< PREVIOUS ] [ 2001 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >
Racial profiling by police is so common that at least
two locutions, based on the DWI acronym for Driving
While Intoxicated,
have entered the vernacular: DWB for
Driving While Black
and DWH for Driving While
Hispanic.
Getting caught for DWB or DWH means getting pulled over for some minor reason, if there even is a reason. The cop checks every aspect of the vehicle and every piece of paperwork, and if you act properly respectful and show that you know your place, you'll probably be on your way in only 20 or 30 minutes.
On account of my pale skin, I know of this only by
hearsay, but I am personally familiar with a related
offense -- DWP, Driving While Poor.
Granted, the police have a job to do. But instead of worrying about DWB, DWH or DWP, the public peace and safety might be improved if they started looking for these offenses:
PWA -- Parking With Alarm: The idea behind a car alarm is that if some unauthorized person intrudes, the alarm will go off, and a concerned passer-by, alerted by the honking and similar noise, will call the police.
Two things are wrong with this scenario. One is that in some places, so many car alarms go off that no one pays attention. I noticed this several years ago in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The nights were so noisy with screaming police sirens and chirping coqui frogs -- and a few thousand erupting car alarms -- that one more made no difference.
The other is that even when people notice the alarm, nobody acts. Salida on a Sunday evening in Mud Season is so quiet you can hear the snow fall. A car alarm went off in the church parking lot across the street, apparently set off by cosmic rays, because we couldn't see any people in the lot.
The police did not hasten, because nobody called them. After a few ear-splitting minutes, the owner emerged from the sanctuary and went over to his car and turned off the alarm. The same thing happened the next week, and the next week. After that, he either fixed the alarm, sold the car or quit going to church.
Anyway, if a car alarm won't provoke a police visit
under those circumstances, when would it? These devices
obviously serve no useful purpose. All they do is disturb
the public peace, and so they should outlawed. Failing
that, levy a stiff fine -- $1,000 seems fair, with the
proceeds split among those reporting the offense -- for
emitting a false car alarm.
DWTM -- Driving With Too Much: First there's the land
yacht, complete with generator and pop-up satellite dish,
which cost more than many houses. It's towing a brand-new
spewt, presumably so the occupants can go to and fro easily
once they've set up the first unit in camp.
Behind
the towed spewt, you sometimes see a trailer with either a
boat or a couple of ATVs.
It's hard to believe that anyone would need this much gear to enjoy our mountains, but these extended rigs create real problems. They take a lot of room to park, and there isn't much room in places like Historic Downtown Salida. For another, they seldom manage even 15 mph while headed upgrade, which encourages the exasperated followers to make stupid passing decisions that lead to carnage.
What penalty for DWTM? Maybe a night in a tent without running water or electricity, since that prospect seems to scare them so much.
DWD -- Driving While Distracted. I don't have a cellular
phone (the harder it is for strangers to reach me at their
convenience, the happier my life), and so of course I felt
gleeful recently when the New York legislature approved the
no hand-held phone while driving
law.
But to be fair, cell phones are hardly the only dangerous distractions. Trying to find a dropped lit cigarette that threatens to ignite your seat covers and char your rump is a much bigger distraction than phone chatter.
Remembering the functions of the tiny control buttons on the car stereo is a serious distraction, and yet there are times, like when a George Thorogood song comes on, that you absolutely need to crank up the volume. Even some safety devices, like those portable roadside radar displays that show your speed, can distract you from minor things like dogs or children darting in front of you.
But should we expand the cell phones to a general DWD offense? I asked some friends, and we all recalled that the worst distraction in recent Colorado history was on the west side of Independence Pass a few miles above Aspen. About 50 yards from the road was a riparian zone where lots of folks, some of them attractive young women, were fond of sunbathing in the nude.
Even though this was by consensus the most severe and dangerous road-related distraction in Colorado, not one respondent wanted it outlawed.
Without public support, we'll never see an effective law against DWD. PWA and DWTM have yet to attract even the cell-phone level of opposition, and so these threats and disturbances will persist.
But if we could only get the cops to take an interest in these offenses, maybe they'd be so busy that they wouldn't have time to pull citizens over for DWB and DWH, and America would be a happier place.
< PREVIOUS ] [ 2001 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >