Sometimes, the Swiss are too much

For all the nice things about living here, you just have to shake your head at the Swiss sometimes. I have a colleague here at work who received a fine of almost $500 in the mail. His offense? Driving with too much snow on the top of his car. I can't remember everything that went into the fine, but it was something like $50 for the cost of taking the picture of the car driving with snow on the roof, $200 for the fine itself, $200 for court costs even though no one ever appeared in court, and a couple of other things. What this means is that someone, either a contractor or an employee of the canton (the equivalent of a state here in Switzerland), is driving around specifically looking for cars driving with too much snow on top. Give me a break! I believe I've complained in the past about the Swiss requirement that drivers who wear glasses or contacts must carry a spare pair of glasses in the car just in case they're needed. (We tend to ignore that law, but I'm sure it's going to bite us sometime before we move back.)

If you step back from the ridiculousness of some of the requirements here, though, it's interesting to think about how each society balances freedom and safety. In the past week or two, Minnesota has had a rash of car accidents involving young drivers (16 or 17 years old). Those accidents have resulted in eleven deaths. Many of the victims were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. If you were to raise the driving age to 18, which is the case in most European countries, you'd have fewer deaths but less freedom to get around. It's the same with drunk driving laws. In Switzerland, the limit is 0.04; in most states, I believe it's 0.08.

You can take this even further. We could save thousands of lives each year in the United States if we lowered the speed limit on the freeway to 30 miles per hour, but most of us wouldn't be willing to make that tradeoff. On the other hand, we could all get around much faster if we raised the speed limit to 120 miles per hour, but most of us wouldn't be willing to make that deal, either.

Each society has to decide these issues for itself, but of the extremes on both sides of those decisions, you can bet that the Swiss are on the side that wants to fine you for something. It's not really their fault. They just can't help it; they're Swiss.