The Santa Barbara Police Department is
doing a poor job at enforcing the statewide law against darkly tinted front
windows on vehicles. Every day I see countless cars and trucks with illegally
blackened out driver, passenger, and windshield windows. Drivers, pedestrians,
and bicyclists need to be able to see each other to be safe. It would be far
easier to drive drunk or high on drugs or do other illegal things behind such
dark windows (which is probably one of the reasons for the law and one of the
reasons so many people want blackened out windows). People can’t be allowed to
think they’re “too cool” to be seen — every one of us has the right to be safe.
The Santa Barbara Police Department needs
to know that allowing such law-breaking activities undermines their credibility
in a big way. When rules get broken so obviously and ignored or inefficiently
enforced by authorities we all suffer. We see that some people can break the
law and get away with it. Also, this would have to go down as one of the
easiest laws to enforce. Perhaps the fines and fix-it tickets need to be
significantly stiffer, but heavy and consistent enforcement is at least the
start. This is a solvable problem.
We need safer roads and the SBPD needs to
do a far better job of making this happen for everyone’s sake. Lives depend on
it and we expect civility on the road.