This
I was going to repost this because the original poster was a drive-by fishing for support for his own purposes.
I find it disturbing that an officer who is suppose to be monitoring traffic speed (for reasons of safety) would pull into traffic and then drive 100 mph trying to catch up to someone for flashing their lights.
After doing a little research I found this site that goes into domestic and international laws regarding the practice of flashing lights.
Not be insulting here but as a general rule, the act of hiding means you won’t notice them as you drive by. It’s not an all or nothing event if you see an officer in a visible spot.
I can show you where they hide in my area and even if you know to look for them you will not see them. A classic technique is to hide on a bridge or on an entrance ramp. The fence on the bridge hides the car and the bridge itself hides them from until the last second (when they are on the entrance ramp). Many of these traps are at the bottoms of hills which will naturally catch people at their peak speed.
You know, it’s funny. In what is now 33+ years of driving, I’ve had exactly two citations for speeding. The first happened when I was young and dumb, and on my way to see my fiancee 7 hours away; the second happened when I was being an idiot driving on US 50 at the Utah/Nevada state line (by being an idiot, I mean driving 80+ mph in an attempt to make up time on my way from Denver to Monterey). As a rule, I drive within the speed limit, or, on rare occasions, not more than 5 mph over it. And I don’t have to worry about traps, or tickets, or being pulled over, or any of that stuff. All the bitching in the world about what state highway patrols do, or most (not all, yes, I know some small towns supplement revenue with true speed traps) local authorities do in the way of catching speeders would go away if people would, you know, stop speeding. 
Having said that, as far as the issue of flashing lights goes:
If you are flashing brights, you are in violation of the law probably in every state in the union. If you are turning your lights on and off, and it is dark enough that you are required to have them on, you are violating the law. If you need not have your lights on, and you flash them on in order to warn someone of a radar location, then some careful attention would have to be paid to what exactly you were charged with; creative attempts to extend the reach of laws not designed to be applied in such circumstance should be fought with vigor. If the local constabulary (or the state police force) are systematically using such efforts to try and stop someone from signalling the placement of a radar gun, then that certainly is a violation of your Fourteenth Amendment rights (due process being construed to include the right to free speech, incorporating the concept of the First Amendment), and should be stopped.
The potential difficulty is this: if you did indeed commit an illegal act, then you won’t be protected by the concept of the right to free speech. So if the law is being applied correctly (whatever law is being applied), you don’t get to say, “But Your Honor, I was breaking the law to communicate something, so I’m protected!” If the law is not being applied correctly, then the citation will be dismissed, without need to reference the issue of free speech (though you certainly might convince a judge not to apply a given law in the specific way the prosecution is asking if you indicate it’s being applied that way to chill free speech). Either way, you are not going to impact the efforts of the police force using that law that way. To accomplish that, you will have to file some sort of systemic lawsuit alleging violation of due process by the activities of the department in question, and that’s a much more substantial undertaking.
And of course, either way your ticket works out, you are spending your time in court. So there is a price you pay for exercising your right to speak freely.
Is there a law that violates? I suspect that this involves disclosing confidential information, as opposed to letting someone know something “in plain sight.” I would think that legally restricting the sharing of confidential board of health info (which is presumably only appropriately available to BOH workers) is a reasonable limitation of free speech rights. Not so much if we assign this same requirement to “civilians” with regard to “in plain sight” information. That would cross a line for me.
But to answer your question (not that it was posed to me), I am about as okay with in either situation, which is to say, it would make me uneasy. Revenue-producing speed traps aside, I generally think it’s best to let the cops (and the health inspectors) do their job without additional challenges. That said, depending upon the answer to my first question, neither warning may actually break the law.
DSYoungEsq, theoretically speaking (since an “appeal” is probably impractical), would the fact that this law is largely ignored when common sense dictates (e.g., to advise a motorist his headlights are off) be a factor in determining if free speech rights are being violated? IOW, if only the objective of flashing the lights makes it wrong, not the act per se, could an argument that this is unconstitutional be realistic? If it’s a safety risk, it’s ALWAYS a safety risk…not just when it pisses off a state trooper.
Also, in any instance where I’ve done this (not for years), it was during the day, and I flashed headlights on and off, no high beams. So I assume no violation!
Not true. Look at the link I posted. Many courts are looking at it as free speech.
But surely there should be a rational basis review of the law to determine if there is any legitimate purpose for it OTHER than violating free speech. I don’t think that it could be argued with a straight face that a split second on/off of your lights constitutes any type of danger to the highways that is proportional to restricting your right to communicate with other motorists. If they would argue that, wouldn’t they have to concede that every police stop at night with flashing red and blue lights constitutes a similar danger?
I’ve been greatly annoyed by the strobe lights used on modern police cars. If one rotating light is good then 20 strobe lights MUST be better. I have to shield my eyes from them as I pass to avoid having my night vision wiped out. the only advancement made in this area has been the directional light bars on cruisers. They can shut off the front facing lights when they pull people over so only the motorists behind them are [del]blinded[/del] alerted.
That is patently false. I propose an experiment. Go out to the nearest interstate and set your cruise control to the exact posted speed limit. Observe in your mirror how many people remain behind you for the whole trip.
Speed traps slow people down for as long as it takes to determine the police no longer have the potential to write tickets. Flashing your lights accomplishes exactly the same thing without making the government fat on fees derived from arbitrary enforcement of laws.
The Health Inspector doesn’t peek through windows to catch violations or sneak around. They walk right in the front door and only shut you down for blatant, egregious violations.
With regard to warnings, I am OK with it in the sense that my unit preparing for an Operational Readiness Inspection or your office preparing for an audit of your records is perfectly legitimate. Nobody ever passes an inspection with a score of 100% without preparation, and staying to that standard is a virtual impossibility. I’m merely providing people that preparation.
Why the :rolleyes:? Seems a little snarky to me.
Police setting up speed traps for the purpose of raising revenue is almost a cliche. Almost every small town in Colorado and Western Kansas has an officer hiding at the edge of town where the speed limit drops suddenly from 55 to 25 mph to catch speeders. There have been stories (here on this board as a matter of fact) of small towns (in Texas IIRC) that had used speed traps to enrich themselves at the expense of tourists traveling through their districts. So in cases like these; where agents of the government are potentially mis-using their position to enrich themselves, their departments, or their towns with arbitraily constructed and enforced laws, the flashing of lights to warn other citizens is definitely (to my mind at least) a free-speech communication that was intended by the framers to be protected. As I understand it, the freedom of speech and press enumerated in the first amendment was intended to be a safe guard against government abuse and tyranny, however petty.
Precisely. If the point of speed traps is to enforce lawful behavior through paranoia, then each and every ticket issued is a testament of the concept’s utter failure. Since speeding tickets can become the main source of income for a small PD… yeah.
Vague, ominous presences don’t work, have never worked - we’re not wired that way. Prison, the death penalty and horrible torture don’t stop crime, Hell don’t stop sin. But one cop or one priest smiling at you and waving…
You want people to stop speeding for fear of getting a ticket, you put bright red fixed radar boxes every few miles. They don’t even need to really have a radar in them - only one in ten, or twenty boxes an actual radar. Get a rookie to do the rounds and shuffle them around at random every month or so. I guaran-fucking-tee nobody will ever speed again.
The cop has pulled over someone for supposedly a GOOD reason (though thats not to say blinding cop lights dont deserve a debate of their own).
What GOOD reason do you have for flashing your lights?
To warn someone so they dont get a ticket that they will deserve?
If you can’t/shouldn’t talk on a cell phone while driving, I dont see why you should have the right to send vague optical smoke signals for non-critical automotive communications.
I think a bunch of you guys are getting wrapped up in the legimate grip regarding true bullshit “speed traps” and letting that cloud your reasoning regarding legitimate police looking for deserving to be punished speeders.
One time, someone coming the other way flashed me. I was pretty surprised, I wasn’t speeding, but I slowed down in surprise. Then I rounded a bend and saw a downed tree covering the road, at any speed, I’d have struck it.
Just this weekend, I was driving along on a deserted main road late at night. I got flashed from the other way. I wasn’t speeding. I rounded the bend and saw red-blue lights. Five cop cars were surrounding another car, belligerent guy, drug bust or some such, anyway, there was only a narrow space to pass.
One time driving on a dark road, I saw deer trying to cross. When I passed another car, I flashed him. He flashed back. I hope he slowed down, just a bit, to avoid a possible messy, expensive impact.
Once someone sped towards me. I flashed him. I saw him slow down. There was no cop, I just made him slow down, maliciously, I guess you could say.
I would bring these instances up in traffic court if I was cited for flashing another motorist. Why can’t I warn them of problems on the road? I was warning them of tumbling rocks, or a dead bear, or something. How does the police really know I’m defeating their speed trap?
Not that I mind bashing Texas, but I should point out that the police also used to target tourists when I lived in northern New Hampshire a while back. It’s even easier to catch people on little winding roads that shift from scenic forest to scenically forested township with barely a marker to be seen. Of course, the speed limit shifted too. And there was always a cop behind the next corner. Who you couldn’t see, by the way, because of the scenic forest. It was basically a tourist tax, that made up for the lack of other tax revenue in the state.
I got nabbed within a week of moving there. But then I changed my plates to NH ones. No more tickets after that!
A speeder requires a simple modification of behavior to become a non-speeder–he needs only slow down to below the posted speed limit. If I can modify his behavior and save him from the fundraising, I’m all for it. If he chooses to ignore the warning he’s on his own.
Answer me this: why, if the point of traffic enforcement is merely to slow people down for safety reasons, do the police get upset when you are doing everybody a public service by slowing people down?
I think you know the answer. There is no way to separate the money-grabbing aspect from the (alleged) public safety aspect. They are one and the same, with one used to justify the other so it doesn’t look like a money grab.
Are you arguing what is morally/legally right for you to do ?
Or are are you arguing what is or isnt provable in court?
There is a big difference there.
It is not about safety. It is about revenue. Cops are cranking out tickets to help financing during the financial down time. They will not settle down to old levels if tax revenues increase. They get used to having more money.
BS
You know what happens to repeat speeders that arent warned by flashers?
They get tickets. Then they get MORE tickets. Then, eventually, they get their insurance rates go through the roof and/or they loose their liscenses.
And rightfully so IMO.
You blinkers are just helping them evade the law for longer. You are enabling irresponsibility.
Baring stuff like going from 55 to 35 around a sharp bend kinda “speed traps”, if you are speeding, you IMO fracking deserve a speeding ticket. Fight to change the law or quit speeding.
The fact that folks make money off your illegal behaviour is besides the point. Unless you think the whole legal system is a farce.
I think that that aspect of the legal system is an absolute farce, in every way.
Well. A free speech communication doesn’t need to have an officially approved “GOOD” communication. It might be very bad. Very evil, in fact. I might tell someone to hate their mothers, or to wish a loss to WVU in tomorrow’s Gator Bowl (wink) Those things would be evil. But that communication would still be protected. The state shouldn’t make a value judgment on the nature of your speech.