They're Back, and Twice as Bad

If you drove south on I-91 past White River Junction, Vermont last week, you noticed that the Border Patrol was operating its pointless checkpoint again. I was especially impressed on Friday afternoon, when the BP saw fit to stop the rush-hour traffic until it was backed up perilously close to the blind turn leading from the I-89 interchange. Trucks and cars coming around that corner at speed had to slow down very quickly to avoid striking the vehicles last in line.
Imagine how dangerous this will be during the holiday shopping season, with snow and ice on the road! The newspapers and the BP don't remind us about the crashes and the multi-fatality accident caused by the Border Patrol checkpoint on I-87 in 2004, a checkpoint declared unsafe by the National Transportation Safety Board. Will we start paying attention to the obvious hazard on I-91 only after someone gets hurt there?
Maybe not. The first accident may instead occur on I-89, where the Border Patrol was also operating last week, at a new "temporary" checkpoint near Exit 18 in Lebanon, New Hampshire.
If you know that stretch of road, it's easy to see how little the BP cares for safety in its quest to legitimize its money-wasting mission 100 miles from the border. Approaching Exit 18, the interstate snakes through a series of long, wide turns obscuring sight of what's coming ahead. That's not a problem when what's up ahead is just the exit. But drivers aren't expecting a traffic line-up to extend back toward the curve. This is an accident waiting to happen.
Of course, as even this complacent Times-Argus story makes clear, all any terrorist or serious people-smuggler has to do is get off ahead of these ludicrous make-work projects masquerading as public safety measures. That's why all these checkpoints have ever done is catch a few aliens overstaying their visas, bust a few pot-smokers--- and needlessly harass hundreds of not-white-enough citizens. Oh yeah, and they've advertised and extended the climate of irrational fear that helps support our unwinnable wars in the Middle East.
I wonder whether the Border Patrol now intends to build a permanent checkpoint in New Hampshire to match the one they're still hoping to build in Vermont? They haven't announced such a plan, but then, when have they ever willingly informed the public about their ambitions and operations in our area, including their documented patrols of area shopping mall parking lots, trolling for people who look "foreign"?
It's bad enough that the checkpoints are discriminatory, fear-mongering, wasteful pork-barrel projects. Now they're doubling the chance of creating a terrible highway accident. Isn't it time we shut this checkpoint boondoggle down--- before the Border Patrol get some poor commuter or shopper killed?