by: B.J.
Posted: March 28, 2007
The State of Alabama is at it again, thanks to its BRILLIANT (Republican) governor—Bob Riley, more Alabama state troopers will be assigned to downtown Birmingham NOT to catch criminals or do REAL police work, they are being assigned to monitor what they call the “Malfunction Junction”, which is the I-20/59 and I-65 interchange. Thanks to Gov. Riley caving in to the Alabama Department of Transportation, the speed limits (which were already too damn low in the first place) were LOWERED even more down to 50 MPH. Of course, the governor, along with the Alabama DOT would like for its citizens to believe that this is a “safety” measure, but anyone with a functionally operational brain should realize that this is nothing but a revenue-raising measure for the state. If the citizens of the State of Alabama would take some time away from their Bibles to actually do minimal research on the effects of speed limit laws, and speed in relation to accidents, then they would come to the realization that Gov. Riley and the Alabama DOT is misleading them badly by doing this.
Unfortunately Alabama doesn’t have the wherewithal to utilize traditional methods of increasing revenue for its state. The state has no desire to create tourist venues, or incentives for corporations to relocate there. Nor does The State of Alabama seem to be as interested in stimulating its economy by creating an environment where people can spend money freely amongst themselves, therefore the state is virtually left with using its police force to reduce itself to armed “ticket agents” with badges, entrusted with bringing money to the state (while they receive no commission for doing so), instead of protecting its citizens from REAL criminals. This is a sorry waste of a police force, especially considering how dangerous Birmingham is when it comes to violent crimes. Why doesn’t the state approach the out of control murder rate in Birmingham with such tenacity? Why didn’t Gov. Riley make the necessary provisions to add more police officers to the streets of Birmingham to make the city safer with the “hopes” of reducing the murder rate? The answers to these questions are very simple. First, there’s virtually NO money in preventing REAL crimes, and secondly the potential lives these officers would be saving would be black ones. In addition to that, since traffic enforcement is left in the hands of state troopers, they could issue either warnings or tickets during a traffic stop. This decision also adversely effect black motorists the most, since they are more likely to get a ticket than a warning. Yes, there are LEGITIMATE racial components here, and they must be exposed, but they won’t because white liberals haven’t instructed so-called black “leadership” to do so as of yet.
Despite the fact that there are NO studies that would substantiate Gov. Riley’s claims that lowering the posted speed limits would result in fewer automobile accidents, or that people would actually drive slower in the first place, he moved to lower them anyway. On the other hand, it’s a proven fact that an increase police presence in high-crime areas does reduce violent crimes. For those reasons alone one would think that the governor would rather use the means to increase the police force to reduce violent crimes instead of this feeble attempt to change driver behavior. In fact, neither Gov. Riley or the Alabama DOT have an interest in changing driver behavior or making the roads or the City of Birmingham safer—they would rather profit from it. Furthermore, if the State of Alabama were more concerned about the safety of its highways, it would do a better job of keeping motorists that are unfit to handle the responsibility of operating a motor vehicle off the road in the first place. I call these people “traffic terrorists”—motorists that are miserable as hell, have NO lives, and are usually dreadfully unattractive (which is generally consistent with a State of Alabama resident.)
In short, many of the accidents that occur on the highways could be avoided if the highways were limited to those who had the skill to operate a motor vehicle properly. Instead many states like Alabama issue driver licenses like prizes in Cracker Jack boxes, thus all of us have to suffer as these traffic terrorists clog up the highways, pointing at the speed limit signs as proper justification to hold up traffic in passing lanes by driving the posted speed limits (which are way too damn slow) in these lanes. Not only do these terrorists cause more accidents, they create more incidents of road rage than anyone else. This problem was dramatically reduced when the federal “double-nickel” speed limit law (another Jimmy Carter masterpiece, by the way) was repealed in 1995. In addition to making the roads safer by better representing the flow of traffic, this kept the traffic terrorists off the roads. Now the citizens of Alabama should prepare for those terrorists to return to “Malfunction Junction”, and they also need to be prepared for the spike in the number of tickets, license suspensions, and the increased insurance premiums due to the unjustifiable decision to reduce the already unreasonable speed limit at “Malfunction Junction”. The only true malfunction here was done in Montgomery—a mere 100 miles away from the point of interest.