Subject kinda says it all.
Example:
You are driving 55 mph (current speed limit) and see a speed limit sign that says 35 mph.
Legally, do you have to be going 35 mph at that sign or do you have some distance after the sign to slow to 35 mph?
Assume a police officer is there measuring your speed. Can the officer bust you at the sign or do they need to give you some leeway to slow down before pulling you over for speeding?
In the UK, Yes.
The speed limit begins exactly at the sign.
A lot of areas have “reduced speed ahead” signage to warn of a lower limit but not always. In those zone the limit still begins at the actual speed limit sign not the reduced speed ahead sign.
Same in the US.
I was wondering this same thing. There’s a place by me where I enter the highway between two speed limit signs—so as soon as you enter, you can see the 45 MPH sign, maybe 50 yards ahead of you. But you’d have no way of knowing that you’re at the tail of end of a 35 MPH zone, because that sign is behind you when you enter the road. So how could I reasonably be expected to know that I was in the 35 MPH zone if I entered the road at that point?
If one’s eyesight is up to par, there is sufficient time to slow down in the time interval between seeing the sign and reaching the sign. I would hope that an officer on duty, seeing that a car is in the process of slowing down, would allow a little leeway, but he doesn’t have to do so.
Some time back I read about some cop in a small town in Illinois that would ticket people for going one MPH over the posted limit. ONE MILE PER HOUR.
Presumably everyone who drives has eyesight that is up to par (we all take an eye exam when getting our license).
The issue is when you notice it.
Certainly we can say that the driver is responsible for noticing any signage in sufficient time to abide by what it tells them.
But, what if a speed trap town decides to put their reduced speed sign just around a corner? By the time you see it you are there and officer Friendly is sitting next to it and tickets you? I suppose you can argue it before a judge but do you expect that to work in that jurisdiction?
Are there laws about visibility of speed limit signs?
I have no clue.
With 50 states…yes…no…maybe?
The little town of Ludowici GA became internationally famous for its speed trap. Sign as you’re approaching town repeated the highway speed limit of 50 or 60 or whatever it was. A few yard beyond it, with no prior warning, a sign said 25 mph, and a police officer lurked there and would ticket out of town (and especially out of state) drivers.
Between us and where I go grocery shopping, the speed goes from 50 to 40 to 30 in a relatively short span. But there are signs warning of reduced speed, and they’re all clearly visible - no overgrown bushes or anything in the way. It’s not a speed trap - it’s leading up to a narrow, curving, hilly bit of road between a church and the graveyard across the street - no shoulder, no practical way to widen the road.
And yet people still zip thru there without slowing, and the sheriff and state troopers regularly sit, waiting for the speeders. I have no sympathy for them - it’s a dangerous spot and there’s plenty of warning. And, to answer the question, I’m at or really close to the posted speed by the time I reach the sign. I believe that’s the law in Maryland.
There are national and international road safety standards, which factor in approach visibility and legibility at distance among other things. Given that there will be infinite different settings where they have to be applied, sometimes the standard can’t be met but adding to safety should be the primary criterion for the placement.
Not sure how national safety standards apply in the US context of individual towns who make up their own regulations on this sort of stuff.
Two nearby towns for some time held the distinction of being AAA’s worst speed traps in the nation. Since both towns are on a major state road connecting Jacksonville to the rest of the state, they get lots of through-traffic and lots of people eager to get where they’re going.
One component of the Waldo speed trap, coming in from the south, was a series of signs quickly reducing the speed limit on a curving road. If you didn’t slow down quickly enough, you’d get pulled over. Traffic tickets comprised something like 50% of the city’s annual budget, and eventually their police force dissolved after it came to light that the chief had been enforcing a strict quota system (to nobody’s surprise).
The town is no longer a speed trap, but you can tell who’s a long-time local by whether they still go through Waldo at a careful two or three mph under the speed limit.
Recently near where I live some 25 MPH paint markings were put down on the travel lanes where the speed drops from 35 to 25 coming into neighborhood business districts. They made sure that the very tip top of the lettering is aligned with the normal signpost, to ensure that all markings are at or before the line of demarcation.
There’s a place in the UK that (IMO) used to have quite a misleading set of speed signs making it a speed trap - the eastern approach to the village of Chideock in Dorset is a long, winding downhill road; it used to be the case that you would encounter a large 40mph enforcement sign with a speed camera symbol under it, then a little further, another identical large 40mph sign with the speed camera warning symbol, then after quite a short distance, a 30mph sign, smaller in size, and immediately behind this sign was the speed camera, enforcing a 30mph limit.
There was nothing technically wrong with any of these signs, but their arrangement was such that they tended to induce attention fatigue and drivers would unconsciously assume the third sign wasn’t anything important and they would get fined for passing the 30mph sign at a higher speed.
I just checked on Google Streetview and the signs are not like that any more.
A half way competent attorney could beat this no problem. The speedometers in virtually any vehicle on the road is not calibrated and there is no requirement for them to be calibrated. My state and many others have laws that allow a 5 MPH grace on speeding tickets for this very reason. I would bet Illinois has something like that in their statutes.
Yes. In CA the law is
The sections all have something like
I would be surprised if most states didn’t have something similar.
Fun tangent: I became aware of the “appropriate signage” law due to a story about a traffic sign installer who was ticketed for parking too long on a city street in Santa Barbara while he was erecting the signs specifying the amount of time you could park. The case went on far longer than it should have, but was ultimately dismissed when he successfully argued that he couldn’t be ticketed for parking there as there was insufficient signage of the parking limit at the time he parked there, and he knew because he had erected the sign after parking.
Some years ago, there were recurring stories out of San Francisco that traffic engineers would install new parking meters on some street, then the meter maids would come on the same day and ticket all the cars that were parked there.
Years ago I was booked under these circumstances. I was visiting family where I had lived years before. I turned onto a main road and, some short distance down the road, went by a mobile speed camera. A sign notified me that I had been clocked doing, what I remembered to be, the speed limit. So I thought nothing of it. Shortly after I received a fine. The speed limit had been reduced because all the lanes had been narrowed to create a bicycle lane. This was so poorly advertised that no members of my family knew.
I confirmed that there was no sign between where I entered the road and where I was booked. I wrote to the issuing authority explaining the circumstances and they apologetically withdrew the fine.
In Philadelphia they do courtesy tows for cars in an area that needs to be worked on. Thing is, they often drop the car somewhere it gets ticketed or even towed for illegal parking.