Saturday, June 29, 2013
COLUMBUS
Back in my carefree younger years, before the burdens of adulthood turned me into the overly cynical newspaper reporter I am today, I used to help my grandfather with his annual end-of-summer garage sale.
(Stick with me here — there’s a state policy issue in all of this, I promise.)
We’d spend June and July buying antiques and furniture, refinishing the latter and putting it all out in the driveway for three days of serious money making.
One year, we sold an old dresser to this guy who lived about 20 minutes away, and he needed help getting it home. So we tied the piece to the back of my grandfather’s Ford LTD, and I climbed behind the wheel to complete the trip.
I was 16 and nervous about losing the guy I was following. And I saw the police officer sitting out in plain sight at that three-way stop that I rolled through.
He pulled me over and gave me a warning for the infraction and a ticket for not wearing a seatbelt. A few weeks later, I stood before a judge, admitted my wrongdoing and walked away with a $1 fine (this was just after the mandatory seatbelt law had taken effect, so the penalties weren’t very stiff).
The incident taught me to come to a full stop at all stop signs and to wear my seatbelt. Lesson learned.
Flash forward 20-some years, to the middle of the saga that led to Marc Dann’s early exit from office and subsequent prosecution.
Late one evening, the attorney general’s office informed reporters that it would be releasing electronic copies of Dann’s emails and other documents that we had requested.
I needed to use my home computer to access the resulting CD, so I sped away from the Statehouse, hoping to get the information to my editors before deadline.
Picture and citation
I cut it a little too close at one stoplight, noticing the flash as I drove on. A couple of weeks later, I received a picture of my car running through a red light, plus a citation informing me of the infraction and levying a fine of about a hundred bucks.
I paid the money and learned my lesson — that is, stop at yellow lights and be particularly cautious at intersections monitored by red light cameras.
This isn’t rocket science. We have laws on the books. If you break them, there are consequences, so you better learn from your mistakes or face a lightened wallet or possible injury.
Here’s another example: I once stepped into a crosswalk in downtown Columbus two seconds before the walk signal was activated. A kindly officer stopped his car in the middle of the road to inform me of the error of my ways and let me off with a stern warning. Since I don’t want to pay a $90-some fine, I now wait until the walk sign is lit to move.
Traffic citations help modify our behavior. They’re designed to keep people safe.
I don’t think anyone can argue with that point. It’s what law enforcement groups and others cited last week during a debate about red light cameras.
The Ohio House moved a bill, on a split bipartisan vote, to prohibit the use of such recording devices except in certain instances in school zones. Among other arguments, supporters of the ban say the cameras are little more than cash cows, installed by communities that aren’t controlling their spending or wanting to expand their governmental reach and lining the pockets of out-of-state companies that operate the systems.
They have plenty of examples of communities in Ohio that are rolling in money, thanks to obscene numbers of citations issued on a daily basis.
You can’t dispute those facts. But you also can’t dispute the fact that traffic citations generally prompt people — I’m talking about the non-knuckleheads out there who don’t like paying fines needlessly — to change their behavior.
I don’t run stop signs or yellow lights or jaywalk anymore because I don’t want to fork over more money to the government than is necessary.
I have to believe there are lots of other people like me out there who are doing the same and helping to make our roads safer.
Marc Kovac is The Vindicator’s Statehouse correspondent. Email him at mkovac@dixcom.com or on Twitter at OhioCapitalBlog.