What it means is that if you are the guy going 55 in the number 2 lane (Number 1 lane being the fast, or passing lane) in a 5 lane 65mph zone and the rest of the traffic is going 70, YOU are the traffic hazard. It's common sense advice, without coming right out and saying that you can break the speed laws under the right circumstances.Originally posted by horseback:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Ba5tard5word:
When I looked at the California Driver's Handbook or whatever a few years ago, one of the cardinal rules it listed was "drive as fast as it is safe to drive." WTF is that even supposed to mean? Very ambiguous but I think it's a vestige of California being a lawless frontier state...CA is pretty "civilized" these days but you see these types of things here and there in the laws and in other aspects of California life.
However, I haven't heard of that particular rule being enforced since 1985 (my Chinese ex-sister in law got the ticket), but it is a valid one IMHO.
cheers
horseback </div></BLOCKQUOTE>
How about drive as fast as is humanly possible.![]()
Brems, it used to be that the individual states set a general set of guidelines that the counties and municipal governments had to follow, the reasoning being that the federal government had more important things to do than worry about speed limits or traffic rules beyond agreeing that we would all drive on the right hand side of the road and things that affected inter state commerce and travel.Originally posted by Bremspropeller:
Fines for jaywalking? WTF?
GTA, in which way are fines based on overspeed in the US? Does every county have it's own speeding-catalogue?
We do have fixed fins based on a federal point and fine catalogue.
Thus, a state which had mainly winding mountain roads with dense forests or woods lining them between dozens of small communities might have stricter rules about speed limits than a desert state with a widely distributed population and long straight roads with next to no obscuring vegetation.
Certainly the states east of the Rocky Mountains were pretty heavily settled before automobiles became available to the average citizen, which led to more generally restrictive laws there; the western US' population had to limit itself to where they could find water, which means that there are looong stretches of hot, dry nothing cold dry nothing, and sometimes big piles of rocks and evergreens.
Obviously, they developed a different attitude about about what is the proper way to drive, with less population density and long distances between cities and towns.
Since the first fuel crisis back in 1973, the federal government has been more heavy-handed. The Congress started with the national speed limit in 1973, limiting everyone everywhere to 55 mph (approx 90kph), and using the federal highway tax monies to enforce individual states' compliance with federal suggestions; since federal taxes on gasoline are based on how much fuel you buy, people in every state contirbute to those funds, which are supposed to support the national road system, with the funds distributed to all states to maintain their roads (thus, Hawaii and Alaska, which do not share borders with any of the other states, still have Interstate Highways). States that balked at following federal rules were subject to losing those funds.
Now, most counties and towns are able to set speed limits well below the state/federal limits, sometimes because people driving through on the main highway are actually using the town's main street and won't slow down otherwise. This is particularly true in rural areas, where there are no Interstate freeways, and the state and county don't have the funds to create multilane throughways every 5-10 kilometers. In other cases, the town's authorities may look on outsiders as primarily a source of funds, and they tend to enforce traffic rules on one level for the locals and another for outsiders.
Even then, a town bisected by a highway has to cough up the money to build bridges across these throughways; there's a small town north of me called Murrietta that is right on top of the I-15/I-215 split; these two highways divide the town into three parts, and the main roads needed two bridges each at millions of dollars to build. That's a huge expense for a small town of less than 100,000 (and it may be less than 75K people there).
They need to get the money somewhere, and the taxpayers in a democracy can be a bit cranky about even necessary funding out of their own pockets. What's a city council to do?
Federal rules don't cover things like jaywalking, which is (usually) the product of pedestrians wandering out into the streets and disobeying the commonsense rules.
cheers
horseback
It isn't going to help alot of people on this forums, buuuuuut: I know in California that if you are in a county other than the one of your residence, you can, when you are being ticketed in the first place, have the trail/appearance moved to YOUR county of residence, and the citing officer is required to appear ON HIS DAY OFF.
I don't remember the exact procedure for doing it (looking it up now), but I know several people that have either gotten out of tickets that way, or plead not guilty and had the cop never show up.
Absolutely. Whenever I drive through MA on I-91, I put it on cruise control at 65. MA is notorious for meeting quotas. They'll get you for anything. When driving north at 3 in the morning, it's routine to see traffic stops on the shoulder every few miles.Originally posted by horseback:
As I recall, GTA, you're over there on the upper Right Coast, so I would come down on the revenue issue as the prime cause, since you folks never had realistic state speed regulations.
My state isn't quite that bad, but it's bad enough. Officially, quotas are against the policy. But everybody realized that is BS after a police memo was leaked to the media a few years ago.
As for your story, I can relate to a degree. I've been on the highways of Montana. It was routine to drive for an hour without seeing another car, yet I still saw speed traps. And that from the state that used to have no speed limit.
Cops have become less about law enforcement and more about being a stream of alternate revenue for their town/county/state.
True dat. I can assure you that this behaviour isn't limited to within US borders, though.Cops have become less about law enforcement and more about being a stream of alternate revenue for their town/county/state.
Especially the poorer states of Germany will have speedtraps hidden at lucrative spots, as opposed to placing them at places of danger.
I've noticed the same thing, and it's ridiculous.Originally posted by Bremspropeller:
True dat. I can assure you that this behaviour isn't limited to within US borders, though.
Especially the poorer states of Germany will have speedtraps hidden at lucrative spots, as opposed to placing them at places of danger.
I'd really like to see the police divorced from traffic enforcement. There should be a separate entity that handles it. Police have more important things to deal with, and besides, I would imagine that giving people power and then turning them lose on an incredibly tedious job has unintended social consequences. Not only are they encouraged to wield that power excessively (through quotas, sheer boredom, etc.,) it puts them into an adversarial role with the very people they're supposed to be serving.
Of course, if anything, I'm sure the British nanny state model will be adopted here: traffic cameras every 20 feet or so. That way the state can be absolutely certain to fine you every time you are 1 over the speed limit. The roads will be so much safer.![]()