I was browsing through all the news that’s fit to print when I came across a story at Yahoo Odd News that caught my interest. A fellow by the name of Randy Kratofil was driving through the Pennsylvania town of Jefferson Hills when he came to a three-way stop sign. He stopped and then proceeded forward. A pair of police officers, clearly staking out the intersection, then pulled him over and wrote him a $127.50 ticket. They told him that residents were complaining of people running the stop sign.
Kratofil has a dash-cam in his car. He took the video to a local news station which then showed it to the Jefferson Hills police chief and the ticket was rescinded although the chief of police stands by the officer that wrote the ticket. Which in itself is ridiculous. If you stand by the ticket then you wouldn’t rescind it. That’s another story.
A factor in the case which I did not see in the reported story is the nature of the intersection where the non-infraction took place. If you watch the video it is very apparent that the intersection is extremely dangerous. It’s a three way intersection which sort of bends around and away to the left; after the original stop it’s very difficult to see oncoming traffic from that direction.
The problem appears to me to be that the white line is not painted in the right spot. From the video I couldn’t even see the white line. For everyone out there not familiar with traffic laws it’s important to note that you are required to stop at the white line, not the stop sign. This rule is designed for intersections exactly like the one in the video. The nature of the road made it impossible to put the stop sign where it needed to be and there should have been a white line painted another ten feet or so forward.
The fact that the white line is either absent or badly painted leads me to the conclusion that someone is either incompetent or the police use the intersection as a revenue generator. I’d like to know how many tickets are written at that intersection. I’d also like to know how many accidents happen at that intersection. If the white line is intentionally absent in order to generate revenue for the police department there is serious criminal misconduct going on. It is creating a dangerous situation in the pursuit of money.
I do not know if any of that is actually true. It’s possible the white line is there but just not visible because of the lighting condition. It’s possible that the white line is missing for other reasons but the events here make me extremely suspicious of the Jefferson Hills police department. If someone was injured in an accident at that intersection there should be criminal liability.
The moral of the story is that it’s not a bad idea to purchase a good dash-cam for your car. They have a nice selection at Amazon but you can pick them up just about anywhere you do your electronic shopping.
As an added bonus for me, I can upload video to YouTube and show off how all those other drivers are out there trying to kill me. I drive about seven minutes to work everyday and about the same back home. Now that I have a food service bringing me food I don’t even stop at the grocery store. In that fourteen minutes of driving I have least one person try to kill me every day. People think I’m paranoid but I’m not! I tell you they’re out to get me! Now to get that dash-cam and prove it!
Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery Fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
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