Daily writing prompt

If you had the power to change one law, what would it be and why?

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Leniency towards criminal drivers is bordering on the outrageous. Once sitting in their boxes, ignoring speed limits and other regulations, is often free of charge. As if there was any difference between crime committed standing, and that committed sitting in the infernal machines. Why is that? Is that leniency built in law, or is senile judges’s pure idiocy responsible for that situation?

This question has troubled me for a long time. There is no clear answer. Yes, there is the car industry lobby, to the point when in some countries there is no real speed limit on motorway, the sacro-saint Autobahn: a total absurdity. Even in those little islands of so-called fair-play, leniency is obvious, if, say compared with the harassment meted out to citizens (subjects?) late in paying their taxes. But killing you may, providing you drive, sir.

There are, of course, easy technical solutions to simply prevent excessive speed automatically. The fact that these solutions are hardly implemented anywhere, despite a general consensus that it would be a good idea, may be evidence of the strength of the lobby, or, perhaps of the obtuseness built into our law making.

For there are other examples, such as the leniency, if it is the reason, that prevents proper protection of battered wives and partners. Or the trafficking of children. Is there a common thread through these examples? It may well be the inability of laws and law makers to keep up with changes in society, or the changing mood of the people, or the reality obvious to all of us but not to the so-called representatives of the people? Once upon a time the US had a generalised speed limit of 50 miles per hour, everywhere as far as I can recall. Why was this repelled? On whose name?

Perhaps the most important consideration is that of responsibility. It’s the leniency that creates the criminal: if every killer-driver was facing unredeemable whole life behind bars, we would immediately see a vast improvement. Given the omnipresence of surveillance cameras there would be no problem in penalising excessive speed on all roads and in towns and villages. So, it’s a matter of courage, for the legislators, the enforcement agencies, and ultimately the citizens.

Picture: Antique New Hampshire speed limit sign. On display at Clark’s Trading Post, Lincoln New Hampshire. Source