It used to be that roadside mulctings were primarily, even exclusively, motivated by simple money-lust. Traffic enforcement as a kind of random tax-raising effort.
Many towns and even cities in the United States are extremely dependent on the “revenue” – as it is styled – which is generated by the fleecing of motorists. This is why there are so many “infractions” – and it is why many of them are deliberately contrived so as to assure almost every motorist will be “guilty” of at least one “violation” every time he drives.
Examples include absurdly under-posted speed limits that are often functionally impossible to comply with – unless you want to get run over. And pedantic requirements about exactly where one must stop at a stop sign – and how long one must stop. The touching of a yellow line, etc.
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But now the object now appears to be to punish driving as such. In order to discourage driving as such. To make it so teeth-grindingly unpleasant – and impossibly expensive – to drive that people will give up driving in favor of government/corporate controlled collectivized driving schemes.
Electric/automated cars are intended to play a major role in this “transition.”
People are soothed with images of a carefree future in which they’ll no longer be mulcted; in which they’ll be smoothly/quietly and speedily whisked to their destination, sleeping in transit if they want to.
And the check’s in the mail.
Is it a done deal? It may well be.
My sense of things is that car culture is in the same general back alley as being interested in the crazy ideas put forward in the Declaration of Independence and the entire backdrop of Enlightenment/humanistic thinking which preceded it.
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Yes, of course, there are still people – including some young people – who are interested in cars and driving; who are not interested in becoming meatsacks gaping at cell phones while being transported by a pod under the control of the government/corporate nexus.
Who are as appalled by the idea of it as they are by the idea of being “assisted” in the bathroom.
There are also still a few people who believe in that old-timey idea, the pursuit of happiness – but don’t believe they have a right to have happiness or anything else at someone else’s expense. That they are owed happiness – and health care and housing, a college education, a “living wage” and maybe sushi once a week, too – by the beneficent Oz styled “government,” which gets them all those things by serving as a middleman-at-gunpoint, stealing the funds from others then redistributing them while keeping a portion for itself (along with the far more valuable prerogative to steal at will, legally).
Both species – the car guy (and car gal) and liberty guy (and gal) appear to be in the minority – which is very bad news when “rights” are a function of the vote.
