Since I don’t have a job that provides me with a car I can take home, allow me to be extremely critical of those who do, especially those whose jobs are funded by tax dollars.

Today while in Albuquerque I was behind a police car from Bosque Farms, whose operator clearly was not paying attention to his driving. For those of you who have no clue where Bosque Farms is, its about 15 miles south of Albuquerque. . . . Anyway, as he drove down the road, he missed the fact that the road split from a two way road to a divided road with a median and hit the median at (we’ll assume he was driving the speed limit) 30 mph. His two left hubcaps shot off into oncoming traffic to be run over and destroyed. Both drivers side tires blew out. His car swerved all over the road, he ran a stop sign, and pulled his vehicle off to the side of the road. He jumped out of his vehicle with a bewildered look on his face.

Now, since he was about 15 miles out of his jurisdiction, heading away from Bosque Farms, I can only assume he was headed home. Most police departments around here allow officers to take their vehicles home, and pay for their gas to and from work. My question is this: who pays for those two new tires, the hubcaps, and for someone to bring him another tire, because I’m sure he only had one spare? If I run my car into the median, I have to buy two new tires, I have to buy hubcaps, I have to find someone to bring me another spare or drive me to the tire shop. If I had a vehicle from work, I would probably still be responsible for something that was clearly my fault. If it happened often I would probably lose the privilege to bring home my car. I was unable to find the policy for any local take home programs, but I would venture to guess the taxpayer pays for this guys new tires.

I would be really curious how often this sort of thing happens, and not just with police cars, but what about city vehicles? federal vehicles? APS vehicles? I bet the taxpayer pays for a lot of bad driving.

You might say, what’s the big deal, you don’t pay taxes in Bosque Farms? But I read on their blog that they purchased most of their vehicles with funds appropriated from the state legislature where I do pay taxes.