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"assault with a deadly weapon." In reality, most of the "stupid laws" on the books are usually in response to a "stupid incident" that inspired them. Also, there is usually a gradient of increasingly severe charges or punishment for increasingly severe bad behaviour. For example, if you are caught doing 10 above the speed limit, there are a number of excuses that you can use, such as not realizing you were over the speed limit, trying to keep up with traffic, etc. These may or may not hold up, but the charges are usually minor: fines +/- points. Once you are doing 40-50 over, it is hard to claim that you didn't really know that you were speeding. Add in some incidents with serious injuries or deaths, and the general public will be clamouring for the Powers That Be to "do something." And what do politicians do? They make laws. Hence, you have some strange laws that don't really make sense, but are targeted for specific incidents. As an example, a few years ago, there were a spate of deadly crashes involving people who were street racing. This included a police officer whose cruiser was broadsided by a street racer, who then fled the scene in the other car involved in the race. Needless to say, this didn't go over too well with either the police or the general public. The result was tougher penalties for anyone caught street racing, such as impounding the vehicles of anyone suspected of racing, and a general crackdown by the police on people who modified their vehicle. There were horror stories on local message boards of people with modified cars who were continually hassled by the police. Unfortunate, but understandable.
Charles
Carbon Black '95 TT Stg III
'02 Honda CR-V "Bustermobile"
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