[QUOTE=What Exit?]
I have heard and seen reference to the fact that Montana had a policy in place where speeding tickets were $5. This was done despite losing federal highway dollars.
I am unsure if this is purely an Urban Legend, partially true, or factually based but now dated.
Does anyone know the complete story?
I am interesting in:
When the $5 tickers were in place?
How fast was too fast?
Why did they choose to do this?
Why did they stop?
Is there more to the story?
Please, please, give this a chance to be answered and don’t just wag and joke.
Jim
[/QUOTE]
Native Montanan here.
As samclem’s linked NY Times story reflects, Montana had no fixed speed limit prior to 1974. The Feds imposed a 55 mph speed limit in 1974 (during the last “energy crisis”) and told all states to adopt it. Since the Feds lacked (and still lack) the direct authority to tell states what their speed limit must be on any non-federal highways, they (the Feds) tied federal transportation dollars to adoption of the 55 mph speed limit and threatened to withhold those dollars froms states not toeing the line. Since Montana, like every other state, gets a huge chunk of their road maintenance money from federal transportation funds, they imposed the 55 mph speed limit.
The speed limit was treated with complete derision for a couple of reasons. First, expecting people to drive 55 on most of the state highways and interstates in Montana is a joke. These are mostly wide open, light traffic roads, and distances between towns is relatively far as compared to smaller states. NOBODY drives 55. Second, and more to the point, Montana has a bit of the “Live Free Or Die” spirit (with apologies for stealing the motto of New Hampshire) and there was a lot of resentment that the Feds would strong-arm the state into passing a law that was (a) unnecessary and (b) unwanted.
So the legislature made the speed limit 55 (raised to 65 when allowed some years later) but then also imposed a penalty of $5 for violating it. Since the Feds’ justification for passing the 55 mph law was not safety but fuel conservation, the Montana legislature made the penalty for exceeding the speed limit a fine for wasting a natural resource, not a moving violation, with the result that it had no effect on your insurance. (Montana did not use a “points” system for driving violations until the 1990s anyway.)
Yes, you could pay the ticket on the spot. No, the officer did not have to follow you to an ATM and I’ve never heard of one who would. You could pay the ticket by cash or check and if you couldn’t pay it, you were issued a ticket just like any other ticket and you could mail your five dollars in. If you didn’t eventually pay it, you could be called to court in theory, but the truth is no one ever bothered to prosecute those tickets anyway. (But most everybody paid it; it was five freakin’ bucks.)
In 1995, the federal government abolished the federal speed limit. Montana then decided that rather than enacting another numeric speed limit for the State, they would simply invoke the “basic rule” for driving, which requires that all vehicles be operated in a “reasonable and prudent” manner. (And yes, it was “reasonable and prudent,” not “reasonable and proper”.) This was an attempt to hark back to the pre-1974 days, when rural ol’ Montana had no speed limit. But what was marginally acceptable in 1974 was not realistic in 1995. Montana got a largely undeserved repuation as the “Montanabahn” where Hey! You can drive as fast as you want! The Montana Highway Patrol disliked the law due to a steep increase in speeding and in people being mouthy when pulled over (“You can’t ticket me!”) and the federal government disliked it both as a precedent and over safety concerns and began rumbling again about limiting the state’s access to federal transportation dollars. More importantly in the end, drivers disliked it because it didn’t give you any clear notice of when you were breaking the law. (“Can I drive 70? 75? 80?”)
In 1998, the Montana Supreme Court struck down the “basic rule” as unconstitutional as a legal basis for fining a driver for speeding. The case was brought by a plaintiff named Rudy Stanko, who was a well-known “Freeman” white-supremicist nut-job who was a perennial recreational litigant who finally hit a winner challenging the speed law. The Court held that “reasonable and prudent” was too vague to give a driver notice of what action broke the law, and therefore violated the due process clause of the Montana Constitution.
Montana then had NO speed limit until May of 1999, when the legislature set the speed limit back to 65. This time from late '98 to mid '99 was the only post-1974 period when Montana really didn’t have any sort of speed limit, which wasn’t that big of a deal because the Patrol just stopped ticketing for basic rule and stepped up ticketing for careless or reckless driving.
The speed limit was later bumped up to the current 75 on interstates, 65 on secondary roads. And that’s the whole saga.
. We were out there in July of '96. I went through a radar trap about 50 miles east of Billings (the only Highway Patrol unit we saw in the entire state). I know for a fact he was runing radar, but I don’t know why. My wife leaned over and took a picture of my speedometer: 96mph! I still have that picture in my scrapbook.
