Washington Post this morning.

The link to the article made Drudge Report too...

But apparently I'm the only one who didn't know about it :-)

Of course I oppose the abuser fees, but I don't find this to be a particularly compelling sympathy case.  Generally we have a pregnant woman get to the hospital in private cars because labor lasts an average of 8 hours if she's given birth before or 13 hours if it's her first child.  Did this woman need to bomb to the hospital at nearly twice the speed limit?  No.  If you think it's a critical situation, call an ambulance and let the professionals get you there.

the first thing to go is your mind and common sense.  And you can talk about statistics all you want, when it feels like that baby's on the way no statistic's going to slow you down on the way to the hospital. 

This issue is about whether someone with a medical condition, or specifically in the case of labor, is exempted from traffic laws. I'm sure it has come up before in the long history of driving, and the law apparently doesn't make an exemption for it. That has nothing to do with the abuser fees.

Yes, you're right that medical conditions (or any other "reasonable" situation to break a law) is not an excuse to actually break the law.  The officer did his job properly and wrote a reckless citation.  I have no problem with that.

The problem here is very much the nature of the abusive fees.  The judge listened to the facts, was able to ask questions of the defendant and the officer, and was in the right position to determine proper punishment for the offense given the circumstances.  And the judge leveed a rather modest fine ($100 + court costs).  He had no say what so ever over the DMV fee - which amounts to an extension of the punishment.

These fees are a one size fits all solution from the Republican House that isn't fair - all so they could avoid another one size fits all solution that is fair (T-A-X).  They are saying a woman rushing to the hospital because she's in labor is the same as a teenager drag racing on public streets.  Not even close.  Yet they both receive the same punishment from the Republicans. 

A judge would likely dole out drastically different punishments for a pregnant woman and a drag racer - and that's exactly the point.  The judicial system should be in charge of determining the punishment.  Not some one size fits all DMV punishment that's really only in place to avoid raising the gasoline tax.

In the movies, when a mother in labor is being rushed to the hospital and the car is pulled over by a cop, the cop ends up giving a police escort to the hospital.  Life is not like the movies for this mother.  Hell, not only did she not get an escort, she didn't even get 5 mph cut off of her ticket.  I'm wondering why.

Several of the statements she made to the Post writer don't make sense to me, mainly because some details are missing. Not the first time WaPo didn't report the whole story. In recent years their stories have become too biased to be called journalism, IMHO.

1. If the woman was still in what turned out to be false labor when the policeman stopped her, why didn't he either call 911 for her or become her police escort with blue lights flashing all the way to Inova instead of issuing a ticket? Police always have that option. I certainly agree that a woman who thinks she's in labor may well not be thinking rationally. But the officer certainly wouldn't feel panicked and would know what to do. Did the Post writer interview the officer ? Apparently not, or if so that part of the story was left out intentionally.

2. I don't follow her statement that the reason she wasn't able to explain her case clearly to the judge was that she felt rushed. No doubt she really felt rushed when she tought she was in labor. But she had adequate time to prepare for her testimony so she could present her case clearly. And I've never seen or heard of a judge try to rush a defendant during testimony. Does her comment mean that the judge simply didn't believe her story and then she felt rushed because she couldn't think of another way to convince him to lower or drop the charges ? Again, the Post writer left out that part of the story.

3. The example of a person who had the charges lowered because of a good driving record makes me wonder why the Post writer didn't say anything about the woman's own driving record. Maybe not an important factor in the judge's decision, but still another fact that was missing.

4. The fact that there's no mention of the policeman's testimony means to me the Post writer only wanted to report one side of the story. In addition to the officer's version of what happened, a judge always asks the officer about the defendant's driving record. A clean or nearly clean (e.g., only a minor traffic infraction with only 3 points against the defendant's license) is usually an important factor in the judge's decision. The missing policeman's testimony combined with the missing previous driving record make me more skeptical about whether the reporter has intenionally biased the story. Maybe not, but there's too much missing from this story to know.

5. It's good that she is appealing the conviction. Presumably, the missing facts will come out in the appeal, although I doubt that the Post will report that story.

I do agree that the Abusive Driver part of the transportation act should be abolished in its entirety since highway safety has nothing to do with revenue for transportation. We do need to have higher fines and jail time options available to judges, and I think that would be easy to pass next Jan. if the bill isn't combined with anything unrelated to traffic safety.

All the more reason to work as hard as possible to elect more Democrats in November.

  T.C.

Fine summary of thoughts.

It makes me sick that so many people want to this woman to be prosicuted with out the facts.

These Nancy Grace judgements are sickening. And our society is falling more and more into prejudgements.

What if she'd been going 90 in a school zone?  My point is, we can't let everyone who thinks they're in an emergency decide their own rules of the road.

I'd be much more sympathetic to a case where the victim of the abuser fees had trouble paying (putting themselves through college, single parent, health care expenses, etc.) than a case where the victim claimed they had good reason to speed.

It's not that she got a ticket, it's that the abusive fees are wrong.  See my response above for a better explanation. 

I have a hard time believing that anyone would be able to drive safely while in real labor.  Reckless driving seems entirely warranted here.  Also Labor usually takes several hours; speeding is entirely unnecessary.  We also don't have the officers testimony from the trial; maybe she remembered she was in labor after she got a lawyer and prepared her appeal.

I hope every politician who voted for this gets BURNED...BIG time...its something people are talking about who AREN'T political, so its a good issue to take on some of the hacks in the legislature, both Democrats AND Republicans.  I'm sick of wimpy Democrats who vote for crap like this because they buy into Republican arguments that constituents can't take a tax hike.  Its totally BS.  If you make specific tax hikes for specific goals, and you give the taxes a date of expiration, I just don't see why people would care that they are paying more for a better system.

But there is a first time for everything...

I agree with you 75% of your post...

First time for everythign dude...

Scotty