The Worst Speed Trap Cities In The United States
November 16th, 2007 Posted in Speed Limits, Speed Traps, Traffic Tickets Thanksgiving is one of the busiest travel times of the year. As people prepare for their holiday trips, they should be on the lookout for speed traps. Nothing can ruin a vacation more quickly than an undeserved speeding ticket. As a public service, the National Motorists Association (NMA) has prepared a list of the worst speed [...]The Worst Speed Trap Cities In The United States
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I belive in my state the defendant can ask for one delay and the officer can ask for one delay and that’s it.
yea, tracker-
one thing you want to be is polite to a judge. In my situation, im not gonna see no judge. I almost lost it when the n.c.h.p. told me I was going 78. I almost told him he was f&#%^%*g crazy. But shoot, he didnt know how fast I was going, he was just “taking ticket orders” from the radar cop. He actually didnt sound to confident in the charge himself. Plus, my buddy was with me,and the look on his face was “PLEASE DONT GIT US LOCKED UP!!!”
But a real kick in the pants – my buddy wasnt wearin no seat belt. cop comes back with our licenses and hands me my ticket and tells my buddy “WELL, MY COMPUTER CRASHED SO YOU DONT GET A TICKET TODAY”
NOW AINT THAT JUST PRETTY %(*^$*%$
Another thing I see, is on my way to work I often see a Walterboro city p.o. pass me.
Mind you Im going 55 in a 55 zone – he’ll be coming up behind me and as I slow down for the upcoming 45 zone, He’ll pass me like Im on the side of the road. All the time my radar detector is going nuts.
If I drove like that he would burn me.
I spent 4 years working and living in Germany where, for the most part, there are no speed limits. It was the best driving experience I have ever had. Drivers were courteous, respectful, and fast. When there were speed limits posted they were EXACTLY the speed you needed to be going to safely negotiate the road. During all this time (4 years) driving at speeds of 120-160 mph do you know how many accidents/collisions I saw? Only one!!!! It is true that the collision was extremely bad due to the speed of the vehicles, however, I do not believe that speed “causes” collisions. In Germany you can not eat, drink, talk on the cell phone, put on your make up, comb your hair, shave your face, or anything that would distract you from driving. Besides these things being against the law, Germans just know to pay attention when driving at high speeds. I truely believe that if the speed limits were raised or abolished people wouldn’t be doing distracting tasks because they would be too busy paying attention to the road.
Our roads were built to be driven faster and therefore people tend to feel they are driving so slow for the road that they can accomplish other tasks while driving. If speed limits were set to EXACTLY the maximum “safe” speed for the road, there would be less collisions because people would be paying more attention to driving as opposed to other tasks.
Just my 2 cents worth.
Somthing dawned on me a couple of days ago. I was watching my speedometer more than I was watching the road.
Am I more scared of getting a ticket than getting in a wreck?
Of course, if I get enough points against me I’ll loose my CDL and thus my job. I doubt h.p. cares.
Pillsbury,
I try to be courteous in a traffic stop. If LEO’s come off belligerent it sets off my verbal attack mode. Ignorance of the law is no excuse and that goes for LEO’s too. With a CDL you have a lot of mileage to cover and that puts you in the cross-hairs of traffic control.If you are on a designated route, so are those LEO’s you come in frequent contact with. My son was arrested for a paid ticket out-of-state which someone did not post in the Georgia courts years before he received his CDL. They pulled him over for a broken headlight on his personal car, and found he had an outstanding warrant for his arrest in Ga. The sad part was he has renewed his license several times over the years and it never showed up till computers starting tracking numbers. It was fortunate he still had the cancelled check and receipt from Gainesville Ga. over ten years ago. We figure it cost about $2000.00 or so for bond, court costs, and reinstatement of license which should not have been revoked. My biggest peeve was that there was no apology or reimbursement from the courts.
Stay outta Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin! The cops there are “Collar Dollar” happy fools. The Police Chief is a woman…I will say no more!
tracker –
there needs to be “recourse legislation”
for situations like that. and my situation.
fat chance of that. we have a constitutional “right to travel” – however its getting to the point that we have to purchase our rights anymore. In S.C. they have gone as far as “selling the right to drive a motor vehicle without insurance”.
It used to be $500. bucks per year.
Sounda like your son had to “buy back” his right to travel.
law enforcement techniques are just a small part of our “GREED BASED ECONOMY”. You can only float on greed so long. I love this country but Im afraid its going down soon.
for example – “W” is going to borrow umpteen billion dollars from china to give us all a tax break. They do expect a majority of that money to be spent on the increased gasoline price. GOLLY FREAKIN” G!!!
One problem is when the insurance intstitutes and the government and the h.p. tells people “speed kills” and other crap like that – people dont “STOP AND THINK” about it. They take it in and keep going – because they have a busy life.
And seat belts – In Dorchester, S.C. on march 6, there was a REAL BAD head on collision involving a school bus.
42 students on board. y’all oughtta se the bus. The worst injury was a sprained wrist.
( not counting the driver who was wearing a seat belt). The car that hit it was obliterated.
S.C school buses dont have seat belts.
I used to drive 75-85 MPH on the freeways and paid no attention to the speed limits on “surface” streets. After filling my tank last summer I was shocked by the price. So, just for the heck of it, I decided to drive no faster that the posted limits. My mileage went from 33.4 to 37.6 in my 1991 Honda Civic. That saved me about $4 a fill-up, or about $100 a year. It takes me about a minute longer to travel the 15 miles to my job. Big Deal!
I also decided to see what would happen if I drove 2-3 seconds behind the car in front of me. Well, the difference in the times it took me to travel to my most often traveled destinations were insignificant. On top of that, I got where I was going feeling less stressed and tired. In inclement weather I slow down and increase my distance to 5 seconds.
Tim writes:
{I used to drive 75-85 MPH on the freeways and paid no attention to the speed limits on “surface” streets. After filling my tank last summer I was shocked by the price. So, just for the heck of it, I decided to drive no faster that the posted limits. My mileage went from 33.4 to 37.6 in my 1991 Honda Civic. That saved me about $4 a fill-up, or about $100 a year. It takes me about a minute longer to travel the 15 miles to my job. Big Deal!}
Hmmm. Just another apologist trying to justify low speed limits. If you were first shocked at the price of fuel last summer, then you have not been paying attention. I get 33 mpg (BMW 328Ci) whether I drive 55 or 85 mph. The key variable is the degree of congestion. You also need to revisit your mathematics to determine how much time you save and how much it is worth. BTW, 75 mph on the 15 between Riverside and San Diego means that you are creating a hazard since traffic often runs 90+ mph.
I also hope that if you’re only going the posted limit that you’re staying in the far right hand lane so as to not impede faster drivers.
By James Young on Mar 9, 2008
Tim writes:
{I used to drive 75-85 MPH on the freeways and paid no attention to the speed limits on “surface” streets. After filling my tank last summer I was shocked by the price. So, just for the heck of it, I decided to drive no faster than the posted limits. My mileage went from 33.4 to 37.6 in my 1991 Honda Civic. That saved me about $4 a fill-up, or about $100 a year. It takes me about a minute longer to travel the 15 miles to my job. Big Deal!}
————————————–
Hmmm. Just another apologist trying to justify low speed limits. If you were first shocked at the price of fuel last summer, then you have not been paying attention. I get 33 mpg (BMW 328Ci) whether I drive 55 or 85 mph. The key variable is the degree of congestion. You also need to revisit your mathematics to determine how much time you save and how much it is worth. BTW, 75 mph on the 15 between Riverside and San Diego means that you are creating a hazard since traffic often runs 90+ mph.
I also hope that if you’re only going the posted limit that you’re staying in the far right hand lane so as to not impede faster drivers.
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Apparently, I inadvertently upset you. I apologize for that. However, I did not mean to justify speed limits at all. I was just telling my story for what it was worth.
My 15 mile trip to work is 10 miles on freeways and 5 miles on surface streets. It seems to make little difference to exceed the speed limit the five miles on surface streets what with all the stop lights. So, at 75 MPH I averaged about 10.8 minutes. At 65 I average about 12.5. I guess I should have said, “…a minute or two. Big deal.”
I used to make a weekly round trip from San Luis Obispo to Fresno – a distance of roughly 150 miles. Sometimes I’d get my little Honda up to 95 on Hwy 41 and always broke the limit on Hwy 46. I got a ticket. So, I slowed down to the 55 MPH limit. Because of traffic on the mostly single lane highways, it took me an average of about 20 minutes longer to make the trip. Big deal!
I guess the term “shocked” was a bit of an exaggeration. However, it was the highest I had ever paid up to that point.
I want to give you a special congratulation on your BMW. It seems you have the only car in the world that can overcome the laws of physics! I wonder if all BMWs are that way, or is it just yours? No more energy to go 85 as it uses at 55. How wonderful!
I used to live 2 miles from the I15 in San Diego. I drove it every day. The left lane was filled with people driving 80-85 MPH. They would be about a car-length apart — a very dangerous situation! I would be in the lane next to the far right lane driving the limit — 70, I think it was. I’d keep 2 to 3 seconds behind the vehicle in front of me, too.
I submit that if you are driving up to 90 MPH you are passing over 95 percent of the cars. If you ever get a ticket for that speed it would be one for reckless driving — a two pointer on your record which is the same as a DWI. Oops, there goes your insurance rates!
{Apparently, I inadvertently upset you. I apologize for that. However, I did not mean to justify speed limits at all. I was just telling my story for what it was worth.}
I have learned after nearly 50 years of fighting greed, political inertia and enforcement intransigence to not get upset. Merely pointing out flaws means only that I’m watching and responding, not that I’m upset. I have heard every excuse in the book to justify artificially low limits and they’re just a hollow now as they were in 1974.
{Because of traffic on the mostly single lane highways, it took me an average of about 20 minutes longer to make the trip. Big deal!}
It is a big deal. Consider that if just ½ of the drivers lost 20 minutes a week that’s 625,000 man-years of productivity lost each year. Speed limits are not benign creatures without consequences. Implementing and enforcing them costs huge time and money, even aside from the cost of enforcement and congestion. Remember that NMSL cost us over a trillion dollars in lost productivity, not to mention the extra crashes, injuries and fatalities caused by forcing drivers to travel below the minimization point of the crash incidence curve.
{I want to give you a special congratulation on your BMW. It seems you have the only car in the world that can overcome the laws of physics!}
It comes from steady travel, not accelerating wildly, good aerodynamics, and a very tall overdrive.
{I submit that if you are driving up to 90 MPH you are passing over 95 percent of the cars.}
That’s about right. It would put me right at the 95th percentile, the safest speed as determined by engineering investigations for Interstate grade highways.
{ If you ever get a ticket for that speed it would be one for reckless driving — a two pointer on your record which is the same as a DWI. Oops, there goes your insurance rates!}
Condescension aside, I would much rather incur the very remote risk of a ticket for traveling with the traffic than to slow down to the point where I am creating a hazard and exposing myself to even more likely risk.
Sidebar issue to the above post:
If Tim was taking the 41 and 46 from SLO to Fresno, he would go right through Cholame, little more than a bar/restaurant and general store, but famous for being the site (actually, near the site) of James Dean’s infamous crash in 1955. Popular legend is that Dean was speeding well over the limit but reconstruction of the crash indicates that he was travelling only 55 mph, below the limit. He was killed when another driver turned left in front of him so the issue was ROW, not excessive speed.
Yea, I also remember for a long time James Deans’ accident was based on the presumption that he was speeding as the cause of his demise. It wasn’t until computers got powerful enough and programs were written to model a crash that the truth came out. I have to admit I too was surprised at the news but elated that the speed haters couldn’t claim another victory.
By James Young on Mar 9, 2008
If Tim was taking the 41 and 46 from SLO to Fresno, he would go right through Cholame, little more than a bar/restaurant and general store, but famous for being the site (actually, near the site) of James Dean’s infamous crash in 1955. —————————————-
Yes, there’s a plaque there and something else I’ve forgotten — a bench or something…
Tim, you won’t drive 75-85 MPH on the expressways in Tulsa Okla, not that the major roads can’t handle it. You’ll get bagged before you ever reach that speed. The guy driving the unmarked cop car who wears some medium blue uniform that almost looks like someone’s work uniform will have a big smile on his face (if he’s not an imposer) because you’ve made his job of filling his daily quota easier. Plus you’ll be donating handsomely to the city coffers. If the good ‘ole boys in OK get a hold of you I don’t even want to think what a 15 to 20 mph over speeding ticket would cost. You might get by with that in CA. But don’t try it in OK. They’ll bust your butt. If your ever in this direction, bare that in mind. James knows what I’m talking about. There’s a voracious appetite around here to feed the city coffers via traffic ticket moneys and speeders are their bread and butter ticket. I don’t have time or energy to explain it but you can find more of my comments around these blogs. It’s a traffic control system that has a purpose but it’s not traffic safety.
{Because of traffic on the mostly single lane highways, it took me an average of about 20 minutes longer to make the trip. Big deal!}
—————————–
It is a big deal. Consider that if just ½ of the drivers lost 20 minutes a week that’s 625,000 man-years of productivity lost each year. Speed limits are not benign creatures without consequences. Implementing and enforcing them costs huge time and money, even aside from the cost of enforcement and congestion. Remember that NMSL cost us over a trillion dollars in lost productivity, not to mention the extra crashes, injuries and fatalities caused by forcing drivers to travel below the minimization point of the crash incidence curve.
———-
James, 20 minutes to ME is no big deal. But, the fact is that I arrived less stressed and less tired (the faster we go the more we SHOULD concentrate on what’s going on around us). My car got about 15 percent better mileage per gallon and it received less wear and tear, makes the 20 minutes, TO ME, well worth it.
__________________________
{I want to give you a special congratulation on your BMW. It seems you have the only car in the world that can overcome the laws of physics!}
————–
It comes from steady travel, not accelerating wildly, good aerodynamics, and a very tall overdrive.
——————————-
C’mon, James! You cannot get the same energy use at 85 as you can at 55. Unless your aeodynamics and travel techniques change at the higher speed.
For the record:
Joe and I have never met. He lives in Tulsa. I grew up in Tulsa, left to go to UT Austin many years ago and returned in early 2006 to rebuild my uncle’s house that I inherited. I am familiar with traffic enforcement there, about its focus on money, money and probably money. I also lived in Denver, Salt Lake City and Beverly Hills. My mother still lives in Tulsa so I’m back every once in a while. Austin, TX is home but I’m currently in Temecula (CA) for two different jobs.
Thanks for clearing that up James. They may be getting us mixed up.
in foristell, mo you don’t have to be speeding to get a SPEEDING ticket!!! the cops sit in a little area between the highway so one is able to head east and one is able to head west…they are known to pull anyone over and issue them a speeding ticket even when you haven’t actually been speeding! how can you prove you weren’t? also lots of semis in that area swerve into your lane and people have sped up to avoid getting pushed into the wall…the police wait right there in that area where this happens ALL THE TIME and issue tickets for speeding when all people are doing is trying to avoid an accident! there is a semi weigh station right there and it is scary the way a lot of these trucks drive through there! i personally haven’t had a ticket here but i’ve been with people that got pulled over for “speeding” – one had the cruise control set to 65 mph and the speed limit is 70 mph! and i’ve known LOTS of people that have had the same complaint!
If anyone might be around North Charleston s.c. – I saw on the news that they are starting a red light camera ticket thing. They CLAIM this particular intersection has a lot of incidents. maybe it does-maybe it dont. Im not sure which street it was, I guess people better watch out. Them h.p.’s want your $$$$$$!!!
Be warned Hanging Rock Ohio on the Ohio River
US 52 is a place where out of town cars are pulled over for trumped up charges,,tailgating weaving,1Mph over,and you name it.High priced cars,women and lone drivers expect to go to kangaroo town court where the Mayor is Judge,prosecutor,and treasurer.Not guilty pleas will get you jailed for hours of waiting on court date.The date will be set for weeks later then moved for sickness reason.Use Ky. US 23 if possible and save a lot of grief.
HEY Y’all want to see how S.C state troopers will treat you? Go to http://www.live5news.com. (thats wcsc Charleston) watch them poke people with shotguns and kick them and call them racist names.
However, not all of them are that bad. There is a few good ones out there. They are just getting harder to find.
They ought to write tickets for “DINGBATISM”. My buddys wife, (same buddy that was with me in n.c.) was driving on the road they live on when she noticed this dude sitting in a driveway talking on his cell.
He backs out. BAM!!!!! totals her car. He gits out, still talking on his cell. He never got off his FREAKING phone.
Paying attention is the real problem with auto incidents. not SPEEDING.
This ticket writing thing has become a new type of “tax” I think. The city budget is short this year. (As elsewhere I am sure) Although they have taken it to another level in my city.
Since no insurance tickets carry the heaviest fines they are targeting people driving older cars. I guess they have to have a reason to stop someone so they are using bogus radar readings to stop these people to check their insurance. The rational is they have 3 citations on the ticket and I guess it saves paper & time if you can fill up at least two. It’s as if they are having to earn their own salary through ticket writing.
I was stopped in this manner last month. I was driving an 89 Cougar. I am 52 years old and have never received a speeding ticket in my life. Why? I don’t speed except perhaps an occasional mile or two inadvertently on a hill for a couple of seconds.
I was on a city street/state hwy. The speed changes from 50 to 40. It is near home and I have lived here for 20 years so I know the area well. I was surprised when the officer said I was speeding when he said I was doing 54, but in total shock when he said it was in a 40! I presumed he meant in the 50 at first and thought “well maybe it is possible” until then. He was much more concerned about my car and my insurance papers. He wrote out the ticket and had already marked the insurance box and had to mark it out when I showed him the papers.
When I went to the window it was first presumed I wanted to take the Defensive Driving, I said no I am not guilty. The ticket even says I was going Northbound when I was actually Southbound. I was given a date to appear and did.
At that time I was offered deferred adjudication. I told him the same thing so then I waited for the Judge to call me for a trial date. I was warned that I was at a disadvantage without an attorney, that I could not appeal the decision, that it was now a misdemeanor charge,etc. He did have me scared but I stood my ground thinking surely an attorney could get it dismissed for $50. WRONG. They are charging $500 to take a ticket to court and the City won’t give anything except deferred adjudication without appearing in Court.
When I went the first time I noticed that almost everyone of the 60 or so people in court that day had tickets for no insurance. Some were dismissed after showing their papers that they weren’t carrying at the time. It was a real mill. I decided to fight this “all the way” to jail by sitting out the ticket in protest. (I can’t pay it anyway or afford the points on my record.) But it seems they have that covered too. They just get a civil judgement, etc. and put a lien on your vehicle.
Today I discovered even though it is now a misdemeanor and not a ticket the standard is only a “preponderance” of the evidence. As in civil court.
You know I don’t mind being stopped to check my insurance at all. But why use a bogus reason to do it which creates a hardship even if the person has insurance? And if you are after fines why target the people with the least ability to pay?
This is very disheartening when I see Escalades, etc. who are truly speeding and tailgating, etc. Perhaps they are still doing that because they can afford $500 to fight the tickets so it is not profitable for the City.
Just like eveything else in our country it’s become another racket. Legalized blackmail.
I WAS GOING DOWN I-20 NEAR LONGVIEW TX ON MY CBR954
I WAS CLOCK DOING 185MPH THE COP STOP ME AFTER I SLOW DOWN ABOUT 6 MILES UP THE RODE AND HE ASK ME IF I WAS THE BIKE THAT PAST HIM DOING 185 OF CORSE I TOLD HIM I DIDNT KNOW WHAT HE WAS TALKING ABOUT AND HE COULD NOT PROVE IT WAS ME SO HE TOLD ME TO BE CAREFUL AND LET ME GO
4/3/08: True-D,
All those legal terms they threw at you do not amount to any more than a plot to intimidate you. The American BAR and the Ethics Commision are both governed by the judiciary and supposed to support the Justice System and this includes the Bill of Rights. Try reading the Constitution and leave out the Bill of Rights. It is all about the money. The Bill of Rights was thrown in to appease the individual states that had to ratify the Constitution of ” The 13 United Colonies into one unified country. We are supposed to be a unified fifty states now with the same individual rights, but the ABA and their ethical commissions do not support the (G) godly standards of the past. I listened to an Assistant County Prosecutor say that “there was no room for morality in law, that it was business. I was prefering charges against a business partner ( small business) when a church we had worked on paid him and I was never reimbursed for my work. The law said I had to put a lien on the church and they had to sue him or the church lien was toward me. This has nothing to do with driving privileges, but the standard is the same. The name of the game is “Show me the money”. On the $500.00 Cost charge, see if your state allows you to waiver your attorney, and let them know the Bill of Rights guarantees a jury trial in matters inflicting heavy fines over $20.00, a speedy trial, and cruel and unusual punishment. To me the aggravation of waiting and stressing over harassment is unconstitutional.
ONE-EYED BANDIT….Nothing in this life or this world is that simple…use a little common sense if you can muster it.
JOE BLEAUX
Would not common sense dictate that slower traffic adhere to the right lane regardless of the speed limit. According to your premise its ok to stay in the left lane and get run over just because you were (in your opinion) right. That is quite absurd.
Thomas Fredrick’s article shows that he is an idiot and that there is no way that he was ever a law-enforcement officer. He also needs a class in spelling and grammar
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By Douglas Guerra on Nov 23, 2007
“If you do the Speed Limit, you won’t get a ticket”
And if the woman raped in Saudi Arabia had been walking with a male relative, she would not have been sentenced to lashes and jail time.
“If you are going over the Speed Limit, then you are breaking the law”
And it is against the law in Guam for a virgin to marry.
Give me a break! A bad law is a bad law and people break laws they don’t respect or have any particular use for.
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Why, Mr. Guerra, have you selected for comparison laws upheld in other countries, by other governments and cultures, regarding criminal violations instead of administrative violations? My answer: wild exaggeration brought on by your inability to cite reasonable and related facts to support your position.
Perhaps you do not perceive a use for nor respect speed limit or other traffic laws because you are selfish. Safety-related laws in this country are generally not interested in you as an individual; rather the focus is on the safety of the general public around you. As far as you as an individual are concerned, the law addresses you as having a duty of due care to not neglect the rights and safety of others around you.
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By Susan on Dec 5, 2007
Another one is going toward Columbia, SC traveling on I-26 between Peak Exit and Lake Murray Blvd. Exit. Unmarked car maintains certain speed in the passing lane creating bumper to bumper stress for those trying to get to work on time blocking access to any passing and then when you do find an opening, when you “gun it” to get through, that’s when you see the blue lights. It’s called the pressure cooker stradegy.
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Let me guess, Susan…unmarked car maintains speed less than you wish to travel at, which is over and beyond the speed limit. The audacity! So, when I see a cop traveling slower than I care to in the midst of other traffic, I’m being set up for entrapment…I’m being “pressure cooked”. Got it.
However, here’s me in the “pressure cooker”: plenty of time to spare because I get up early, prepare myself early, and depart early. The result is that I’m usually at least a little early in getting where I need to be. But I couldn’t do this without my special car. My car has magical properties like James Young’s only mine can travel faster than the velocity observed by outside observers including the Doppler Effect. It’s an expensive option and one that doesn’t really exist, so it probably isn’t within your means. Guess you’ll just have to break the law to survive.
Then move to Germany writes:
{Why, Mr. Guerra, have you selected for comparison laws upheld in other countries, by other governments and cultures, regarding criminal violations instead of administrative violations? My answer: wild exaggeration brought on by your inability to cite reasonable and related facts to support your position.}
Your answer is much too narrow. First, traffic law is not administrative law and, given sufficiently egregious behavior, can result in criminal prosecution. Douglas has posed a rhetorical question about the actual practice of traffic control, the answer to which lies in the profit from their enforcement, not the societal benefit.
{Perhaps you do not perceive a use for nor respect speed limit or other traffic laws because you are selfish. Safety-related laws in this country are generally not interested in you as an individual; rather the focus is on the safety of the general public around you.}
Then perhaps you can provide us with what that use is and why we should respect it. There is a quantum difference between “other traffic laws” – I’m assuming that you mean the Uniform Rule of Right-of-Way – and the speed limit, which is not part of URROW. The deliberately conflate the two is disingenuous if not outright dishonest.
Self-interest is the fundamental assumption of traffic engineers who calculate the 85th and 95th percentiles, thus recommended speeds (which are then ignored by politicians who set limits at politically motivated levels). That is, drivers will not deliberately do things that will exceed their personal threshold of risk. The fundamental traffic laws were implemented as a legal solution to an organizational problem. Speed limits were not then and are not now a part of those organizational rules.
Speed limits serve no useful public purpose. There is no correlation between speed limits (or changes in those limits) and traffic safety (or changes in key measures of traffic safety).
{ As far as you as an individual are concerned, the law addresses you as having a duty of due care to not neglect the rights and safety of others around you.}
Here, of course, we agree. Traveling in excess of the posted speed neither neglects the rights nor impairs the safety of others around the “speeder.” “Speeding” does not affect other drivers at all.
Then move to Germany writes:
{Let me guess, Susan…unmarked car maintains speed less than you wish to travel at, which is over and beyond the speed limit. The audacity! So, when I see a cop traveling slower than I care to in the midst of other traffic, I’m being set up for entrapment…I’m being “pressure cooked”. Got it.}
No, you don’t get it. It is expressly prohibited to deliberately impede traffic, especially in the passing lanes of a highway, yet Texas DPS (for example) routinely uses this tactic (it’s not a strategy) on Loop 360, a semi-limited access highway around Austin with severely underposted limits. If law enforcement has such a low regard for the written law, why should citizens hold any higher regard for those same laws?
{However, here’s me in the “pressure cooker”: plenty of time to spare because I get up early, prepare myself early, and depart early. The result is that I’m usually at least a little early in getting where I need to be. }
This is not about time management – apologists often use time management as though it is the answer to traffic flow and in integral element of driving psychology – but the strategy to use traffic laws to generate massive revenue from reasonable behavior. Why don’t you tell your spouse, your boss or your captain that you can’t stay for that last-minute meeting because you need to allow more time to avoid the “pressure cooker”?
{But I couldn’t do this without my special car. My car has magical properties like James Young’s only mine can travel faster than the velocity observed by outside observers including the Doppler Effect. It’s an expensive option and one that doesn’t really exist, so it probably isn’t within your means. Guess you’ll just have to break the law to survive.}
Gratuitous and confused insult aside, there is a certain element of truth in your last sentence.
By James Young on Apr 12, 2008
{Your answer is much too narrow.}
I wasn’t about to waste a lot of time debating someone who asserts that being punished for driving in excess of the posted speed limit is like being lashed for being raped in Saudi Arabia. He didn’t stop there, either; he went on to imply that he shares the innocence and woes of a virgin in Guam who cannot legally marry. Outrageous.
{First, traffic law is not administrative law and, given sufficiently egregious behavior, can result in criminal prosecution…}
Alright…if you are here to argue semantics, then I’ll change “administrative violations” to read “infractions”. I’ll do this even though speeding in some areas of this country will land you in administrative court, in front of an administrative law judge, facing administrative actions against your driving privileges. Further, it was not my intention to draw a complete distinction between criminal acts and traffic violations. The intended distinction was between the speeding that you condone (trusting that you do not advocate speeds that fall under “reckless endangerment”) and the act of rape or ridiculousness of lashing a rape victim for not avoiding rape.
{Then perhaps you can provide us with what that use is and why we should respect it. There is a quantum difference between “other traffic laws” – I’m assuming that you mean the Uniform Rule of Right-of-Way – and the speed limit, which is not part of URROW. The deliberately conflate the two is disingenuous if not outright dishonest. }
It does not surprise me at all, Mr. Young, that you will attempt to skew everything that I will state in response to the content of this forum. People generally do that when the foundation of their argument is weak. When I said, “…speed limit or other traffic laws,” I was grouping the terms under the umbrella of purpose for any and all traffic laws: the safety interests of the general public. That was, after all, the implicitly clear subject of the paragraph. Are you just going to make me repeat myself until I grow tired of doing so? Your assumption, leading to your accusing me of being ‘disingenuous if not outright dishonest’ reminds me of your intentional speeding and blaming the government for the hardship of paying the prescribed fines.
{Self-interest is the fundamental assumption of traffic engineers who calculate the 85th and 95th percentiles, thus recommended speeds (which are then ignored by politicians who set limits at politically motivated levels). That is, drivers will not deliberately do things that will exceed their personal threshold of risk…}
I do not debate that the purpose of the engineers is to improve upon existing concept and design criteria in an effort to increase safe and efficient utilization of the public roadway system. But if you’re here to argue that the recommendations of engineers should translate directly into law, then I invite you to look into the I-35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis, Minnesota, last fall. Engineers designed it. Engineers made their recommendations. Inspectors and engineers continued to make recommendations at each inspection period. Then the damned thing simply collapsed into the Mississippi one day and killed several people despite all the idealism. Only one of countless such examples. Now you can say that I might be guilty of over dramatization. But if I’m not mistaken and your wish came true tomorrow, there would suddenly be no penalty for speeding because there would no longer be legally enforceable speed limits. This all made possible by the fact that, “…drivers will not deliberately do things that will exceed their personal threshold of risk.”
What??? Were you serious, sober, and sane when you typed that? Drivers exceed their “personal threshold of risk” every day , deliberately and otherwise, and people die every day as a result. You are here professing that when each crash and fatality takes place: 1) Someone erred in their “calculus” when they entered their vehicle for the purpose of travel, 2) Speed can be neither causal nor contributing factor, unless one or more parties involved in the crash were abiding the posted speed limit, 3) If someone was abiding the speed limit that person forced the other driver(s) away from their calculus-derived optimal point on the crash incidence curve, rendering their personal threshold(s) of risk and their attention available to the task of driving meaningless/useless…
Jimbo, the next time a crash victim dies in your emergency room and all your formulae and statistics tell you, the expert, that the whole thing could have been avoided by exceeding the speed limit, I want you to share your spin with the survivors of the deceased. It might help forward your cause.
{…Traveling in excess of the posted speed neither neglects the rights nor impairs the safety of others around the “speeder.” “Speeding” does not affect other drivers at all.}
In your mind, perhaps. Because people who exceed the posted speed limit do not blaze through red lights as a result of going too fast (yes, SPEEDING, sans your trite quotation marks) to heed the change in status of the intersection. And those all-to-common intersecting collisions would be the fault of those who lawfully enter the intersection under a green light, not the SPEEDER. SPEEDERS never tailgate, blatantly ignoring any notion of reasonable and safe following distance in frantic efforts to catch up to your sanctified “optimum point on the incidence curve” by weaving to and fro, in and out of the “wasted spaces” (see: safe following distance) between other cars. I’ve never had to slow down, rather than smoothly and LAWFULLY pass slower (yet still LAWFUL) traffic ahead by using the left lane(s) for the intended purpose, because I have never observed a long progression of overtaking SPEEDERS, bumper-to-bumper, in my mirror prior to merging.
And now I’ll attempt to trace your twisted, circular logic as it applies to “ownership” of any lane to the left of the right-most. You do not deny the existence of speed limits; it is the whole reason you are here spewing your self-proclaimed higher understanding and personal path to a utopian system of public roads. Notwithstanding all the posted speed limits, you and SPEEDERS like you point out the “Slower Traffic Keep Right” (STKR) signs and proclaim exclusivity to the left as though the two laws cannot seamlessly coexist. You would have everyone else on the road believe that the law is broken only by anyone occupying a left lane and traveling the posted speed limit or less while lawfully overtaking as soon as a SPEEDER arrives on scene and would otherwise be “impeded”. You hold that the STKR signs direct traffic in left lanes to either break the law or get out of the way so that others may break the law. You state that there is no connection between SPEEDING and URROW because the laws in print do not do you the service of directly connecting the dots for your black and white way of looking at things.
And now I must go or I’ll be late because the importance of me is not beyond the law or respect of safety for others. Translated for you: I DO NOT SPEED. Besides, I am thoroughly convinced that you are not capable of meaningful reasoning on the topic at hand.
Wow, I had to drag out my decoder ring for this one. James, I think “translated” that means he’s/she’s (TMTG) is taking their marbles and going home. To use their quote, “People generally do that when the foundation of their argument is weak”. This individual tends to isolate you when in fact many us subscribe, at least in part, of what you propose not to mention similar arguments offered by the NMA and other scources. This individual is most certainly a charter member of the anti-destination league. And I am so impressed with how smug this individual is in being so secure in the idea that they never exceed the speed limit so they never need to worry about an accident as they drive along totally engrossed talking on the cell phone or other some other cabin distraction.
It was also interesting that this individual brought up the bridge collapse in Minneapolis, Minnesota last fall. I believe if we had some civil engineers here they might take issue with that observation. As I watched some of the congressional hearings on this subject, it became quite clear that civil engineers had been, and continue to raise the red flag about our crumbling infrastructure. That of which bridges continue to get the most attention.
Then move to Germany writes:
{ Outrageous.}
Perhaps. The misappropriation of law to enhance power and wealth of the incumbent political machine is a topic that we must address. Particularly egregious is the use of state authority to support stupid religious rules. That truly is outrageous.
{…if you are here to argue semantics, then I’ll change “administrative violations” to read “infractions”.}
Semantics are important. Words are important. Words can be used to soothe a sick child or to initiate racial war. Like any powerful weapon, they must be chosen and used with great care.
Driving and holding a driver’s license are not a mere privilege, regardless of what the states try to tell you. SCOTUS determined that holding a driver’s license is an “entitlement,” a mixture of pure right and pure privilege that cannot be revoked by mere bureaucratic whim.
{It does not surprise me at all, Mr. Young, that you will attempt to skew everything that I will state in response to the content of this forum. People generally do that when the foundation of their argument is weak. When I said, “…speed limit or other traffic laws,” I was grouping the terms under the umbrella of purpose for any and all traffic laws: the safety interests of the general public.}
You still need to provide us with the use or benefit of the speed limit and why we should respect it.
You are making an unwarranted and unsupported assumption. The purpose of the rules of right-of-way are clearly all about keeping vehicles from bumping into each other. Speed limits have never been a part of that body of rules and are not necessary for the operation of that body of rules. The purpose of speed limits has morphed throughout the years, from a heavy-handed attempt to drive the newly invented automobile out of existence because they scared livestock, to saving fuel, saving tires, safety and reducing urban sprawl. All of these have failed but that ubiquitous money monster remains constant. “Speeding” is easy to detect because it occurs over long periods, can be measured quickly and remotely, and at any given time about 50% of the people are exceeding the posted limit.
Let me be harsher. Speed limit laws are about money and only money. If anybody claims that speed limits are about safety we should immediately ask how much money they make as a result of enforcement of those limits. We gain nothing from having limits but we lose much. Speed limits increase and key measures of traffic safety remain stable or decline, albeit insignificantly.
{That was, after all, the implicitly clear subject of the paragraph. Are you just going to make me repeat myself until I grow tired of doing so? Your assumption, leading to your accusing me of being ‘disingenuous if not outright dishonest’ reminds me of your intentional speeding and blaming the government for the hardship of paying the prescribed fines.}
I don’t want you to repeat yourself; I want you to grow into a better understanding of the truth. I labeled your deliberate conflation of speed limit laws and the body that we denominate as URROW as disingenuous and dishonest. The two concepts are completely different creatures. Whether such conflation was based in malice or mere ignorance is something that you must answer for yourself and that we can determine after a longer posting history.
{But if you’re here to argue that the recommendations of engineers should translate directly into law, then I invite you to look into the I-35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis, Minnesota, last fall. Engineers designed it. Engineers made their recommendations. Inspectors and engineers continued to make recommendations at each inspection period. Then the damned thing simply collapsed into the Mississippi one day and killed several people despite all the idealism. Only one of countless such examples.}
That is why we should listen to the engineers, the professionals, rather than the politicians. The Bridge 9340 collapse was due to politicians ignoring science that told them that the bridge needed repairs for whatever purpose they thought important or that they could get away with, not engineering failure.
{. . .there would suddenly be no penalty for speeding because there would no longer be legally enforceable speed limits.}
Yes, I would do away with speed limits on suburban and rural highways. They provide no benefit and cost enormous sums of cash, wasted resources and wasted time.
{What??? Were you serious, sober, and sane when you typed that? Drivers exceed their “personal threshold of risk” every day , deliberately and otherwise, and people die every day as a result.}
People die every day from multiple factors. What I want to do is apply the lessons of science to the science/art phenomena of traffic flow, to help drive public policy based on reason and goal achievement rather than the current public policy of transferring tens of billions in cash simply because they can get away with it. If speed limits can be demonstrated to have a significant positive effect on traffic safety, then we can examine how to utilize that effect to our benefit. The anti-destination league has been looking for this magic bullet for near 60 years and they cannot demonstrate such a connection because it just does not exist.
Exceeding one’s personal threshold of risk does not necessarily lead directly to disaster and disaster may strike from any number of exogenous factors as well.
{You are here professing that when each crash and fatality takes place: 1) Someone erred in their “calculus” when they entered their vehicle for the purpose of travel . . .}
No, I’m not. See above.
#s 2 & 3 snipped because they make no sense.
{Jimbo, the next time a crash victim dies in your emergency room and all your formulae and statistics tell you, the expert, that the whole thing could have been avoided by exceeding the speed limit, I want you to share your spin with the survivors of the deceased. It might help forward your cause.}
I no longer work in an emergency room, haven’t in over 40 years. Avoiding crashes requires careful attention and a small amount of skill. Strict adherence to an arbitrary limit will not protect you. Formulae and statistics are a tool to help us understand a complex truth, they are not the truth itself.
{In your mind, perhaps. Because people who exceed the posted speed limit do not blaze through red lights as a result of going too fast (yes, SPEEDING, sans your trite quotation marks) to heed the change in status of the intersection. And those all-to-common intersecting collisions would be the fault of those who lawfully enter the intersection under a green light, not the SPEEDER. SPEEDERS never tailgate, blatantly ignoring any notion of reasonable and safe following distance in frantic efforts to catch up to your sanctified “optimum point on the incidence curve” by weaving to and fro, in and out of the “wasted spaces” (see: safe following distance) between other cars. }
That paragraph is very confused. First, you are deliberately conflating “speeding” with violation of red lights, tailgating and weaving. Such tactics are as dishonest now as they were the first time you deliberately conflated speeding with violation of URROW. I use “speeding” in quotes sometimes to amplify the fact that it is the word carelessly used by anti-destination league people. If the quotes are “trite” to you, address your complaint to those who misuse the term.
{I’ve never had to slow down, rather than smoothly and LAWFULLY pass slower (yet still LAWFUL) traffic ahead by using the left lane(s) for the intended purpose, because I have never observed a long progression of overtaking SPEEDERS, bumper-to-bumper, in my mirror prior to merging.}
Again, I have no idea what you’re trying to say.
{And now I’ll attempt to trace your twisted, circular logic as it applies to “ownership” of any lane to the left of the right-most. You do not deny the existence of speed limits; it is the whole reason you are here spewing your self-proclaimed higher understanding and personal path to a utopian system of public roads. Notwithstanding all the posted speed limits, you and SPEEDERS like you point out the “Slower Traffic Keep Right” (STKR) signs and proclaim exclusivity to the left as though the two laws cannot seamlessly coexist. You would have everyone else on the road believe that the law is broken only by anyone occupying a left lane and traveling the posted speed limit or less while lawfully overtaking as soon as a SPEEDER arrives on scene and would otherwise be “impeded”. You hold that the STKR signs direct traffic in left lanes to either break the law or get out of the way so that others may break the law.}
This is proscribed in some states, implied in many more. In Colorado, faster traffic has the ROW to their lane and slower traffic MUST move to the right and allow faster traffic to pass, without regard to the posted limit.
Posed for your consideration: which is more dangerous, a car running 90 mph in the left lane with light to moderate traffic and a 95th percenitle of 88 mph or that same car running 40 mph under the same conditions? How many drivers have to change lanes to go past the impeder compared to the no lane change for the yahoo to stay to the right?
{You state that there is no connection between SPEEDING and URROW because the laws in print do not do you the service of directly connecting the dots for your black and white way of looking at things.}
No, I say that because it is true. URROW preceded speed limits by millennia, going back as far as the Roman Empire.
{And now I must go or I’ll be late because the importance of me is not beyond the law or respect of safety for others. Translated for you: I DO NOT SPEED. Besides, I am thoroughly convinced that you are not capable of meaningful reasoning on the topic at hand.}
If you don’t speed, you’re probably too dangerous to drive on public streets. I suggest that you stay in the very rightmost lane and away from limited access highways. Faux humility aside, whether I’m capable of meaningful reasoning is best left up to the consumers of these fora.
Richard F Jones 1/31/08:
If all three of you were blocking all three lanes the one in the left lane was speeding if the other two were doing the limit. Apparently the police officer intimidated all three of you into signing that ticket. Three tickets, three individual cases. If all three of you were doing the speed limit the one in the middle should have merge right, and the only valid ticket would have been the driver passing all legally driving motorists. If all three of you were doing the speed limit only two citations would have been valid. Speeding, and /or hindering the flow of traffic. I would have loved to have seen all three of you in court tearing down the unethical officers case. Here in the states we need to drive with two or more people in a vehicle so drivers have witnesses to keep the traffic law-enforcement division honest. This is why more jury trials would break these rogue fee collection points. I got a ticket for crossing the street once. I pulled into a parking behind four cars that made an illegal left turn on a divided road. The circumstances were about the same. The police had several cars filling ticket quotas in a Wal-Mart parking lot and I stopped at the stop sign across the street and crossed when traffic was clear. Three cars were stopped at a divider about twenty feet to my left and I went in behind them. I never knew there was a picture sign there with the circle, arrow, and don’t-do-it slash meaning no left turn. I always thought an entrance was made to be entered and I only crossed the street and entered. I worked at that Wal-Mart and after heavy argument with the officer giving me my ticket I went and got the manager ( my boss) and before we could confront these revenue agents in police officer uniforms and vehicles they scurried to their cars and left people who probably deserved their tickets. Some of those who were left standing did not even know why they were pulled over in the lot. I wrote to the courts and Clerk, and people, but I let people know their tickets were part of a quota system and the police officer giving me my ticket was even so rude and obnoxious he said I should consider the ticket given that day as the one I may have missed every time I ignored the sign. I have to go now, but I will admit over the years I never noticed the sign and probably had made that turn in the past. I also admit that I never made that turn unsafely. There is more to that story.
4/14/08: Richard F. Jones Continued from earlier.
Mr. Jones,
I did not contest that ticket, but I should have. I am not an attorney, but what better way would there have been than close to twenty or more witnesses in over a half dozen vehicles in a Wal-Mart parking lot pulled over for illegal left turns when only one was ( Me) protesting he had come across the street and turned only a few degrees left following cars already in an intersection with no oncoming traffic. There was a station across the street I had purchased gasoline from and the officer told me to contest the ticket in court. The week before I contested a ticket in the same area for 62 in a 55 mph on an interstate. It was late at night and I was going home from that same Wal-Mart and thought I had passed the 65 zone heading east because traffic was passing me. That officer was courteous and so I signed his ticket. The fine was $62.50 back then, and the court costs were $61.00. I was found guilty of 62 in a 55 by my own admission, but the judge waived the court cost. I know the waiver was based on my attitude toward the court.
I mentioned this to my Storm-Trooper courteously and told him I could not afford the cost of losing more work. He was so set on giving me that ticket he told me I could bring the cashier, my friend from the station,to court. That was when my anxiety took over. I raised my hands and made sure if he continued to harass me because I refused to sign his ticket the witnesses would see I posed only a verbal threat. Several of the other officers approached and one of them had a hand on his gun and asked if the belligerent officer could “handle it”. DJ were the initials of the Storm Trooper. I read his name tag while he told me he could arrest me and I asked him to. He had no cause to arrest me so we argued law in front of a gathering crowd at Wal-Mart. He said he could hold me in custody for up to eighteen hours and impound my car, charge me for $88.50 tow charges, and storage fees of $10.00 a day until I paid the fees and picked up my car. I became more furious with every threat he made, and finally signed his ticket. I do not remember how much the ticket cost because it was over thirteen years ago, but when I think of how much “we the people” of these United States could do to rein in these rogue-revenue collectors if we collaborated and quit taking the defeatist ” you can’t fight City Hall attitude”. There are one police chief, one captain, and one patrol man less on payroll of a notorious Tennessee speed-trap because about three years ago we went to court because the patrolman refused to post my ticket to the three miles over I was going downhill and told me he had me at 56 mph.I wrote the States AG and never got a response but waived attorneys and demanded a jury trial. I spoke for myself with one of my friends present who was with me when I got the ticket. The judge tried to bluff me into thinking I had to pay costs associated with a change of Venue and costly trial and I tried to show him Tennessee and US Constitutional law as written by website and copied and put in my folder. Since there were witnesses in the courtroom ( those whose cases had not been heard) he dismissed my case with no costs, but too often I have seen blogs on this site where dismissals are given court costs. The judges last statement was What are you so belligerent about, “It is not costing you anything”? I answered ” It cost me forty-three days of agravation and anxiety, several envelopes and stamp costs, thirty-eight miles round-trip gasoline and mileage, but fortunately this court is held at night and I did not miss any work. I did miss my favorite television show because this was scheduled for Tuesday night.
I am hyperactive and have taken anti-anxiety medications since I was a child. I believe I am old enough to be given the respect I give police officers when confronted and accused. When threatened I learned to react with my military training.I do not try to break the law, but I do not submit to the law trying to break me, ” financially or otherwise”.
I remember things vividly and I hope to make people aware that their views are not always 100% correct.
how about in such cases, rare as they are, when the officer “antagonizes” speeding. such as when my fiance and i were driving home on I-90 (NY) headed east from syracuse. it was about 10pm we were keeping up with the flow of traffic until a vehicle approached rather quickly on us and began to tailgate us. having been in the left lane to pass another vehicle we moved into the right lane to allow the “tailgator” to pass at which point the “tailgator” switched lanes also. yes we did increase our speed at that point from 73 to 75 (posted speed 65mph, actual traffic speed 70-75mph) the “tailgator” continued to creep up and increase speed at which point we were very uncomfortable. this continued for about 3 miles our speed reaching 76mph at its highest (we have a digital display dashboard so there are no mixups in speed)well needless to say the second we hit 76mph we saw those blue flashing lights. the whole time the “tailgator” was a state trooper which we did not realize until we saw the lights go on. the trooper argued with us that we were going 81mph, which we knew full well we werent because as we pointed out to the trooper we have digital display dash and cruise control. he then said “well im a nice guy so ill ticket you for 78 in a 65″
yeah real nice guy
Virginia is a nazi state. they are by far, the worst state in the union with their rules. their speed traps are questionable with relation to ethical placement.
i also think that DUI checkpoints are unconstitutional but since we are on their county, state, township or city roads, they get to call the shots.
if you are caught having fun on virginia beach, stop it. you will be disciplined. also, “taxxsylvania” is the second worst. who can speed there with potholes all over the roads.
man, i love florida!
I dont know if anyone else that reads these “posts” might live in colleton county s.c., but I seen wit my own two eyes a colleton county cop sitting in someones FRONT YARD trying to burn somebody with his radar. IN THE YARD not on the side of the road. Thats crooked. My radar detector is worth its weight in gold.
Ive been checking out http://www.dynaspy.com for surveiliance equipment. They got some pretty neat stuff. Somebody was talking earlier on this page about cameras in the car. Thats an excellent idea . Thought of it myself too. I want my own homemade “EDR”.
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Yea, My boss (on my part time job) was pulled and ticketed, I forgot where, but Ill find out. Once returned home, he called the court at the municipality and inquired about his ticket. I think it was $118 and 4 points. They told him they could cut the 4 points and raise the fine to $252.
I think us rednecks call that “reverse bribary”
THATS OUR LAW ENFORCEMENT FOR ‘YA!!!
Law enforcement is hindering our “right to travel” by targeting vehicles with out of state tags. the farther you are from home, the more likely you are to get a ticket – whether you infracted or not.
4/21/08:Pillsbury,
The state regulates the point system in conjuction with the insurance companies. By doubling that fine that was their way of getting more money and not reporting the citation to higher authority for its slice of the pie. This was my argument after a dismissal of a ticket because I researched the practice of ticketing and the unethical practices of traffic law in Tennessee. The judge would not cite me for contempt, but continued to double-talk me when I tried to produce photo-copied documentation of not only the state laws, but the Federal Constitutional Bill of Rights. I believe he did not want people in the court to know they had a right to a trial by jury, and a dismissal left a permanent record without one.I am not an attorney, but I insisted I had the right to waiver my attorney and speak for myself. I wanted the record removed because just because my case was dismissed without cost the actuarial figures for the citation were still on record justifying insurance coverage premiums going up within the district. I talked to my insurance agent on this subject. The only one who could drop, not dismiss, the charges was the accusing officer. He refused to DROP the charge. His refusal cost him his job after a period of time because I remained vocal on the subject of even a hint of favoritism. Guilty I will accept the burden of guilt, but extortion after all these years has made its mark. The land of the free has escalated from taxation to exploitation when it comesz to travel beyond your driveway.