Second ticket is the luckiest

FLO MARTIN

Anyone who has been stopped by a police officer recently, raise your

hand. And you lucky ones who got a traffic citation, keep your hands

up.

“Lucky,” you protest? Yes, lucky, indeed, because you might avoid

injury or live just a bit longer than the driver who blithely cruises

the freeways at 90 mph or the Type-A who barrels through red lights

on a daily basis.

In the poem “Don’t Mess with Mom,” a smart-aleck son comes home

“with a smirk on his face” and tells Mom about the “Children’s Bill

of Rights.” She can’t make him clean his room, cut his hair or tell

him what to wear. He can wear earrings, pierce his nose, get tattoos,

and she can’t stop him. “It’s all about the laws today.”

Lucky me, I got a speeding ticket several months back. The officer

clocked my car traveling at 85 mph in the carpool lane and pulled me

over. My son was in the passenger seat and his wife was in the back.

This was a Saturday at 6:30 in the morning. Talk about a deserted

freeway. Talk about no one around on whom to gauge my speed.

I was even afraid of crossing the double yellow lane lines to get

to the side of the freeway until the officer’s loudspeaker told me to

cross. Duh. I uttered not a single word in protest. He quickly wrote

out the ticket, handed it back to me and left. My second traffic

ticket in 41 years of driving, the first having occurred some 30

years ago.

Now, here’s where the “lucky” comes in. I went to traffic school

and was lucky to share a full day with some 120 other lucky folk. Our

facilitator not only showed us the dangers of breaking traffic

regulations but also, with his warm, encouraging humor, kept us

talking all day long.

We talked about why we drive the way we do -- tired, with cell

phones, eating or drinking, being distracted by the dog or the kids,

even reading at the wheel. We talked about substance abuse, about how

50,000 deaths are caused by drugs each year. We learned that alcohol

“poisoning” is too innocuous a term, sounding almost like a medical

condition. The official term is alcohol “overdose” -- an event that

occurs more than any other type of deadly overdose. Our facilitator

mentioned a beer “funnel” and a young, articulate fellow in the back

piped up enthusiastically: “Oh yeah! We have a four-way beer bong in

our backyard.” Three thousand drinkers a year die of alcohol overdose

(some of them with a 0.43 blood alcohol level as a result of

“funneling” hard liquor). Literally, bottoms up.

We talked about speed and time. My Saturday morning trip to the

airport at 65 mph would have taken some 27 minutes. At 70 mph, 26

minutes. At 85 mph, I would have saved only about 5 minutes. So what

that the freeway was empty? What if a tire had blown? Speed kills,

right?

We talked about stress and speeders, about road rage, about recent

freeway shootings and stabbing deaths. The killers are literally

getting away with murder. This business of no fear has gone too far.

We talked about the camera-watched intersections. The photos are

indisputable. The sensors in the street accurately gauge speed and,

thus, the likelihood of running the red light. So, why are the

cameras on Newport Boulevard being shut off? If they’ve saved one

life, they’re worth it. My son and daughter-in-law live one block

away from 19th Street and Newport Boulevard and report that the sound

of screeching tires, banging metal, breaking glass and ambulance

sirens had all but disappeared from the neighborhood, thanks to those

cameras.

A driver has challenged the cameras. And the judge agreed

(probably got a ticket recently). It’s the Driver’s Bill of Rights,

right? It’s all about the laws today, right? Phooey! Let’s stop

insisting on the letter of the law and focus more on the spirit of

the law. Let’s stop hogging the intersections, even if we’re in the

right (front fender just over the outside line of the crosswalk as

the light turns red). The yellow light means slow down, not speed up.

The smart-aleck driver seems to rule all the lanes of the freeway

as well. Get out of my way, lady. Yes, you who got that ticket and

who now watches the speedometer or uses the cruise control and stays

close to 70 mph. Get in the really slow lane, where you belong.

* FLO MARTIN is a Costa Mesa resident and faculty member at Cal

State Fullerton.