So, how much can we raise the speed limit before we get one additional accident as a result?
I drive just fine, thanks for asking.
I notice that tho’ you quoted my entie post, you failed to address anything. Are you conceeding the points?
Elendil’s Heir, so, how would you handle some situation where there was a conspiracy of four people to drive side by side down a major highway, average speed 75 MPH, during rush hour, at the speed limit of 55 MPH?
If a cop saw them, and arrested them and their bridge-crew as well, what would they be charged with? Assuming there’s four miles between exits, we could expect… a really quite nasty backup, and at least one fender-bender resulting.
They’d probably be charged with impeding the flow of traffic, but it might be a hard case for the prosecution to prove. (If they were boastful jerks, of course, it would be easier). In such a hypothetical, as I suggested above, and if the evidence was sufficient, I could see mebbe convicting anyone not in the curb lane. They’d have made their point, though: on most highways in most cities, many people routinely violate the speed limit to some extent.
That’s not possible. Most radar/laser/vascar units state in their operators manual that they are accurate +/- 4 miles per hour (there are a few that say 2 miles per hour). If an officer writes a ticket for 3 over the limit and the radar unit manual indicates the unit is accurate +/- 4 miles, it would be easy to beat that ticket in court.
I am not a lawyer and that wasn’t legal advice.
I’ve seen crackdowns backfire. On average the guy who get’s a ticket for 15 over may go to his initial court hearing but no further. He’ll plead guilty or no contest and try to get the fine/points reduced.
The same guy get’s cited for 5 over he thinks it’s chicken shit and demands a trial. Get enough people with that sort of crackdown and the court get’s clogged up. Especially if no one accepts a reduced fine/points because only 5 over is crap. If everyone who got any sort of ticket demanded a trial the system would collapse. Especially in areas with high populations.
Court get’s jammed up, D.A. get’s pissed, worse yet, judge gets really pissed and dismisses huge amounts of tickets out of spite to the police department clogging up his court docket.
I have seen that happen! It’s one reason why these crackdowns are usually temporary.
There weren’t any.
OK, I admit I didn’t know that. Is that a guaranteed accuracy, or 3-sigma, or what? How accurate are optical sensors?
Basically all it says is along the lines of “When used as instructed this device is accurate within +/- 4 miles per hour.” It depends on the unit and manufacturer as to what each operators manual says.
I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice:
But every attorney I’ve encountered that fought speeding tickets would subpoena the manual during discovery and try to get the officer to testify to something that was contrary to the manual of the unit that was used. Writing a ticket for 3 over when the manual says it’s accurate within 4mph would be easy to get dismissed.
Not only that, if I wrote everyone up doing only .5 over, I’d do nothing else on the job. Not only is that absurdly strict (so is only 5 over), it would result in unintended consequences (see my previous post). Which is one reason why “crackdowns” are usually temporary.
You’re confusing my post w/your OP.
You took an obvious hoax email and made it the cornerstone of your OP. You’ve been all over the map about what your point is, from ‘cops shouldn’t give your wife a 75$ ticket for not wearing her seatbelt’ to ‘there’s no safety risk to driving 5 mph over the posted speed limit’.
I’ve attempted to get you to support something, anything with data, facts, well, anything other than the disjointed rumblings of your posts, w/o success. Your ‘counterpoints’ are to ask me if I ever go over the speed limit or how do I even ever drive, attempting to personalize the issue. You seem genuinely upset over this drivel, sputtering anectdotal stories about your friends getting ticketed for 5 over and the like.
There would be a semi interesting debate here if some one (you’ve not succeeded, so I suspect that you’re not able to) were to cogently put something together.
Fact is speed limits are (generally) set for reasons having to do with society’s need to reasonably get from one point to another relatively safely. Fact is, policing is a 24 hour job. And speeding is actually against the law. Certainly no reasonable person would want to have all police sitting around in speed traps while banks are being robbed and parking meters expire willy nilly, but as far as I can see, no one is suggesting/proposing that. What does seem to happen from time to time, is that a municipality/governing unit may create an ‘enforcement zone’ or ‘enhanced enforcement’ of some of these safety regulations (speed, seat belt usage etc.) in order to compel more drivers to obey (or more closely obey) the laws.
There is room to debate ‘best utilization of the finite police resources’, but when you start from a position of asserting w/o support that there are no safety factors to driving 5 over the limit, the more interesting point is then lost in the flotsam of what friends tell you happened to them.
Let me be clear: your friends claim that they were personally written for 5 over the speed limit when all they were doing wrong was going 5 over the speed limit :
A) doesn’t mean that they’re telling you the truth,
B) even if they were, there is no data to support that that routinely ever happens (in fact a couple of posters have pointed out the real unlikeliness of that happening), and
C) doesn’t mean that there is no additional safety risk attached to driving 5 over. (I am willing to believe that there’s not a measurably large risk, but that’s not at all the same as ‘none’, and I’ve pointed out that it’s likely that while there’s data about damage and so on for excessive speeds, I doubt that they have data tracking ‘how much damage on average for speeds 5 over and less’ vs. ‘how much damage on average for speeds of 6 - 10 over’ etc.)
So, I’m perfectly happy to have you and your wife ticketed for failing to wear seat belts, I’m also going to drive happily in Michigan next month, w/o fear that the email hoax you started out with is true. I’m also going to be perfectly aware that I will, from time to time, run into enforcement zones that local authorities have set up to nab speeders and the like, and will behave accordingly.
OK. I agree that if the radar reading was 0.5 mph over the limit, then that doesn’t justify a “0.5 mph over” ticket.
On the other hand, if a radar reading was 5 mph over the limit, wouldn’t that justify a ticket for “1 mph over”? The reading proves that the car was doing 1~9 mph over the limit.
And that’s why “crackdowns” usually don’t have much effect. They need to be continued until people actually realize they’re supposed to obey the speed limit, at which point the number of tickets will decline.
Having gotten a few speeding tickets in my life, one common thing that officers do around here is tell you how fast you were going, then write you a ticket for the next bracket down from that. For example, it might be $75 if caught going 0-10 over the speed limit, and $150 for going 10-20 over the speed limit. The officer might say, “you were clocked at 14 km/h over the speed limit, but I’m going to be a nice guy and only write you up for 9 over.”
I suspect that’s done precisely to stop a certain number of people from going to court to have the ticket moved down a category because of radar error. If I was clocked at 14 over, and the gun is accurate to ± 5 km/h, then it’s possible I was only going 9 over, and I might go to court to get the infraction reduced. So by giving me the reduced infraction right on the spot, the cop probably saves a lot of wear and tear on the legal system and his time.
Are you OK. Take it easy.
I have not been given a seat belt ticket. I have put my belt on every time I have gotten into the car since I got my first car with one. I have not been pulled over for any reason for the last 35 years. So you are not getting anecdotes about me,
You are grasping . Xways are made to go much faster than we allow. To crab that going 5 over on an empty road is dangerous is a poinless argument. Do you want to factor in the greater pressure inside a tire at 70 instead of 65., Since the number is less than zero you claim it is more dangerous. If thats your style keep it.
why quote me if you won’t answer me? I don’t care if you get tickets, don’t get tickets.
what I do care about is your continued failure to support (prove_) your claim that there is “No” risk to going 5 over. DId you even read what you quoted? criminey. I don’t claim that there’s a BIG risk. just that it ain’t zero
but more than that, do you have any evidence that cops routinely cite drivers for 5 over when they’re only doing 5 over? so far, all you’ve got is your friends claim.
So, IF you can prove there is zero risk added for the 5 over, AND that cops are, in fact, routinely citing for 5 over, THEN you might have something.
as it is, you got nada.
All we’ve said is that it’s more dangerous than driving below the speed limit. And I don’t see how you can deny that. An apparently “empty” road can have all kinds of hazards. Stopping distance increases as your speed increases. There is a chance you’ll come across a hazard that yuou can avoid if you were driving at the speed limit, but not 5 above.
And of course it’d be even safer if the freeway speed limit were lowered to 35 mph. It’s just a question of where to compromise: how fast we want to travel vs. how many deaths and inuries we want to accept.
Sorry, but you’re wrong. If writing at one mile over was always done there would be a public backlash. Americans are not wired to accept such draconian enforcement like that. And it wouldn’t go away. People would bitch at elected officials constantly, elected officials would get voted out, radar detector sales would sky rocket, people would just say fuck you and drive without a license. And I’m talking otherwise law abiding.
Americans are not wired to accept such draconian enforcement like that.
You are a study in illogic. When you want me to state it is less than zero I did. I added of course ,if these these near zeros could and should be dismissed. It is more dangerous to drive at 26 than 25. Does that prove something to you. Hurdling down the street at a breakneck 27 would have you whimpering in the back seat.
I disagree - Americans are very used to “draconian” adherence to the law in many areas. Strict enforcement of legal age for alcohol purchases for example - to the point where 70-year olds get carded. Parking regulations are strictly enforced too, you let the meter expire for one minute and you can get a ticket. Enforcement of child pornography laws is so strict (or perceived to be so) that people get nervous if they accidentally click on a web link and end up displaying simulated child porn (we’ve had a thread about that, I recall). We put up with the ban on sharp objects and liquid containers on airliners.
The only reason the speed limit is routinely broken is because it’s not enforced.
In addition to not knowing me at all, it’s obvious you also don’t know your own position, how to argue, and perhaps your native language. Please go ahead and continue to believe every email you get is real. You simply aren’t worth the effort.
Apples and oranges. Comparing enforcing child porn to one mile oiver the speed limit is inane.
Checking id cards by a private business is not going to have people react the same as a government agency giving someone a large fine, points, and increased insurance costs for going 1 freaking mile over the limit. The reason it’s not enforced that way on a routine basis are many fold. I already spoke of one (clogged court rooms).
Another reason it’s not enforced that way is it would be a goofy waste of police manhours to permanately enforce a minor violation in a draconian way. Judges (at least around here) wouldn’t convict for such a small amount over, and every cop I know wouldn’t want to spend their day writing a bunch of piddly tickets like that.
This includes me.
Unless I pull you over, scr4. 1 mile over it is! I wouldn’t want to. But seeing you so insist…! 
Why? Either can be an unintentional, accidental violation.
Businesses get penalized for selling alcohol to someone who is 19 years, 11 months and 30 days old, right? That’s not draconian?
Is there any reason why a vast majority of such cases can’t be simply dismissed?
Anyway I see very strict and literal enforcement of parking regulations. I’ve personally gotten one for leaving the car till 6:30am where it’s only legal till 6am (as if there’s any business in the area that opens before 10…) Why doesn’t that clog up the court rooms?
Yes, please do, if you ever catch me doing even 1 mph over the limit. I promise I’ll pay up without a fight.