We Are All Criminals – or – Why I Hate Traffic Cops

http://enmaku.wordpress.com/2011/11/22/we-are-all-criminals-or-why-i-hate-traffic-cops/

by enmaku • 15 years ago

67 87 15 years ago

enmaku.wordpress.com

ck22• 15 years ago

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.

po• 15 years ago

This sort of touches on my main dislike of speeding tickets. It is basically the definition of a police-state. In a police state, all of the citizens are always breaking the law. It is therefore up to the police to selectively enforce the rules on those that they deem deserve punishment.

I grew up in Northern New Jersey where 'racial profiling' was a big problem. But really the main issue was that everyone on the NJ Turnpike is driving 70-80 MPH every day. The posted speed limits are a joke. I was passed by a patrol car while I was doing 85 once. If I had been suspicious (i.e. african american), I might have been pulled over.

Moreover, I think it teaches a bad lesson about law enforcement: everyone is doing it and it's only a crime if you get caught.

darklajid7• 15 years ago

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?

buff-a• 15 years ago

http://articles.cnn.com/2011-10-11/tech/tech_mobile_californ...

California Gov. Jerry Brown has vetoed a bill that would have prohibited police in that state from conducting warrantless searches of the cell phones of people under arrest.

"This measure would overturn a California Supreme Court decision that held that police officers can lawfully search the cell phones of people who they arrest," the governor's brief statement said. "The courts are better suited to resolve the complex and case-specific issues relating to constitutional search-and-seizures protections."

The courts said "there's no law against, so its ok". So California made a law against it. So the governor vetoed it because the courts had said it was ok. Police state much?

ck22• 15 years ago

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?

yardie• 15 years ago

Yes and yes.

Once they pull you over some people are bothered more by the inconvenience of being pulled over than they are by the rights they give up. One of my friends allowed the police to search his car because he didn't want to wait for the drug dog. He got out of the ticket by cooperating, but what if they said they found something?

By not cooperating I got a range of tickets: live in this city but don't have a city parking sticker, don't have a safety inspection sticker, have the wrong type of insurance coverage. This was after the original reason he pulled me over (not speeding) didn't pan out. All of this because I wouldn't allow him search my car without a warrant.

Also, different states have different interpretations on cellphone contents. California, (normally quite liberal) just has a shitty interpretation of the law.

matwood• 15 years ago

You've obviously never been harassed by the police. I was driving home from a late night study session in college and was pulled over. I was completely sober, and knew I had done nothing improper. The cop told me I touched the white line and I told him no I didn't. Then he proceeded to interrogate me about where I had been, where I was going, etc... After a few minutes of this charade I told him either write me a ticket for something I didn't do or let me go because I needed to get to sleep for an exam the next day. He then told me that he could keep there all night while waiting for a warrant to search my car, so I might as well let him search it.

At this point, I really needed to get this done with so told him to get ahead. I had a small cab pickup truck at the time and figured this shouldn't take too long. Him and his partner then took all of my stuff out of my car and placed it on the hood. They found a small pocket knife under my seat and tried to make a big deal about 'you said there were no weapons'. Yeah, okay. So, after all that and almost 2 hours of my time they got in their car and drove off leaving me to clean up all my stuff in the dark that's now sitting on the hood of my car.

This incident (and yes, I have others) happened over 10 years ago, and it's apparently only gotten worse. So yes, what was said is a reality.

danssig• 15 years ago

Actually the cameras are much better. If nothing else, it removes the need for about 80% of the police force in most places.

mikeash6• 15 years ago

Doesn't the shift to speed cameras undermine your theory that speeding tickets exist mainly to allow randomly searching people? The police don't get to check your stuff when a machine sends you a ticket in the mail, after all.

I'm pretty sure you have as much right to contest a speed camera ticket as any other ticket. Most people don't try, but that's a different matter.

ajays• 15 years ago

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• 15 years ago

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

babebridou2• 15 years ago

> 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.

cjdavis• 15 years ago

His first population based result - "If each <truly awful crime> had one perpetrator we’d be talking about 3.3% of the population" - uses the correct population. After that he's using 208.

darklajid7• 15 years ago

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• 15 years ago

> 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.

darklajid7• 15 years ago

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.

arnoooooo4• 15 years ago

You're completely ignoring the fact that most everybody thinks they're the next Ayrton Senna, and that people are very bad at estimating risks.

skrebbel• 15 years ago

...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.

Hah! That was me you were braking for.

Never realised that that's dangerous. Thanks for the heads-up!

mikeash6• 15 years ago

As a compromise, how about setting speed limits based on safety rather than revenue? If a particular stretch of highway can support 80MPH, set the limit to 80. If the difference from the current limit is large, the change could be made gradually.

I don't think speed limits are a problem per se, the problem is that they're not set rationally. How many roads have you seen where traffic flows 10MPH above the limit? It happens all over the place here, and it's a sure sign that the limit is improperly set.

arethuza2• 15 years ago

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

darklajid7• 15 years ago

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.

arethuza2• 15 years ago

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.

neutronicus2• 15 years ago

It's exactly the same for me.

I just tool along in the right lane at 5 mph under the limit (US) and all the traffic passes me on the left. I pretty much never have to react to anything, since everything in front of me is moving away from me. I set my cruise control at what I've read is the optimum speed for fuel economy on my car, and I feel like I use 2/3 as much gas.

runningdogx• 15 years ago

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• 15 years ago

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.

davekinkead3• 15 years ago

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.

brey• 15 years ago

some truly bad reasoning in the article.

using that logic, slavery was just fine, because a large percentage of the population at the time owned or profited from slaves.

darklajid7• 15 years ago

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.

davekinkead3• 15 years ago

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)

Djehngo• 15 years ago

I think the idea that a law which criminalises a majority of the population is invalid stems from the following logic:

1. Governments are supposed to represent the will of people 2. People would not want a law which criminalises them 3. By 1. and 2. any law which criminalises the majority would be rejected by a perfectly efficient government (where efficiency being the minimisation of overall dissatisfaction with the legal state)

I am not sure I agree 100% with 1 or 2 (Self interest and tragedy of the commons poke slight holes in each)

However the notion of a country where 51%+ of the people commonly committed murder is so far removed from our cultural norms it's a baseless comparison.

padobson• 15 years ago

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://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.

babebridou2• 15 years ago

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.

Newgy• 15 years ago

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.

arnoooooo4• 15 years ago

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.

weff3• 15 years ago

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• 15 years ago

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.

tintin• 15 years ago

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.

Symmetry3• 15 years ago

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...

mikeash6• 15 years ago

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?

Symmetry3• 15 years ago

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.

DanielStraight2• 15 years ago

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.

tibbon4• 15 years ago

I wholeheartedly support the idea of increasing the standards for driving skill, training and ability. I've heard in Norway/Sweden that you have to spend a large amount of time and money training specifically for night driving, snow driving, standard driving, etc.

I know in most European countries getting a motorcycle license is far more difficult, expensive and restricting than in the US. Consequently, I bet they are more skilled drivers.

I've been in the car with so many people in the US that say they know how to (and are licensed to) drive, but yet clearly don't know how to drive. They are unaware of the most basic mechanics of how the car actually moves. The terms oversteer and understeer are completely foreign to them. They probably don't even know if their vehicle is front or rear wheel drive. And of course most couldn't parallel park if the street was empty.

Yet with the way we've architected America (huge and sprawling), everyone feels entitled and required to have a car. I moved to Ohio about a year ago, and apparently there's laws here that allow even 13 and 14 year olds to drive if no one else in the family can. I'm guessing in most countries the response wouldn't be to give a kid a license, but to say, "move to a city" or "here's some public transit". On the flip side, there are clearly many elderly that shouldn't be driving. Driving should be something you have to test for every few years, and that you're expected to always get better results on the test.

mattmanser2• 15 years ago

What is your population density of the US compared to the UK for example? So how do you think that affects the average number of cars on the road that you will pass on your average commute? Do you think passing more cars increases or decreases your chance of death? Do you need more or less skill? How much of American towns, suburbs and cities were built before or after the introduction of cars? Were they designed to handle cars and not have really windy roads? Note that you said it, 'huge and sprawling'.

Do you need to be taught snow driving, will there be snow on the road for 6 months a year?

Is it more or less likely that you're going to be driving on a winding mountainous road or a big open freeway?

You can't compare driving in different countries or even in different states in the US as the skill needed and problems are different.

neutronicus2• 15 years ago

    Second, I think most American drivers are reckless.

I'd stay away from Latin America if I were you, then.

I feel like your "solution" is mostly just making a moral point, and doesn't accurately reflect the amount of risk the voting public finds acceptable.

generalk2• 15 years ago

  > 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_v2• 15 years ago

"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?

viraptor• 15 years ago

> My city can't even operate a municipal bus service properly, and that's at current revenue levels.

If enough people switch to public transport, they're going to have to pay for it / fund it.

DanielStraight2• 15 years ago

I called out Americans specifically because the author of the post dealt specifically with Americans.

As for backing up the claim that average driving isn't safe: average driving is, by definition, how people in general drive. How people in general drive causes something like 30k fatal accidents a year. For comparison, there were zero U.S. airline fatalities in 2010. I've pulled stats before (I can dig for them if you want) that show that public ground transportation has something like a tenth the deaths of personal cars. The amount of needless deaths in the U.S. can probably be reduced by about 27k a year by improving transport safety. I think that's worth trying for. (I will agree that it is possible that all or most traffic accidents are caused by a small fraction of drivers, which would basically nullify my point about average drivers, but I have never seen any reports to this effect.)

Removing drivers removes a source of revenue but charging more for a license adds one. Public transportation also adds a source of revenue at the same time as it adds costs (ideally the system would eventually break even). I'm not saying I've run the numbers. The point is just that public transportation isn't just a money sink. It's also a source.

freehunter2• 15 years ago

>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.

Fines are as legitimate of a revenue source as lawsuits are. I'd rather not have our government be Righthaven. The idea of "we need more money, so start giving out more tickets than you normally would" is not a good solution.

mikeash6• 15 years ago

I'm a little confused. I agree that these various types of bad driving are difficult to enforce, but how does that justify the massive over enforcement of speed limits?

quanticle2• 15 years ago

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

Really? I think American drivers are amongst the least reckless in the world. If you want to see reckless driving, go to India, Brazil, or even places in southern Europe, like Italy or Greece.

roel_v2• 15 years ago

I think he was talking in absolute terms, not relative. It's not because somebody is worse, that that person is good (or just 'not bad').

To take an extreme analogy: if I beat my wife daily, and my neighbor twice a day, does that make my behavior OK?

bh42222• 15 years ago

Go to Germany and American drivers are super reckless.

colanderman• 15 years ago

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.

cq• 15 years ago

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

jfruh• 15 years ago

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.

reduxredacted• 15 years ago

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.

JamisonM• 15 years ago

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.

crikli• 15 years ago

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

tibbon4• 15 years ago

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.

arnoooooo4• 15 years ago

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.

tibbon4• 15 years ago

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

http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,448747,00...

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• 15 years ago

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.

dahjelle• 15 years ago

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.)

We Are All Criminals – or – Why I Hate Traffic Cops

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