Naive Hopes
By Greg L | 3 August 2007 | Virginia Politics | 3 Comments
Don’t start popping the champagne corks yet in the battle against abusive driver fees. Even though Richmond and Henrico have ruled them unconstitutional, the reasoning behind these rulings is pretty weak and may well be overturned on appeal. My take is that it will require legislative action to overturn this, as there hasn’t been a really compelling argument in the courts yet.
The arguments that prevailed in the rulings in these two jurisdictions have focused on an equal protection argument — that Virginia drivers are being treated less favorably than drivers from other jurisdictions. While to many of us that seems to be an entirely adequate argument, in reality it’s not. My understanding is that in this body of law, had drivers from other jurisdictions been treated more harshly than Virginia drivers, there certainly would have been a problem. Out-of-state drivers can’t directly influence what laws get passed in Virginia, so if they’re treated more harshly, they can’t fix the problem. They can’t vote those out of office who passed these laws, and it’s a lot harder for them to weigh in in the legislative process since they’re out-of-state, and can’t reasonably predict whether they’d be adversely affected by the law since they can’t accurately foresee their future behavior. They probably wouldn’t even be aware of such a proposed law in time to make their opinions on it known.
This is a case of the differential treatment going in the other direction. If Virginians want to hold themselves to a higher standard than others, that’s probably not a constitutional problem. They elected the folks who passed the law, they had an opportunity to weigh in on that law, and they can demand that law be repealed. Virginians have a whole heck of a lot more power to change this outside of the courts than those from other states who have no real standing before the General Assembly. That makes a critical difference.
I’m not a big fan of these abusive driver fees, but it does seem that this is somewhat overrated as a political issue. Maybe I’m somewhat unusual in not collecting a huge number of moving violations, but it’s pretty unusual to me for someone to rack up a reckless driving charge. Folks who regularly do are the same ones in many instances who are engaging in dangerous behavior that often causes road accidents that make commutes on major commuter routes an absolute nightmare. If we could discourage dangerous or reckless driving behavior, it would make quite a difference on our transportation systems. Penalizing dangerous drivers might help, and as long as it’s not unreasonable, I’m all for it.
The reason there’s this difference in treatment is because the General Assembly, in it’s infinite wisdom, decided to make sure all traffic fines are dedicated to the school system (specifically the Literacy Fund), which is now dependent on that revenue much more than the transportation budget might ever rely on abusive driver fees. Since these fines would be imposed on vehicle registrations, only Virginia drivers would pay. If the argument of depending on revenues from traffic fines is a bad idea, it’s worse for all traffic fines collected now to be dedicated to the school system. If we can free these collections up, abusive driver fees could be collected as traffic fines, a portion of the traffic fines could be directed towards transportation improvements, and the rest could go wherever the General Assembly wants, such as for school construction.
It makes little sense to band-aid this problem, and the recent court decisions are entirely a band-aid, albeit a very temporary one. Until we re-craft the structure of directed revenue flows to education and transportation, we’re going to have little choice about holding Virginians to a higher standard if we want those fees or fines to help solve our transportation problems.
Here’s the solution I think might make more sense:
- Repeal abusive driver fees
- Repeal the dedication of all revenues from traffic violations to the Literary Fund
- Establish a target for reduction in accidents and aggressive driving violations
- Raise fines for aggressive/dangerous violations 20% annually until those targets are met
- The budget process will direct funds collected from traffic violations as they see fit
It might need more work, but it would resolve the structural problems that are causing all this inanity with abusive driver fees. Meanwhile, the more naive are under the impression that the problem will be solved in short order with these court decisions. It wont.
The opinions expressed here are solely the views of the author, and not representative of the position of any organization, political party, doughnut shop, knitting guild, or waste recycling facility, but may be correctly attributed to the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy. If anything in the above article has offended you, please click here to receive an immediate apology.
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I wouldn’t mind the excessive fines if they applied to everyone. The fact that illegals without drivers licenses (or anyone without one for that matter) and out of staters get a free pass galls me.
This fine mess (no pun intended) should never have occurred in the first place. It only shows what can come from hastily concocted legislation which is then hastily amended at the last minute by the Governor.
I think it is a good idea to have high fines for dangerous driving, but they could have been and should have been imposed on all drivers. If the legislature then wanted to allow Virginia residents to pay large fines in installments, that could have been sold as a concession to Virginia citizens and this whole issue of discrimination need never have arisen. As for out-of-staters, hey, if you want to drive dangerously drive somewhere else.
Greg, all someone needs to do to get wreckless in Virginia is drive 20 miles over the speed limit on the highway. If you go up and down the I-95/395 corridor, you will witness the VAST MAJORITY of people driving AT LEAST 25 over the limit. Most police officers will lower the speed to 78 in a 65 or 55 just to help the person NOT get wreckless driving.
I, too, had thought that wreckless was the weaving in and out of traffic, but found out on a lonely road taking the boys to a bicycle motocross race they were participating in MANY years ago that my speed was considered wreckless, even though I had full control of the vehicle and the police office even admitted that I was not posing a threat to anyone. He lowered the speed that I was clocked at and the judge gave me a break because I had had a perfect driving record.
That being said, I was told by a Republican candidate for State Senate here in VA that the original wording HAD included both in and out-of-state drivers, but DMV had lobbied the Governor because they felt it would be too difficult to collect the heavy fines from the out-of-state drivers and the Gov. relented.
I agree, it should apply to all, or it should apply to none. Also, because these laws are applied based on inter AND intra state driving, I would argue that out of state people CAN influence and already have - if they were not speeding thru Virginia to get to Florida or New York, or even Busch Gardens or Kings Dominion to beat the crowds, we might not have to worry about abusive driving fees.