, he made no push for more highway or transit money. To help his campaign promise to create more jobs, he wants to raise the amount of money available for small businesses and lower the threshold for jobs required to be created to qualify for tax credit. He also proposed to drastically increase the amount of money available to state tourism advertising and movie recruiting, citing a new movie called “Secretariat,” about a Virginia race horse. The movie was filmed in Kentucky and West Virginia due to a lack of state promotional money. Finally, he pushed for promotional money for Virginia’s wineries and Virginia’s commercial spaceport at Wallop’s Island.
He seems to be full of ideas. Some of them I agree with (Privatizing ABC) and some of them I think are terrible ideas (off-shore drilling). I only hope that he can muster the political will to fix our transportation system. We need more money to be devoted to transit construction and operation and we need to focus highway money on the construction of rebuilt choke points.
Good Luck Governor. Good Luck GA. Good Luck Virginia. There is definitely a lot to be done.
