There is a lot of hysteria lately about people getting killed in police
pursuits. The bill you mentioned is only one of several that are being
proposed. One would deny law enforcement the ability to pursue any violator.
It basically says that if a violator won't stop just to let them go and
maybe they'll stop next time.
The proposed laser sounds more discriminating than a spike strip. When a
spike strip is deployed against a pursued vehicle there is also a chance of
collateral damage to other vehicles.
In reading the text of the proposed law, it appears to me that it requires
that vehicles sold in California after 2005 must be equipped with this
gadget. This is similar to our more restrictive smog requirements. New cars
sold in California must have California smog. My old cars (over 20 years) do
not have to comply. The same goes for cars brought in from out of state and
registered here.
There will be a lot of ranting about this before it goes anywhere. Right now
there is questioning on how to keep the laser out of the wrong hands. For
example: What if one of these things got stolen out of a police car and some
"bad" people start using it to stop us law abiding citizens on the road?
Also being looked at is how cars react when the engine suddenly stops.
Obviously power steering is lost as well as power brakes. There are a lot of
unanswered questions that will have to be addressed before this bill goes
into law.
I'll try to keep the list posted as things develop on this.
Gary Pavone
gpavone@thegrid.net
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Oct 24 2000 - 20:55:35 PDT