Premium ContentMouse over Home then click on Premium Content for information.I spent several hours Monday and Tuesday conducting my own little traffic study at spots throughout Omaha.
Out of 1,000 vehicles, 225 had some significantly sized item dangling from the rearview mirror.
Under Nebraska law, those 225 drivers could have been pulled over and ticketed.
Soon, those drivers no longer may need to fear. State legislators are considering a bill from State Sen. Tanya Cook of Omaha that essentially would remove the ability of a Nebraska law enforcement officer to pull over a vehicle because items are hanging from the rearview.
If the bill passes, hanging stuff on the mirror would be a secondary offense.
Before I started my survey, I stopped at an auto parts store to buy some fuzzy dice for $3.99. Then the sales staff weighed in.
Pablo Luna said he has a tiara hanging from his rearview mirror, a gift from a female friend. The tiara replaced a small stuffed monkey, which was less offensive than the women's underwear some of his friends hang from their mirrors. His mother, he said, drives around with his baby shoes dangling.
I drove off, stopping at 10 spots from which to watch at least 100 vehicles pass.
Crystals, tassels, dream catchers, Mardi Gras beads and other unidentifiable stuff.
Pine-tree-shaped air fresheners. Other air fresheners. Parking placards.
Then the granddaddy of them all in terms of obstructed vision: The handicapped-parking placards given out by the state DMV.
In time, patterns appeared.
Older cars seemed to have more items dangling from their mirrors than newer cars.
Mirror bling was more common near apartments and high school and college parking lots.
And in South Omaha, just south of 24th and L Streets, 42 of 100 vehicles had items dangling from their rearview mirrors.
Tuesday, I went back to survey the area again and found 38 out of 100 with dangling items.
One car that had an unadorned mirror belonged to Jezharela Arteaga, a Scottsbluff native who lives in Greenwood and commutes to Omaha and Lincoln.
“I actually had fuzzy dice, and I got pulled over because of them on I-80,” Arteaga said. “I got rid of them. I didn't want to keep getting pulled over.”
A couple years ago, while driving from her office job in Lincoln to a nearby restaurant, Arteaga said, she was pulled over and then allowed to leave “without ever getting an explanation of why we had been pulled over.”
“My co-worker sitting next to me was half Hispanic, my two co-workers in the back of the car were black.
“We're white-collar workers going to lunch, and the first thing the officer asks me is, ‘Are there any weapons in the vehicle?'”
So what about the mirror law?
“It sure felt like profiling.”
Deb Collins, spokeswoman for the Nebraska State Patrol, told me that her department is “neutral on legislative matters. We simply enforce the laws as passed by the Legislature.”
The problem: Some silly little laws beg to be selectively enforced.
Contact the writer:
402-444-1129, robert.nelson@owh.com
Copyright ©2012 Omaha World-Herald®. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, displayed or redistributed for any purpose without permission from the Omaha World-Herald.
