Idle your car, go to jail

As a lead blogger here at The Autolog, I’ve done my best to keep politics and car talk separate but today those two worlds have met. I don’t want to bore everyone with my political opinions and beliefs but this situation was simply too good to pass up.

The city of Minneapolis has passed a new city ordinance stating that motorists are now allowed to idle their vehicle for more than 3 minutes in a one hour period with a few exceptions. If the weather is below 0 or above 90 degrees, people can idle for up to 15 minutes an hour for “the comfort and safety of the occupants” of the car. Emergency vehicles or vehicles that need to idle to power electric equipment are exempt.

The city will make available a 311 information line where people can report violators of this idle rule. Criminal charges could occur if you are a repeat offender.
Now, if you’re not seriously pissed off then I would suggest you sit back and think about how this not only affects you as a driver but where laws like this can lead. I have a few issues I’d like to express.

First, why is this law being put into place? Because of Global Warming! Yes, by not idling your vehicle you can save the planet from unavoidable climate change. I won’t even get into the fact that there isn’t a shred of proof that man is having an impact on climate one way or another and in fact the last 7 or 8 years have been showing a cooling trend.

These kinds of laws do nothing to impact the climate and there isn’t any proof that vehicles idling causes any serious pollution in the first place. What’s even more absurd, is this law is so full of holes that it won’t have much of an impact anyway. If vehicles idling is causing climate change, why not outlaw idling totally? Make it illegal for you to idle your vehicle for more than 60 seconds and violators will lose their license! Now that will make sure we really change the climate!

The reason such things are not done is because of how outrageous the enforcement would be which shows the logical fallacy in this law. If idling is causing problems, why not outlaw it completely? It’s another feel good measure designed to be totally ineffective. In the mean time, people are going to be tattling on each other without any proof or due process. How can you prove if you were idling more than 3 minutes? Do we really want people running around being the “idle police” getting people into trouble because they want to run their A/C and not fry in the heat or freeze in the cold?

The long term impacts of laws like this are very obvious. At some point, cities will outlaw rapid acceleration, reduce speed limits, or outlaw amateur racing or racing events because of the large amounts of fuel used in the process. Imagine it being illegal to race your car ANYWHERE in your state or city because it is considered a waste of fuel and creates pollution?

Who knows, maybe cities will outlaw exercise because the extra carbon dioxide people exhale when exercising is causing pollution, climate change, and wasting valuable food resources for your vanity and desire to look good.
If you think stuff like that can’t happen, remember that idling your car in Minneapolis just became a crime!

we need a full overturn of govt and the laws of cities are becomming outragous, and assanine, its how stupid all these people are who make this crap up, and how dumb people are for letting this take place, "we the people" can change everything if our voices are heard instead of being sat to the side, why dont we take back govt. and bring this country back to morals and responsibility, and make it where someone who gets a moving violation dosent sit in jail as long as someone who just beat up his woman or killed someone, or robbed a convience store, its just a bunch of b.s. and we have let it go on, lets stand!

Being in Minnesota I can tell you there is a need for a law like this but not for the reasons one would assume. In Minnesota there is no emissions testing and maybe 3 out of 5 4x4's and a 4x4 in 1 out of every 3 households, have exhaust on them that rattle house windows and set off car alarms and on a chilly morning for example my neighbor lets his diesel idle outside my bedroom window for around a half hour at a time, Just long enough to make it so I have to get up and go to the bathroom and then I'm up for the frickin day and I only really get to sleep in 1 day a week. Another reason is auto theft in the metro area is high when it's cold out because everyone leaves their car running at the pump when they run in to pay for their gas or run a letter into the post office and bam, someones off to the liquor store in a warm car instead of walking with someones small child or kid sleeping in a car seat. I'm not endorsing the law, just stating the other side of the debate. I have seen dumber auto laws pass such as the getting pulled over for no seatbelt. That's just an excuse to get you pulled over and let the tickets fly when they really figure out why your shaking and have a freshly lit cigarette in your mouth. That's another blog in itself.

Thanks for your comments everyone!

i see that law, not being followed or enforced by Police officers.. useless laws that dont protect or serve people.

whoever passed this does not want to have another term at thier Job.. thats for sure.

just another things to add...

there will get to a Point when too many Laws are passed, and the citizens of this great Country will have the Consitutional Right to remove the current Govt' from its position of power. With everything going on, and all they are trying to do.. I give it 10 years before we all decied its time to Change.