I've long championed the free market, but that championship has its limits.
It stops with the sale of products designed to disable or disrupt controls put
in place for public safety.
One such product is the traffic light preemption emitter, also known as
MIRT, or mobile infrared transmitter.
The device can change traffic lights to green from red in two seconds.
Police and fire departments for years have used MIRT, marketed by the 3M
company, to clear intersections and halt opposing traffic on emergency
runs.
That is the proper and intended use for MIRT.
It never was intended for the travel convenience of individual drivers.
But, increasingly, that's how it's being used today.
Some Internet entrepreneurs, apparently more interested in cash than in
road rage, or the possibility of a fatal crash, have been offering MIRT and
MIRT knockoffs for $300. Their pitches are quite tempting: "Never wait for a
red light again!" and "Tired of Waiting for Red Lights?" and "Changes Stop
Lights >From Red to Green in Seconds."
Of course, there are buyers; and at the moment, the commerce is legal.
MIRT transmits an infrared beam, instead of a radio wave. The Federal
Communications Commission regulates the use of radio waves. Infrared
transmission falls outside of the agency's purview. As a result, currently,
there are no federal laws restricting civilian use of MIRT technology.
This, many police and auto insurance officials believe, is a problem. In
cities and states nationwide, traffic safety officials are studying the
possibility of implementing laws to make civilian MIRT sales and use illegal.
That's a good thing.
Public safety controls, such as stop lights and airport protocols, are put
in place for the general protection of the public. Compliance and respect for
those controls should not be left to individual whim. People get injured or
killed when that happens.
Imagine a world in which airline passengers could countermand the
directives of air traffic controllers. The controllers tell an airline pilot
to remain in a hold pattern. But an antsy passenger onboard, anxious to get to
a business meeting, pushes a button to allow the aircraft to land in the midst
of heavy airport congestion. Would you want to fly that way?
Now, imagine a more likely, more threatening scenario with the civilian use
of MIRT:
It is rush hour. Cars are stacked up waiting for traffic signals to change.
Someone gets tired of waiting. He pushes a button on his dashboard-mounted
MIRT transmitter, which is plugged into his car's 12-volt outlet. The device,
using 15 watts of energy, sends an infrared beam 1,500 feet to a traffic-light
receiver installed at the intersection. The red light facing his line of
traffic instantly turns green, much to the surprise of motorists already
moving through the intersection on an opposing green signal.
At best, there'd be one heck of a case of gridlock. At worst, someone gets
killed or injured.
We're already paying a heavy price in lives and money because of people who
run red lights. According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety,
careless disregard for red lights and other traffic control devices is the
leading cause of urban crashes, representing 22 percent of the total number of
those crashes. The institute assigns a $7-billion price tag to that carnage --
the cost of medical bills, lost productivity, insurance rate increases, and
property damage.
It is difficult to assign a cost to the value of lives lost in those
crashes.
That cost in money and lives is likely to go up, rather than down, with the
civilian sale and use of MIRT. There ought to be a law on this one, a tough
law.
MIRT devices are not radar detectors, whose sale and use I support.
Detectors are informational devices. People who use them in the many states
where they are legal usually don't speed up when they detect a police cruiser
in the area. They slow down -- just as we all slow down when we see a police
cruiser with the naked eye.
But I put MIRT in the same category with police radar-jamming devices,
whose sale to and use by civilians I oppose. Civilians do not have the right
to disrupt police operations, particularly those put in place for public
safety. Civilian users of radar jammers, judging the functional intent of
those devices, have no intention of obeying the law, no intention of slowing
down.
Sales of radar jammers, which generally use radio waves, are outlawed.
Sales of civilian MIRTs should be outlawed, too. It's a matter of functional
intent, as opposed to the method of transmission.
