It’s 2011… It’s time for that age old tradition of finding out what new California vehicle laws went into effect and how they will affect you.

Our lawmakers were busy this year… stuffing their pockets with money obtained off of personal “pork” projects. By the way, those “pork” projects are paid for by you and I. It’s our taxes doing good things and buying large personal yachts for our elected officials (whole other story line… I’ll let it rest tho…).

Do you remember the law that made molesting butterflies in City parks a misdemeanor? Well, those duly elected officials, the ones we pay our tax dollars to, managed to get that law changed. Took a day and a half to change the wording to read as “bother butterflies” on that one.

Here’s a good (kaff…) motorcycle law. If you are under the age of 21, a new law requires the completion of a motorcycle safety course administered by the CHP if you want to obtain a motorcycle instruction permit. But, if you are older than 21, never really ridden a motorcycle, use a friends Rebel 250 to pass the very difficult (ah…hem) DMV motorcycle driving test to obtain your M1 and you have the money, you could buy a 160HP bad-azz crotch-rocket. Just throw your babe on back and do wheelies down the freeway… eventually ending up as a statistic that the CHP and the Coroner’s office would have to scrape off the freeway.

New bike... New Driver... Same PITA passenger...

Another bike related fiasco here. There’s now a law that deals with motorcycle theft. It makes it a misdemeanor to possess, give, or lend any device designed to bypass the factory-installed ignition of a motorcycle to start the engine without the manufacturer’s key or any motorcycle ignition or part of motorcycle ignition, with the intent to unlawfully take or drive, or to facilitate the unlawful taking or driving of a motorcycle, without the consent of the owner. A misdemeanor. If you carry a screwdriver around a hot (as in “stolen”) motorcycle, you’re fresh meat and you could be on the receiving end of a parking ticket… well, the equivalent of a parking ticket anyway. Is this law a deterrent? Or a detriment? I can hear the cop now; “Hey Bub, you got a nail clipper on ya? That there vehicle is a stolen motorcycle and you’re the closest warm body to it. Gonna have to cite ya for that I’m afraid…”

You know those gay little underpowered roller skates bearing the yellow and white “clean-air” stickers that clog up the car-pool lanes? Guess what? They can continue to use the high occupancy vehicle traffic (read: car-pool) lanes. And forty thousand new stickers will be issued to early purchasers of Enhanced Advanced Technology Partial Zero Emission Vehicles (EATPZEV). They will still be underpowered, have a max speed of 50 miles per hour (if the owners can get them to go that fast) and look like badly put together tissue boxes.

Hallelujah! You are now allowed to record your passengers while they are inside your car. That is, as long as the occupants are notified that their conversations may be recorded. It also allows you to place a video event recorder in a 7-inch square space in the lower corner of a vehicle windshield on the passenger side, or a 5-inch square in the lower corner of the vehicle windshield on the driver’s side, outside of an airbag deployment zone. Now you can record the backseat trysts your teenagers are getting into. YouTube never had it so good! If your responsible for your office car-pool, every passenger will have to sign a release, provide six forms of identification and remove all sharp objects from their pockets before boarding. “Mr. Driver, I’m ready for my close-up now!”

What did that sign say?

Remember the Amber Alerts? Now there are Blue Alerts. The Emergency Alert System (EAS) specifies that the Law Enforcement Officers Blue Alert is similar to an Amber Alert. This alert system goes into effect if a law enforcement officer is killed, suffers serious bodily injury or is assaulted with a deadly weapon, and the suspect has fled the scene of the offense. Pardon me… but if the dude (or dudette) that does this kinda thing is caught by me, they may end up black and blue and bloody cause this kind of thing sets off my Red Alert system.

You’ve seen those moving trailer mounted billboards, right? Well, there’s a new law that deals with mobile billboard displays and it defines such displays as advertising. Ya think? These devices are attached to a wheeled, mobile, non-motorized vehicle that carries, pulls or transports a sign or billboard for the primary purpose of advertising. You gotta be kidding me. The law did go one step futher… the damn thing can be towed (and impounded) if you park it illegally in a crippled peoples parking spot. “Uh, yes… Is this the police impound yard? My mobile trailer sign thing that advertises Viagra and “You Go Boy” condoms that was sitting in front of Hills Park Elementary School right next to the fire hydrant is missing. You guys didn’t tow it, did you?”

I wonder... does this qualify under CA DMV rules?

You know what a “utility trailer” is? Not until January 1st, 2011 you didn’t. There’s a new California law that defines a utility trailer as “a trailer or semi-trailer used solely for the transportation of a user’s personal property, which cannot be used in commerce, cannot exceed gross weight of 10,000 pounds, but can be used for transportation of livestock.” Hear that Bubba? Now you can haul your pet sheep in a utility trailer instead of that old broken down livestock hauler.

I can see this next police stop now. Cop gets on the loudspeaker; “Hey! Buzz-Bait! Yeah… You in the pick-em-up truck that’s jacked 8 feet off the ground and hasn’t seen a dirt clod… Pull that spank wagon over to the curb. Hey, there’s sumpthin’ you should know dood. You see there’s this little amended Section of the Vehicle Code? It now a requirement that your license plate is to be mounted parallel to the ground so the characters are upright and display from left to right. So, that off angle, vertical shingle in your rear window ain’t cuttin’ it Dutch. I’m gonna have to haul yer ass in.”

And from the Thank-you God fringe… There’s a new law which allows drivers of vehicles to pass on the right under specified conditions and it was amended to clarify that it does not prohibit a bicyclist from passing on the right in either a bicycle lane or on a shoulder. Makes me all teary-eyed just thinking about it. I always wondered where the cop was as I was sitting in stopped traffic and those bikers with the little whiffle ball helmets would race past me on the right, cause everybody knows you can’t pass on the right. Right? Or was that left? Right? Never mind…

And from the WTF files… There was this section about driving with a cell phone? A section 23123(a) Which said that a person shall not drive a motor vehicle while using a wireless telephone (read: cell-phone) unless that wireless telephone is specifically designed and configured to allow hands-free listening and talking, and is being used in that manner (read: hands-free) while driving. Nice law… Don’t work… Doesn’t stop the toads from talking or texting while traveling in the fast lane. But it’s a nice law.

You can see this every day if you look hard enough!

Well the new cell phone law has a few less lines of mambo-jumbo (affectionately know as “legalese”) in it. You see, the old cell phone law has been repealed as of January 1, 2011. The new section goes into effect, and I am quoting here… “(g) This section shall become operative on July 1, 2011.” So, you got six months Bosco. Talk up a storm. And if the mobile law-dawg stops you for using your cell phone as a brain warmer, show them this article. May not save you from wearing the silver bracelets or having to buy a ticket to the policeman’s ball, but it makes court a helluva lot more fun.

Again, 2010 was just as expected when it comes to vehicle laws. It patiently obvious that our elected drudges have done their very best to make sure that we abide by some type of rule or regulation that has nary a chance of doing anything for us. Well, that is unless you drive a gay car or ride a bike in them cute little bike shorts and whiffle ball helmet. For the rest of us, we just have to squirm a bit more when we get pulled over by the local constabulary. No matter what, you’ll either be getting a hand slap or a free trip downtown. Probably because of that little hula girl you have mounted on your dash that has been outlawed in fourteen other states… for being sexist!

Welcome 2011…  So, let’s sing…   Should old acquaintance…   forget it…   Auld Lang Syne?  It means literally “old long ago…” and it comes from old Scottish tune.   We translate “Auld Lang Syne” as “The Good Old Days”!

First off… I wish you and yours the happiest of holiday seasons. May the year 2011 be prosperous and a safe year for you and your family and friends.

Something interesting crossed my e-desk about a week ago. It was a very official looking document, replete with logos, signatures, major sounding e-mail addresses and powerful sounding words. As I read the document, which had my full name in the subject line, I became uneasy. At the end of the document was a list of approximately eight very prominent judicial bureaucracies, and four obviously made up ones.

The e-mail document was basically telling me that I would not be reported to the FBI, CIA, DOD, NSA or a string of other agencies. The charge you ask? I was being reported to these agencies for treason unless I paid the requisite $175.00 to the EFCC in Lagos, Nigeria.

I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck, so this kind of thing caused me to pause, and then laugh. I reread the poorly written letter about six times laughing so hard that I almost soiled myself. In my mind I’m thinking… “what a crock of…”

Wait a minute. This is just the type of ruse to catch some folks blindly filling out a check and mailing it to some scumbag in Nigeria. Why? It’s a simple fact that the American consumer is gullible and that my friends has me more afraid now that at any time in the past.

Most of the “sheet-zah” (a new word for scam e-mail and letters) that comes from these parasites that live in Nigeria or some other dark stinky hole usually tell me I can have 20 or 30 percent of 26.5 million “crotch-rots” or some denomination if I just help some poor dude out of his settlement dispute arising from the death of some long lost politician or family member. Pony up the five thousand cash that they need to pay-off some ding-bat judge or corrupt banker and I could be rich in no time.

Here’s the sad part. I got three phone calls within about a week from people asking me if this FBI e-mail that they just got was legit or not. These are educated folks; people whose opinions or guidance I have relied upon in the past. They are asking me what they should do. And then lo and behold, the same exact letter crops up on a web site forum that I frequent. Those leeches in Nigeria are getting smarter. What happens when they get so smart that they sucker you and empty your bank account?

I read in the paper recently that a series of credit card “bills” got mailed out to some of the residents who frequent an upscale restaurant in their town. The C/C bill looked very official and even had the correct credit card number on it. The bill only asked for 129 dollars and 42 cents. The C/C never got dinged.

Want the bad news? Over 40% of the folks that got the bill paid it. Apparently, the card number was skimmed, the address of the owner was found out and a very official looking billing statement was mailed out complete with an addressed return envelope.

So who do we shoot? Who do we prosecute? Who do we report to? Heck, can we even be sure we are reporting anything to a legitimate agency? If your point a finger at someone, there are three more pointing back at you. I hear howls of indignation? Where do I get off saying that it’s OUR FAULT?   Because…  it is our fault.

If any one of these scams never gets tripped; in other words, if not one single scam artist got back a nickel when he pulled one of these things, would they keep doing it? So yeah… it’s our fault. There are some of us who are so gullible that when a friend sends out an e-mail that he/she got mugged at gun-point in London England, and their wallet/purse got stolen and they need $1500 quid to get out of the country and back home, we waltz down to the Western Union office, fire off the money-gram only to turn around and find that the next guy in line is the exact same friend you were trying to help. And he’s trying to help another friend who got mugged in Sweden.

Congrats! Both of you morons got mugged… at the same time. DON’T TELL ME THAT IT DOESN’T HAPPEN! It does, and all too often I’m afraid.

The year 2011 will be the year of the scam. Time magazine will devote their Man-of-the-Year issue to a cloaked figure lurking in the shadows. Once a week there will be a newspaper report about some elderly couple lamenting the fact that they made a check out for $1600 bucks for a patio they never ordered. There is no doubt in my mind that each and every one of us will get scammed out of our hard earned cash one way or another.

“Not me! I won’t get scammed…” I’ll present a scenario; you will get a bill from the IRS. It states something about a mistake you made in 2008 and the IRS will need you to send a check for $24.95. You’re gonna think, “Aw hell, it’s only 25 bucks” and you’ll fire off the check, with an address of P. O. Box 41231 Dept. SCRW-U. If one hundred thousand people get the same letter and just 40% do the exact same thing you did, that’s a million bucks being sent to the same P. O. Box.

However, if one hundred thousand people got the same letter and no one sent in the check, would the scammer keep trying the same scam?

A large portion of this is our fault. We perpetuate this type of thing by falling for the believable and believing the absurd. Each and every day more and more of our neighbors are getting scammed. Can we stop it? Unfortunately? No. There is no stopping this type of crime. All we really can do is keep our eyes and ears open and expect the “scammers” to offer you their services of parting you and your money.

I can tell you this? We are at war. A war that is silent; instigated on foreign shores and just as capable of killing the American Dream as a bullet is. Arm yourself with knowledge; resort to a careful and detailed understanding of your family surroundings. Just remember that doing all of this is only a small part in this war. Prepare others. Ask questions. Throw the ‘BS’ flag if you don’t understand something and pick up the phone and ask for explanations.

It’s fun to laugh about these things… right up until you realize that your checking account has been emptied and your credit cards have been shut off for being over limit. I wonder who would be laughing then.

By the way… he rode a Kawasaki Ninja 900.

Be safe and secure in 2011?

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Until next time…