The larger lesson in Corzine's bad example

Published April 19, 2007 at midnight

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New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine set a bad example for both his constituents and the rest of us, and he is now paying the penalty in a Camden hospital.

As of Wednesday night, the governor was still in critical but stable condition, having already undergone several operations, with a thigh broken in two places, a broken breast bone, a broken collarbone, a broken vertebra in the lower back and 11 broken ribs. Doctors had recently inserted two catheters into his back to deliver pain medication more effectively. Even so, he remained heavily sedated and was relying on breathing and feeding tubes.

New Jersey's chief executive was not wearing his seat belt, as the law requires, and news accounts indicate he regularly rode that way and bristled at aides' suggestions he buckle up.

Corzine was in a two-car motorcade racing down the Garden State Parkway in excess of 90 mph when his Chevrolet Suburban clipped a pickup truck, spun and then slammed into the guardrail, bouncing over it.

The governor, who is 60 and surely remembers the expression, was riding in the right-front passenger seat, what in pre-seat-belt days was called, with certain reason, "the suicide seat." The state trooper driving, who was wearing a seat belt, and an aide in the back seat, who was not, suffered only minor injuries.

There was another issue here, too, along with the governor's disregard for his own laws - the increasing abuse of motorcades by officials entitled to have them.

New Jersey regulations allow official motorcades to speed only in emergency situations. The governor was racing to attend a meeting between shock jock Don Imus and the Rutgers University women's basketball team, hardly an emergency.

If a New York Times account is right, the accident occurred 75 miles from the meeting that was still 90 minutes off, more than enough time to get there at the speed limit of 65 mph.

We hope the governor makes a complete recovery and emerges from the hospital a convert to seat belts, speed limits and safe motorcading.

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