Why are certain laws never enforced?

Question

In particular, here in New York, driving while talking on the cell phone is illegal; and in my opinion it's a good law, since statistics show that hand held cellphones cause accidents. But you never see the law enforced. In fact you will often see the police driving while chatting?

I can understand not agreeing with a law, but should we only obey the laws we agree with?

Answer 1

Check the statute, in NY Police are exempt from the law while working.I am a police officer and understand your frustration.The problem w/ that law is you could write 3 books a day.I usually only write people that talk as they are next to me @ a light or something like that.Other laws are just antiquated and were never taken off the books.Police use something referred to as "officer discretion" when it comes to writing most V&T. Sometimes a person doesn't need a ticket, there might be a good reason they were doing what they were doing.

Answer 2

Unfortunately police officers do not have much say in which laws are passed and not passed in their state. Some laws are seen as more helpful in deterring crime / accidents and some are not. Many laws are passed more for earning a jurisdiction or state money than for any other reason. The cell phone while driving is illegal and I think most police officers do enforce it if the driver doesn't show some common courtesy by at least lowering the phone or taking it away from the ear area when the cop is looking right at you but for the most part it is a very unpopular law. The next time you are driving in a busy part of town look and see how many people are driving while eating, reading, putting on make up, combing their hair, or messing with gadgets in their vehicle... I'm sure that people talking on their cell phones cause accidents but so do people who are trying to read the morning edition of the local paper... it's just that cell phones are more popular and a better money maker at this time....

Answer 3

Traffic laws are a farce in this country.

We have entire budgets that depend on people disobeying
the law (sizable portion of the town income may depend on
speed traps).

And if wanted to enforce the law, we could do a lot better in
many cases than we do. For instance, when you get on a
highway, then know when you got on. When you got off,
they know that too. Since they know how much road is
in between, they can calculate the speed.

Why not hand out speeding tickets with everyone who goes
over the posted amount?

Why? Because the system depends on the laws being
wishy washy.

Why do women get a disproportionately high number of
warnings per arrest?

Why do police regularly disobey the law when not in
emergency circumstances.

There are some laws that I refer to as "and your mother
dresses you funny laws." That is, laws that usually aren't
cited unless some other law has been broken. The
seatbelt and cell phone laws fall into that category. If
you are in an accident and you were disobeying one of these
laws, it makes you legally more likely to be at fault (cell phone)
and responsible for your own injury (seat belt).

Personally, I think we should either enforce the law AS
WRITTEN or scrap most of the laws and replace them
with simple judgement driven "reckless driving."

Driving drunk shouldn't be a crime. Reckless driving is the crime.
Driving at 200 mph through town isn't a crime. Reckless
driving is the time. This puts the entire matter into the
judgement of the police officer and perhaps the judge.

That's where it is anyways, but at least we would know where
we stand.

Answer 4

Because police use discretion when enforcing certain laws. If you run a stop sign with no one around, they're not going to care; the fact that they're there will scare the crap out of you anyways, so you would've learned your lesson on running stop signs. If the street was filled with kids, that's a different story. Same goes for your cell phone law too (I really wish we have something like that in Toronto). Also, police officers are human beings, too. If your boss told you to do extra paperwork, would you really do it?

Give the ten points to the guy above me.

Answer 5

Because they're stupid laws and they make even more paperwork for our already overworked law enforcement officials. I mean, seriously, if I were a police officer worried about getting shot every time I stopped someone, I wouldn't be stopping people for something like talking on a cell phone when there are drug dealers and car accidents and prostitutes and a whole lot more severe and life-threatening things I could be dealing with (or just totally avoiding).

Answer 6

"Laws were made to be broken" is a very bad philosophy.

We should all strive to remain within the law and our law enforcement agents ought to strive to do their job as well as they can; however, some laws are difficult to support and equally difficult to enforce - these are the statutes that seem to go unnoticed by us.

In the long run, if a law is seen as generally good for the continued development of a better society, it will be easily followed by the bulk of the population and it will be enforced with enthusiasm by our police.

Give it time... like wearing seat-belts... it may take a while for most of us to assume new habits and to allow for the necessary adjustments in our behavior; but then, most of us will finally be able to agree with you, that it is a good law ...and that's when we'll all stick to following it.

ZZZZZ r u randy? ZZZZZ

Answer 7

There are so many laws that people tend to focus on the ones they believe to be more serious. For instance, would you really want to wait while someone is in your house trying to kill you for the closest police officer to finish pulling someone over and writing them a ticket for talking on a cell phone? It is basically like triage in the medical field - the most important police matters are taken care of first and the other issues have to wait.

Answer 8

I guarantee if you cited everyone that was on a cell phone while driving, you would get sued by one of those folks. They would get some scumbag attorney to prove your civil rights were being violated, the end result of that would be to have the law repealed.
Worse yet, the ACLU (alll crininals love us)would step in and make it mandatory you talk on a cell phone while driving.

Answer 9

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Answer 10

Because we as a society do not demand our elected officials to enforce the laws enacted by other elected government officials.