There’s been a large amounts of complaints recently in the UK about the Police (or the Government depending on who’s complaining) using speed cameras as a ‘Stealth Tax’. Naturally followed by calls to stop this practice.
I’ve come up with a quick and sure method to stop this corrupt practice. Stop Bloody Speeding
It really narks me that the people doing the whining are the people who get caught speeding. Not really surprising but I think it does show that they not trying to stop the practice by holding on to the ‘Moral High Ground’ they just don’t want to get caught.
Perhaps should have gone in GD, but it depends if people agree with me
Ain’t ever had a problem with speed traps, personally Both of my brothers got caught once, one readily admitted it and paid up; the other one claimed and proved that the speed limit sign was half-hidden by a tree (DoT accepted he was right, overturned the fine and got the tree trimmed) - the speed indicated by that sign is lower than the normal speed for that kind of road.
The people I know who complain about getting fines for hundreds of € were all doing the kind of speeds that make other drivers go “there goes a coffin on wheels! May you only kill yourself and not another!”
There are times when speed laws are definitely written up to collect money. In parts of Arizona, there are open highways at 65-70mph, which precipitously drop to 30 when you enter a town. To actually stay under the speed limit, you have to either know that the town is there, or slam the brakes. Of course, there are police cars in that 100-foot stretch of road through which you must decelerate, and speeders (mostly out-of-towners, who appeal less frequently) get the bill.
I agree with the OP. But it still amazes me that so many people think think speeding is normal - twice in the past month I’ve been passed illegally (across double yellow lines or using the center lane) when I was doing exactly the speed limit.
And don’t give me that stuff about “flow of traffic” - you’re just breaking the law together, it doesn’t make it right.
Every time I drive north to NC, my route takes me on US301 through the towns of Waldo, Starke, Lawtey, Baldwin and Callahan in Florida. Each of them are speed traps, although you do get the chance to slow down gradually as the signs change from 65 to 55 to 45, etc. Then the signs reverse as you leave town and you go on your way. Triple-A has put up a billboard annoucing, “Speed Trap Ahead: Town of Lawtey.” The town tried to get them to take it down but the courts sided with Triple-A. So lawtey put up their own billboard announcing, “Lawtey is concerned with saving lives” as a rebuttal.
It’s annoying to have to slow down for each town, but it takes less time than getting pulled over and waiting for the officer to finish with you.
I’ve been driving for more than a dozen years and have never once got a speeding ticket. I am certainly not going to claim I never break the speed limit, though. I do, but I like to think that I only do it where (a) I am not going to get caught, and (b) the speed limit is inappropriate for the road and conditions.
Does that sound arrogant? Possibly, but I am amazed by the number of people that get caught by great big bright yellow painted speed cameras in plain view at the side of the road. Frankly, if you can’t see one of these, then what hope do you have of seeing and reacting to any other kind of road hazard?
Oh, and I second what Khadaji says – I too have a sporty red car (for another couple of weeks, anyway, I am getting rid of it in favour of a bicycle!) which would be expected to attract traffic police attention. But if you drive properly, you have nothing to worry about.
Our city recently installed a number of red light cameras, and photo radar setups. Our Mayor insisted that they were purely intended to increase safety, and the millions (yes literally, with the fines starting at $100 for the first offense) of dollars of revenue generated had nothing to do with it.cite
Now, for various reasons, the fines associated with these systems have been defined as “civil penalties” rather than traffic violations. I think one of the reasons is that there are a number of burden of proof, and presumption of innocence issues associated with ticketing the vehicle owner who may or may not have been the driver. Another reason, as it turns out, is that driving infractions are violations of state law, and thus the state is entitled to the bulk of the fines collected, with the municipality that actually enforced it given only a percentage (I think 26%) of the fine. Thus the city was able to increase it’s haul by almost 400% by virtue of legal semantics.cite
The state legislature, however, took notice of this, and are in the process of amending state law to close this loophole.
The Mayor has therefore made a public announcement that if the bill becomes law, the photo-enforcement program will be terminated. Yep, Mayor Marty, it’s all about safety, and revenue never had anything to do with it did it now?
AND don’t get me started on how a private contractor is really running this show, from installing and maintaining the cameras to mailing out citations…er I mean “Public Nuisance Enforcement Orders”
Regarding the complaints about low speed limits in a small town, I’ve got to assume the criticism is about the enforcement, not the existence, of such limits. It seems like a town’s inhabitants would have a legitimate concern about not having cars rushing through at 70mph on what is likely their main thoroughfare, possibly with pedestrian traffic…?
What Kevbo said above rings true. Photo radar tickets are about money, plain and simple. When an officer stops you, he actually prevents you from speeding. With the photo radar, you just keep on driving the same way you have been, without a care, until a ticket arrives in the mail. How does that make things safer?
I am also of the opinion that speed, in itself, is not dangerous. Driving recklessly is dangerous. Driving speedily but safely is not.
Many speed limits don’t make much sense, either. The biggest road near my home is seven lanes, three each direction plus a center turn lane. The southern part of the road, which is surrounded by flat undeveloped dirt fields with excellent visibility, is marked “Speed Limit 45”. But if you travel north, where I live, along the same unbroken road, you’ll find it closely bordered by houses, gas stations, and a school. There, the speed limit on the exact same road is 50. How, pray, does that make any sense?
Another example: There’s a stretch of road just beyond the route I take home that has some interesting signage. First, the road is marked, “Speed Limit 65 - Minimum 45”. A few hundred yards on, however, there’s a sign that says, “Speed Limit 45”. So, apparently, if you’re going anything other than exactly 45 at that point, you can be ticketed, because you’d either be exceeding the limit or below the minimum.
This isn’t a bitch because I’ve never had a ticket either. But not all cameras are in plain sight. I know of one that is planted right behind a road sign and one on the Blackwall Tunnel road that is hidden round a bend (if you drive that route you’ll know it, it’s been there for years).
If the point of the cameras is to stop people speeding rather than to catch them doing so they would all be in plain sight. They aren’t. The rest of the cameras along that Blackwall Tunnel route are all clearly visible (and there are a LOT of them) but I’d be surprised if anyone sober would speed past them.
Both the M25 and M1 now have sections with average speed traps at 40 mph, which means everyone has to creep along at 39. This at least looks like a genuine attempt to slow traffic down (around road works) rather than to rasie money.
I’ve hated those things since they were first installed. Actually, the NM legislature has taken two tacks at getting rid of it–the first was a bill that, if passed, would have made it so that no municipality could set fines higher than the state itself. Since running a red light is “not obeying a traffic control device” and the state has set that fine at $10, that means that the city’s fine could also not be more than $10. The one you describe is the newer tack.
I lived in a town once where this was the case. We got a lot of traffic from big research centers feeding into a faster road leading to an Interstate. The slow stretch went right by an elelementary school and a little downtown. A lot of these people were eager to get home, and didn’t want to go 25 for the mile through town, and no doubt weren’t sensitive to the number of kids crossing the main street.
It helped that the police didn’t ticket residents.
The ACLU is challenging a Minneapolis “camera cop” program on that very point. And I think the ACLU is right … ticketing the owner of a speeding car, and then forcing the owner to dispute the ticket if someone else was driving the car that day, is unconstitutionally removing the presumption of innocence.
If the town of Lawtey were truly concerned with saving lives I wonder why they objected to the sign, it is warning people there is a reduction in speed up ahead and so should slow down. As the goal is to have people driving slowly through the town
they should be happy the Triple-A is helping them out.
There are two issues here: speed & safety; and a priori enforcement.
There is some correlation between speed and safety, but it tends to get overemphasized and sometimes misunderstood. No one wants to see people going 50 mph down a residential street where kids are playing. A collision at 80 mph means more damage and death than one at 40 mph. But in reality, exceeding the speed limit is not always a significant safety risk. Studies repeatedly show that the great majority of drivers (85+%, IIRC) go at a speed appropriate for the road and conditions, even if that speed is higher (typically by 5-10 mph) than the posted limit. What is much more dangerous is vehicles at speeds noticeably different from the norm, whether higher or lower. The driver who insists on going the speed limit when almost everyone else is going 10 mph faster is the real hazard in such a situation.
Even though the majority of people realize this, and speed occasionally, it’s tough to make the point without appearing to be a scofflaw. When police officers solemnly deride speed as unsafe, contradicting them puts one in the same light as advocating killing kittens with sledgehammers. But consider that the state police with the most visible anti-speed profile are in Ohio, where tickets have been issued for going one mph over the posted limit. Contrast that to some western states, where officers have been known to apologize for having to write a ticket for speed that they knew wasn’t inherently unsafe, even though it exceeded the limit. And put that in the context of the nationwide 55 mph limit in the U.S., which absolutely was not about safety. Savvy officers in many areas don’t even bother with drivers going less than 10 mph over the limit, because they can find enough of the fools who are driving faster than that - and who are the real safety concerns when it comes to speeders.
Kevbo’s example is far from the only one that illustrates that much of speed-law enforcement is more about revenue than about safety.
The other concern is with cameras monitoring every vehicle. This may not resonate so well in other countries, but in the U.S. there is a strong legal tradition of police needing probable cause to conduct a search. It may be well-established that 10% of the people in your neighborhood are drug dealers, but the police can’t search everyone walking down the street just because they know some of them will have illegal drugs on them. They can only search you if they have a specific reason to think that you are dealing drugs. The idea of everyone being subject to scrutiny for illegal acts at any time/all the time is contrary to the U.S. sense of justice. It is, however, exactly what many people feel these cameras represent.
On the one hand, speeding is perfectly acceptable if safe, and frankly should not be a crime. I also believe the obsession with speeding enforcement in the UK at the expense of promoting good driving has cost thousands of lives. See www.safespeed.org.uk
On the other hand, it’s not difficult to not speed, and no decent driver should be caught out by the fixed speed cameras in the uk (vans, a bit different).
My own approach is to speed, and if I were ever caught to accept the penalty - but first fight it as far as possible using the legal system, to cause the bastards maximum hassle.
Wouldn’t the sign encourage drivers to drive faster when they’re elsewhere? Wheras if there were no signs associated with speed traps, drivers would be more inclined to obey the speed limit all the time.
Both of my brothers got caught once, one readily admitted it and paid up; the other one claimed and proved that the speed limit sign was half-hidden by a tree (DoT accepted he was right, overturned the fine and got the tree trimmed) - the speed indicated by that sign is lower than the normal speed for that kind of road.