More USPS problems

Postal Service says it?s immune from local traffic laws | The Lookout - Yahoo! News

Not really shocked...

My parents are both Postal emplyees and I do know that they have the right of way over anyone except a cop in pursuit. They are not required to pull over for police, fire trucks, ambulance or funerals. Most however do, but they do not have to. I don't know about the traffic laws, I would assume they have to follow the same laws.

Hendersonfan said:

My parents are both Postal emplyees and I do know that they have the right of way over anyone except a cop in pursuit. They are not required to pull over for police, fire trucks, ambulance or funerals. Most however do, but they do not have to. I don't know about the traffic laws, I would assume they have to follow the same laws.

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Why is that?

Not required to pull over for emergency vehicles?? So someone dying of a heart attack or trapped in their burning house have to wait so that others get their mail on time? Ridiculous.

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Antiquated laws, I would presume.

Government's view is the mail is more important. I know my mom pulls over (dad retired, but never drove vehicles) for anything. But they are not reuired to by federal law.

olerud363 said:

Not required to pull over for emergency vehicles?? So someone dying of a heart attack or trapped in their burning house have to wait so that others get their mail on time? Ridiculous.

Sent from my Galaxy S2 LTE using Freedom Card Board mobile app

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THIS!

Federal > State/local

General Chat!

That snopes page was great, magicpapa.

I love that people have been debating the same inane hypothetical situation since before the automobile was invented.



As to the OP, that's just a lawyer being a lawyer - they don't actually think they're immune from local law, but they will claim they are just to stir the pot. These guys have advanced training in argumentative dickishness, and they like to show off their skills from time to time.

Then again, in terms of crazy-ass excuses used to try and get out of tickets - "I have special Federal status" is towards the bottom.

nbailey said:

That snopes page was great, magicpapa.

I love that people have been debating the same inane hypothetical situation since before the automobile was invented.



As to the OP, that's just a lawyer being a lawyer - they don't actually think they're immune from local law, but they will claim they are just to stir the pot. These guys have advanced training in argumentative dickishness, and they like to show off their skills from time to time.

Then again, in terms of crazy-ass excuses used to try and get out of tickets - "I have special Federal status" is towards the bottom.

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I took Argumentative Dickishnest 101 and 102 when I was in law school.

Almost got my LLM in it too.

As a writer of many Federal response letters that basically say "not our problem", I can kind of see where the Post Office's response is going, but it doesn't quite get there clearly, whether by design or not. To translate to actual English it basically says:

"Hey *******, there's a Federal law that says you can't make the POST OFFICE pay traffic fines."

Then it does a very poor job of saying:

"The Post Office requires our workers to obey traffic laws, and that's their responsibility, send the tickets to THEM. The Post Office itself is not allowed to collect money from them to pay the fines."

Not sure if it doesn't explicitly tell the city to ticket the drivers because they are trying to protect the drivers a little, figuring the city might just give up when they can't get the Post Office to directly pay the fines. Since the letter was sent by counsel I'd say that's unlikely. In my experience with Federal counsel they just like to say as little as possible and answer the very specific question that was asked. I suspect Postal Service counsel is similar.

The response letter from the traffic company attorney includes the reason why the fines were sent to the Postal Service instead of the drivers (in that city fines are levied against the owner of the vehicle unless liability is transferred by the owner to the operator) in between completely unprofessional attention ******* and grandstanding. Seriously, the traffic company attorney comes off like a massive *********.

As somebody who drives a Federal vehicle once in a while I'm interested to see where this case goes. At my job it's understood that if you get tickets while driving a Federal car you're responsible for them (and it will reflect extremely poorly upon you), there's no expectation of immunity.

As long as I get my eBay quickly they can do whut they want!