Comments on: Goodbye Photo Cop

By: Legless Linda

Legless Linda — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 22:16:52 +0000

It’s about time someone had some sense about this matter and strike it down for good I hope. A car doesn’t break any laws its driver does. The driver may or may not be the owner. It is totally stupid to think that only the owner of a vehicle drives it. Consider an average family, a married couple and one or more teenagers are drivers. The little princess or sonny runs a red light and dad gets a ticket in the mail a few days later. Dad needs to take a day of of work to go to court and prove that, yes he was at work as he always is at two thirty in the afternoon, and no he wasn’t cruising West Broadway or the streets downtown like the city coprs want you to think. Maybe the cop ought to sit on the corner a while and witness these infractions if the city wants them to right more tickets to line its pockets. I doubt very much if the accidents at these corners were reduced much if any for the time thay were taking picture. This was just one more way the City of Minneapolis blew alot of our tax money.The cities stupity of not really checking into this before hand is what got me mad.
I take the bus myself as I’m handicapped and have been for many years. I have no legs since I lost them in an auto accident more than thirty years ago. I use the bus system and a wheelchair to get around the city with just fine. I don’t drive by my choice. I could if I had a specially equipped car. A law like this could help hanicapped people like me perhaps by making them slow down when they near stoplights as they should, ha! like that will happen, but you have to catch the driver not the car.

By: chacha

chacha — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 11:13:01 +0000

My solution is easy: Switch the lights to flashing red both ways. That will make it nearly impossible for the scofflaws to run the red lights. And it will make it much safer for pedestrians. Traffic flow will suck, but that won’t heap a whole new tax burden on Minneapolis taxpayers just so that suburbanites can travel as fast as they like.

By: yoder

yoder — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 18:54:56 +0000

caryc

Thank you. My job is done.

And no I don't believe in safety at any cost to freedom, but if that's what you need to believe in order to despise me then by all means.

By: ranty

ranty — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 04:45:47 +0000

Certain intersections are worse than others. I used to live at 2800 Park, and I saw MANY terrible collisions there. Morning rush hour was the worst, as late-for-workers gunned it down both 28th and Park at speeds sometimes in excess of 40mph. Running a red light and t-boning someone at that speed means serious damage and injuries, to say nothing of the danger to the daycare kids who often played in the massive front yard of the center on the NE corner of that block. (Into which struck vehicles were often propelled.)

I get the presumption of innocence argument, and I think it’s valid. At the same time, after seeing so many crashes, I also sympathize with the desire to crack down on red-light-runners.

By: mazasapa

mazasapa — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 04:05:53 +0000

I also think you demonstrate daily that you are far from believing in the inherent goodness of people, especially if they're liberal. So does that make you a liberal, too?

I was a liberal for the first half of my life and I've been a conservative for the second half. Whereas liberals seem to despise conservatives, I don't think liberals are bad people. But as Ronaldo Maximus once said: "T]he trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn't so." heh

By: caryc

caryc — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 03:39:06 +0000

People like yoder make me sick… Safety at all costs to freedom.

That’s pretty much it.

I’m just not living with the fear that so many are. It makes me sad to see how scared some people live.

By: mazasapa

mazasapa — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 00:27:23 +0000

This isn't a right vs left issue at all, it's simply how you view government's role in protecting the people.

But that is the fundamental debate of left v. right. All that other stuff is just a distraction. The left believes the role of government is to "protect the people," while the right's view of the role of government is to "protect the peoples' constitutional rights from being infringed."

We're constitutionalists, not social engineers.

Some may think they're the same thing, but they're not. One implies nanny statism, the other means simply enforcing the law. I appreciate that there's too much nuance in many of my arguments for some people here, but I keep thinking that perhaps some people get it.

By: yoder

yoder — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 22:01:10 +0000

I don’t give a crap if it’s Big Brother Government keeping people from driving like @$$holes or groups of neighborhood watch vigilantes doing whatever the hell they feel they need to do to keep themselves and their families safe. The end result just needs to be drastically lowering the number of innocent people being hurt or killed by reprobates who believe driving however the hell they want is somehow their right as an American.

I think it would be much easier and more efficient (and probably more humane and moral) to just hire more police, but that would give the republicans a conniption fit. Groups of heavily armed vigilantes seems to be more their speed.

By: Tib

Tib — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 20:55:16 +0000

I see. Conservatives are the idealists in this society? Or is it that these conservatives who abhor regulation just don’t like anything getting between them and their profits? No matter what the shitty consequences for the rest of us?

I also think you demonstrate daily that you are far from believing in the inherent goodness of people, especially if they’re liberal. So does that make you a liberal, too? Or just a really illogical conservative?

By: caryc

caryc — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 19:57:06 +0000

maz.... there have also been "law and order" conservatives who would jump all over this.

This isn't a right vs left issue at all, it's simply how you view government's role in protecting the people. While it's true that advocates of bigger government tend to go for this sort of things, a true social liberal would be against these 100%.

I think the bigger issue is society as a whole is allowing fear to rule our lives in every aspect... From the patriot act to immigration to terrorism to these sorts of surveillance programs, we let fear guide us.