Here in the borough of Queens in New York City there is a phenomenon afoot that actually takes my mind off the larger issues of the day--out-of-state license plates on cars driven by city residents.
Early in this phenomenon, I actually found myself chatting with a driver I was caught in a traffic jam with. He had Maryland plates on his car, so I asked him if he was from Baltimore (Ball-r-mur). The guy looked at me like I didn't get it, and I now know why. One night in the section of Queens in which I reside, I counted 21 license plates from states like North Carolina, Florida, Ohio, Michigan, and others within a span of less than ten city blocks. When I asked a local mechanic if he had noticed this phenomenon, whether maybe these were refugees from Katrina or something, he just laughed. "They just get cheaper rates out of town," he said. "But don't get in an accident with one of them. They just abandon their cars." When I asked how city residents establish residency in those other states, he just looked at me like I was hopelessly naive. I wrote to the AAA, and they in fact acknowledged a problem, but said that there was nothing we could do unless those other states adopted more stringent residency checks. The last straw, though, are the commercial vehicles driving with impunity through the city bearing out-of-town plates and the name of a business with a New York City address. How to explain that one?
This phenomenon is just one of many examples of how respect for the law has broken down in the city. I will discuss other examples in future blogs.