An airplane is not a vehicle? (is this judge a dumbass or what?)

Great Debates
1

This article in Slate points out the assinine reasoning of a US District Judge in the ‘shoe bomber’ case.

http://slate.msn.com/?id=2066958

If he is going to be such an assinine stickler for details like this, shouldn’t he also pay particular attention to the “or capable of being used” part? After all an airplane is perfectly capable of being used as a means of transportation on land. We just don’t use it that way. If you want to REALLY be a stickler, it actually is used in that means, when it taxis. Otherwise you would have to board your flight on a launching pad with no runway.

I realize that there are enough other counts on this Reid guy to likely get him convicted for a very long time, but do we really need judges to be making these kind of ridiculous decisions regarding our public safety?

2

And federal judges are appointed for life. Yay!

3

It doesn’t seem like a crazy decision to me.

Keep in mind that there are plenty of statutes on the books aimed at those who interfere with air travel. So this guy’s gonna do plenty of time.

IMHO, criminal statutes should be construed narrowly. This helps protect you and me from government abuse.

4

Folks, ya gotte remember, we’re dealing with the Federal government and a bureaucracy here.

Opening up my copy of the Federal Aviation Regulations, I note that there is always a distinction made between “vehicles”, which are land transportation, and “aircraft”, which are air transportation, even if the aircraft do occassionaly travel by land. And when you get to the part on on seaplanes, some of which are boat hulls mounted with wings, a simillar distinction is made between things that transport people and things over water and those that do so over air, even though the air transport contrivences occassionally use the water.

Where this really gets confusing is Part 103, where an ultralight, which flies, is defined as a “vehicle” and not an “aircraft”.

The point being, how the government defines things may or may not be how they are defined by the common citizen, which is why there is a “Dictionary Act of the US Code”, to make explicit these definitions.

For many many years, whenever you approached an airport of any size, there was at least one sign (usually many) stating that the penalty for delibrate damage to an aircraft can result in penalties up to and including death. Likewise, usually multiple signs saying interfering a flight crew is a Federal offense with very stiff penalities. So the judge is actually right - the Patriot Act brought the penalities for messing with other forms of transortation up to those for screwing with airplanes, and in that sense is redundant in relation to airplanes. (To my mind, this means you should be able to charge the guy under both sets of laws, but I’m not a lawyer so what do I know?) This doesn’t mean someone carrying a bomb onto a plane will go unpunished. This columist saw an oppotunity to blast a judge and put a “isn’t the law and its practioners stupid” slant to it.

Maybe, to make everyone happy, we should ammend the Dictionary Act to better define “mass transportation vehicle” as something that transports X or more people by land, air, or sea. Then in 50 years we can all have a meltdown over the fact that the tourist shuttle to the space stations and moon colony aren’t included because those quaint, early 21st century folks never considered space travel for the masses.

To reiterate - under Federal regulations and law an airplane is not a vehicle, it’s an aircraft (unless it’s an ultralight). If you carry a bomb onto an airplane it doesn’t matter what you call the fast-moving aluminum tube, you’re going to be heavily penalized.

5

Okay, so my angst is (once again) misdirected. Why would the legislators make a distinction on what type of conveyance is used to transport people? Why leave room for law enforcement to screw up the paperwork? It seems to me the interference with mass transportation is the important issue, not the particluar medium involved. How is destroying or damaging a plane different from a bus or a train or a boat or any future mode of transportation? Isn’t it the disruption of commerce and normal life for the citizens that is at issue?

Why do we need seperate laws for each mode of travel? Why not make ‘mass’ the operative term? If it carries more than say, ten people, by whatever means, label it as a mass transportation vehicle. If someone wants to use a giant skateboard to carry 100 people, what is the difference except efficiency? Where would the problems lie with this type of definition?

6

Yes, Broomstick and Lucwarm, but remember, this definition was made many years before airplanes were invented, much less a passenger vehicle. No body ever updated the dictionary. It was entirely an accident of time and history, and I dobt that had anyone from the last 70 years written it, they would have included planes, at least passenger ones, in that definition.

7

Certainly the question is debatable; reasonable people can disagree over whether “vehicle” should include airplanes.

My point is that the judge is not a “dumbass” for choosing one side over the other.

8

I think it’s a pretty weird sort of distinction, too. As smiling bandit pointed out, a lot of this has to with historical omissions and such. Yes, mass transport of any sort was the target of the new law, but whoever wrote it should have included airplanes by term since the hair splitting tendencies of lawyers are well known.

As a general rule, blowing up an airplane in flight pretty much gaurantees the death of all aboard, unlike trains or boats where there is a much greater chance of survivors. Jumping out of a burning airplane in flight is almost invariably fatal. Jump out of a boat you are much more likely to survive long enough for rescue. With passenger trains, given their length, while part of the train will be a death trap passengers further away from the affected cars are likely to escape with no or minor injuries. Busses can be effectively blown up, but simply do not carry as many people as trains and planes, so there’s a difference.

Airplanes also double as flying bombs themselves - something we all learned so painfully last September. While large boats have taken thousands of lives on sinking, only people on the boats in the first place are affected. With airplanes, however, when they fall out of the sky they become random catastrophe from the blue for those on the ground. A bus bomb or car bomb might kill hundreds - it takes an airplane to kill thousands.

Does all this justify treating airplanes differently under the law? I don’t know. It still seems a matter of degree rather than fundemental differences in effects.

Why do we need seperate laws for each mode of travel? Why not make ‘mass’ the operative term? If it carries more than say, ten people, by whatever means, label it as a mass transportation vehicle. If someone wants to use a giant skateboard to carry 100 people, what is the difference except efficiency? Where would the problems lie with this type of definition?

9

"As a general rule, blowing up an airplane in flight pretty much gaurantees the death of all aboard, unlike trains or boats where there is a much greater chance of survivors. Jumping out of a burning airplane in flight is almost invariably fatal. Jump out of a boat you are much more likely to survive long enough for rescue. With passenger trains, given their length, while part of the train will be a death trap passengers further away from the affected cars are likely to escape with no or minor injuries. Busses can be effectively blown up, but simply do not carry as many people as trains and planes, so there’s a difference. "
But even so, this would indicate stricter charges for ‘airplane crimes’ (for lack of a better word’, not less.

10

Any interference with an airplane that leads to the death of someone can be punished with the death penalty. We have a punishment beyond death?

Where do you get the idea that “airplane crimes” are punished less severely than crimes on other mass transport vehicles?