© 2007 Michael Swickard, Ph.D.
Some say the hardest job is being a funeral director. It is hard to look glum at an expensive funeral while calling the wife on a cell phone and saying, “Go ahead and buy that new Lexus.”
Likewise, city councilors all over our nation have a hard time looking glum at the millions of dollars of new revenue coming in from red light cameras. They should be glum because their solution to the problem of red light runners does not work. In fact, all it does is invest the city council in being happy when people break the law. If the penalty did work, the revenues would dwindle and at some point the revenues would not pay for the program. Then what?
A guy goes to a psychologist. “For the last five years my brother has thought he is a chicken,” he says.
The psychologist asks, “Why did you wait so long to bring him in?”
The guy answers, “We needed the eggs.”
First comes the need to ensure people are safe while driving. Then the money coming in becomes more important than stopping the behavior. For the red light camera industry to stay in business, enough citizens must run red lights. It is quite a predicament, ethically. If the threat of being caught by red light cameras really worked, it would put said cameras out of business.
I agree with the efficacy of cameras. They are more effective than having our finest loiter at intersections. And ticketing officers must be in the right position to catch violators. However, the increased revenue masks local governments from the fact that red light running continues.
While police administrators will deny this, friends in police departments tell me they are routinely told to write a certain number of tickets to provide the financial resources for their departments. How can it not be unethical when an officer of the law benefits from writing tickets? What if judges, reminiscent of Judge Roy Bean, got a percentage of the fines levied?
I have the same concern when police departments support themselves with vehicle seizures. All of a sudden the priority is to get more money for the department. As the saying goes, “To someone holding a hammer, all solutions look like nails.”
Changing driving behavior is possible
It is possible to change how people drive, but not in the current way. Behaviorist B.F. Skinner wrote, “The consequences of an act affect the probability of it occurring again.”
The current financial consequences are not fundamentally changing driving behavior. This threatens the welfare of citizens. In the old west Judge Parker tried a man for horse stealing. The judge found him guilty and announced the fine would be $200 dollars. The thief smugly pulled his wallet out and counted out the bills.
“And,” thundered Parker, “20 years in prison. Pull that out of your wallet.”
The theory is that people do not like to part with their money. That is true to a point. When the national speed limit was dropped to 55 mph in the 1970s, the fine for speeding a few miles above the limit was $5. Most people considered it a fee and drove as they pleased.
The fines today are higher, yet any time the police want to concentrate on speeding they can spend the whole day – or the whole month – writing tickets. The threat of the fine does not really change behavior. Further, radar detectors allow people to break the law. Exactly why is it that radar detectors are legal? They only function to allow drivers to avoid getting tickets.
Maybe a threat that would cause a change of behavior is a consequence of inconvenience, so that the penalty is time on a Saturday picking up trash. The important part is not to have citizens pick up trash, it is to provide an effective incentive for them to drive correctly.
Yes, a very few would test the law and, rather than whipping out their Visa cards, they would be compelled to be personally inconvenienced. I am not talking about putting citizens on chain gangs, but they would find it very inconvenient. There would be no financial value to the government other than the safety of its citizens. But money is not the object; the safety of the people is what we are after.
Maybe changing behavior should start with taking driving privileges away. That is also a real inconvenience. Going to college, I didn’t have a car. It was hard calling up a woman and saying, “I will walk right over and pick you up.”
We, as a society, need to change our method of changing driving behavior. Our current method does not work and it is unethical. The legitimate role of government is to safeguard citizens, not fill government coffers with continuing required revenue.
In this coming election, I wonder if there are any candidates who will change the paradigm from governments’ need for people to offend. I will vote for the candidates who are not sold on the money and think of safety instead.
As I say to my cat, it is time to think outside the box.
Swickard is a weekly columnist for this site. You can reach him at michael@swickard.com.