Traffic Lights and Stop Signs May Be Unconstitutional

When considering kinetic energy as private property, stop signs and traffic lights may violate the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution, which states that private property must not be taken for public use, without just compensation.  But there is a solution:  replace traffic lights with roundabouts.

Why do traffic lights and stop signs violate the Constitution?

Consider a person driving down a road.  She has kinetic energy equal to one half of her total mass (including vehicle) multiplied by the square of her velocity relative to the ground.  She clearly owns this energy because she paid for the car and the gasoline to run it, plus all the necessary taxes to build the road.  (This is not her only "energy", but we will neglect all other types of energy for the sake of this argument).  If a traffic light ahead of her turns red, she must stop according to the law.  Thus she will relinquish her energy, and thus her private property has been taken.

Now consider the Fifth Amendment.  Private property must not be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Are traffic lights unconstitutional?  I think so.  Clearly, if individuals do not relinquish their respective energies, then the traffic light system used by the public is useless.  Thus private property is “taken” (privately-owned energy is removed in the process of stopping on public (government) command), and the public “uses” this loss of private property to make the system work as intended, even though the item that is removed (energy) is not directly used by the public as energy.  Finally, there is no compensation for this loss of energy.

If this sounds absurd, it is not.  Billions of dollars are wasted per year because people are required by law to stop and start their cars at traffic lights and stop signs.  There is no government compensation, and often traffic lights favor one group of individuals over another. 

The Solution:

Some European countries have replaced traffic lights with roundabouts.  In a roundabout, the government is not taking energy for the good of the public.  The onus is now on the individual, and we might be able to apply the old axiom “the right for me to swing my fist ends where my neighbor’s nose begins”.   In other words, if there is a vehicle already occupying the space in the circle, I do not have the right to hit it, and I must yield (as the sign says).  This is not true for traffic lights and stop signs.