If you frequent a car forum with a lot of fairly young members, you’ve probably seen plenty of threads that ridicule, insult, and otherwise denigrate police officers. Cops, the complainers assert, give ridiculous, stupid tickets. They abuse their authority. And they are rude.
I don’t like getting tickets any more than you, and I’ve run into the occasional testy officer. In general, though, I can’t complain about the way I’ve been treated and the frequency with which I’ve been cited.
On my way home last Friday, for instance, I was pulled over by a State Trooper in my Protégé. He explained that the numbers and the exhaust were suspicious, and that he thought he’d pull me over just to have a look. I told him that I use the Protégé for ice racing, and that the numbers and stickers are required. He checked my license, good-naturedly asked me if I was aware that numbers and loud exhaust would get me pulled over, and sent me on my way.
I have no problem with what the trooper did, even though, by his own admission, he had no actual reason to stop me. Beaten-up cars with numbers and loud exhausts are suspicious, and if I were him I might want to check out my car as well. The trooper was friendly, honest, and polite; aside from the 10 minutes I lost having to sit there, and the initial fear that I might be cited for something, the stop couldn’t have been more pleasant.
Of course, one incident isn’t enough to make an argument that the police are easy on us and that we should thank them every time they write us for 85 when they “know” we were doing 90. But that’s not my argument anyway. The current system is flexible and inexact. As the complainers on forums are quick to whine about, officers can do just about anything they want during a stop. But the forum complainers are quick to forget that that often works in drivers’ favor, as it did for me last weekend.
Further, that flexible system affords all of us the right to contest our tickets (the ones we’re not responsible for and the ones we are responsible for) in court, where a polished appearance and humble presentation are often all that’s necessary to win. When I think about all the tickets I’ve received and successfully fought in court, not to mention all the tickets that I could have received but have not because of the flexibility of the current system, I’m very reluctant to complain about a random pull-over or a ticket for doing 5 or 10 over late at night.
Could our traffic enforcement system and laws be better? Is the current one occasionally unjust, illogical, even unfair? Sure. But the times when the flexibility of the current system has worked for me outnumber the times it has worked against me at least 10 to 1. With those numbers, I’m perfectly happy to play along and work the system.
on June 25, 2008 at 7:53 am Bo wrote:
Bullshit. The numbers are in your favor. You’re an inconspicuous looking white dude. The system works [best] in your favor. The only way you’d have any more of an advantage [over the rest of the population] would be if you grew a set of hooters and learned to cry at will.
on July 17, 2009 at 4:45 am anon wrote:
Speed limits are far outdated and have not been raised on many roads despite newer vehicles being able to stop better and handle better. The system is about revenue.
“Sir, you were going 52 in a 45 mph zone while coasting down a hill with a mile of visibility ahead on a sunny day…I am gonna have to cite you…Speeding is bad MMMkay”
You have some towns where everyone who drives through is getting a ticket even if they are going 5 mph. There have been a lot of absurd abuses of police power to raise revenue.
In some cases Police have dressed up as transvestites and Santa Clause in speeding traps.
The fact is distraction and impairment are the primary cause of road accidents. Low speed limits just encourage people to play with cellphones, text message, eat, fiddle with radios, look out the side window, etc. The slower a person drives the longer it takes them to get somewhere. The fact is attention naturally starts to wander the longer a person is driving for, they become dehydrated, putting along they go into an almost hypnotic state, they become tired, they have to go to the bathroom, etc. If on the highway someone wants to pass you in the fast lane and you are in the slow lane why should it bother you? The slower traffic moves the worse traffic congestion becomes.
The speed limits are set lower than the prevailing speed of traffic so that when you have someone who drives in the state approved manner suddenly thirty cars are tailgating each other at a foot.
Slow speed limits make people think they drive when sleep deprived or drunk. “Oh the speed limit is so slow I can drive even messed up, don’t worry.”
A couple of speeding tickets and an insurer can raise your rates above that of a drunk driver or drop your coverage all together.
We live in a world where 80% of drivers cannot be bothered to use a turn signal; something that is clearly dangerous when other traffic is around. Maybe the police could concern themselves more with that than someone coasting down a hill.
The fact is a safe speed depends a lot on the vehicle and the driver. A sports bike driven at 150 mph by a good rider is going to be able to out-brake a fully loaded tractor trailer that is going 80 mph.
Speed limits are more about mass hysteria and some kind of resentment that other people harbor towards anyone that is going faster than them to get somewhere.
Driving is a series of judgments and speed limits only give people the illusion of safety. I would rather drivers be encouraged to drive a speed they can drive competently at given the road conditions at hand.
Not to mention risk tolerances vary. Different people have different types of personalities. I personally would rather have an aggressive driver pass me rather than tailgate me at a foot.
Someone who has a long commute from a rural area may want to drive faster than someone that is going 5 miles down the road.
Slow speed limits encourage people to drive behemoth SUVs and trucks that don’t handle well. They tend to rollover guardrails. They tend to kill people in cars due to stiff front ends and high bumper heights.
Speed limits are set so low that people have pointed guns at me for driving them.
If safety was the primary concern a lot of older drivers would be retested and taken off the road. Many cannot even check their blindspots due to a poor range of motion in their necks.
I talk to people all the time who think they don’t need to get their brakes fixed because in their words traffic is not going that fast or that speed limits are low, it is not that big of a deal they say.
One speeding ticket will often raise your rates by about $600 over three years plus the $120 the ticket costs. That is money that could have gone to replacing the worn struts on your car; a safety improvement.
Going to traffic court is a major pain in the ass. You are often left waiting all afternoon for your case to be heard on a workday. You may have to drive across the state to the hearing. A lot of justices have little to no legal training and side with the police no matter what.
Now I am not encouraging anyone to drive 140 mph around blind turns on crowded streets, but I think the focus on speeding as a safety hazard is far exaggerated.
If you doubled the speed limits I doubt there would be any significant increase in the carnage on the roads. When highway speed limits went up from 55 to 65-85mph fatalities actual went down.
People who talk on a cellphone while blocking the fast lane appear far dangerous to me than someone driving alertly and a little fast. I see people driving with a foot out the window. I see people applying makeup and reading the newspaper while attempting to drive. I see people driving down both lanes of the road in their giant SUVs/pickups.
The fact is inattention adds far more emergency braking distance than speeding, in the vast majority of cases. I would rather people drive fast and alert than slow and distracted.
Around here the police have resorted to writing tickets for such abstract things as exiting the highway fast without measuring your speed. I had one cop sit a quarter of a mile away from the road and say he timed me with VASCAR/stopwatch based on shadows on the road. Another cop said he saw me pass a car on the highway and so I must have been speeding; wrote a ticket. Another ticket was at night with VASCAR/stopwatch where the cop sat far back from the road (200ft) and said he could see my headlights pass the small white nonreflective markers painted within 20 ft together on the road. The cops have also used ENRADD devices to pull over strings of 20 vehicles and write tickets to all of them.
When traffic is dense on the highway I am the first person to hang back and leave space in the slow lane. I watch as other people pull off dangerous stunts cutting off traffic within inches nearly causing pileups to get home 15 seconds faster while talking on cellphones during rush hour. Yet I am vilified by the police for coasting down a hill to save some gas on a nice day with no traffic. A safe speed is entirely dependent on traffic, your vehicle, your driving ability/experience, your alertness, road hazards, and the weather.
Cops do not want to waste time patrolling for traffic infractions that might actually be dangerous. It uses more gas and more of their time. So they prefer to write a bunch of easy tickets for speeding.
We have a system where the points for blowing through a stoplight in a crowded intersection are the same as the point for driving 6 mph over the speed limit. The system does not reflect the reality of the dangers on the roadway.
Auto insurance companies make almost double the profits that health insurers make thanks in large part to absurdly low speed limits. The system is a racket and highway robbery. It is collusion between the state and major corporations to interfere with the ability of citizens to travel freely.
In my state two speeding tickets within a year for driving 6 MILES PER HOUR over the speed limit is enough to suspend your license and double your insurance premium. You can lose your license at any time for driving with the flow of traffic.
If you do not pull over right away when the cops go to pull you over for speeding you can be charged with felony evasion totally at the discretion of the police officer. A friend of mine was doing about 90 mph and elected to pull over in a parking lot three miles up the road rather than on the nonexistent curb. The small town police officer charged him with felony evasion; he was in jail for three weeks before they dropped the charge.
The fact people do not get is there is thin line between the police and criminals. The police have the law on their side and do not think for a moment that sociopaths do not gravitate to law enforcement careers. Speed limits set absurdly low just give the police an excuse to pull over any car they want for any malicious reason they want.