A Red Light For Scorfflaws Summary

The importance of the law often get forgotten by ordinary American citizens. Frank Trippett in his excerpt, “A Red Light for Scofflaws,” argues that Americans think that law-and-order is threatened mainly by violent crime. He supports his argument by first giving examples of the minor laws that people seem to ignore, such as speeding and littering. He continues by stating that breaking these ‘minor’ laws have a greater affect on foundations of social order than people think they do. The author’s uses a serious tone to get American citizens to understand the major impact that these minor laws can have if they are broken. These minor laws were made to keep people safe and citizens should take these laws much more seriously because they are more

People often disobey rules such as littering because they assume that is won’t harm anyone, but people don’t really think about the long term effects. Littering won’t necessarily harm someone at the time that it is being done, but it will eventually have a major impact on the plants and animals living in the area. Laws against littering are made to keep our environment clean because that ultimately will affect how we live in the future. Laws regarding driving is also another law that is treated as if it is unimportant, however there are many dangers in breaking driving laws. Laws such as speeding or texting or drinking and driving are critical because the second that the driver’s attention is on something else rather than on the road, not only is the driver’s life at risk but so are the peoples’ lives around them. Drunk driving and texting while driving are notorious for creating nothing but chaos and have both caused many accidents and put many people in danger. If an accident is happens from texting and driving or speeding and results in death, those ‘minor’ laws suddenly become just as serious as a felony such as murder. Overall, minor laws can have the same results as serious