November 19, 2009 6:01 pm

Norwalk Police Check Seatbelt Use

Results from the Norwalk Police Department’s�”Click It or Ticket” enforcement effort Thursday, checking that motorists were wearing their seatbelts on Westport Avenue from 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.:

12�infractions for failure to wear a seatbelt

5 infractions for operating an unregistered motor vehicle

1�summons with�two charges: operating an�uninsured motor vehicle (misdemeanor) and operating an�unregistered motor vehicle (infraction)

1 infraction for a cellphone violation

Source: N.P.D. Public Information Officer Lt. Paul Resnick

Steward

So that’s what that was. Thanks.
Just Wondering…

7 riflesand ammo are stolen in Stamford why aren’t the Police canvassing every town for miles around?????? I don’t want to be a deer for some nut!
Mark

Given what a mess traffic on that road is already, four hours of screwing it up even worse for a handful of infractions seems to me like a bad idea.
OLD TIMER

RETIREMENT PENSION REQUEST
(Former Lt. Thomas Cummings)
** COMMISSIONER TORRANO MOVED TO APPROVE THE
RETIREMENT PENSION REQUEST FOR FORMER LIUTENANT
THOMAS CUMMINGS.
** MAYOR MOCCIA SECONDED.
** THE MOTION PASSED UNANIMOUSLY

From the minutes of the October 19th police commission meeting, posted here without comment.
Kevin

They would do better to sit on Highland Avenue in the AM and look at all the seatbealt infractions at BMHS. Not to mention the illegal U-turns, and dropping of passengers in the middle of the road on Lenox.
Kevin

Oh… and I was walking my dog on Highland they other day. I tried to use the marked crosswalks near the high school. I promise you, if they want to write tickets I would be happy to volunteer my help here. I counted 12 cars that blew through the cross walk failing to yield to the pedestrians as is required. Then one even had the nerve to stop and yell at me for “Standing in the road!”
wineshine

Anyone doing the math here? Out of 12 cars stopped, half were either uninsured or unregistered. That’s just wonderful. Further proof that Norwalk could pass as a third world country.
Highway robbery American style

Third world? Who doesnt have running water? Refridgerator? Cell phone?
Half the cars were not legal. Hmmm. Could it have something to do with employment, living wage? Interesting to note that an unregistered vehicle is an infraction but not paying the fat cats in the board rooms that are the ones in power, not paying them is criminal and if you dont pay them they will suspend your registration and licence, instantly making you a criminal. It wasnt till what the late seventies early eighties that the insurance lobby effectively had legislation enacted that made it (a crime) not pay them. Next the cable companies will have laws enacted to make it a crime not to pay for services, even though you dont want the services provided. Oh dont forget even though your pay has remained flat or disappeared altogether, your electric rates, cable rates, communication rates, insurance rates, credit rates, bank fees, fuel for home gas for car food for your stomach, hell everything increases 3-5 % annually and we quitely demurely pay the tab. One day you will eventually notice, you work hard but never can get ahead. Hmmm. What will happen when the ones at the bottom, that keep the ones in the penthouse’s, realize they are being extorted for every drop of blood, sweat and tears that they spend 95% of the time of their lives earning?
Answer, nothing if the ones in the penthouses can keep the booze and the drugs flowing to anesthetize the working population and keep them from educating themselves. The towers didnt wake us up, we just acted like hornets that have had their hive slapped silly, we buzz around and zapp whoever is zappable. But we never look at the real problem. Greed. Check out the health bill, we, (the people) lost and the insurance lobby won, you dont pay for health insurance, hey you will soon be a criminal. Thank you Joe Liberman. Pay up or the militia that we pay for will be after you next and you will be forever branded a lower class and excluded from a seat at the table.

turfgrrl

Highway Robbery American Style: Riiiggghht. Lets blame everything on the people who actually create products, goods and services that employ thousands because people are too stupid to either register their cars, buy insurance or increase their job skills in order to get paid a better wage for their time.

Steward

TG, come on. I was beginning to enjoy that. It reminded me of the communist agitators in Riverdale. “If you’re not an owner of the means of production, you are a member of the proletariat! If you are a teacher, proletariate! A researcher, proletariate! A custodian, proletariate! ” They would then cut to a Highway Robbery rant, some more vocabulary practice, a few songs, a couple of chants. Then we’d all mingle with coffee and danish. Great fun to watch and much cheaper than Broadway.

ENW

Riverdale in the Bronx? Might have been some aging red-diaper babies, offspring of parents from some obscure Trotskyite faction.
I’d be careful around them–some of them have been known to spontaneously morph into neo-conservatives with warlike tendencies.

Steward

ENW, you nailed it perfectly! Our goals were far more mundane. After a triage to eliminate the perpetually angry, we�d feign �danger� with our filter-less-cigarette poses and repetition of the rhetoric du jour. Naturally, we always wore seatbelts on the way home. There was reason to arrive safely.

Humm� Maybe the whole �Click-it-or-ticket� campaign is focusing on the wrong motivation?

anonymous

This is becoming the american way. Lawsuit againstMcDonald’s because your coffee is too hot when you carelessly spill it while holding it between your legs while driving. Go after gun manufacturers because a criminal uses a stolen gun to shoot someone. Target cigarette makers because people who have read warnings on every pack for the past 40 years continue to smoke and get cancer. Instead of ticketing violators, why doesn’t Blumenthal file suit against auto manufacturers because they don’t have automatic seatbelts that strap you in when you sit down, or disable the ignition until the seatbelt is engaged.

Fleeced

Be careful for what you ask for–you just might get it– with the horde of newly-minted legal eagles looking to pick YOUR pocket.

wineshine

Highway, let me get this straight: You’re saying that registration fees, and auto insurance are discrimiatory? Or, you lose your job, and your registration automatically expires? Registrations expire what, every four years, and you’re saying that the $85 fee is a hardship? You actually condone, or make excuses for citizens who openly flout laws, and put others in harms way financially? Let’s face it, there are more than a few illegals in town who CAN NOT obtain insurance or drivers licenses. But, that’s okay too, right?

Secondhand Rose

Wineshine, there’s a difference between those who CAN not obtain insurance – because they can’t afford it, for example – and those who WILL not obtain it – because they are in the country illegally. There is a preponderance of illegal alien drivers with no insurance, no licenses, no registration, driving willy-nilly throughout Fairfield County these days. I’m willing to bet that at least 75% of all hit-and-runs are committed by illegals with no license/insurance/registration. I’m aware that there are people out there who deliberately “flout” laws simply because they feel like it and can get away with it, but it’s my opinion that people who drive without insurance and/or registration are doing so because the cost is prohibitive for them. If people can’t afford to pay for a medical prescription, how do you expect them to pay for insurance and registration? $85 is a LOT of money to people living on a reduced income, like seniors – or for people barely making ends meet on unemployment. With the economy in the state that it currently is in, I think you’ll be seeing more uninsured drivers in the near future, instead of less. It’s not right, and I’m not condoning it – but I do understand it.

wineshine

Rose,

You are certainly well-intentioned, and I agree with almost all of your statements, because, (and thanks for the lucidity!!!) they’re logical! I do want to put the question of insurance and registration costs into perspective (albeit mine) though.

While I’d be among the first to get a prescription filled, given the choice between good medical treatment and being insured, having insurance and being registered is part of the cost of operating a car, and should be viewed as such. Let’s be honest, $85 pales in comparison to the overall cost of automobile maintenance, and fuel, and should be viewed by responsible citizens as such. We can’t give people a pass based on feeling sorry for their situation. The best analogy I can offer is: what is the difference between medical malpractice insurance and auto insurance? Those who can potentially do harm to others have a responsibility to society to abide by accepted principles.

Secondhand Rose

I understand what you’re saying – and I agree.

However, you also need to understand that for many people in today’s economic clime, vehicle maintenance also falls by the wayside. Thus you have motorists who cannot afford the every-3-month-recommended oil changes; cannot afford to purchase tires (and at $50 to $100 per tire for a minimally decent pair, that’s REALLY dipping into the pocket money); and cannot afford to do much more than the absolute minimum maintenance necessary to keep the car on the road – thus you have cars with loose and noisy mufflers; cars dripping oil all over city streets and parking lots (not good for the environment when it gets washed into the storm drains); and cars in such a bad state of repair that that alone could be the cause of an accident – think bad bearings, for example, which could cause a wheel to come off while driving down the street, or lack of oil causing the engine to freeze in the middle of the highway, or a cracked water pump on a 25-degree day, and you get the picture. In lots of cases, finding that $85 to pay the insurance cost means NOT being able to pay some other bill, whether it’s for a prescription or for food on the table, or to keep the electricity on.

Fact is, far too many people right now are being forced to choose between the lesser of two evils. Frankly, if it’s a choice between heating/lights and paying for car insurance, or eating and paying for car insurance, which do YOU think they’d choose?

I’m not playing Devil’s Advocate here; but I’ve actually had to make this choice at one point in my lifetime. And I can certainly sympathize with those who have to make it now. And another thing to remember is, not every person out there in the world without car insurance is a menace to other drivers – a lot of these people are simply normal, average, everyday people like you and me, good drivers all, many of whom have probably never even had a speeding ticket much less been involved in an accident – who have had to make choices based on being able to EXIST.
OLD TIMER

The law requires proof of insurance to register a car. If you cannot afford a registration and insurance, and the inevitable tax bill for owning a car, you cannot afford a car. If you cannot afford to keep a car in safe operating condition, you cannot afford a car. If you cannot afford to fix dents and scratches, but you keep good tires and brakes on a properly registered and insured car, then you are a responsible person who can afford a car. A lot of poor people share cars so with others who work in the same neighborhoods. A lot of very hard working poor people, walk or ride bicycles until they can save enough to buy, and register, and insure, and maintain, a car.
They are not the ones getting caught with unregistered, uninsured cars. The people getting caught with unregistered, uninsured cars are people with prior history of similar violations.
wineshine

Rose,
Again, I understand where you’re coming from, however, it’s really a black and white situation. The cost of registration, and insurance, as OT states, is an inherent cost of operating a motor vehicle, and should be viewed by responsible citizens as just that. A car on the road without insurance is just as dangerous, potentially, as one without brakes. The victim in each case will be different. In the former, it’s the person the car hits, in the latter, the operator. Nevertheless, someone gets hurt when another makes the decision to flout the law.

The damage may not even be directly attributed to the uninsured motorist. You know the way it works. If you have insurance, and you hit someone who doesn’t, and you push that second car into mine, my insurance company sues the driver in the middle, not you. When my insurance company finds that the car that hit me is uninsured, I end up paying the damage.

Further, the damage done is often worse than just body work needed, or medical bills incurred. These violators give insurance companies an excuse to raise rates for everyone to cover their losses.

I guess I’ll never be able to accept having to pay for someone else’s mistakes.
Secondhand Rose

Old Timer, so what you’re saying is that if you have been a perfect driver all your life, always paid your car tax and insurance bill and registration all your adult life, but you suddenly find yourself unemployed through no fault of your own – you would happily put your car up on blocks in the back yard and hang your keys on the wall and take the bus or ride a bike to your job interviews or to your Labor Dept. appointments?

Somehow I don’t think you would.
OLD TIMER

Rose:
Think what you want, but the risk of driving without insurance, if you own anything at all, is enormous. If you have nothing to lose, then the risk might seem acceptable. If you get involved in an accident where someone dies, no matter who’s fault the accident was, without insurance, the lawsuit will bankrupt most of us. If, as in your example, life has been good for so long, I can’t imagine not owning some assets that I wouldn’t want to lose because I had no insurance. Driving without a registration or a license is not, in my opinion, anywhere near as big a risk. If you get caught, you pay a fine, you don’t loose your house.
The poor soul who has to choose between car insurance and food on the table simply cannot afford a car. There are a lot of older people in that position and the car goes on the market rather than stop eating.