Checked

I mainly try to do the right thing. I don't always even try, but I do try most of the time. Trying to do the right thing includes doing it when no one will notice whether you do or don't, because you're not doing it to stay out of trouble or to get some reward. You're doing it because it is the right thing. Most of the time, I think I manage to do the right thing in that way, but it's not always the case. I still rely on incentives sometimes.

It's hard to say how it is with public transit sometimes. You are going to have to pay in order to ride the bus, because the driver sees to that. It's considerably easier to get by without paying to ride the train in Los Angeles, but I pay anyway. That's partly because of how lousy it is to be a chronic scofflaw like that, but it also just doesn't pay to be one if you ask me. People do get cited for not riding, although God only knows how.

After several years, they still haven't locked the turnstiles at stations, so that's no reason to pay. Every so often they do run fare checks, but it's nearly impossible to be stopped by one of the fare checkers, so few are they in number compared to the hordes of people coming off the train where they are stationed. Rarer are sweeps through the train as it runs. Even rarer are checks in which they actually look to see if your electronic car has fare on it.

The other day, they did about the second or third check ever where they got me and weren't satisfied to merely look at my card without scanning it. I was surprised, but ready. I had my fare on my card, I'd swiped it at the station, and seeing this and they let me go. There have been a handful of times where I didn't manage to do it, and was lucky that those times there wasn't a check. The fine is over 300 dollars, I believe. I'm glad I've been lucky.