Todd Stadler's blog

un-relevant, a heavy-handed allegory

There's a major problem with speeding in Portland. You see people doing it every day, both on highways and surface streets.

What's baffling is that there are several laws on local, county, and state books that make it clear that speeding is against the law.

And yet it is extremely rare that I ever see anybody enforcing these laws. Cars go zooming by all around me at well over fifty-five miles-per-hour.

Clearly, something needs to be done.

So I've decided that the right thing to do is declare my local, county, and state governments irrelevant, consigning them to the dustbin of history.

Oh, sure, some might ask if enforcement of this law isn't up to the discretion of the entities that originally declared the speed limits.

Others might claim that while the laws are not enforceable every hour of every day of every year, people are still pulled over for excessive speeding. Or that without these laws, the speeding problem would be much worse.

This latter, so-called "containment" theory, is utter bilge. Sure, law-abiding citizens are cowed into obeying the law by seeing speed limit signs, but all it takes is one crazy driver to kill a whole lot of people.

And this is why my city, county, and state governments are irrelevant, and I have decided to have nothing further to do with them.

Furthermore, I have decided to start pulling over speeding drivers myself, since the local police won't do it.

Anybody driving fifty-six or more miles-per-hour can expect to see me pulling them over soon.

Of course, I don't have an official police car, so they might not initially recognize me or give me the respect I deserve, but I will make them pull over, using force, if necessary.

Then they will respect me. Nobody laughs at a gun.

Yes, a gun. How else will I enforce the speed limit?

After all, speeding drivers have been known to kill people before, and while simply going over the speed limit might not of itself seem dangerous, I will not let these people threaten our roads anymore.

To anyone who doubts that this needs to be done now, need I remind you that there were four times as many people in the United States killed by speeding in 1999 as were killed by terrorists in the past decade?

And that was four years ago! How long must we let this go on?

Clearly this problem needs to be dealt with, and it needs to be dealt with now.

If these various governments will not enforce their own laws, then I will lead a coalition of random citizens (most of whom won't actually help me enforce anything, and a few of whom I had to promise to give donuts to) to start pulling over speeders on our roads.

The only thing I would ask is that other people not try to do the same thing I'm doing.

If everyone goes out there and tries to enforce the speed limit themselves, things could get confusing.

After all, I often speed myself in order to catch up to those who are speeding . How else would I catch them? But I wouldn't want anyone to try to pull me over for that reason.

So if you see a maroon Toyota Camry trying to get you to pull over when you're speeding, please be nice about it, pull over, and pay the $1 million fine.

I know it seems like an awful lot to pay, but trust me, you cannot put a price on freedom.

Thank you and good night.