Some things just don't make sense

A road I often drive turns from a busy street to a neighborhood street after crossing one of the major roads in our city. After crossing this intersection the two lanes reduce to one lane. To aid that reduction, yellow stripes are painted through the right lane identifying it as non-drivable. Shortly thereafter the road officially moves from two lanes to one, but this time the left lane is removed through signage that indicates the left lane merges into the right. To successfully, rather legally navigate this road you must enter by the left lane and shortly thereafter transfer to the right lane (which should be empty since it was previously non-drivable) before the left lane vanishes.

Now I know that these markings are intended to give order to the flow of traffic and inform drivers of a condition (lane reduction) for safety. But that intent doesn't make sense of the poor application. Another senseless situation that has been sticking out in my mind as is this effort spearheaded by the governor of New York to grant driver's licenses to illegal aliens. (here, here, here). This discussion was a topic at the debate last week and is sure to be a topic for months to come. The discussion will remain as a political power struggle, but as a rational choice for public policy there seems to be little to discuss. The benefits of issuing a driver's license to illegal aliens seem to include proper identification and the assumption that traffic accidents will be reduced, however neither of these arguments float.

Proper identification for illegal aliens is a benefit to all people and state issued identification cards are the most reasonable method to ensure this process. Of course, each state issues identification cards without driving privileges already. Maybe the debate should center more around identification privileges and not around driving privileges?

But that's the push by NY governor Eliot Spitzer, who argues that unlicensed drivers account for a large number of traffic accidents and that granting driving privileges to unlicensed illegal aliens will reduce the number of traffic accidents. How much more simple could the solution be? Or is this not really a solution and merely a fruitless lane shift?

Let's start this discussion from the front end. Why aren't these illegal aliens pursuing legal residence? As legal aliens these men and women are privilege to such. Certainly there is much nationalistic opposition to all immigrants, but there is little loss and great gain for illegal aliens to enter the legal residence and naturalization processes. I should assume that these immigrants are either uninterested because there is no need (or accountability) to validate their residence status or because there are political blocks to that end. In either case it makes no sense to give illegal aliens partial privileges for residence.

Are these aliens licensed to driver in their home nations? Can they not use these licenses to drive in America? Maybe they should be able to do such, just as any visitor may do on vacation.

Do driver's licenses make drivers safer? The formal training and testing that accompanies a driver's license should make an illegal alien a safer driver, but what about those who fail the driving test? Will they stop driving? Safer driving is the implicit effect of Spitzer's plan, but is there any data to support this idea? The only situation I can see where this works is if unlicensed illegal alien drivers are causing traffic accidents because they are evading pursuit. Granting a license to these drivers would help create fewer situations where risky or reckless driving seems beneficial to them.

So what is an appropriate thing to do? Can granting driver's licenses to illegal aliens make the roads safer? It may be that such a privilege will create a sense of ownership or care for driving safety that may not be present in some of these drivers. That would be a safety benefit, but that benefit would be greater if these drivers were legal in car and home. In any case, it seems that Spitzer's plan is avoiding the problem to create the solution. Much like switching from the left to right lane on a single-lane road we seem to be on the same path as we were when we started, we just jiggled our feet a little. I don't see this driver's license hokey-pokey providing any real benefits to any American citizen, natural, alien, or illegal.