Questing for Atlantis

In case there was any doubt, Denville Police Chief Chris Wagner is ensuring that everyone is aware that police support for Kyleigh’s Law has nothing to do with safety and everything to do with revenue.

Wagner said his officers were stationed outside Morris Knolls High School last week, giving warnings to teen drivers who either failed to display the new decals or who were violating other new GDL requirements such as the revised passenger limit.

Wagner said the warnings were intended as a informational courtesy but that tickets will soon follow.

The claimed point of Kyleigh’s Law is that it will make it easier for police to tell when teens are violating the GDL restrictions. However, the stickers serve no purpose outside of the high school, every teen driver has a GDL. The stickers serve no identifying function in this case, and enforcement of it can only be seen as a revenue measure.

In fact, not only is it a revenue measure, it is counter-productive to the stated aims of the bill. Even in the theoretical case for the law the stickers are only useful if police presence is randomly distributed throughout the areas a GDL driver is going to be driving. If it is known that police will be focused around high schools to check for red stickers than most teens are going to figure out they simply need to have it on in that vicinity and then they can remove it once they are a safe distance away, reasonably secure in the knowledge an officer is less likely to be places not near the school.

Supporters of Kyleigh’s Law said we were crazy to think police would use it as a revenue raiser rather than for safety concerns. Thank you for proving us right Chief Wagner. Now please do something productive instead.

Another unsurprising development for Kyleigh’s Law – the Appellate Division of the New Jersey Superior Court has denied a request by attourney Gregg Trautmann to delay the implementation of Kyleigh’s Law:

Attorney Gregg Trautmann of Rockaway, who is appealing a Superior Court judge’s March dismissal of his lawsuit last month, said the appellate division also rejected his request for an accelerated appeal. The denials effectively removed the last remaining legal hurdles that could have prevented Kyleigh’s Law taking effect next month.

While Trautmann has said he will continue with the appeal, their refusal to delay the implementation and grant an accelerated appeal doesn’t bode well for them overturning the lower court’s decision. But we can still hope.

In the meantime, with the stickers going on sale this Monday, I think it’s worth highlighting this piece from an earlier post I did on Kyleigh’s Law;

…there’s only one real option left – subvert the law.

I can imagine two relatively easy ways to accomplish this.

1. Ignore the law. I know I’ve seen numerous parents in messageboards say they will refuse to obey the law and will refuse to have the decals on any cars their children drive. If parents do this there will be so few decals on the road that the bill will have proven ineffective and may be open to challenge.
2. Obey the law – and then some. As I understand it, the law only says that provisional drivers will be required to have the decals. There’s nothing that says non-provisional drivers can’t use them though. If tons of cars on the road have the sticker they’ll become useless for identification purposes, and police won’t be able to use them as a guide in pulling people over (and they’ll be even less likely to do so after pulling over a few non-provisional drivers). Once again, this will prove the bill ineffective and create an opportunity to challenge it legislatively.

Personally I would recommend the second path. The first one requires a relatively strong willingness to ignore the law. Many will do that, particularly if they feel the law puts their child in danger (as I noted, and some parents are beginning to realize, the decal is a bright orange sign that tells would-be assailants “I’m young and alone, please rape me!!!”).

However, if not enough do so the effort fails.

On the other hand, if the second route is taken there is no need for illegal action (although discretely placing decals on every car in a parking lot would certainly help). It also may work more easily – every time a police officer ends up pulling someone over for having the decal on the car and they aren’t a provisional driver some resentment towards the law will build and they’ll be a bit less likely to pull over the next car that has one if there’s too many people in it.

And even if the state does claim it’s illegal to use that decal, stickers and the like can be made cheaply over the internet. We just need them to be slightly different, but still look a lot like the decal itself, and the effect will be the same.

In the end, I suspect it’ll be a lot easier to get police to stop enforcing the law because there are too many decals than it will be to get legislators to repeal it because there aren’t enough.

(Note: In no way do I advocate engaging in any illegal activity. I am simply highlighting what may be effective ways to oppose a bad law)

Back with the Kyleigh’s Law efforts, it was definitely a mistake to not develop an e-mail or some other form of distribution list. I don’t believe I blogged about this any, but there’s a bill that recently got introduced to ban the use of GPS units while driving.

I figured I could try and get all the people that were riled up over Kyleigh’s Law to put pressure on the General Assembly in order to stop this before it got to a point where it was too late to do anything, like it was with Kyleigh’s Law.

Unfortnately, the only real means of communication I had with that group is Facebook. Being the sometimes unreliable medium it is, there’s been almost zero response with regards to my efforts. I suspect if I had a more direct way of getting in contact with these people I could likely get more action going.

Lesson learned though. Next time, get an e-mail list or something like that.