Reporting online purchases on your taxes. Ripping/downloading music. Traffic laws regarding speeding.
I personally don’t jaywalk, but that is because it is dangerous more than the legal punishment. I see tons of people trying to cross 5 lanes of traffic on the highway and it doesn’t seem like a good idea.
With speeding I don’t really see it as “scoffing” at the law: as has been mentioned almost everybody will go only about 5mph over, but more importantly, everybody wants all the other people to abide by the law. I think wanting everybody else to toe the line precludes scoffing.
For the most scoffed at you need a law that everyone agrees is a silly, useless law. A law everyone here scoffs at is the law that you could get fined if you leave rubbish next to the shared container bins in our street. I mean, the rubbish is there because you can’t fit it in the bin anymore. I get that it looks messy, but what are you supposed to do?! And anyway, how would they ever know it’s mine?
From the way most people in modern western capitalist societies live their lives I 'd say the laws of probability.
Jaywalking (although it isn’t officially called that, AFAIK) is sort of well-defined in CA. I don’t know the exact wording, but it’s crossing a street in mid-block, where the ends of that block are not controlled by traffic control signals. (By my reading, that’s ambiguous in the case where a block has a traffic light at one end but not the other.)
Also, by explicit law, a crosswalk always exists wherever two streets meet at right angles (or nearly right angles), whether that crosswalk is marked or not. So at any normal corner, even if there isn’t a crosswalk, there’s a crosswalk.
ETA: Add my nomination for traffic laws commonly scoffed: Stop signs. Rolling through a stop sign is even commonly called a “California stop”.
Another much ignored and irregularly enforced law: Prohibition against prostitution.
I think I may be the only person in my neighborhood who actually puts a lid on his trashcan. I’m not sure if this is scoffing or merely ignorance of the law.
I see people jaywalk in Seattle all the time.
Incidentally, a friend of mine got a ticket (I think it was about $100) for it once on a side street when we had a lot of snow and people weren’t driving or anything. That was some bullshit.
“Kid, we found your name on an envelope at the bottom of a half a ton of
garbage, and just wanted to know if you had any information about it.”
And I said, “Yes, sir, Officer Obie, I cannot tell a lie, I put that envelope
under that garbage.”[indent]-- Arlo Guthrie, Alice’s Restaurant[/indent]
Around here, it would be running red lights.
Coming from California, Charlotte drivers scare the crap out of me. This afternoon, I watched six or eight people run a red light at two left turn lanes.
Aren’t most blue laws left on the books pretty much alcohol sales laws? I would venture to guess that those are NOT scoffed at. You pay a ton of money to get your alcohol license, and all the rules for your particular license are very well spelled out, you’re not going to go breaking them because someone MUST buy a bottle of Jack on a Sunday.
Yeah, as far as I’ve seen, those things are followed closely.
Then you always hear about places that let you buy liquor with food stamps or something, and I’m like…well…can I get a directory of these establishments?
In the UK I think the following laws are the one’s most likely to be ignored:
Speed limits
Illegal drug use
Using a cell phone when driving
The last government we had introduced a completely futile, unenforceable and vindictive law against foxhunting with dogs. It’s so full of loopholes that the entire foxhunting community ignores it with impunity.
I don’t want to derail the thread but that’s the sort of law that absolutely should be ignored.
Speed limits (it’s about time they raise those, they’re so ridiculously low) and illegal downloading of music. Now the second one especially. I think a few years ago, statistics showed that 95% of all music downloads were illegal.
Smoking where it’s illegal. Which in New York State is just about everywhere.
It’s hilarious to think of masses of people openly defying this law just because no one is about to tell them whether or not they can have sex in a moving ambulance. And the cop on the street turning a blind eye because he doesn’t need that kind of aggravation every day.
Gravity.