Rules and Discernment

Do rules weaken an individual's ability to use discernment?


I asked this question of myself while driving in Denver's late afternoon city traffic. I realized somewhere along the busy familiar way that it didn't take hardly any mental engagement on my part to arrive safely at my destination. I thought back to my experience in other countries (particularly Mexico) where the laws of traffic are significantly different (and in most cases looser). I remember having to be more alert in order to survive the overwhelmingly hectic traffic. Not to say that there are no traffic laws where I was in Mexico, they just hold to a different standard of following those rules. Traffic laws are mostly suggestions there.

I need to insert this little disclaimer here:
I don't have anything against rules really. I understand the reasoning behind them and I value them (maybe more than I ought to at times). I cling to Romans 8:1-4 in my interpretation of "law" (this passage is one of MANY which I could reference here).

"There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit."

So I know the law is weak. It can't stand alone. Nor should it. Not now.
Not in the age of the Spirit.
How then does this change how I approach the law?