Driving Legally Is Your Responsibility
Ray Eddings
There is a basic principle at work in societies where the rule of law precedes all other authority: ignorance of the law is no excuse. At its heart it is a simple idea. Society is built upon rules and to exist within that society it is the responsibility of each individual to know and abide by those rules.
But real world applications become complicated. For example, the web of local, state and federal authority that dominates in the US is further confused by the other responsibilities such as personal, professional and familial obligations. Sometimes the simplest questions can be so muddled by the circumstances of one's existence that clarity might seem impossible.
My wife recently had a little adventure that illustrates this point.
She is a courier for a medical lab. She spends her day driving to various doctors' offices gathering vials of horrible things which are carefully cataloged and sent on to her employer's lab for testing. It is a rotating responsibility in the local office to spend an evening driving the gathered samples to the company's hub about 200 miles away.
It was while returning from this weekly night-time drive that she was pulled over. Fortunately she didn't wind up with a ticket but in talking to the state trooper she found out that she was very likely driving with the wrong license. She was returning and only had empty plastic crates with "Medical Samples" stamped on them. Perhaps she did not get ticketed for this offense because she was not transporting actual samples at the time.
The next day she talked to her supervisor about what the officer had said. This was not the first time that they discussed license classes. The standard driver's license class is Class F. This is the operator's permit that most drivers use. The next step up is Class E. This is the license that my wife presumed she would need when she was first hired over two years ago. But her supervisor told her at the time that it wasn't necessary; she was legal under the regular Class F license. She was also informed that any tickets she received would be her responsibility.
This time her supervisor decided that since a state trooper had put things into question that she ought to check with the company's legal team. The next day she handed my wife an email that said, in part, "We should not need special licenses in any state. We are not a 'for-hire' company and we do not meet the criteria necessary for medical transportation in regards to hazardous materials."
That sounds convincing enough. But after talking to other drivers, both those who work for the same company and friends who work for competitors, my wife decided that this issue needed further research. She contacted the state trooper's main office, the local police department and the local department of motor vehicles. The results were unanimous: she was most certainly required to carry the Class E driver's license.
She reported her findings to her coworkers and got an odd response. Those who were hired around the same time or after her were grateful for the information and, like she did, started the process to earn the advanced license rating. But her coworkers with seniority responded angrily. In a classic case of shoot the messenger they argued with her and seemed to blame her for this new burden. As of this writing none of them have applied for the advanced license.
As most people would, my wife had originally trusted her employer to know the laws regarding its operations. It is clear that, at least in this instance, they do not. But with the convenient caveat that drivers are responsible for any traffic tickets the company doesn't really have to worry too much about it. Had she been pulled over and ticketed she would have no recourse but to accept the responsibility for breaking the law of which she had been ignorant.
The moral of this little story is clear. It is up to each person to behave legally. Friends, coworkers and even bosses can't be trusted to steer one in the right direction as they have no legal responsibility in the matter if a law winds up being broken.
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