Note: This article is the closing political news story from my April 2017 newsletter. If you’d like to have one of these arriving in your inbox every month, you can sign up for my monthly dispatch on the home page (and some other pages) at daveelder.com. If you sign up before Saturday (5/27), I’ll do a resend of the May 2017 issue.
(Friday, 4/20/17) Today the Trump administration announced its new plan to, as Press Secretary Sean Spicer explained, “deconstruct the road administrative state” by removing two highway signs for each new one put in place, with a similar tactic applied to traffic lights and other movement restrictions. According to the official policy statement, “Traffic laws are low impact, unable to demonstrate strong performance outcomes. All of these signs, signals and regulations haven’t put an end to traffic deaths — in fact, the last 2 years have been the deadliest ones ever on the highway! Putting more restrictions on driving clearly hasn’t worked, so we have to go a different way! We’re destroying these horrible road regulations that have been placed on your heads.”
This proposal gives structure to the complaints Trump expressed during the campaign when he criticized traffical correctness, saying, “For too long, Americans have been needlessly stuck in gridlock, and the problem is that today nobody wants to hit anyone any more. Back in the good old days, in some places in this country there were no speed limits at all! Now, as soon as you pull out of your driveway you’ll see a traffic sign! Together, we can change that — let’s make America race again!” According to his press secretary, the President believes that with fewer road laws in place, citizens will move about more freely, and they don’t need their government to tell them how fast they can or can’t go on the highway, because they’re smart enough to figure that out for themselves.
In conjunction with this announcement, Speaker Ryan’s office issued a corroborating declaration: “Having all of these unnecessary traffic laws lulls able-minded people into complacency on the road, as they come to depend on the government for highway guidance, draining them of their will and incentive to make the most of their driving — it’s demeaning!”
When asked if this program might lead to more traffic-related injuries, Secretary Spicer answered that President Trump believes Americans can and will take responsibility for their driving, pulling themselves up by the running boards, and that this will improve their motoring fiber. The press secretary issued a final communication to close the conference: “The President believes Americans know when to shift into reverse, when to put on the brakes, and when to floor it, so the government doesn’t need to get in their way, slow them down, hold them back, send them on a detour or in any way keep them from getting to where they want to go!”