Driving While Resurfacing

If libertarians really want to make a freer society instead of daydreaming about it, perhaps we should focus on how ridiculous the law can be with a comical but true story.

Yesterday afternoon a police officer followed up on a call that someone was erratically driving a Zamboni in a local ice rink. When the cop arrived at the scene the driver was having lunch with a friend. Noticing tell-tale signs of alcohol use the officer administered a blood test on the man who registering .04 points above the legal limit. He was arrested for drunk driving.

If the goal of drunk driving laws is to keep us safe, how is arresting this man—who drove in a private space with no one else around and didn’t go faster than nine miles an hour (a Zamboni's max speed)—pose a threat to anyone? It doesn’t, of course, but I’ll guarantee you that it will be included in arrest statistics that area politicians will cite to convince the public they are safer.