By Joe Westenberger
There are various laws that people view as pointless. These laws were established for a reason, but most people disagree with these laws. There’s quite a few of pointless laws, such as jaywalking, changing lanes before an intersection, etcetera. When I think of a pointless law, I think of this one; modifying your own car. As of February 8th, 2016, President Obama approved a bill against citizens modifying their own cars. This has been causing problems and disagreements for the car community, because of all the money people have invested into their cars.
Although there are people against this law, it makes some sort of sense. The older generations don’t want these young adolescents and adults ripping their roads up in their race cars. Understandable, so why isn’t there a law for going 10 under the speed limit, obstructing traffic? This is incredibly frustrating, especially when you need to get somewhere in a hurry. Why shouldn’t they be required to take a drivers test when they turn 75 or 80? That might sound a little ridiculous, but so does the fact that people with modified cars getting tickets, and even sometimes getting their car taken away.
In an economic standpoint, it also doesn’t make sense to ban aftermarket or racing parts for vehicles. There are hundreds of specialty companies that make racing and off road use parts for cars and trucks, let alone, all of the specialty shops with their main purpose being performance oriented servicing. There have already been thousands of jobs lost over this ban increasing the unemployment rate, and a ton more to come. The racing industry is giant, and it was just getting started.
Fast forward to july of 2016, After all these car enthusiasts became concerned about these new laws and driving their illegally modified cars, they got together to form an act against this called RPM (recognizing the protection of motorsports). This group of people created this, to protect their rights of their modified cars. Since this was created, DRAGG (drag racing against gangs and graffiti) was created, by police, to stop the violence on the streets. Organizations like DRAGG are beneficial in the car community in the way people look at racing and modified cars.
After all, on Thursday, August 23rd of this year, the EPA finally abandoned their law stating that it did not have a benefit to the EPA’s emissions goals. This was expected because of the opportunity cost that this would have had (long term) on the big automotive performance companies and the overall impact on the economy. Yes, there are some cons to having race cars ripping down the streets at two in the morning, but in this case, the negative externalities were overruled by the organizations like RPM.
