

We Are All Criminals – or – Why I Hate Traffic Cops - enmaku
http://enmaku.wordpress.com/2011/11/22/we-are-all-criminals-or-why-i-hate-traffic-cops/

======
ck2
You are falling for the illusion. Because driving is a privilege, not a right,
speeding tickets are a control on a population.

Speeding pullovers allow them to run all sorts of background checks on you,
possibly search your possessions, copy your cellphone contents, etc. It's a
112k person-a-day sampling of the population.

That said, I haven't gotten a speeding ticket in well over a decade and rarely
drive more than 5mph over the posted limit which is probably why. Last ticket
I got was actually under 5mph in a speed-trap town (which I now avoid).

What I fear is the switch to speed cameras from speed police. Because you have
little to no right to contest a speed camera ticket or examine the possibly
faulty code that some unknown programmer put into it.

~~~
darklajid
I'm not trying to troll, I'm genuinely curious: 'Search your possession' and
'Copy your cellphone contents' if you were pulled over for going to fast with
a car are hyperbole and doomsday scenarios, right?

This isn't actually reality?

~~~
ck2
All they have to do is say they smell drugs or alcohol. Then they can search
your car, bring in a drug dog and give it a fake trigger.

I don't even drink, forget drugs, and I've actually been stopped and searched
while riding my _bicycle_ down my street several years ago at night. Granted
it's a bad area but still.

Right now around the world they are showing footage of cops using heavy duty
military grade weapons meant for riots - against peaceful protesters - and you
are questioning police overreacting and overreaching without an ounce of fear
for their jobs?

~~~
darklajid
Whoa. Nevermind the stupid drink/drug thing [1], but being pulled over on a
bike and searched would be the day I'd give up, I guess. At least in DE this
is, in my experience and my social circles, totally unheard of and
unbelievable.

1: There are tests for alcohol/drugs. For drugs they _might_ search your car
if there's a reasonable doubt, but so far I only know about these controls
near borders, especially to NL: It's just easy/legal to get weed there and the
customs police (?) isn't stupid and watching for ~interesting~ cars crossing
over. I've never heard of searches related to alcohol. If there's any
indication that you had alcohol you might have to do the breath test. If you
fail that or don't want to do that, then it's off to the police station for a
blood test. No need to search you or your car, and damn certainly not your
mobile?

~~~
sneak
As someone who left all of his friends and family and connections behind in
the USA when it became a police state and moved to Germany, I can tell you
with certainty that it really is that bad there.

~~~
RyanHolliday
I'd like to point out the hypocrisy of holding Germany up as a bright and
shining alternative[1]. Regardless of what you think about the state of
government in the US, nothing you say about the Holocaust here will you get
imprisoned.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_against_Holocaust_denial#G...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_against_Holocaust_denial#Germany)

~~~
darklajid
My pet peeve. Considering "Freedom of speech" the most valuable freedom of
all, because a particular piece of paper created a culture/country that is
based on that idea.

Thing is - people here tend to disagree. Yes, you cannot say whatever you
want. No, you're not easily allowed to have a gun at home. But look - that's a
freedom that is debatable in itself and even if we'd discuss it for hours over
a couple of beers: We'd probably end up having to agree to disagree on the
merits of both approaches. Or philosophies. Or ideologies.

Look, I don't particularly like Germany. I think patriotism is as good an idea
as being a fanatic football follower, regardless of your home country. Someone
put it better than me here: [1]. There's a lot wrong in DE as well, but if
someone from the US calls the US a police state and you're invoking that
difference in belief and laws as kind of an example how bad it is over in DE,
then I think you're lacking perspective.

1: <http://www.futilitycloset.com/2011/09/22/one-world/>

~~~
sneak
You're not allowed to have a gun at home in NYC, either. It's the worst of
both worlds.

------
darklajid
I really like the 'do we need the speed limit' part.

Not surprisingly, maybe, since I come from a country where that approach works
(although there seems to be a tendency to reduce the 'free' parts and a number
of factions don't like the concept in the first place, for reasons that are
either ecological - use more public transportation - or FUD - going fast kills
faster/more).

On the other hand I cannot imagine reintroducing that concept of 'no limit'
easily. I think it's easy to go down that street into one direction (limit the
speed) but much harder to go back (go as fast as you feel safe to do). People
that are used to drive w/o limit here DO have speed limits to respect (on
anything that's not the Autobahn, and on more and more parts _on_ the Autobahn
too). People that always had a maximum speed limit of X are not used to
someone overtaking them with a relative speed difference of another times X
again.

This is mostly a gut feeling and personal, non-scientific observation, but
when I went fast on the Autobahn I tended to scan the lane to the right for
cars with foreign license plates. These had an immensely increased probability
to switch lanes at 120-130 km/h when I was approaching on an otherwise
safe/clear/free lane with 220-230 km/h. I write that off to experience alone:
If most of the traffic flows at the same speed, maneuvers like this might be
annoying but okay. Understanding the fact that, while you're going at the
normal/maximum allowed speed at home, there might be legal scenarios where
someone passes you with twice your current speed is one thing. Overcoming the
~subconscious~ patterns in ones driving is probably harder.

Short version: I'd be afraid to drive fast in a place where that is uncommon
or new.

~~~
dexen
_> On the other hand I cannot imagine reintroducing that concept of 'no limit'
easily._

Advisory signs suggesting speed for /typical/ car. Adjusted once in a while by
local citizens as they know the local road conditions best. The driver can now
make well-informed decisions. If you have super-duper tyres and suspension you
mentally add 32% to suggested speed. If you are the next Ayrton Senna, you add
64%.

You can re-define legal sense of current speed limit signs overnight, with one
congressional act.

I believe drivers would trust citizen-maintained signs much more & follow the
advice, to the boot.

~~~
darklajid
While I'd like that approach in theory, I see two issues with this:

1) It doesn't answer my 'going from some limit to no (declared) limit' thought
experiment. I still think that this is ~hard~.

2) Who are the local citizens to change the signs? Who's responsible for signs
on highways/streets through parts of the country w/o a lot of people?

On a sidenote: Advisory speed limits are exactly what DE is doing: If there's
no sign indicating something otherwise, the Autobahn has an advised maximum
speed limit of 130km/h. If you go faster, you might lose parts of your
insurance protection (depending on the results in case of an accident). It's
legal, but in that case you're just ignoring the friendly suggestion to stay
at 130.

------
arnoooooo
All drivers are criminals because they underestimate the risks. Studies show
that risks are systematically underestimated in situations where people feel
in control. The car (large, heavy metal box) and safety equipments certainly
add to this feeling of safety.

Speed limits exist for a reason. A moving ton of metal is dangerous, and the
faster it moves, the more dangerous it gets. Kinetic energy is (mv^2)/2, so a
little difference in speed makes a huge difference in a collision. Drive 40
instead of 30 and you've nearly doubled the energy of impact in case of a
collision (x1.77).

I think most people actually acknowledge this, as very few people argue for
raising or removing the limits. Yet, most feel OK speeding, probably because
they each individually think they drive better than the others.

I'm not sure repression is the solution, but there's clearly a problem with
speed. And for that matter, I'm pretty sure that other traffic laws also
belong to the list of the most commonly broken, partly for the reasons above,
and more generally because people don't always understand why they exist.

~~~
weff
While people do suck at evaluating risk, so do the people who set up the speed
limits. In my town, it's 50 km/h everywhere. Everywhere.

Crazy tight winding path in residential area? 50.

Three or four lane-wide roads stretching for a few kilometers with nothing but
forest on both sides? 50.

I assume we can agree driving on the crazy winding path is more dangerous.
Guess where all the police traps are.

~~~
pflats
Look at it from an officer's perspective: They're going to watch the one where
people are more likely to go over the speed limit (i.e. the straightaway). The
winding road is self-policing; the majority of drivers will stay under the
limit out of self-preservation.

I'm not sure about your neck of the woods, but the police generally don't set
the speed limits, they merely enforce them. You're conflating the two ideas.

~~~
weff
Well, if the winding road is self-policing because of self-preservation, why
isn't the straightway? Sure, people will go 80km/h, even 90km/h, but why not,
it's basically highway conditions.

In some sense, I don't really care who sets the speeds limits and who enforces
them. The legislatve and bureaucratic tangle is so Gods damn dense from my
point of view, I wouldn't even know who to blame. I'm not stupid enough to
think the officer ticketing me in responsible for anything but what do I know,
maybe the chief of police can say something to the mayor, like "hey, people
going 80 on that highway-looking street isn't actually dangerous".

As always, it's easy to pass the "not my responsibility" or "it ain't
desperately broke, no need to fix it" for government decision-makers.

Also, speeding tickets are the good old new tax.

~~~
arnoooooo
The straightway is not self-policing because the dangers are not as obvious.
Maybe there are animals crossing, or some other thing that is not immediately
obvious to a driver.

While it is physically possible to go very fast in a straight line, which you
mostly can't do on a winding road, it does not mean that you should. If you
are within city limits, there are usally more pedestrians than elsewhere, and
a small difference in speed can mean a huge difference in safety.

~~~
weff
>The straightway is not self-policing because the dangers are not as obvious.
Maybe there are animals crossing, or some other thing that is not immediately
obvious to a driver.

I assure you that while I understand your point, people do go 80km/h in that
area even though it is heavily ticketed and even though they do, there have
not been any such accidents.

I'm not directing this at you but I have to say I'm getting irritated by the
'stop questioning, you wouldn't understand' argumentation. The reasons
decisions are made and the way conclusions are reached continue to be a non-
transparent process when there is no reason this should be. In the past, you
could bring about an argument about communicating this information but with
the possibility to post information on the website, there is no excuse.

I already highly question the competence and honesty of my municipality's
decision-makers, this kind of shit is not helping.

------
DanielStraight
First, speeding is not a crime. Not everyone violation of law is considered
crime, and not all violators are considered criminals.

Second, I think most American drivers are reckless. Common driving behavior is
not a good standard.

Third, ticketing for speeding may not be ideal, but the things that are really
dangerous are much harder to ticket. How do you enforce a law on safe
following distance? How do you publish the standard? How do people know if
they're following it or not? How do you prove they were violating it?

How do you enforce a law on distracted driving? It is much harder to catch
someone (provably) driving while texting than it is to catch them speeding.
How do you set the standard? How long is too long to look at your phone?

How do you enforce a law on emotionally unstable driving? Driving while
enraged can be as dangerous or more dangerous than driving drunk, but there's
no breath test for rage.

How do you enforce a law of passing without checking your mirrors and blind
spot? Or on cutting off other drivers?

The author doesn't like speeding tickets. Fine. What's his solution?

I have a solution, but most Americans don't like it. Require an expensive and
hard to obtain license for driving (akin to a pilot's license, since cars are
statistically more dangerous than planes anyway), and drastically increase
public transportation to accommodate the increase in non-drivers. An average
level of patience, skill and focus is simply insufficient to safely operate a
car. Those unwilling to be unusually patient, well-trained and focused
shouldn't be allowed on the roads.

~~~
generalk

      > Second, I think most American drivers are reckless.
    
      > I have a solution, but most Americans don't like it. 
    

I'm fairly certain that poor driving isn't limited to Americans. Why call out
them, specifically?

    
    
      > An average level of patience, skill and focus is simply   
      > insufficient to safely operate a car.
    

You have research to back this up? What's considered "average"? What's
considered "safe"?

    
    
      > Require an expensive and hard to obtain license for driving (akin to a 
      > pilot's license, since cars are statistically more dangerous than planes 
      > anyway), and drastically increase public transportation to accommodate the 
      > increase in non-drivers.
    

Making something more expensive makes it more exclusive, but only to people
who have money. Making it hard to obtain doesn't ensure that unsafe driver's
won't get one, just that they'll go through more trouble to get it.

If you remove drivers from the system, you also remove a source of revenue for
the city in violation fees -- speeding tickets, moving violations, parking
meters and tickets, etc. So your plan is to decrease revenue while drastically
increasing the amount and quality of public transportation? My city can't even
operate a municipal bus service properly, and that's at current revenue
levels.

~~~
roel_v
"I'm fairly certain that poor driving isn't limited to Americans. Why call out
them, specifically?"

Maybe the writer is American and is writing for an American audience, and was
just using 'Americans' as a synonym for 'the general population'.

"You have research to back this up? What's considered "average"? What's
considered "safe"?"

Well, the amount of traffic accidents is evidence enough, isn't it?

~~~
generalk
Maybe the writer is American, maybe he isn't, but it sounded to me as if he
was specifically calling out Americans. Maybe I'm wrong.

    
    
      > Well, the amount of traffic accidents is evidence enough, 
      > isn't it?
    

What amount? Evidence of what?

The original post I responded to claimed that in order to decrease the number
of traffic accidents, we need to license fewer people to drive, because the
average person can't operate a vehicle safely.

But licensing fewer people != licensing only people who will always drive a
vehicle 100% safely. The set of accidents includes accidents caused by factors
other than lack of training or lack of attention. Poor weather conditions,
drunk drivers, falling asleep at the wheel; these aren't things that licensing
fewer people to drive will solve, not to mention that simply refusing to issue
a license doesn't ensure that the person won't drive.

It's an overly simplistic solution presented in a superior tone that does not
solve the stated problem.

------
davekinkead
Wow - bad logic and selective evidence.

Firstly, just because lots of people do something, doesn't make it acceptable.
An act is wrong because of the harm it does, not the frequency of its
distribution amongst a population. By the author's logic, murder would be ok
just in case more of us did it. You may think speeding is fine but sadly for
the rest of us, your choice to speed imposes a harm on to others.

And regarding that harm - speed kills. Yes, there is a strong relation between
speed variance and fatalities so its be fair to argue that focusing on traffic
flow & speed differentials is important. But there is an even strong one
between average speeds and fatalities. Ignoring absolute speed is misleading -
especially in urban areas where the survivability of being hit at 20 vs 30 mph
is an order of magnitude different.

And finally, 'The speed limit assumes a level of stupidity that the average
person does not possess.' Again, wow. Im pretty the author doesn't go around
killing people because he realises 1) its morally wrong & 2) its rational for
us to all agree to not kill each other because my loss of freedom to kill is
more than offset by my not having to spend my every waking moment wondering
who's going to kill me. Yet, some people still murder others. We do need laws
to protect us from the harm of others, even if we ourselves would not have
engaged in that harmful behaviour anyway.

~~~
darklajid
Disclaimer 1: The other posts of me in this thread show that I'm in support of
going fast.

Disclaimer 2: English is not my native language and I very well might miss
something in your chain of thoughts.

With that out of the way, this is what I read in your last paragraph: You take
offense with (?) the idea that the average person shouldn't need (a number
of/this kind of/as much as) speed limits. You then jump back to the comparison
to murder and seem to say (my words) that: "Since he's not running around and
killing people he obviously understands that it's morally wrong and rational
for us to agree upon not doing that sort of thing. Some people still do that
nevertheless. We need laws to protect us from others"

Now I think the 'morally wrong' part doesn't translate to driving here. I'm
not sure how to parse the rest: I'd rather agree on driving safely than on
driving slower than X. Safe is hard to define for a complex thing like
driving. You already rely on the common sense of other people anyway (Do they
drink/do drugs and drive? Do they use their mobile/search cigarettes in the
back of the car while driving? Are their tires in a good shape or flat like
those of a formula 1 car? Do they reduce their speed according to the
situation, not just the signs - think fog, rain, snow? Are they able to judge
their own ability to drive in general - think granny w/ limited vision).

The speed is already variable (legally only in the downward direction right
now) and you're relying on other people to notice and understand that if
you're taking part in that game called traffic. The question whether it's not
okay to go faster than the speed on the sign allows you to _in the right
situation_ is a real one and doesn't necessarily lead to reckless driving and
mayhem on the roads.

Edit: Erm - I agree that the line of reasoning of the original article is ..
unfortunate. No questions about that.

~~~
davekinkead
This issue is really why we should have laws: the post argues that speeding is
ok because lots of people do it and it doesn't hurt many people. I say that is
completely wrong.

Speed kills - Road deaths in the US in 1 month are more than all US terror
related deaths in the last 20 years. And just because lots of people do
something doesn't make it right.

Do we need speed limits is a different question however - I can imagine a
world without speed limits (but severe punishment for any harm done to others
equivalent to violent crime, or even sharp knives sticking out of the steering
wheel - a sure way to encourage people to drive safely).

Disclaimer: I love driving on the autobahn (but germany still has one of the
worst road fatality rates in Europe)

~~~
andrewla
"One of the worst road fatality rates in Europe" -- that's not really
accurate; even a quick glance at
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-
re...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-
related_death_rate), assuming the accuracy of the numbers, indicates that
Germany is among the safest from this viewpoint.

Only Sweden, the UK, Iceland, the Netherlands, Malta, and San Marino are
better (and the last two probably aren't statistically significant). France,
Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Ireland, Norway, Finland, ... -- almost every
country in Europe is less safe than Germany.

~~~
davekinkead
Happy to stand corrected on that one. I had thought that autobahn fatalities
were worse than Euro average (noting that Germany but it seems that Germany
pays no penalty for unlimited motorway speeds.

------
padobson
I had a stats teacher who insisted in his first lecture that the goal of speed
limits shouldn't be to slow everyone down, but convince everyone to drive the
same speed. His position was that the average speed of everyone on the road
should be measured, and a speed limit should be chosen that approximates how
fast people naturally want to drive - thereby pulling more people into the
group with the posted number.

You can't run into someone if they're going the same speed as you.

The author rightly concludes that over-ticketing people is about money, first
and foremost.

Defense spending in the United States is $685.1 billion per year, or $2,218.98
for every person in the country. (This number is probably much higher because
of the creative accounting of the federal government, but it will work fine
for my purposes) You can throw in another $40 Billion for DHS if it meets your
fancy.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_S...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States)
<http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/budget-bib-fy2012.pdf>

In my state, Ohio, the State Police budget is $613M every two years, or $26.57
for each of the 11,536,504 people in the state.

<http://statepatrol.ohio.gov/units.stm#fiscal>
<http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/39000.html>

Finally, my local municipality offers a ballpark figure of $10M a year to
serve about 40k people, or about $250 per person.

Last year, my state ran an illegal (under our constitution) budget deficit of
$8 billion.

I paid just under $250 in taxes to my local municipality (I made just over
double what the average citizen here makes).

The fact is that those who protect us in our own neighborhoods don't have the
budget to do so - so they have to raise money by inconveniencing us.

If the tax system were upended and I was paying 30% of my income to my local
municipality and $250 bucks to the federal government, I bet we would see a
massive reduction in the speeding tax we pay every year.

The benefits it would have on education, research, entitlements and the amount
of corruption it would eliminate by decentralizing the moneypot would just be
a bonus.

~~~
babebridou
It's not that easy. I live in France, and the taxes you currently pay are far
inferior to ours in many cases. We still see the same phenomenon as you do
with speeding tickets.

Speeding tickets are a boon for any form of government, just like smoking
taxes or any other easily justified tax/ticket for punishing bad habits of the
masses. You can't make them disappear by finding another source of revenue,
because they represent an opportunity for easy cash that is also politically
correct.

------
arethuza
After 25+ years of driving I actually got my first speeding ticket last year
(on the A9, from a camera in a van) - since then I've been _very_ careful to
stick to speed limits and have actually found that:

\- Driving is less stressful

\- I use a lot less petrol

\- I don't actually seem to take that much longer to get anywhere

~~~
darklajid
I agree with all your points. Still, countering them:

\- If it's stressful it's probably not a good idea to speed in the first
place. I.e. don't go fast if you're not feeling safe.

\- Granted, but then again I'm not convinced that I'm very, very evil (if you
talk about being green) or wasteful (if you talk about saving money) if I go
240 and use 9l/100km if there's someone driving a Dodge Ram with 130 on the
right lane. In addition I consider this a limitation of technology, that
might/could/should(?) go away w/ time and incentives to the industry.

\- Depending on the distance I'd agree. I'd argue that I'd be a lot faster on
a 400-500km route, but for the ~usual~ trips it doesn't matter much.

On the other hand, if the argument really boils down to 'let's get reasonable
fast and safe to X while saving energy and removing the individual factor of
going there in different ways': Might I suggest to look into trains for that
usecase? They are actually quite good in DE and outrun cars/using the Autobahn
in a number of cases. Public transportation vs. individual forms of travel.

~~~
arethuza
I wouldn't say that I was aware of being stressed by driving before - but I'm
definitely less tired driving than I used to be. Now I just chug along at the
speed limit, listening to a decent audiobook....

Also I inevitably do a lot of driving up and down the UK A9 - which is a
scenic but rather horrible and notoriously dangerous road.

------
colanderman
This is terrible logic. Why is this on HN?

1) Speeding is not a crime.

2) _The 112,000 or so tickets given each day add up to over 41 million tickets
per year – that’s 19.5% of the populous!_ \-- NO it's NOT! He's totally
disregarding the fact that some people are repeat offenders.

3) Just because something's popular _doesn't mean it's right_. Any argument
that relies on normal distributions to determine what should be illegal should
be considered flawed from the outset.

------
Symmetry
Odds in New York City in 1900 of dying in a horse accident: 1 in 19,000

Odds today of dying there in an automobile accident: 1 in 26,000

From
[http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/01/roa...](http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/01/road-
safety.html)

~~~
mikeash
I'd wager that horses are more dangerous in cities, because horses are slow
pretty much everywhere, whereas cars are more dangerous on highways, because
of the much higher speeds they achieve there. Does this figure take that into
account?

~~~
Symmetry
No, but you don't really need to. The number of people dying in transportation
accidents has stayed remarkably constant for almost a century despite huge
differences in technology, like horse to car, seat belts, air bags, etc.
People calibrate their driving/riding so that they get to their destination as
fast as possible while still feeling safe enough.

~~~
mikeash
That's not really true. Per mile, car travel is 3-4 times safer today than it
was in 1970. The absolute number of fatalities has decreased by about 40%
while the population has increased by about 50%, so per capita rather than per
mile is also substantially safer.

To put this even more in perspective, there were more motor vehicle fatalities
in 1934 than there were in 2009, even though the population in 1934 was just
over 1/3rd the size. Per mile, car travel was about _fourteen times_ more
dangerous in 1934 than in 2009. Of course, people drove a lot more in 2009,
but even per capita, car travel was 2-3x safer in 2009.

~~~
Symmetry
Hmm, apparently I'm wrong then.

~~~
mikeash
Hooray for civil discussion on the internet.

I believe you are correct that people will adjust their behavior in
compensation for added safety, but it appears that the compensation isn't as
large as the initial safety benefit.

------
ajays
The population of the US is (or was at a recent instant in time, since it's
never static) 308,745,538 , and not 208,745,538 as he claims. All of his
statistics are off by ~50% throughout the rant. And it just goes downhill from
this basic error.

~~~
mikeknoop
You're actually right. His citation has the correct statistic in the first
paragraph (replace 2 with 3).

~~~
babebridou
> The 112,000 or so tickets given each day add up to over 41 million tickets
> per year – that’s 19.5% of the populous! Between 1 in 5 and 1 in 6 American
> citizens will be ticketed for speeding this year [...]

This struck me as a misleading use of statistics, because Pareto likes to say
hi everytime we try to correlate a repeatable event and a global population.
Most of those tickets will actually go to the same drivers, and Pareto's Law
even gives us handy empirical proportions. 80% of the tickets will probably go
to the same 20% subgroup.

This means that we have ~8 million tickets to distribute more or less
randomly/statistically (over let's say ~8 million american citizens), and then
~2 additional millions get the rest of the tickets, for a total of 10 million
ticketed people per year, or roughly 3-5% of the population.

Which is still huge and doesn't exactly change the author's point.

------
tibbon
Speed limits really should be more self regulating. The driver should be
skilled enough to know at what safe speed they can drive. If they cannot
determine this speed, they should stop driving or at least slow down.

I ride a motorcycle, and often the 'safe speed' for me is far different than
other vehicles on the road. Sometimes its faster, and sometimes its slower.
When I'm on a big highway in the mountains (4 lanes each way), I can probably
get my bike to go up, down and around hills far faster than your average car
can on the road. Up by Cleveland there are some signs about 'sharp turns' on
the highway and say they should be taken at 25mph. I can easily do them at
50mph, and that isn't even really leaning in hard.

Yet, other times, I go significantly more slowly, especially at night, in the
rain or in fog. There's some road (22?) I take back from Pittsburgh to
Columbus, and in the summer between the fog, the bugs, the corners and the
darkness, I often find myself going 20mph on a road that is marked at 55mph
during the day. I use my own judgement here and slow down, and pull over to
let cars past me.

In the past 13 years I've been driving, I've never gotten a speeding ticket,
and I have never been in any wreck with another vehicle (and never rode my
bike off the road). To the letter of the law, surely I've deserved a few
tickets; yet, I've driven safely and I feel that I'm well trained and always
ride within my ability.

As a side note, I feel that motorcycling overall has made me more aware and
able of driving all vehicles. I'm infinitely more aware than anyone else on
the road, and I think much more about what's right for me safety-wise, and not
just what the roads say.

~~~
arnoooooo
No. See my other comment. People are very bad at estimating risks. Plus,
they'd have to know all the risk factors. They don't.

"I'm well trained and always ride within my ability" : I'm pretty sure mostly
every driver will tell you that, the reckless drivers being the first.

~~~
tibbon
I remember reading about some cities removing most signs and seeing traffic
safety increase.

[http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,448747,00...](http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,448747,00.html)

I agree, almost everyone will rate themselves as an 'above average' driver.
Most don't actually spend a good amount of time practicing technique though.
When was the last time you were in a car with a person and they were actively
practicing cornering technique? I actively work on this almost every time I go
on more than quick ride to the store.

------
TheCapn
1) The entire article is based off the incorrect assumption that every offense
is a different person which the author proved to be incorrect in his first
example (but ran with it because it fit his argument).

2) "Most people, it seems, choose a speed that feels safe to drive with full
knowledge of their equipment, abilities and the current road conditions"

Baseless and plain wrong. People do NOT understand the safety thresholds of
their vehicles and become overconfident with the situation based on past
experience. The number of studies that show stopping distance, reaction times,
and overall road safety when vehicles are traveling at a difference of 10km/hr
is enough to disprove this. And real-world example exists anywhere that gets
regular annual snowfall because you'll see how people handle driving when that
sudden change in conditions exists.

------
JamisonM
Though I disagree with much of this article it is the main premise that I have
the most trouble with. It is precisely _because_ speeding is considered by
much of the population to be an acceptable behaviour that it needs to be
policed. Much like drunk driving in recent history, it being so socially
acceptable is why it is so dangerous - if someone drives like a maniac at
30-40% over the speed limit people feel uncomfortable telling them that they
are in the wrong.

------
reduxredacted
This is an interesting problem that I think some states in the US have at
least partially solved.

The highways in Michigan, for example, are almost all set at 70 MPH (minus
those around large cities like Detroit, a point I disagree with). The result
has been a dramatic reduction in speeding. I'm not sure if road safety has
improved or not since the change, but since I have taken the same way to/from
work 5 days a week for 15 years, I can say I haven't seen any increase or
decrease in accidents, personally. What I have noticed is a dramatic change in
driving behavior. When the limit was 55 MPH, the majority of traffic was going
at least 60 with a sizable minority of traffic working very hard to get around
those doing 60.

From my personal perspective, 70 MPH feels fast enough. It probably feels that
way because I'm not being tailgated at that speed, nor do I feel like I'd have
to slow down to take a bend in the road at that speed (my understanding is
that the highways in Michigan are designed to be driven safely at 75 MPH in
reasonable weather conditions). By casual observation, most people are driving
between 65 and 75 MPH outside of rush hour.

------
tintin
Bad article. There is a lot more involved. The nerdier people among us could
easily make a list of them. For example: air pollution, noise, fuel
consumption and insurances. In Germany a lot of roads don't have a speed
limit. But when you create a crash, don't count on your insurance company to
cover all the costs.

The comparison between murderers and fast drivers is plain stupid.

------
runningdogx
By casual observation, probably 90% or more of the driving population violates
speed laws regularly; only the people who exceed the limit by 10-15mph or
more, or who get caught in small town speed traps, get ticketed for it.

Why do you consider crime rates of more serious crimes, yet instead of
counting the number of road speed law violators, you count only the number of
citations for speeding? Like drug possession laws, road speed law enforcement
is highly selective. You can't get a picture of overall criminality by
measuring arrest and citation rates.

How fast would speed limits change if automated detection led to automatic
fines for any speeding? We're already close; the only reason it hasn't been
implemented is that everyone knows it would upend traffic speed laws through
public outrage. (I realize there's the theoretical legal problem of
identifying the driver, but that hasn't stopped many locales from using red
light and speeding cameras and holding the registered owner responsible for
fines.)

~~~
learc83
That's similar to drug possession laws. Recently more than 50% of people in a
Gallup survey said they support the end of marijuana prohibition, however it's
so easy to get away with in most places that there isn't a big enough outcry
to overturn the law.

------
crikli
Speeding tickets exist to generate revenue for townships and municipalities.
Period, full stop.

------
dahjelle
I've often wondered if speeding tickets and the like are the reason for the
general decline in positive opinion of the police. (I've done no research on
this whatsoever–anyone have any pointers to interesting materials?) But it
seems that the police were, once upon a time, the friendly man on the corner
keeping you safe, and now they are the guy with flashing lights who will pull
you over. Somehow I expect that change in opinion has cost the police far more
than they realize.

(Of course, past positive perception of police could be a myth, too: I've not
been around long enough to know.)

------
jfruh
It's worth noting that the reason so many people routinely speed is that roads
are engineered to be driven on faster than the speed limit. The best way to
get people to drive 35 miles an hour in the city (say) is to build roads with
narrow lanes, frequent stop signs/signals, roundabouts, etc.

------
Newgy
Auto insurance is regulated, but in most states it is a reasonably competitive
market. I have to assume that speeding tickets are an important signal to
future crashes, or the insurance companies would compete this penalty down or
away completely.

------
cq
I never drive above the speed limit, fuck getting tickets. Deal with it,
horrible drivers.

