Florence Is Going to Be Fucking Fine

People fear what they don’t understand. And fuck, people don’t understand much these days. In fact, I’ll just say it: people are getting fucking dumber. Idiocracy got it right. But the intellectual decline of Western civilization isn’t actually the point of today’s rant. The seemingly unending war on motorcycles is.

What the fuck am I talking about now?

Arizona.

Arizona has decided that a motorcyclist riding between lanes of moving traffic isn’t merely committing a traffic violation. Under Arizona law, violating its prohibition against riding between moving lanes is now reckless driving, a Class 2 misdemeanor. A judge can even suspend your driving privileges for up to ninety days.

There are so many fucking things wrong with this. So fucking many.

Let’s start with the word criminal. Can we just fucking clear this up right now? The use of “criminal” in any sentence regarding driving is categorically wrong unless you’ve actually harmed somebody. Who is the fucking victim? Who is this crime against? Can anyone answer that fucking question?

You lane split and nobody gets hit? No victim. You speed and arrive at your destination without hurting anybody? No victim. You make a maneuver Florence doesn’t fucking like from the passenger seat of her Toyota Corolla? Still no fucking victim. Hit somebody with your vehicle? Now we have a victim. Now you’ve caused actual harm to another human being, and now government has something legitimate to fucking prosecute.

But depriving someone of liberty because of what might have happened? Calling them a criminal because their behavior made somebody else nervous? Fuck that.

And Arizona isn’t merely attaching a fine to this shit. Reckless driving is a Class 2 misdemeanor, and subsequent convictions can carry harsher consequences, including possible imprisonment. We’re talking about potentially depriving a living American of their fucking liberty because they took advantage of the fundamental design of a motorcycle while riding it.

Which brings me to the next problem: reckless. Are you fucking kidding me? Lane splitting is only inherently “reckless” when viewed from the perspective of somebody sitting inside a car. Of COURSE you can’t fucking do that with a car. But a motorcycle is, um… fucking smaller.

I realize this is apparently an astonishing technological revelation requiring several legislative committees and possibly a fucking research grant, but motorcycles are considerably narrower than automobiles. We know where our bikes are. We know where our handlebars are. We know where our mirrors are. We know whether we’re two inches or four inches from the bumper beside us. We can see gaps, traffic movement, and escape routes differently because we’re sitting on a machine fundamentally different from a fucking Toyota Corolla.

Can someone lane split recklessly? Of fucking course. You can change lanes recklessly, too. You can accelerate recklessly. You can take a corner recklessly. You can follow another vehicle recklessly. You can operate pretty much any machine ever invented like a complete fucking asshole. Punish the reckless behavior. Don’t declare the maneuver itself reckless simply because people sitting in cars can’t imagine doing it safely on a motorcycle.

Florence gets nervous when motorcycles pass by her window. Well, Florence is sitting in the fucking passenger seat of a 2004 Toyota Corolla. She’s going to be fucking fine. I fucking promise you.

And that’s what bothers me about laws like this. We increasingly regulate behavior according to the comfort and understanding of people who aren’t actually participating in it. Something looks frightening, so ban it. Something makes somebody uncomfortable, so regulate it. Something carries risk, so criminalize it. This is pure fucking madness.

People who don’t understand dick about motorcycles are deciding what constitutes acceptable behavior while riding a fucking motorcycle. Does that sound familiar? It should, because it’s the same fucking thing I see with gun-control laws. People who don’t know shit about firearms come up with increasingly elaborate ways to regulate firearms because they fear something they don’t understand.

People regulate what they fear, and people fear what they don’t understand. Motorcycles get the same fucking treatment. Someone sees a bike traveling between two cars and thinks, Jesus Christ, that’s dangerous.

Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. Tell me how fast the motorcycle was traveling. Tell me how fast the surrounding traffic was moving. Tell me the width of the gap. Tell me whether the rider was weaving unpredictably. Tell me whether somebody was actually endangered. Tell me what happened. Then decide whether the rider was reckless.

Because that’s what reckless ought to fucking mean. Not: Florence got nervous.

Then we get to another one of my favorite fucking words government likes to use: privileges. Driving privileges. The state grants you the privilege of moving around, provided you comply with whatever collection of rules the state has decided constitutes acceptable movement.

Fuck that, too.

The free movement of a citizen is part of their goddamned liberty, not some benevolent fucking gift bestowed upon them by the state. Yes, government regulates roads. Yes, licenses exist. Yes, traffic laws exist. I’m talking about something deeper than administrative law. I’m talking about liberty.

The machine changes. The road changes. The century changes. But the underlying principle shouldn’t: free people should begin with liberty, and government should have a damned good fucking reason before restricting it.

This is exactly the kind of problem the architects of this country worried about: a political majority using government power against the rights of a minority. Madison wrote in Federalist No. 10 about majority factions sacrificing the rights of other citizens to their own interests. The American system wasn’t designed around the proposition that fifty-one percent of people should get to dictate every fucking aspect of how everybody else lives.

That’s the part we seem to have forgotten. Democracy and liberty are not fucking synonyms. Fifty-one percent of people being uncomfortable with something doesn’t magically transform that thing into an offense against society. Sometimes the minority is doing something the majority doesn’t understand. Sometimes they’re doing something the majority doesn’t like. Sometimes they’re riding a fucking motorcycle between two cars.

And yes, motorcycles involve risk. No shit. I’ve accumulated enough firsthand experience with that particular subject to last several fucking lifetimes. But there is a massive difference between risk and harm. There’s an even bigger difference between doing something another person considers risky and actually victimizing another human being. That distinction fucking matters.

This country has gotten so fucking far away from its origins that sometimes I barely recognize the underlying philosophy anymore. Government was supposed to exist within boundaries. Courts were supposed to settle disputes and protect rights. Criminal law in a free society should address actual fucking harms perpetrated against other free human beings.

You know, murder, rape, stealing, assault. Things where, when I ask the incredibly complicated question “Who is the fucking victim?”, somebody can actually point to another human being. Not passing through the prairie at a speed Florence finds unsettling. Not slipping a motorcycle through a perfectly navigable gap between two automobiles. Not engaging in conduct that resulted in absolutely no injury to another fucking person.

We’ve gotten remarkably comfortable converting disapproval into regulation and regulation into criminal law. Every time we do it, government gets another little piece of authority while the individual gets another little piece of liberty carved away.

Maybe you hate lane splitting. Fine. Don’t fucking lane split. Maybe watching motorcycles lane split scares you. Fine. Don’t buy a motorcycle. Maybe you think riding between two cars with only inches to spare is completely fucking insane. That’s fine, too. But your inability to imagine safely doing something yourself isn’t proof that somebody else doing it is reckless.

Sometimes freedom means watching another adult do something you personally wouldn’t do. Sometimes liberty means accepting that other free people will make decisions you think are fucking stupid. Sometimes liberty is uncomfortable.

Florence is going to have to fucking deal with that.

Because she’ll be fine. She’s in a Toyota. I’m on a fucking motorcycle. Those are not the same thing.

And laws pretending they are?

As my Uncle Shifty used to say, “that’s a bunch of breaded bullshit”.