ASHLAND — Twenty-six Amish who refused to pay their fines for violating a law that requires flashing lights on their buggies appeared in court on Friday.
Once there, Ashland Municipal Court Judge John Good ruled out the possibility of jail time for them and instead said he would impose liens on their real estate.
Just because something is illegal doesn’t mean it’s immoral. Sometimes the laws themselves are immoral. I believe this may be such a situation.
I don’t necessarily disagree. But someome using the road legally needs be able to assume others are too. If you can’t, what do you do? Walking, riding a bike, or driving do you stop at every green light to make sure no one is going to decide the red lights don’t apply to them? Do you idle down the road at 10mph whenever it’s dark or there is reduced visibility to make sure someone didn’t decide the laws don’t apply to them and drove an unlighted vehicle?
The most important thing about using a road safely, whether you’re walking, riding, or driving, is to be predictable. A large unlighted vehicle appearing out of the darkness is not predictable.
If you think the law should be changed and some other accommodation made, that’s a reasonable opinion. But until that happens, the person injured or killed by illegal activity is the victim, not the person acting illegally.
That’s a great response and I’m now on board with you. You’re considering this from a perspective I hadn’t, but I see it now. Thanks for taking the time to write this out.
Let it be known that on this day, the sixth of August in the year of our Lord 2024, an event of great import and considerable rarity occurred: a man’s opinion was changed by Internet discourse.
But a bear, deer, moose, or other large animal is, and they don’t have warning lights. Drivers need to drive within the distance of their headlights and sight; it’s that simple.
I occasionally come around bends in the roads to my neighborhood and discover a deer standing in the road. Because I’m not going too fast, I’m able to stop and avoid hitting them. Or, I could come around a bend and discover a large tree has fallen on the road. Again, it’s my responsibility to be driving in a manner that I can stop in time. It’s not the tree’s fault if I hit it, unless it just happens to fall inches in front of me.
Blaming the victims instead of the drivers is the biggest problem with cars in the US today. Drivers need to be responsible for their several tons of heavy machinery, and we do not hold them responsible often enough. So, drivers are practically encouraged to drive like nothing is going to go wrong.
I suppose you could try to pass laws against animals or fallen trees in the roadway. I don’t know how successful that might be. Fining a bear for being in the road also presents challenges.
Using a road in any way is never going to be completely safe. All we can do is make rules that reduce or eliminate known hazards.
We’re not taking about a deer being a deer. We’re talking about a group of stubborn dickheads who despite knowing damn well that they’re sharing the road with vehicles that have large speed differentials, refuse to make themselves visible for the benefit of everyone’s safety.
The victim is the person injured or killed by someone committing an illegal act. Not the person acting illegally.
Keep driving like nothing will ever go wrong, I’m sure that will work out perfectly for you!
Lol, nice straw man.
Hey, let me ask you a few questions.
What if the next law these fucking jerks decide they don’t want to follow is driving on the right? You come to one of the bends you go around and instead of a deer standing there, or a fallen tree, there are two horses pulling a carriage toward you making the combined speed too high to stop in time. Your hood takes out their legs and a couple thousand pounds of house torso blasts through your windshield killing you and your family.
Are you and your deceased family victims now? Or is the victim still somehow the asshole driving the carriage who miraculously always remains blameless just because they’re not driving a car?
What does fuck cars mean to you?
To me it means drastically reducing the share of infrastructure and space given to the operation and storage of cars by improving public transportation and cycling/pedestrian friendly infrastructure to reduce, or even eliminate, the need for personal motor vehicles larger than an E-Bike in most, or even all cases.
Based on your comments “fuck cars” is just a mantra. A mantra you’ve repeated often enough to inspire a religious-like conviction that the driver of a motor vehicle is always at fault when they come in conflict with any other road user, no matter how ridiculous it makes you sound.
You’re actually insane. Got it.
Roads are a shared resource, and we all have a responsibility to use them wisely.
Driving around too fast to stop - whether it be vehicle or horse - is irresponsible. I don’t understand why this is a controversial opinion, but it sure as hell is. I ride bicycles, I drive compact cars, and I drive a pickup while towing a 30’ long trailer, so I experience all aspects of road usage and rage directed at me.
And somehow I know that I need to keep within my limits of braking. It’s not hard. Christ. I’m blocking you, I don’t need insane people in my life.
So we’re both in agreement that driving too fast is irresponsible.
But you think diving an unlighted buggy at night is fine. And furthermore, if that unlighted buggy gets in an accident with a car, it’s definitely the driver of the car obeying all the laws at fault, never the fault of the buggy driving scofflaw.
Nope, doesn’t sound like dogmatic culty thinking to me at all.
BTW: the appeal to authority fallacy is no better than a straw man. Much like traffic laws, they’re all important.
Traffic laws tend to be about safety rather than morality.