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CARROLL: No room for judgment

By Vincent Carroll, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published December 10, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.

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Let's assume you're the sort of person who never leaves a car running when you're not seated at the wheel. That would waste fuel and attract thieves - and besides, it's illegal in this state.

Unless you're an unfeeling prig, however, you might want to question the sort of crackdown on "puffers" that occurred recently across the Front Range, with police writing tickets to motorists who had the audacity to let their cars warm up unattended for a few minutes before they drove away.

A Rocky article by Judi Villa perfectly captured the indiscriminate fallout of this ill-advised campaign. "[Karina] Patton had turned on the vehicle to warm it up," Villa wrote. "Then she dashed back inside her home to get her 9-month-old daughter settled in with Grandma for the day.

"Now, the ticket will cost Patton about $75. She started to cry.

" 'I just started doing that this week,' she said. 'I wasn't even inside for three minutes.' "

Are we really supposed to feel better knowing that alleged miscreants like Patton are paying such a price for daring to flout the sacred laws of this state, no matter how petty? Do they really need to be told "Your car could have just been stolen," which is what an informational pamphlet left on their vehicles said?

Or be told that it's bad for air quality - as if driving weren't?

So long as we're going to harass time-starved Coloradans juggling day care with work, maybe we should increase the fine to a couple hundred dollars so that it could really ruin their week.

Look, people who treat their cars as bait for thieves tend to be punished by the thieves themselves - and with a far more costly lesson than any that will be dispensed by an officer with a ticket. What's next - a state law requiring that all front doors and backyard gates be locked, and all basement window wells be covered with grates?

Shouldn't a free society leave at least some room for people to be their own judge of how much risk they tolerate in their lives?

A hobble on spendthrifts

See how contagious bad habits can be? Having watched the federal government spend or pledge, oh, trillions of dollars in the past few months to "stimulate" the economy, some state officials now seem determined to get into the act. A special committee of the legislature has been taking testimony on how to spend more government money to fight the recession - Washington's lavishness apparently having been found wanting in Statehouse halls.

The latest Rocky article on the committee's deliberations neatly conveys the self-interested essence of many stimulus packages: "Much of the meeting involved proposals from colleges, renewable energy groups and nonprofits on bills that specifically would help them, but the idea of pouring money into construction and infrastructure came up repeatedly."

What, no bills proposing to shovel money into newspapers as a way to save jobs? Well, why not?

As a matter of fact, the idea of pouring revenue into construction and infrastructure is not exactly a novelty of this recession. It had also been proposed repeatedly before hard times ever struck.

But unfortunately for the spendthrifts, Colorado - unlike the federal government - cannot simply spend money it doesn't have. It must balance its budget. So there isn't a lot of running room, thank goodness, for our fledgling Harry Reids and Nancy Pelosis who might be out to make a mark for themselves in this era of the New New Deal.

Vincent Carroll is editor of the editorial pages. Reach him at carrollv@RockyMountainNews.com.

Comments

  • December 10, 2008

    5:49 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    roger44 writes:

    when I went to work yesterday morning in NE Co. and we were having a few snow flurries, several plows were out, guess just driving around, forecast didn't predict any snow to speak of in the area, State says they need money but waste it by such actions. They did the same thing last year, sent them out to plow wet pavement...we have Deputies that cover the area and I had suggested they communicate with them on road conditions, guess that wasn't their cup of tea. Sure hate to look at my check and see Co. taking money out to waste.

  • December 10, 2008

    6:46 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    VVVV writes:

    My owner's manual states that the car should be warmed up while driving in order to prevent damage to the engine. People must be bundled up to walk out to the car, so there is no reasonable excuse to let a car warm up idling. And if you want to argue against the nanny state laws, I suggest you address you commentary to the hundreds of thousands of people locked up for years on end for drug posession. $75 - Boo Hoo.

    I used to have to deliver your paper through the neighborhood while those people warmed up their 70's gas guzzlers. Entire sections of the neighborhood were choked with exhaust so they could sit inside and drink their coffee. I was the one that had to cough through the clouds of NOx, unburned gasoline and diesel (those were the worst) and Carbon Monoxide to deliver your precious paper. Of course it wasn't long before your paper put paper boys like myself out of a job by hiring adults to toss them out of the windows of their moving cars under those very same cars warming up. Go cry me a river.

    So the market tanked because growth was too abundant, and people can't buy the real estate on the market as it is, so their idea is to build more? Let's just shovel government money into a fire. It would do less damage to the economy than the rollercoaster created by the government, and every word that comes out of its mouth, driving the potential for recovery or crash. They could do more benefit just by shutting up than anything else. As could many others.

  • December 10, 2008

    8:05 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    vendari01 writes:

    I do not leave my old Jeep running unattended (I'm too cheap), but I have been known to sit inside with it idling for quite a bit more than ten minutes, as I monitored a site's security. If they want to ticket me for that, I guess I'll just have to ask the officer what he or she does while doing paperwork during a patrol, especially in the winter.

  • December 10, 2008

    8:24 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    fencergal writes:

    I think the practice of ticketing people who are warming up their cars is a thinly disguised "revenue enhancer". It has nothing to do with the possibility of the car being stolen. If you have two sets of keys, one set could be in the ignition, and you could still lock the car while it is running. City and state governments are hungry for your money and this is one nit-picking way to get it.

  • December 10, 2008

    9:22 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    HopiMedicineMan writes:

    I'm confused as to who is being protected. Is it to keep individuals from stealing unattended cars, prevent crime by punishing the innocent? Is it about global warming, unecessary carbon dioxide production? There's a paucity of definitions. As an XXL-American, producing copious amounts of CO2, I'm wondering who'll get to live and who won't as this craze is taken to the next logical step.

  • December 10, 2008

    11:17 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    Marshdale writes:

    Fencegirl: I think you are probably correct.
    MedicineMan; Thats hillarious.

  • December 10, 2008

    11:50 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    ILoveChipotle writes:

    What about remote starters? I can turn on my truck from inside my house and it's impossible for someone to steal it without the key.

  • December 10, 2008

    1:53 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    peterpi writes:

    Burrito lover, you took the words right out of my mouth.
    My partner often remotely starts her car before she walks down two flights of stairs and a short length of sidewalk. In order to remotely start the car, she has to remotely lock the car -- twice. She's in no danger of having an "opportunity" thief take her car -- especially since she has the only set of keys that will actually allow the car to move.
    "Your honor, this woman's car was an opportunity for thieves."
    "Your honor, my car was locked, and I have the only keys to operate it."
    "Case dismissed. Next!"

  • December 10, 2008

    2:09 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    vendari01 writes:

    peterpi, as I understand it, your partner's car, having the remote starter with kill feature is actually exempted under the new law. Frankly, though, instead of giving out tickets, they should just tell 'puffers' that any car stolen while running, with the keys inside, simply isn't insured, due to "culpable negligence".

  • December 10, 2008

    2:11 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    denverrep writes:

    I wonder, when the police car was stolen here recently, if that officer recieved a $75 ticket?

  • December 10, 2008

    2:44 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    vendari01 writes:

    denverrep, if you a talking about the one I think you are (the parole officer), they didn't get the car, just his gear, which was bad enough, because they got his Glock, and the ammo. He'd better get a lot more than a ticket for that foul-up.

  • December 10, 2008

    2:49 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    HopiMedicineMan writes:

    Punishing the innocent for the intentions of potential criminals makes no sense to me. Producing carbon, however, is a crime and should be vigorously prosecuted.

    People do call me on some of my points. I don't mind. I'm in the book.

  • December 10, 2008

    3:14 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    Clarence_Boddicker writes:

    Nothing illegal about remote starters because they still leave the steering wheel locked and the vehicle disabled, most have a starter kill as well to prevent grinding the starter when you turn the key on

  • December 11, 2008

    5:37 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    Brian1973 writes:

    change the law make it read:

    If your car is stolen because you left it running and unattended - no police action will be taken.

  • December 11, 2008

    8:26 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    roger44 writes:

    Put a plug in heater on vehicle, I have one and it works great, uses less energy than using gas. New systems for remote starting have a chip that if the brake is used before actual key is in ignition, shuts off the engine. And if they want to address the pollution factor, they better start ticketing the coal fired power plants, they pollute more than all the vehicles in this country. it's a revenue thing, all there is to it....

  • December 11, 2008

    8:31 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    Mike_In_Hartsel writes:

    If safety is their real concern, why not have "meter maids" walk throught neighborhoods checking to see if front doors are locked? Give homeowners a ticket because their house could be robbed or they could have a home invasion?

    Let's ticket chubby people for endangering their health by overeating. Ticket smokers for costing health givers more money. Ticket ugly people for ruining the view (I'd get two tickets for this one). Ticket people for too much perfume or cologne for smelling up the environment.

    Think of the money, and safety, the government would get!

  • December 11, 2008

    12:38 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    freethinker07 writes:

    This is a fight between people who park on the street and people who park in a garage. Warming up your car on the street is illegal, warming it up in a private lot is not illegal, and warming it up in a garage is unnecessary.