Awsome million dollar traffic facts - 5.2.2007.1

I decided to address the obvious for a moment. It seems that the Bureau of Justice Statistics has determined that its most recent report confirms and earlier report in 2002. What might the reports be looking into? It is now well studied and determined that African Americans and Lationo/Hispanic Americans are more likely to have an negative expirence once pulled over by the police. I know, you are sitting there shocked.

Once your amazement at this ‘newfound’ fact subsides you might be interested to know what both studies confirmed. The first thing is that roughly 10% of the driving population are pulled over, and that this figure is consistently similar for all races. Obviously this study wasn’t done in New Jersey. I recall one time where I was in a minivan with my best friend Mike, driving to a meeting when we were pulled over for speeding. While the technical answer was yes, the flow of traffic was about 70 which is what we were doing, and while we had the State Police pointing guns at us I counted 5 cars driving past at what I would guess was 85. Oh, I forgot to mention a couple of things, just before we were pulled over 3 cars passed us at about 90, and when the officers came to the window and pulled the guns on us we were in suits. The time was about 12:30 in the afternoon. But this study says being pulled over is an equal chance event. OK.

Other facts that will awe you include:

Blacks (9.5 percent) and Hispanics (8.8 percent) were much more likely to be searched than whites (3.6 percent). There were slight but statistically insignificant declines compared with the 2002 report in the percentages of blacks and Hispanics searched.

Blacks (4.5 percent) were more than twice as likely as whites (2.1 percent) to be arrested. Hispanic drivers were arrested 3.1 percent of the time.

Among all police-public contacts, force was used 1.6 percent of the time. But blacks (4.4 percent) and Hispanics (2.3 percent) were more likely than whites (1.2 percent) to be subjected to force or the threat of force by police officers.

Thank goodness for this report, because no one would ever imagine that the chance of violence against Black Americans [I wonder if Mr. Rodney King was asked about this report] and Latino/Hispanic Americans [This report couldn’t include the May 1st protest in L.A. could it?] would be roughly 400% and 200% respectively higher than to White drivers. I’m so relieved now. My life has changed. This is EXACTLY how the government should spend an unknown millions of our tax dollars. We don’t need more money in education, or to fund our soldiers in Iraq.

Yep this is where we need to spend our money. And hey, this time we even got to hear about the report. Let us count our lucky stars that the economy has improved so we could afford to tell people about this recent report, unlike the shortfall that must have prevented any public notice of the 2002 report. I mean the $100 it would cost to use PRWeb to make a press release is way too expensive.

This is what I think, what do you think?

Where is the attention focused - 3.28.2007.1

I find it amazing that at a critical point in our nation, with decisions that will affect our children and grandchildren under debate, so many items are lost in the rush by the general media to get to the next story. Perhaps as amazing are some of the things that are requiring attention by legislators, rather than focusing on truly important issues. Rather than being cryptic I’ll present an example.

The State of New Jersey has found it necessary to draft a bill that would ban sending text messages while driving. While this may seem an obvious thing not to do, there has been research done stating that as many as 1-3 drivers text message while driving. (The numbers are less frequent when looking at all drivers as opposed to the 16-29 year old group I mentioned above.) In my opinion, this is stupid. It’s stupid that anyone would send a text message, which requires a person’s eyes be on their phone rather than the road, while driving.

The mere fact that a law needs to be drafted to address this issue gives me the thought that a harsh penalty, and thus a lesson, must be made. The proposed fine of a maximum $250 is far too lenient. It does not make an impact, nor does it impede the desire to act in this manner. Make the penalty a loss of the driver’s license for no less than 6 months on the first offense, going up at least 6 months for each additional offense, and now you have a deterrent. Let one kid, or individual lose the ability to drive and that will be texted like wildfire. Such restriction will have an affect, the punishment being too dire to brush off. And if it seems too harsh, think of this. If your child, sibling, parent or friend were to be killed because someone was writing a text message on how Britney Spears looks (as an example) instead of watching the road, would you think it too extreme then? If preventing an irresponsible driver from committing such an act could be done, would you fight it after losing a loved one? If not why would you want to wait until people die as a consequence?

But this should not even be a question. There should be no need for the law in the first place. Stupidity truly seems to be the only ‘epidemic’ that is overtaking the nation. As time is wasted making laws against obvious offenses and dangers to the public less attention is placed on matters that will affect our future. Consider that in Washington D.C., the nation’s capital and what should be a shining example of the nation, 1 in 3 people are illiterate.

Illiteracy is something that as a first world nation, and the only real empire in the world at this time, should not exist in a meaningful manner – least of all in our capital. Yet there are about 36% of the people in D.C. that are functionally illiterate (meaning they can’t read a bus schedule or a restaurant menu). For the nation as a whole the rate is 21%, nearly one fourth the populace. That’s embarrassing.

I have to believe that if there was less time being dedicated to nonsense like text messaging while driving laws, there would be more time to find a solution to real issues like illiteracy. We have the money. And I firmly believe that for every dollar we don’t spend educating, we will spend 10 dollars incarcerating.

Continued in Part 2...