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Honolulu Lite Charles Memminger |
Don’t forget the ugly
truth of Van CamsI'm trying to understand the strange sense of nostalgia so many people suddenly seem to be having about the Gestapo-like tyranny of the "Van Cam" speeding enforcement program.
Sure, fatal accidents are a horrible thing, and we've been having more than our share lately. But you don't need to place the black boot of oppression on your own throat just to get the heavy feet off the accelerators of a bunch of idiots who use the highways as their private racetracks.
But the recent fatal crashes have seemed to stimulate the defective memory lobes of more than a few out there. People are actually saying that the then-called Tali-vans should be reactivated to deal with our roadways of death.
I don't have the best, uh, whatchamacallit -- memory -- in the world, but I do recall that the privately run camera gotcha speeding program was not all cherries and cream.
For those who have put the whole Van Cam experiment out of their minds for therapeutic reasons, avert your eyes while I explain to the civilians what the program was all about.
The idea was to let a private company issue speeding tickets and get a cut of the financial action. The company used computerized cameras that would snap a photo of your car exceeding the speed limit, and then you'd have to pay a fine.
That may sound fairly harmless, but because they received a financial incentive to catch speeders, the Van Cam operators stopped just about everybody going even a tad over the posted limit.
NOW, TO JOG the memories of the people who suddenly want to bring the Van Cams back, let me point out a few things: Under the camera enforcement program, we still had fatal accidents and we still had highway racers.
The reason was, instead of concentrating on catching the dangerous drivers and highway racers, the Van Cams camped out on the shoulders of major commuter routes like Pali Highway and bagged Mr. and Mrs. Kailua going three miles over the speed limit on their way to and from work.
It didn't improve safety or reduce traffic. It made decent drivers paranoid and bad drivers worse. It also made anyone driving a white van nervous because they thought they were going to be mistaken for one of the Van Cam operators and stoned.
It was simply a case of technology being used for technology's sake and not for the betterment of society. (In the spirit of disclosure, I will concede that if I owned stock in the Van Cam company, I might have felt differently.)
The answer to stopping dangerous speeders, the ones who go 20 to 50 miles per hour OVER the speed limit, is to take their cars, put them in jail and, when appropriate, tell their mommies and daddies on them. Most of the kids speeding are teens still living at home, so, come to think about it, we might have to put mommy and daddy in jail, too. What kind of parent allows a kid to have a car that can go 200 miles per hour?
The last speeding ticket I got was on a residential road posted for 30 miles an hour. I was exceeding the speed limit, but I wasn't "speeding." Let's think hard about putting police where the murderous speeders are and forget hard about bringing the dumb Van Cams back.
See the Columnists section for some past articles.
Charles Memminger, winner of National Society of Newspaper Columnists awards, appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. E-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com
