"The argument against enforcing the rules is that you don’t want to ruin someone’s life over a minor infraction."
The other variable here isn't just the severity of the infraction, but the willfulness involved. It's so easy to just *not* blast music through a portable speaker that I can only assume anyone doing it is trying to figuratively punch me in the ears, and I am 100% OK with deputizing the law to punch them right back.
Exactly. This isn’t a case of poor or otherwise marginalized people being further punished by their inability to comply with rules that they’d probably prefer to comply with. (Thinking of things like fines for not having car insurance here.) There is absolutely no cost to the rule-violator to comply with rules like not littering, not blasting music, not obstructing the seat, not using drugs or alcohol on the train, etc.
Now that I have a son, I am going to quietly sit here and take it, because I realized that me confronting people about this will eventually lead to me getting stabbed.
My daddy taught me that real men risk a stabbing to put a stop to minor annoyances. He told me this right before he was stabbed, but that was unrelated.
We visited several cities in Italy last summer that have congestion pricing. I think the idea is totally reasonable, but it's a hard policy to implement, and the Italian government was definitely not up to the challenge. The system was complicated and explanations on official sites seemed to assume you already knew how everything works. Signage was sparse and imprecise. GPS was unable to route around it (okay; that one's Google's fault). But worst of all, the web site to actually pay the toll was so dysfunctional that our host in Milan (who helps several guests do this every day because it's so difficult) took over an hour in our case to successfully pay the 7 euros.
I hope New York is doing a better job on the details. As liberal US cities strive to improve their governance, "Be better than the Italian government," sounds like a nice, easy first goal to shoot for.
EZPass seems to work pretty well from what I can tell. I live upstate in the Albany area and they just replenish my account straight from my bank account when I get low, and it works anywhere there’s an EZPass. For people who don’t have EZPass they send you a bill in the mail for toll roads, which I *think* works well for that purpose since unless your car isn’t registered (which of course is illegal), they have access to your mailing address. So I’m inclined to think it should work better than what you’ve described in Italy, but of course we all know that expression about how sometimes theory and practice don’t line up.
It absolutely is not a hard policy to implement. Toll passes with cameras (to take pictures of your number plate) have existed in the world for decades. Italy however can't implement picking up the rubbish on a regular basis so no surprise they f7cked it up.
On an island with half a dozen land connections and thousands of vehicles entering every day, the investment in electronic toll collection is well worth it. Around a medieval city center with three dozen streets going in and out, it’s a bigger investment for many fewer tolls collected.
Pretty sure you're supposed to bribe a civil servant to get anything done in Italy :). How are they supposed to get their bribes if the system works well on its own?
Can we talk for a second about people who blast their music in the wilderness? I’ve come to expect a certain level of obnoxious disruption on my daily train commute. What surprises me is how often I now see people with Bluetooth speakers on public trails, who have decided to impose their personal soundtrack on an old growth redwood forest or a snowy mountaintop for all to enjoy (wildlife included). I know there are rules against this, but good luck enforcing them. There is no escape!
Well written column, as usual. But what’s concerning is this is obvious. The fact that we now need arguments for enforcing bare minimum laws is a major red flag for our broader society.
Have you ever lived in an enabling family, typically featuring someone really invested in making excuses for people making terrible choices? It’s that but metastasized to the legal-nonprofit-government ecosystem.
We have a lot of “good people” running around unaware of the harm they do at a societal and individual level. Or at least I hope they’re unaware. But if you’ve had them in your family, you know them.
Yeah. Waterboarding would work too, for things like playing music on the subway. You want them to be traumatized so they don’t repeat the bad behavior.
Maybe taking the subway should be part of NYPD patrol routes.
One of the reasons shitheels feel so empowered to be their worst selves on the subway is that it feels like an NYPD-free zone once you get past the ticket gate.
I’ve ridden safe mass public transit networks and the defining feature is that police are frequently patrolling the cars and platforms, which dramatically increases response time.
Ex: Moscow has cops at almost every single station, and they’re never far away. They are polite, but they will also give a baton massage to anyone acting out.
$9 seems cheap compared to those $28 pastrami sandwiches they have in Manhattan. Great article. It's amazing how soft we are as a society, and how far it has gotten out of hand.
I'm always amazed by how low the fines are in other countries, here in Australia you don't buy a $3 Train ticket and get caught its a $200 fine
I remember when my mate when I was younger made the mistake of drinking on a train and standing on the seat to yell at someone just as the train cops came onto the carriage and he got whacked with about $600 of fines for the accumulated offences (from memory no ticket, feet on seats, drinking and probably something i am forgetting) Same with our car fines, you get hammered here for being 5km over the limit but the way I here americans talk its like speeding fines are a minor annoyance and the number of them I hear people talking about getting its like you don't have points on your license as another incentive either.
Now some people here argue that State Govts just use fines as a revenue raiser to avoid raising taxes but it sure works as an incentive to not go doing stupid stuff that can get you fined
Speed limit rules in America must be confusing as hell to foreign visitors. It's a cultural thing, there's just this unspoken agreement that the actual speed a cop will pull you over for is about 15% higher than the posted speed limit (e.g. 30 in a 25 might get you pulled over, but go 70 in a 65 and everyone will be passing you). I have no idea why this is, but it's a thing. If you drive the speed limit, you'll be one of the slowest cars on the road.
The actual rule is "don't go too much faster than the cars around you". If you're keeping up with traffic and everyone's doing 10 over, you're fine. If everyone else is doing 10 over and you're passing them, then you're taking a risk.
But do you have points you lose on your licence and if you lose too many you lose your licence like here? Because I listen to US sports podcasts and I hear hosts whining about speed camera traps, but the way they talk it’s like it’s catching them every week, which here would mean you’re losing your licence in a couple of months
Yes, you can lose points from traffic tickets. If it's minor you might not (especially if you go to traffic court and suck up to the judge and you don't have any recent priors), but generally if a cop is writing you a citation, you're probably taking a points hit. Which means higher insurance premiums and, if you keep getting citations, eventually a suspention of your license.
The camera traps thing is even weirder than the fake speed limit thing. US courts have ruled that tickets sent from a traffic camera (sometimes for speeding; in my town they're mostly catching people for running a red light) aren't legally enforceable unless they are served in person. If a cop pulls you over, you're being served in person, but if a camera gets you they have to track you down and hand you a ticket after the fact. When you get a notice in the mail from a traffic camera, it'll say something along the lines of:
"You can voluntarily pay us $100 now, or pay us $150 if we have to go to your house and serve you the ticket in person. If you don't pay and we don't serve you, it goes away in 90 days." The extra $50 is described as a service fee, but of course its purpose is to pressure you into paying the ticket rather than chance it. And that number is probably different in different cities; I only know how mine does it.
If you pay the ticket without being served, you don't get points on your license, because the courts say you haven't been legally served a citation. It's like the whole thing never happened, but the city gets your $100 (or whatever it is).
I do know that 20 year old me definitely would have taken the chance on 'its only 90 days, lets hope the cops are too busy'
But that does answer another question of mine which is I have never understood how traffic cameras could be legal in America with your warrantless search laws, kind of feels like a traffic camera is walking right up to the border of being that
One day you'll long for the times when people blasted music with rude lyrics, because in the future popular music will sound like car alarms going off forever.
In DC its the utes and man they don't give a whit at all. I think it was said elsewhere but being an asshole to people in public is the point. Nobody is actually able to enjoy the music being played on crappy phone speakers. What most people don't want to confront is that some people get off on being anti-social.
Great column as usual. Once read a very progressive (Im liberal, not progressive) colleague post on FB that the idea of being quiet on the train is "white supremacy" (x did, I kid you not, naturally x is white). Few months by and x complained about people being loud on the train. It took everything I had not to comment... Its rude and annoying.
The main question I have about this policy is how it will impact the Christian rapper I saw performing on the subway last week, blaring his boombox. I'd think he should be able to pay the fine, but only if he achieves his goals of "going viral" and "making a million dollars."
(I kid, but that guy dropped talented enough beats that I'll take his rapping about the devil or whatever over the usual subway music blaring)
"The argument against enforcing the rules is that you don’t want to ruin someone’s life over a minor infraction."
The other variable here isn't just the severity of the infraction, but the willfulness involved. It's so easy to just *not* blast music through a portable speaker that I can only assume anyone doing it is trying to figuratively punch me in the ears, and I am 100% OK with deputizing the law to punch them right back.
Exactly. This isn’t a case of poor or otherwise marginalized people being further punished by their inability to comply with rules that they’d probably prefer to comply with. (Thinking of things like fines for not having car insurance here.) There is absolutely no cost to the rule-violator to comply with rules like not littering, not blasting music, not obstructing the seat, not using drugs or alcohol on the train, etc.
* BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM *
I’m playing loud music in your comment section right now, Maurer. What are you gonna do about it? As a paid subscriber I’m above the law.
* BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM *
Now that I have a son, I am going to quietly sit here and take it, because I realized that me confronting people about this will eventually lead to me getting stabbed.
But how will your son learn how to be a man if you refuse to be stabbed
My daddy taught me that real men risk a stabbing to put a stop to minor annoyances. He told me this right before he was stabbed, but that was unrelated.
LOL
Oh shit it’s my favorite TURN IT UP!
We visited several cities in Italy last summer that have congestion pricing. I think the idea is totally reasonable, but it's a hard policy to implement, and the Italian government was definitely not up to the challenge. The system was complicated and explanations on official sites seemed to assume you already knew how everything works. Signage was sparse and imprecise. GPS was unable to route around it (okay; that one's Google's fault). But worst of all, the web site to actually pay the toll was so dysfunctional that our host in Milan (who helps several guests do this every day because it's so difficult) took over an hour in our case to successfully pay the 7 euros.
I hope New York is doing a better job on the details. As liberal US cities strive to improve their governance, "Be better than the Italian government," sounds like a nice, easy first goal to shoot for.
Dysfunctional Italian governance? I’m shocked
EZPass seems to work pretty well from what I can tell. I live upstate in the Albany area and they just replenish my account straight from my bank account when I get low, and it works anywhere there’s an EZPass. For people who don’t have EZPass they send you a bill in the mail for toll roads, which I *think* works well for that purpose since unless your car isn’t registered (which of course is illegal), they have access to your mailing address. So I’m inclined to think it should work better than what you’ve described in Italy, but of course we all know that expression about how sometimes theory and practice don’t line up.
It absolutely is not a hard policy to implement. Toll passes with cameras (to take pictures of your number plate) have existed in the world for decades. Italy however can't implement picking up the rubbish on a regular basis so no surprise they f7cked it up.
On an island with half a dozen land connections and thousands of vehicles entering every day, the investment in electronic toll collection is well worth it. Around a medieval city center with three dozen streets going in and out, it’s a bigger investment for many fewer tolls collected.
Pretty sure you're supposed to bribe a civil servant to get anything done in Italy :). How are they supposed to get their bribes if the system works well on its own?
Can we talk for a second about people who blast their music in the wilderness? I’ve come to expect a certain level of obnoxious disruption on my daily train commute. What surprises me is how often I now see people with Bluetooth speakers on public trails, who have decided to impose their personal soundtrack on an old growth redwood forest or a snowy mountaintop for all to enjoy (wildlife included). I know there are rules against this, but good luck enforcing them. There is no escape!
Sometimes people walk into the wilderness, and they don't walk back out.
Just sayin'.
Well written column, as usual. But what’s concerning is this is obvious. The fact that we now need arguments for enforcing bare minimum laws is a major red flag for our broader society.
Have you ever lived in an enabling family, typically featuring someone really invested in making excuses for people making terrible choices? It’s that but metastasized to the legal-nonprofit-government ecosystem.
We have a lot of “good people” running around unaware of the harm they do at a societal and individual level. Or at least I hope they’re unaware. But if you’ve had them in your family, you know them.
Or we could have real punishments that don’t involve fines or jail time. Bring back flogging.
Make them listen to *my* music.
Yeah. Waterboarding would work too, for things like playing music on the subway. You want them to be traumatized so they don’t repeat the bad behavior.
Public stocks
Maybe taking the subway should be part of NYPD patrol routes.
One of the reasons shitheels feel so empowered to be their worst selves on the subway is that it feels like an NYPD-free zone once you get past the ticket gate.
I’ve ridden safe mass public transit networks and the defining feature is that police are frequently patrolling the cars and platforms, which dramatically increases response time.
Ex: Moscow has cops at almost every single station, and they’re never far away. They are polite, but they will also give a baton massage to anyone acting out.
In Europe (where, I don’t remember, maybe 10 years ago) they had very serious guns. That seemed a bit extreme but I figured they had reasons.
$9 seems cheap compared to those $28 pastrami sandwiches they have in Manhattan. Great article. It's amazing how soft we are as a society, and how far it has gotten out of hand.
Katz's is worth it for that pound of pastrami.
Just enforcing the law in an approximately cost-effective way (carjacking, subway noisomeness, asylum seeking abuse) would go a long way.
One of these things is not like the others...
Each is different but all could be better enforced
I'm always amazed by how low the fines are in other countries, here in Australia you don't buy a $3 Train ticket and get caught its a $200 fine
I remember when my mate when I was younger made the mistake of drinking on a train and standing on the seat to yell at someone just as the train cops came onto the carriage and he got whacked with about $600 of fines for the accumulated offences (from memory no ticket, feet on seats, drinking and probably something i am forgetting) Same with our car fines, you get hammered here for being 5km over the limit but the way I here americans talk its like speeding fines are a minor annoyance and the number of them I hear people talking about getting its like you don't have points on your license as another incentive either.
Now some people here argue that State Govts just use fines as a revenue raiser to avoid raising taxes but it sure works as an incentive to not go doing stupid stuff that can get you fined
Speed limit rules in America must be confusing as hell to foreign visitors. It's a cultural thing, there's just this unspoken agreement that the actual speed a cop will pull you over for is about 15% higher than the posted speed limit (e.g. 30 in a 25 might get you pulled over, but go 70 in a 65 and everyone will be passing you). I have no idea why this is, but it's a thing. If you drive the speed limit, you'll be one of the slowest cars on the road.
The actual rule is "don't go too much faster than the cars around you". If you're keeping up with traffic and everyone's doing 10 over, you're fine. If everyone else is doing 10 over and you're passing them, then you're taking a risk.
But do you have points you lose on your licence and if you lose too many you lose your licence like here? Because I listen to US sports podcasts and I hear hosts whining about speed camera traps, but the way they talk it’s like it’s catching them every week, which here would mean you’re losing your licence in a couple of months
Yes, you can lose points from traffic tickets. If it's minor you might not (especially if you go to traffic court and suck up to the judge and you don't have any recent priors), but generally if a cop is writing you a citation, you're probably taking a points hit. Which means higher insurance premiums and, if you keep getting citations, eventually a suspention of your license.
The camera traps thing is even weirder than the fake speed limit thing. US courts have ruled that tickets sent from a traffic camera (sometimes for speeding; in my town they're mostly catching people for running a red light) aren't legally enforceable unless they are served in person. If a cop pulls you over, you're being served in person, but if a camera gets you they have to track you down and hand you a ticket after the fact. When you get a notice in the mail from a traffic camera, it'll say something along the lines of:
"You can voluntarily pay us $100 now, or pay us $150 if we have to go to your house and serve you the ticket in person. If you don't pay and we don't serve you, it goes away in 90 days." The extra $50 is described as a service fee, but of course its purpose is to pressure you into paying the ticket rather than chance it. And that number is probably different in different cities; I only know how mine does it.
If you pay the ticket without being served, you don't get points on your license, because the courts say you haven't been legally served a citation. It's like the whole thing never happened, but the city gets your $100 (or whatever it is).
so you pay to avoid the points
I do know that 20 year old me definitely would have taken the chance on 'its only 90 days, lets hope the cops are too busy'
But that does answer another question of mine which is I have never understood how traffic cameras could be legal in America with your warrantless search laws, kind of feels like a traffic camera is walking right up to the border of being that
Maybe you're not thrilled about the Guardian Angels patrolling the subway, but I am.
One day you'll long for the times when people blasted music with rude lyrics, because in the future popular music will sound like car alarms going off forever.
The future is now!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EA5eIAfutYU
The worst noise offenders are little old ladies with no headphones who watch video on their cell phones while on the bus and subway.
In DC its the utes and man they don't give a whit at all. I think it was said elsewhere but being an asshole to people in public is the point. Nobody is actually able to enjoy the music being played on crappy phone speakers. What most people don't want to confront is that some people get off on being anti-social.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ute_people
Colorado native Americans?
Less feather, more My Cousin Vinny
Great column as usual. Once read a very progressive (Im liberal, not progressive) colleague post on FB that the idea of being quiet on the train is "white supremacy" (x did, I kid you not, naturally x is white). Few months by and x complained about people being loud on the train. It took everything I had not to comment... Its rude and annoying.
The main question I have about this policy is how it will impact the Christian rapper I saw performing on the subway last week, blaring his boombox. I'd think he should be able to pay the fine, but only if he achieves his goals of "going viral" and "making a million dollars."
(I kid, but that guy dropped talented enough beats that I'll take his rapping about the devil or whatever over the usual subway music blaring)
People who FaceTime while shopping.