The answer is enforcing the motor vehicle laws with real teeth, but more importantly to fund and maintain public mass transit and sidewalk/bike lane infrastructures.
(SALEM, Ore.) - Governor Kulongoski has finally finished playing a game of "Chicken" with the Department of Homeland Security in regards to compliance with the REAL ID Act. Bully for him. He has decided that his posturing should not deprive legal citizens of Oregon the right to travel.
However, he continues to worry about the 'poor illegal' who would be unable to get a license. So he proposes a 'Driver card' that would not comply with the REAL ID act but that those who cannot prove legal status (probably 99.99% of
whom cannot because they are in this country illegally) can acquire, and we are left to marvel at his compassion.
Or is compassion another word for stupidity these days?
I understand his goal - If illegal residents have the card maybe they will be more inclined not to flee the scene of accidents they cause, maybe they will be more likely to carry auto insurance, etc. But who does he think he is fooling and how moronic does he think illegals are?
This card should have ILLEGAL stamped right at the top of it because really the vast majority of those getting it will BE ILLEGAL.
Sure there will be the odd person who is 90 and lost their birth certificate in a fire in 1932 but how many of those will there really be?
What the Governor will be expecting is all the nearly 200,000 illegal drivers to come out of the woodwork and sign up for what amounts to an illegal registration program, giving their names and home locations to a government they inherently distrust. No recipe for failure there huh?
On another track we cannot even get legal residents to get licenses and insurance or to not drive without them. Need I remind anyone of Sean Lee Hagen, the deadly motor vehicle scofflaw who has 16 or so suspensions of a license he has never had who ran down and killed (some might say murdered) an elderly veteran in Downtown Salem just this summer past? He, like so many others, has no license (or a suspended or revoked license) and no insurance yet he is a legal, if not law abiding, citizen.
The answer to getting scofflaws, legal or illegal, off the roads is not allowing or supporting more of them. The answer is to both enforce, with real teeth, the motor vehicle laws but more importantly to fund and maintain public mass transit and sidewalk/bike lane infrastructures.
Putting people in a situation where they feel they have to drive to survive will make them drive even when they should not. The answer in the long run is to make it so driving is no longer seen as necessary for day to day survival.
Besides, in our generally obese society it is healthier to walk, ride bikes and take the bus than to drive anyway even without the pollution aspects, true?
Oregon Governor's Driver Card is No Answer
Salem-News.com