Here’s the problem. Courts have a way of finding ways to ignore or supersede the Bill of Rights. Here in California courts have ruled that it is completely legal for the police to put up roadblocks stopping all drivers without any reason at all, for checking drivers licenses, insurance, registration paperwork, dui. A straight forward reading of the Bill of Rights suggests to most folk, like me, that this would be a violation of the right to go about your business unhindered, absent cause.
Wow…Im learning that I live in possibly the MOST Dastardly High cost, inspection and ticketing frenzied state of all. Gotta love PA… ESPECIALLY Philly…where you can park your car and the exact moment the meter runs out…3 Philly ticketing agents are all there to use up some ink and citation papers… Im not kidding either. They will also give you an expired inspection citation while you are parked and paid at a meter. Then there is the other half of philly…the Tow Happy A holes that take your car on a whim and lock it in the most Medieval Vehicle lockup I’ve ever seen. Happened to me once… I was there to pay the 250 an hour after my vehicle was towed because a sign had been removed from the street… My wallet was INSIDE the car…and the parking lot would not allow me to pay for and remove my vehicle…without my ID…WHICH was in the car…right on the other side of the fence… They would not allow me to obtain my ID…to pay for the illegal tow… Talk about a Shit show… By the time I got done with the unbelievably rude tellers in the parking authority…I had called the police myself…on myself …and had the owner of the lot onsite… Add on top of this Philly parking authority Court…You cannot imagine the insanity in that place. The fees, the fines, the holding of your vehicle until whomever says to release it. You simply would not understand… Hey they even made a TV show out of it.
Then there is the yearly state inspection…EVERY YEAR…even brand new vehicles suffer through this process…every year…from every vehicle… Know how much money that is?
Police here rarely give a friendly warning of you have a tail light bulb burned out… You get a ticket…always… You can go to court and argue if you like…youre paying either way. The end of each month I think the cops fight over getting the Toaster Oven by handing out the most tickets… The are literally directed to do so…so I was told. I hate it here…absolutely hate it and I will get into deep trouble one day from it methinks.
PA could be the worst place to own and drive a vehicle…Dunno
@Keith wrote: " I got a ticket last year for expired tags. It was a new car and for some reason, the state had not sent me the renewal notice."
Similar happened to me a few years ago. Reg. renewal notice didn’t come in the mail (but not a new car).
Since I don’t drive to work I come home to 3 tickets on my car.
One ticket for the expired reg., plus on my street parking is limited to 2 hours during the day unless you have a residential parking pass, which had expired at the same time.
So the enforcement officer wrote two tickets in the morning (expired reg. plus no parking pass) then wrote another 2 hour zone ticket about 4 hours later; also noted “towing requested”.
I parked the car in a neighbors driveway to avoid more tickets; renewed the reg. and RPP the next day.
I contested the tickets and they only dropped one of the RPP tickets. I was out $80 IIRC.
Tag scanners are all over the place here in Wash. DC. On police cars, parking enforcement cars, tow trucks.
DC currently has 153 traffic cameras, including 97 speed, 42 red-light, 7 stop sign, and 7 oversize or weight cameras.
And they’re adding more; plus reducing the speed limit on many streets from 25mph to 15mph.
Local governments, starved of cash to do things like keeping the infrastructure repaired, are relying more and more on traffic fines to fund general spending. Voters don’t like any increases in taxes, so they come after the car owners for the money instead I guess. Here in Calif an illegal right turn at a red light – like if you coast through it at 1 mph instead of coming to a compete stop – will yield you a $500 fine. The actual fine by state statute is more like $50, but the local government adds the other $450 to it. They say it is “court costs”.
Things are clearly getting out of hand… Basically the entire point of this post. What to do? Not much if you live in an area like mine…where there is literally no main street… Nothing is walking distance away. You absolutely must own a vehicle here…you are totally screwed without one.
Soon I will own a beat up Toyota and a dirt bike… A small Cassita in Costa Rica… and go surfing…maybe repair mopeds for money. Simplify…and leave the rest behind…things are nutso anymore.
Well, things aren’t quite that bad I’d move to Costa Rica … lol … we can still own our own cars and fix them ourselves. And be on the lookout for the ticket-givers. I have to check my tires all the time for chalk marks placed by would-be-ticker-givers, that’s just part of the life of a car owner.
And who knows, you might get your surf board impounded down there for leaning it up against a protected tree … lol
Surfboard theft is Punishable by death of course… You’d be surprised…surf board theft is RARE in my experience. Its bad JU-JU anyway…most surfers know this. haha I should be in CR permanently within the next 5 yrs…for good
Well they can do that (DUI roadblocks) because driving is not a right but a privilege. So you have no right to be on the highway and subject to local laws.
Personally, I think Big Brotherism was way out of hand a long time ago. A big ruckus going on here in OK right now is the policy of police departments keeping assets from those arrested; even if it turns out they’re innocent.
If someone commits a crime there are certain fines and jail terms specified for those guilty of the crimes. That should not mean giving law enforcement carte blanche to clean someone’s finances out.
Such as the small business owner who was carrying 3 grand in cash on him and was stopped by the police for a traffic violation. The law thought that since he was carrying that much cold cash he was involved in drug running so they kept the money.
That leads to don’t like it, get a lawyer and fight it until someone runs out of fighting money.
Or the guy passing through a small town (notorious speed trap) just west of me a few years ago and it was discovered that he had an outstanding warrant in CA for some comparatively minor crime. The small town confiscated his BMW X5 and converted it into a new police car since their funds were limited. After a few years they got rid of it as the town could not afford maintenance and repair costs on it. Total BS in my humble opinion.
They now have a converted (and much cheaper) Ford Explorer. Whether or not they obtained that one the same way I have no idea but it would not surprise me if the same heavy handed tactics were used in acquiring the Ford.
Then there is the yearly state inspection…EVERY YEAR…even brand new vehicles suffer through this process.
It seems excessive but if it is a brand new vehicle I would expect the selling dealer to perform the inspection, it should be a non issue for the buyer.
I do find it ironic that conservatives, who have strangled government spending as per their ideological beliefs, find it unbearable when the lack of federal money starves state and municipal governments into finding all sorts of creative “fund raising” mechanisms. Folks, years of cutting taxes are the cause of your misery. Once upon a time a well funded federal government helped support states and municipalities so our kids didn’t have to sell candy bars to raise money for baseball uniforms and drivers didn’t have to worry about cities and states resorting to red light cameras and license plate scanners to close their budget gap.
I am not trying to start an ideological argument here so don’t waste your time trying to argue with me. I am simply pointing out that many people wanted “less taxes” and “less government”. You are going to have to pay “the man” one way or the other unless you want to live in a third world country. Bridges, tunnels and roads need to be repaired, maintained and expanded, especially now that so much of our infrastructure is old and decaying.
Back to the original topic. As a liberal (booooo) I hate government intrusiveness more than conservatives. OBD III, if it comes to pass, is not that big of a deal. I dislike the added intrusion but the privacy horse is out of the barn unless you don’t own a cell phone or toll tag. I keep my cars in good shape and repair any items that cause the check engine light to illuminate. Why should I care if our benevolent overlords want to know about it? Methinks this is much ado about nothing.
Bloody Knuckles expressed my feelings very well.
I simply find it amazing that some people can get their panties in a wad over an issue that would have no substantive impact on anyone who maintains his/her car conscientiously.
bloody: I agree. Most states have an annual inspection that requires no check engine light to pass, so remote checking in those states will not gain them anything.
@bloody_knuckles
I’m don’t want to argue with you, but please understand some of us have a different point of view.
"I do find it ironic that conservatives, who have strangled government spending as per their ideological beliefs, find it unbearable when the lack of federal money starves state and municipal governments into finding all sorts of creative “fund raising” mechanisms."
Not so in many states where liberals are not in control. Our previous liberal governor spent the state to the brink of bankruptcy. Our current governor, more moderate, republican and republican controlled house and senate, straightened the mess out and revived the state without raising taxes or becoming more dependent on the federal government. Spending was controlled.
"Folks, years of cutting taxes are the cause of your misery."
Again, not so from where I sit. I’m not in misery, except that the current government has spent far more than it brought in and would do so no matter how much revenue was available. That’s the problem. "Bridges, tunnels and roads need to be repaired, maintained and expanded, especially now that so much of our infrastructure is old and decaying."
Wait, I thought Obama fixed that with that nearly $1,000,000,000 he allocated for infrastructure. The money’s gone, but all I see that happened is a trillion more added to the nearly ten trillion that was added to the national debt during his tenure. Our children and grand children have been dug into a hole that will be impossible to escape.
I operate my life on a balanced budget. I don’t spend more than I have. I don’t rely on any government to help me. I’m not wealthy, but I have no debt or deficit, never did. I expect the same from those who purport to represent me.
Spending is the problem, not too little taxation. That’s my point of view.
VDC, the problem is that some inspection stations (garages) in NH use these inspections as revenue generators. They reject cars for reasons having nothing at all to do with safety and then charge highly elevated prices to fix them. Yet people who know “where to go” drive around in junkers with current stickers on the windshield.
And IMHO we should not be subjected to this unless the data can show that state’s with safety inspections have lower accident rates than states that don’t… and the data shows the exact opposite. IMHO we should not be subjected to useless and aggravating mandates for no cause other than revenue generation for the state and for crooked garages.
Bloodyknuckles, true conservatives believe in reducing the size and expense of to only its primary functions. This isn’t a “conservative” thing. It’s a “government waste” thing. The government doesn’t have a revenue problem. It has a spending problem.
It’s a shame that other states don’t use the model that NJ used to use.
When we still actually had safety inspections, they were carried out at state-owned facilities that did not do repairs, thus there was no incentive to find problems that didn’t exist.
However, that is a moot point, as those facilities now do only emissions testing.
As one of the inspectors commented to me, “Even if somebody drives in with a missing windshield, bald tires, and no functioning lights, there is nothing that we can do about it”. Thanks Governor Crispy!
Maybe this is an old wives tale, but I recall being told, maybe in the 80’s or so that if your time was too short between tolls in PA on some turnpike, you would be issued a speeding ticket. Sure the automatic red light ticketing is a questionable practice, but I imagine some one is thinking of automatic speeding ticketing. Hopefully people who pass the laws consider how it will affect them and their constituents personally, and use a rational approach.
As far as odb3, and engine issues current law in our state is you have x amount of days, or dollars to fix an issue after a failed inspection. The sensing would boil down to a daily rather then biannual inspection, but unless the laws changed the window of opportunity to get the failure fixed or spend x amount of dollars trying would remain in place.
Nevada…the dealer does do the inspection… Thats besides the point. They still paid to do it as well. Why would a brand new vehicle need inspection…it begs too many quality control questions to even ponder after that point. The dealer pays PA for that inspection…on the day of the cars birth. Which is BS…complete and Total BS.
You want to talk Police stories? Ugh…I can mention a particular someone who had two loaded Semi-Automatic handguns held 6 inches from his face… The two men were each dressed in Blue Jeans and a Hoodie, so they looked very UN-official for sure…they appeared to be exactly as advertized…Car Jacking A-Holes. The men proceeded to tell SWIM that he is being CAR JACKED… Was told to get out of the Effing Car…We are taking your Effing Car Mother Effer… After a considerable pause and stare down…the driver threw his keys in the face of the man at the drivers window so he had to pick them up off the ground. As he got out of his soon to be long gone vehicle…he pondered what would happen if he had his legal firearm at that moment…decided right there that would probably spell the end of his story if he pulled his weapon.
SO the guy got out of his car…only to have his person and vehicle searched by these Car Jacker turned magical Police agents. He had his 2 week paycheck with pay stub STOLEN from his pocket on the spot, literally went into one of the guys jeans pockets. He was also given numerous charges that he had to go to court 6 times to TRY and resolve. He is out over $1250 in CASH…Out court fees and fines…to the tune of $815. Out time from work…still has charges and now…a lovely criminal record. Not so much as a parking ticket prior… No probable cause…No nothing. 40 yrs of age with no priors…NOW ? A criminal record…Forever. Professional Career? Down the Drain… Cash? GONE… STILL dealing with the aftermath. Still wondering what would have occurred if he had his legal to carry .38 Special at that time.
You guys should come to Philly…Its a Friggin HOOT. Lets just say that the police are not my favorite people. Nice story eh? Come on down…Youre the next contestant !!!