Wipers On and Looking Back
Massachusetts has a new law: if your wipers are on, your head and taillights also need to be on. It's a safety issue. I like it. I hear that some Massachusetts lawmakers want to repeal it . But, I digress, as I often do when blogging. It's a new law in Massachusetts, but Maine has had this law since 1997. I know, because I did a research project on this law during my first semester of graduate school. That was fall of 1997. I completed an assignment for a research class on this new law. I was interested in how people know if a new law has been passed. This was before widespread use of the Internet and unlike now, there were no electronic signs along the highways. How would people learn about this law? I conducted a project in which I assessed the extent to which Mainers were compliant with the law. On five or six days when it rained, I parked on several different roads in Saco and Biddeford and among cars with Maine plates, when the wipers were engaged, I recorded wheth