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Automotive News & Views Traffic Laws & Enforcement Tactics
540 messages, Last post on Sep 21, 2009 at 12:22 PM
You are in the Automotive News & Views Forum. Your Hosts are steve_ & claires
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Replying to: ponderpoint (Mar 05, 2007 5:49 pm) You can do it for a while and not get nailed, but you always have to be open to the possibility of getting busted if you choose to speed. I speed on a regular basis, and have gotten a few tickets. Big deal. In the grand scheme of things, with all the things going on in the world, a speeding ticket doesn't even register for me as something to get too worked up about. That doesn't mean that I think our traffic enforcement system is perfect. Far from it. But I see many people overgeneralize with the assumption that every jurisdiction has the same priorities and tactics, when that is not really the case. I do believe that the speed limit posted on many roads and interstates is too low. This has a bad effect on safety in my opinion, since it effectively makes many safe drivers lawbreakers, blurs the line between safe drivers who are exceeding an artifically low speed limit, and people who are a real danger, and generally breeds disrespect for the law. At the same time, when most people are lawbreakers, it becomes politically impossible to really impose meaningful penalties, and this allows truly dangerous drivers off the hook. The most effective deterrent is not punishment by a court, but social sanction. Because it's so common to get tickets for speeds that aren't unsafe, there is little to no social stigma to having been caught speeding. Speeding tickets are things people joke with their friends about. If they carried some social stigma, speeding tickets would be more effective in changing driving behavior, but that won't happen until we change our enforcement policy so that having received a ticket generally means that you have done something dangerous. Still, I don't think it makes sense to hang all our discontent about the current system on the police. It's really the politicians who pass the laws and set enforcement tactics. The police only follow orders. And who elects these politicians? If we want to blame somebody, we should each look in the mirror. Speed enforcement is a good example of the hypocrisy of the general public. Unlike on this forum, most people are not permissive of speeding other than their own. They demand artificially low speed limits to snag people driving in their own neighborhood, then they speed through somebody else's neighborhood, and cry like a little baby when they get nailed. I don't expect perfection from traffic enforcement. I have bigger things to worry about. If I choose to ignore the posted speed limit, which I do pretty much all the time, I'll take the consequences that come my way if I get busted. If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
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Replying to: davv62 (Apr 01, 2007 4:03 am)
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Replying to: gee35coupe (Apr 01, 2007 1:46 pm) What type of driver are you? I assume you like to go fast, and have gotten nailed a few times, like me. It's really not a big deal. Some of my friends have a deal that whenever one of us gets a ticket, the others buy him drinks equal to the value of the fine he has to pay. Last time one of my friends got a ticket, he was joking that he was going to argue for a larger fine in front of the judge..."you really need to fine me more...I haven't learned my lesson"...so he could get more drinks bought for him.
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Replying to: davv62 (Apr 01, 2007 4:02 pm) Good Lord, I was just thinking that with the last ticket I got, that much booze would probably put me in the hospital with alcohol poisoning! Or, at least get me on an episode of "Intevention" 
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Replying to: andre1969 (Apr 01, 2007 5:13 pm) He wasn't really serious of course, but it was pretty funny. My last ticket only ran me $35, so I'd have little trouble drinking that, as long as it wasn't a dive college bar that charges $1 per drink... 
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Replying to: davv62 (Apr 01, 2007 5:31 pm) The ticket I was thinking of when I made that earlier comment though, was about $275. 80 in a 50. I was coming out of one of the Baltimore Harbor tunnels, and somehow managed to get so far in between the packs of traffic that I was the only car visible on the road! I lost track of the speed, and as I rounded a gentle bend and started down a slope, a coppette on the other side of the highway nabbed me. This was one of those areas where the road was nice, wide, and smooth, and that 50 mph speed limit was really artificially low. Oh yeah, I tend to be cheap, so chances are I'd be at a college dive, or happy hour somewhere, so with $275 worth of booze in me, I imagine my next of kin would have to sign on here to let y'all know about funeral arrangements! 
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Replying to: andre1969 (Apr 01, 2007 5:41 pm) Did you go to court on that one, or just mail it in? I imagine going that far to court would be a major PITA. You're right about the other ticket, though. $275 is a kick in the 'nads. When did you get that ticket? Drinking that much worth of liquor would surely land you in the Betty Ford Clinic...  BTW, I had the most fun speeding experience of my life in Maryland a while back. I was driving back from Myrtle Beach (I live in Connecticut) and I had stopped for the night on Saturday in Rockville. My brother was with me and had to be back home early for some reason, so we left at 7AM on Sunday morning. There was nobody on the road, and man, was I flying. There were a few staties out and about, but they were always on the other side of the road, or busy with another driver they had pulled over. I slipped right through. Honestly, the drive was so much fun that even a ticket like you got would have been well worth it.
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Replying to: davv62 (Apr 01, 2007 5:50 pm)  Anyway, they rescheduled that ticket for January, 2006, and made me pre-pay the fine in advance, which I'd get refunded to me if I was found not guilty, so I figured I'd better go down to Emporia on the off chance I could get off with just a fine or whatever, and hopefully keep it off my driving record. No such luck. That place is a speed trap, pure and simple. Just about everybody in the court room was from Maryland or someplace further north, like PA, Joisey, Connecticut, etc. A few days before my court date for the $275 ticket, I pulled my driving record, and saw that the Emporia offense was showing on it. So I figured hey, the court already has my money, and there's no way they'd reduce a ticket like that especially AFTER getting another one, so why waste more money and time by taking off work, just to get the book thrown at me? Rockville's not too far from me, maybe a half hour. U ever get back down this way?
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Replying to: andre1969 (Apr 01, 2007 6:09 pm) Do you get a lot of tickets in general? I get you feeling you drive a good amount, and that puts you at greater risk. I know a few guys who seem to be ticket magnets -- they do pretty much what everyone else does, but always seem to get nailed more often. I haven't been down to Rockville for a few years now, but I always stop there on the way back from Myrtle Beach. I used to go every year, but now it's been a few years. I hope to get back there soon.
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Replying to: davv62 (Apr 02, 2007 3:04 am) Also, I could never prove it, but I think I also got pulled over because of an attempt at racial profiling. I'm white, but have a somewhat dark complexion. And while my hair is a medium brown, for some reason my mustache and goatee grow in black. Anyway, put a baseball cap on me, hiding my hair, and I get mistaken for Latino pretty regularly. Until I open my mouth, I guess, and my slightly southern, rural Maryland drawl comes out! It was almost amusing, when the cop got up close to me, he kind of did a double-take, almost as if to say "OHMYGOD...you're WHITE!!". Anyway, he asked me to consent to a drug search of the car, seeing as I was so far away from my home state and not all that far from the Mexican border. His drug search was haphazard at best, though. Heck, I could've thought of a few dozen good places to hide something, and I'm not even all that imaginative! I was on my way again in something like 20 minutes, with a ticket for $189.75. I hate thinking like this, but I just have a gut feeling that if I was Latino, black, or some other minority, I would've probably been detained a lot longer. Before that, I got a ticket back in August 1999. I was driving a 1989 Gran Fury at the time that was an ex police car, and I remember the speedo read about 56 mph. A cop nabs me in a 50 mph zone, trying to tell me I was doing 69 mph! He ended up writing it up for 67 though. I was miffed, because I was POSITIVE that I was only going 56. For one thing, the car was almost out of gas, so I was limping it to the nearest gas station! In fact, I was so sure that I was right that I took the car to get the speedo checked and recalibrated. Well, imagine my surprise that the speedo really was off! Not quite enough to make 67 mph only register as 56, though. IIRC, according to the printout the shop gave me, I think 60 mph on the speedo was 67 in real life. I do remember 81 was really 90 though, and 91 was really 100. Needless to say, I felt pretty dumb at that point. However, the judge was pretty cool about it, and since I went through the trouble of getting the speedo checked and fixed, he let me change my plea from "guilty with explanation" to "Not guilty". I swear though, ever since that speedo got recalibrated, that car just seemed slow! I used to drive a lot, but moved to about 3.5 miles from work a few years ago, and I don't run around a whole lot anymore. And most of my driving is local/residential these days, where I'm more likely to drive the speed limit.
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