I was immediately reminded of a story tweeted about by On the Media. In the story it was reported that a man in Florida had been charged after he had been flashing his car lights to warn drivers about an upcoming speed trap. The judge considered headlight flashing a form of protected free speech and the ticket was overturned. Despite the fact that the case related to free speech protections that are specific to the US, I thought one the concepts that the judge mentioned was particularly relevant to the issue of warning cyclists.
At an earlier hearing Circuit Judge Alan Dickey said, "If the goal of the traffic law is promote safety and not to raise revenue, then why wouldn't we want everyone who sees a law enforcement officer with a radar gun in his hand, blinking his lights to slow down all those other cars?" reported The Crime Report.My thinking is that the judge has it right. Whether one is flashing lights or issuing a warning over the radio the end result is, hopefully, less of the prohibited/dangerous activity. And isn't reducing the number of incidences of the action in question usually the justification for such check-points? And, as far as society is concerned, isn't reducing these incidences what we really want as an outcome not the issuance of more tickets? Are we necessarily served by the police issuing more tickets (which implicitly means that instead of being prevented the behaviour was ongoing until after it had been observed)?
Anyway, I quickly dashed off an email to All in a Day expressing my disagreement with the listener's letter, citing the aforementioned case. Just a few minutes ago I received an email from someone from the show looking for more information about he case because they are interested in doing a follow-up piece on the topic today. So if all goes well the radio will be one step closer to fixed by the end of the day.
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