I just realized, Arizona’s new law means even more illegal immigrants will drive *exactly* the speed limit down local AZ roads, to lower their risk of contact with the police. This was already an observable phenomenon; now it’s going to become an epidemic. Do the voters realize what they’ve done to their traffic patterns? OH THE HUMANITY!
The same thing happens out here in California. If we are lucky, they will just raise the speed limit again.
On a more serious note, it is telling that Illegal immigrants observe the traffic laws, but have no compunction about violating more serious laws such as identity theft and welfare fraud.
Let me suggest that differing rates of enforcement has something to do with this.
I just realized, Arizona’s new law means even more illegal immigrants will drive *exactly* the speed limit down local AZ roads, to lower their risk of contact with the police.
Politicians and bureaucrats must have the same fears because I repeatedly run into the same problem here in Virginia as well. And let me tell you something else: Mexican roadblocks are annoying on the wider freeways you see out in AZ and CA, but here in VA where a great majority of the key thoroughfares are only two lanes each way, they’re an absolute drive-killer.
Why oh why won’t slow drivers move to the right?
Yes, but that presumes Jackass Joe doesn’t order his troops to treat driving the speed limit as suspicious behavior.
Man I just hate police officers who enforce the law!
“Why oh why won’t slow drivers move to the right?”
That depends. If you make it an absolute rule “if someone is going faster than you you must move to the right” then it degenerates to 1 person in the left lane going the fastest, one person going slightly less fast in the next lane and so on and EVERYONE ELSE in the rightmost lane.
If you are going reasonably fast enough you shouldn’t have to drive in the right most line, the system works better if we use all lanes to spread out traffic.
The leftmost lane is called the passing lane for a reason.
gahrie – in the UK, those folk who drive in the rightmost lane (fast lane for the UK) at the speed limit will actually get pulled over and issued a ticket unless there is no other place for them to be driving … that lane is the overtaking lane, and, as soon as you have overtaken the car in the next lane over, you are expected to pull safely in front of the car you have just overtaken, without forcing that car to brake …
If you do not do so, you are presumed to be driving without sufficient due care and attention …
I like the autobahn law in Germany even better…you can get a ticket for driving too slow.
aside #1..there are similar laws in many US states
aside #2….I lived in England for many years, and when I could eventually drive, the hardest thing to do was drive a left hand American car on right hand British roads……..
I mean lefthand roads…you know what i meant….
Yes & in my three visits to the Republic of Ireland, I found that the Number-one most objectionable legacy of Her Britannic Majesty’s former Empire was the damn left-side driving. It’s bloody Unnatural. (The six-county Statelet to the north comes in at number Two. 😉
Hmm, a little less speeding doesn’t seem like such a bad thing to me… Though the more serious issue is simply people driving like idiots. Which doesn’t necessarily mean speeding. Speeding and bad driving do tend to correlate. But I wouldn’t call that correlation causal, at least not in all circumstances.
In other news, gahrie, care to back up back up your claim that illegals are more likely to commit welfare fraud. Please control for socio economic status in your answer.
In the case of Identify theft I would venture you are both correct and incorrect. Strictly speaking yes, I would guess there is a lot of fraudulent use of SSNs, a fair % of which likely belong to dead people and are being used by more than one person. But in terms of more malicious identity theft, like stealing access to bank accounts, falsifying credit documents for the purpose of intentional default, etc. etc. In other words the things we associate with a lot of work to fix and as a serious problem for the person who has had their identify stolen. Well, I think you are full of shit.
That said, if we were serious about dealing with illegal immigration we would, and it wouldn’t be an issue. Make the penalty for hiring an illegal sufficiently serious that people won’t hire illegals, in other words, the fine for hiring an illegal needs to be more than the cost savings for doing so. The demand dries up and the supply takes care of itself. As long as we do nothing to curb demand for illegal labor we will have illegal immigrants. It really is that simple.
dcl #13 – or, we could require that those who do not speak English reasonably well (we *do* have to allow for speakers of Amurrican (and Oirish, to be sure), after all, now don’t we, Venerable Sir ?) carry their proof of legal residence, be it Green Card or Visa or whatever suffices, just as is *already* required by Federal Law … that way, the supply dries up, cuz the illegals boycott Arizona, for example …
Venerable Loy #12 – driving on the right is worse than bloody Unnatural”, it’s *French* ! Back in the days of good old Richard trevithick and his steam-powered road carriage, which was followed by steam-powered stagecoaches in the 1820s and 1830s, civilised gentlemen, when passing each other in opposite directions on the public thoroughfare would present their right-hand side to each other, to display that they were not currently wielding arms (ie were not highwaymen), which meant riding/driving on the left-hand-side … (steam-powered stagecoach usage cite: here) …
Then the French decided that self-powered vehicles actually could have value, realised that les mauditsanglais drove on the left, so they had no choice except to drive on the right-hand-side just to be different … (grin) …
(In the interests of fairness, the French choice coincidentally aligns with maritime usage, which has vessels going in opposite directions passing each other port side to port side, effectively navigating ‘on the right-hand-side’ – this was originally to protect the steersman and steering mechanism on the starboard side (steering-board side) from hostile actions as much as possible))