NATIONAL MOTORISTS ASSOCIATION

        HIGHWAY ROBBERY AWARD





      National Motorists Association Issues First Annual Award
      for Advancement of Highway Robbery

      National Motorists Association members have selected the United States Environmental Protection Agency as the recipient of their first Annual Award for the Advancement of Highway Robbery.

      This award will be presented each year to the organization, agency, government, business, or individual that has done the most to harass, tax, intimidate, deceive, or otherwise abuse the motoring public. The competition was numerous and stiff. Runner-up nominees for 1995 included the community of Linndale, Ohio, a village of 160 souls who used a quarter-mile of Interstate highway to bilk $400,000.00 out of passing motorists. Again, in the speed trap category, was the triad of Florida communities, Lawtey, Waldo, and Hampton, that also used underposted speed limits on state highways to extract hundreds of thousands of dollars, primarily from non-residents.

      The State of Connecticut was nominated and was in the hunt for first place. In 1995, Connecticut was given $750,000.00 by the federal government (yes, the same federal government that can't come up with a balanced budget) to intensify traffic enforcement over the summer holidays. And intensify enforcement they did! The Memorial Day campaign generated a 33% increase in speeding tickets, a 22% increase in DWI arrests, and a 51% increase in seat belt tickets. The only category that exceeded the percentage increase in traffic tickets was the increase in traffic accidents-a 66% increase. Now there's an example of our tax dollars at work!

      But, when it comes to costing motorists time and money, all other challengers paled in the wake of the EPA, the winner of this year's Annual Award for the Advancement of Highway Robbery.

      The EPA can claim credit for billions of dollars and millions of man-hours squandered on programs and projects that have marginal to non-existent effects on air quality. There is no expenditure too great and no regulation too onerous to dissuade the EPA from its task of making the automobile too expensive to own, too complicated to maintain, and too costly and too inconvenient to use.

      Topping the list of abuses is the mandated annual emissions inspections that force millions of vehicle owners to spend time and money being processed through expensive, intrusive, and largely ineffective centralized and decentralized inspection systems. No one but the businesses, contractors, and bureaucracies that run these programs realize any benefit. They don't clean the air. They don't identify gross polluting automobiles in a timely fashion. They don't stop tampering with emissions systems. And, they don't fix polluting cars!

      Another EPA mandate ordered thousands of private businesses to reduce the number of miles their employees drive. Plans were to be put in place, penalties applied to recalcitrants, and business parking lots to be monitored. Even the sheepish east coast states balked at this mandate. Congress has since decided that this isn't such a great idea after all.

      Acting in concert with smokestack industries, EPA devised a plan that would allow stationary polluters, like power companies and refineries, to avoid cleaning up their own emissions by buying and crushing older, still operational, cars. With one pass of the regulatory wand, EPA put in motion a program that could harm the recycling industry, increase the cost of buying and maintaining used vehicles, and burden the collector/hobbyist community and the industry that supports old car enthusiasts.

      Of course, the smoke stacks keep pumping out the same levels of pollutants. Lest we forget, the EPA mandated gasolines that allegedly make people sick, reduce mileage, and increase cost.

      The National Motorists Association believes these policies are the product of an anti-automobile, anti-motorist, social engineering campaign designed to restrict, reduce, and control individual mobility. The EPA and its minions view the automobile as the cause of all that is wrong with America. To them, the car is little more than a source of air and water contamination, the enemy of properland use, a profligate consumer of natural resources, and the cause of death and carnage.

      No regulation is too arbitrary, too abusive, too costly, or too authoritarian to deal with the menace of the personally owned and personally driven automobile.

      The award has been sent directly to Ms. Carol Browner, Secretary of the Environmental Protection Agency. "We assume the award may be viewed in Ms. Browner's office," said James J. Baxter, President of the National Motorists Association.


      Last updated: April 1998
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