$623

Having just got back from China I forgot to notice that the car registration was due yesterday.

So on my way to a lunch, and driving because I am sick with a cold, a cop car that had been tailing me for about 5 minutes ‘woop woops’ me. I wasn’t surprised – you can sort of tell when that is going to happen.

After pulling over, the first thing I did was get out of the car to talk to the police. But apparently we have gone all American and I was quickly waved back into the vehicle. I am surprised I didn’t end up spread-eagled on the ‘hood’.

The first course of action was a breathalyzer test. I commented that I didn’t realise my driving was that bad. Not funny.

And then I handed over my license. Luckily I had it – a couple of weeks back I had misplaced it for a week or so.

Then came the true cause of my delay – driving an unregistered vehicle. A complete surprise to me.

After explaining the circumstances by responding factually and without embellishment to the questions, I was fined $623 for driving an unregistered vehicle.

(* – a little Googling later I find out that if I had said I was driving to the car rego office they have the power to let me continue on that drive without fining me, just FYI).

Apparently it could have been a lot worse, they told me.

I could have copped another $623 for driving an uninsured vehicle. There is some other offense as well for a similar amount. Plus they could have taken some demerit points off my drivers license. And they could have made me leave the car by the side of the road until the registration was dealt with.

So the picture I was painted was that they were in fact doing me a favour by charging me only $623, which is about double the registration cost, and just less than the combined compulsory third party insurance and registration cost.

Then one more weird thing happened. I had left the old (and now defunct) rego sticker on because I thought I could always refer to it if I was in doubt when the car needed to be registered – it’s pretty easy to lose track of all the mail that comes in. Unfortunately I had forgotten to look at the sticker altogether. In any case the copper came around to the passenger’s side, opened the door and removed the old rego sticker using my license as a scooper. What’s that all about if it’s not to do with making sure there’s a greater chance that we will miss the registration renewal?

What I am left with is an impression of how impersonal the police are these days. The whole process is videoed and recorded and they clearly have to play the whole thing with a very straight bat.

In fact it’s a binary process with very little leeway. You commit a crime or misdemeanour and you are charged or fined. My confusion remains as to why they suggested that they have the authority to charge me with one, or many offenses. If true, I can’t see the state government allowing this lost revenue opportunity to continue much longer.

There is now no connection between the words ‘policy’ and ‘police’. They are not policing policies at all – that would require police discretion. They used to have it but no more. What the police are actually doing is collecting revenues for state owned monopolies. You have to think that it will only be a matter of time before discretion is taken off judges and magistrates too.

Putting on my futurology hat, my guess is that the police will be the first government service to be completely replaced by IT technology and robots. They are well on the way already – they like daleks with all that IT they carry, half man and half machine.

In the bigger scheme of things it has to be cheaper to penalise people out of their cars and off the roads, as compared to investing in more roads. I think they could be onto something really good here.