I liked its point that many people tend to think of traffic violations as not 'real' crimes. Everyone does it, we think. And seriously, almost everyone does. Speeding must be the most common crime in the country. (I'm just guessing on that, and have no citation to back me up, so don't even ask.)
Just get on the the highway somewhere and you're surrounded (if not by people stuck in traffic and frustrated by the inability to go anywhere) by people blithely flouting the law.
I myself am strictly law-abiding in many ways (I dutifully declare my internet purchases for purposes of state sales tax), but I still disregard the speed limit. I don't habitually break traffic laws in other ways, although I've racked up a few parking tickets in my time, possibly since I rarely drive or need to park these days, but here I am, deciding which laws I want to obey and which I don't, exactly as one should not really be able to do in a society of law (right?).
I was particularly struck by this example of how we tend not to take traffic crimes seriously:
Even the most socially abhorrent driving crimes, like a fatal crash involving an alcohol-impaired driver, often evoke curiously lenient legal responses. Consider the nonautomotive case of Plaxico Burress, who accidentally shot himself with an unregistered, concealed gun. Stupid? Yes. Illegal. Yes. End result? A painful leg injury (to himself)—and two years in jail. Now compare that with fellow NFL player Leonard Little, who in 1998 ran a red light and smashed into a car whose driver died the next day from her injuries. Little was found to have a BAC of 0.19, more than twice the legal limit in the state of Missouri. Stupid? Yes. Illegal? Yes. End result? Another person lost her life. Little's sentence, compared with Burress', was minor: 90 days. He missed only eight football games and was able to keep his license.
Put like that, it does seem a little off.
The piece argues that traffic tickets are good in a couple of ways, one being that a lot of people wanted for more serious crimes are caught during traffic stops, and one being the suggestion that enforcing traffic laws is a way to encourage generally more lawful behavior, kind of the way that the 'broken windows' theory suggests that cracking down on petty crime will help keep neighborhoods free of more serious problems.
I don't know that I would ever actually want a traffic ticket, and I argued about a couple of mine (I contend that it's legitimate to contest tickets given for violating parking rules that were not posted), but in general I figure them's the breaks. If I'm violating a law, I know I'm taking the risk of a ticket.
The question then arises, given that I just admitted I speed practically whenever I drive, but have never gotten a speeding ticket, should we be getting more tickets, to even further advance the greater good?
After all, a lot of times you don't get pulled over for speeding. I've heard the argument that cops figure it's actually safe for most people to drive faster than the posted limit, but that having it lower than most people drive both keeps you from driving even faster, and gives them a reason to pull you over if they think you're doing something else you shouldn't be doing.
Either one of those notions could be dissected on its own, but I've already said too much.
For any reader's patience, I mean.
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