On Tuesday evening, I found myself fourth in line to make a right turn at a red light. Directly in front of me was a police car, and there were two other cars in front of it.

At first, no one moved, for good reasons: There was a “no turn on red” sign.

Then I watched as Car No. 1 made a right turn on red. I thought, well, that’s because the driver couldn’t see the police car.

Then I watched as Car No. 2 made a right turn on red. How brazen, I thought (though maybe the car’s rear window was so full of doll parts that the driver couldn’t see the cop).

Then I watched as the police car … politely waited for the light to turn green. Cars 1 and 2, propelled by their moving violation, had gone merrily on their way without even a hint of a ticket.

The officer may have had somewhere else to be and something more urgent to do — Minneapolis is a city that experiences a felony or two now and then. Still, even though Roadguy has written about driver anarchy before, it’s a bit of a different level when a cop is right there and no one seems to notice or care.

This all came to mind when I read this story about how some municipalities give out local tickets, which have lower fines than tickets handled by the state (and let local governments keep more money). The idea is to issue more tickets; officers sometimes give only warnings for speeding violations under 10 miles per hour because fines can run as high as $142.

Maybe more frequent and somewhat less painful enforcement would encourage drivers to obey signs that are right in front of them and respect officers who are right behind them. Or maybe not; share your thoughts below.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 27th, 2008 at 12:18 am and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.