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matt87 Unregistered guest | Have you people just thought about obiding traffic laws and not speeding? It makes much more sense doesnt really, im sure that most responsible people will agree with me here. |
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Gold Member Username: GlasswolfNorthWest, Michigan USA Post Number: 5963 Registered: Dec-03 | In my case, I don't so much speed purposely, as I forget to check my speed at times, or keep up with traffic instead of sticking right at say 55MPH. In these cases it's easy to get nabbed with speedtraps over hills, or in places like urban areas where tehy change speed limits constantly just to set traps. (yes it happens, a lot in country towns.) On top of that, modern higher end units also alert you to traffic work ahead so you have time to slow and change lanes if there's shoulder work ahead on a freeway. That's a terrific feature in my opinion. Especially in MI here where road construction is nearly constant. |
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Anonymous | I agree with glass on this one...i just got my liscence back and can not afford a ticket because i will loose it again so i tend to watch my speed pretty carefully, and i still catch myself speeding sometimes on accident, and i live in a rural area where they like to drop the speed limit from 55 to say 35 in a heart beat! |
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not a nice guy Unregistered guest | we shouldn't have to "watch our speed" it's all just a gimmic to get more money out of the tax payer. more accidents are caused by people doing attempting to multitask,( talking on a cell phone, playing with the radio, sending text messages, anything except for paying attention to the road) when they can't. Germany has the autobahn, no speed limit, and very few speeding accidents i'll bet think about it. if speeding was such an issue. why do they make cars with a 120mph+ top end available to everyone? why not just build governers into the cars computers limiting the cars speed? because they want you to speed so they can hit you with some rediculus ticket. next time you get a ticket for speeding, tell the officer he should be happy because you just paid his salary for the day. here's the REAL idea, maybe cops should be out tracking down criminals or arresting people commiting crimes instead of sitting on the side of the road, wasting gas our tax money pays for, and watching a radar gun. |
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Anonymous | "if speeding was such an issue. why do they make cars with a 120mph+ top end available to everyone? " They make these things called race tracks where you can take your car and play with them in a controlled environment where you wont kill someone else. Just because you havnt had a major wreck yet doesnt mean you wont. Thats like saying I drink and drive all the time. I never killed anyone, why should they make it illegal. "Germany has the autobahn, no speed limit, and very few speeding accidents i'll bet " Yes nobody tries to multitask in Germany. Germany also has much less traffic congestion thanks to lots of mass transit, extremely high fuel prices, etc. I'll admit that the system could be revised a tad, but as a driver you have the responsibility of maintaining a resonable speed such that you dont kill yourself, and anyone else who might be unlucky enough to be around. If you dont notice the sign saying the speed limit is changing, what else might you miss? Maybe one day it will be a child that runs into the street in his neighborhood while youre hauling at 50mph. |
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Luv2Drive Unregistered guest | *RANT WARNING* Sub-warning: I'm a U.S. citizen, and my opinions are limited to conditions within US borders. I'm too ignorant of non-US driving conditions to comment intelligently on them. Speed limits are an arbitrary, artificial, and easily abused method for controlling the flow of traffic and keeping it within safe limits. They can do some good, but are far from being an effective general panacaea. The speed difference between two vehicles passing on a road *is* important. But the absolute speed of any given vehicle is a non-issue, if the driver is driving safely, carefully, and has good training. Nobody should have to "watch their speed" as a normal part of highway travel. Distracting drivers with the omnipresent threat of random enforcement of an artificial legal hazard is counter-productive, and actually can be downright dangerous. Provoking fear and anger in drivers who see cops on the roadways is the opposite emotional result we should be striving for. And just from a philosophical point of view, this (the USA) is supposed to be a free, libertarian society - illogical and artifical limits on one's behavior, enforced by "the government" against the obvious general will of the people, is anathema to American principles. Speed itself is not a killer. Cars can be made safely enough to withstand accidents at very, very high speeds without much danger to the driver (how many racing accidents have you seen where the driver walks away from a 150+ mph crash seconds after the car comes to rest?), and should be if the driver expects to be travelling at high speeds. Yet we have no laws requiring higher levels of safety equipment, safety training, or safety procedures for higher speeds. Drivers can be trained to recover a car that is getting out of control. Yet most drivers on the road don't have any training on recovering a car that has lost traction, and true understanding of the physical limits of a vehicle's abilities is laughably rare. Drivers *could* be pulled over for more serious infractions, like not paying attention to the road, blocking the flow of traffic, behaving erratically (changing speed a lot, dodging in and out of traffic, cutting people off, etc.). But usually they're not. The real killer is lack of training. Nowhere in the mandatory driver education is there any attention paid to teaching people how to recover traction, prevent or avoid dangerous traction situations, what hydroplaning or sliding feel like, or what a car's actual capabilities are (which varies by car, obviously). In an emergency situation, human beings will do only what they have been trained to do. You have to train someone pretty intensely to get them to do the right thing when there is no time to think about it. This fact is understood very well by trainers of pilots, military personnel, firefighters, police, and others expected to encounter emergencies. Yet, as a society we don't spend any amount of legal effort or money requiring such training for car drivers, and we have millions of them piloting deadly lumps of mass at high speeds around our roads every day. People die because in an emergency sitation, they do the wrong things - lock the brakes, steer the wrong way, increase the skid, completely lose control.... etc. People have accidents because they make mistakes they haven't been trained well enough to avoid - following too closely, not looking far enough ahead, failing to prepare for upcoming hazards, failing to *recognize* hazards, insufficient awareness of the surroundings. Intensive training could go a long way toward fixing these things, at least among the average (non-hooligan) drivers. Instead, we have a lot of self-righteous pansies who carp endlessly about how "speed kills" and "speeders are a menace". Speed isn't the problem. If we had proper training and an educated respect for the laws of physics, we could all safely drive around at any speed our cars will do (well over 100 MPH on many roads) and still maintain a lower accident rate, lower fatality rate, and keep our insurance and tax costs lower. Having said that... speed limits are perfectly logical in places where living creatures (children, pedestrians, pets, road workers, emergency personnel, etc.) with a speed near zero are in vulnerable proximity to the roadway. School zones, residential neighborhoods, and construction zones are excellent places to enforce a low speed limit. But on high-speed, limited access highways... speed limits are an illogical solution to an ill-understood problem. Our current system of artificial speed limits with random ambush enforcement is a silly game played by the citizenry, law enforcement agencies, insurance companies, and the courts, and it's a ridiculous waste of time, money, and energy. |
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Unregistered guest | Here in Michigan, these traffic laws are just a way to make money. Now you have to pay "Driver Responsibility Fees" on top of the fines and insurance. To me, this DOES NOT protect anyone....It is just a way to make more money to buy more pigs to write more tickets. One of these days someone is going to put a stop to this Un-American Police Scam and make them do what they are supposed to do: Catch criminals!!! Like the "not a nice guy" reader posted on here; there are real criminals out there getting away: part of this is because there are 2-3 cop cars present to write one guy a seat belt ticket. Crimes go unsolved, and are not even properly investigated everyday because of a lack of REAL policework. The guy with the 'rant warning" (luv2drive) had some very intellignet comments about the futility of some of our speeding laws. And Matt87, you must be an uninformed, pretentious jackass to say "you people" should just not speed: They are called Speed TRAPS for a reason.....You don't mean to fall into a trap: thousands of "responsible people" are harassed with pointless tickets everyday in this corrupt to the bone country (you jackass). |
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Dustin - Seattle, WA Unregistered guest | wow! This is exactly what I have been looking for, this is how I have felt but have just been unable to put in to words that would make senses to others. I feel like in America the police mostly just harass the citizens. I really noticed this after I spent three weeks in Uganda. The police there were at first a little scary because they walk around with AKs and other guns you don't see on a day-to-day bases in America, but after I got over the gun thing they were really nice and really helpful. They were there to serve and protect not try to raise money for the government. Example: One of the laws in Uganda is you can not take any pictures of the police or military, but I wanted a picture of them. So I walked up to one of there trucks and asked if I could take there picture, not only did they say yes but they had me get in the truck and have someone else take my picture with them! <img> Note: This was two years ago and I have since found a gym ;-) |
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Dustin - Seattle, WA Unregistered guest | My pic did not show? http://img503.imageshack.us/img503/9499/me5vk.jpg |
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New member Username: CumileoPost Number: 1 Registered: Jan-06 | Anyone ever herd of "Speed studies"? Speed studies are supposed to be done on all American roads per Jurisprudence (the law)! That's right every municipality is supposed to do speed studies on roads where traffic flow is known to exceed the posted limit (that would be, wherever the most tickets are written of course) to determine if the speed limit needs to be raised in any one area, and the traffic flow is suppose to dictate the speed limit where ever it is deemed to not interfere with the safety concerns of the neighborhood, through witch the traffic is traveling The federal law states that, at whatever 80% of the traffic is moving 80% of the time in any 24 hr period that should be the posted speed! But no-one in your states government will adhere to this law because too many are making too much money! That is the truth about all this! No sensible person goes through a residential community at more than 10 or 15 miles over the posted speed, or where traffic is heavy for, whatever reason, and if so that person should be stopped and fined! No sensible person goes faster than there able to, in their vehicle, maintain a single lane of travel, and if they do, they should be stopped! But we also need "Road reform!" Each travel lane, wherever it is, should be tagged with a speed rating based on the position of the lane and its access or lack thereof and given its own speed limit! And the posted speed should be painted on the road just like all the arrow and lines! It's cheaper than signs and it would be way more visible. Give tailgaters tickets and then ticket people that impede the flow of traffic! Hell that's already illegal just starts enforcing it! But none of this will ever be done no mater who thinks it's good or who thinks it's bad! It won't even come up for debate in a forum where change can even be talked about because everyone that can make a change has a reason not to. And most or all of the reasons involves self righteousness or just pure greed! Congressmen are saying "The present system works!" because they know what a large revenue base is generated by that system! The average Joe Blow says "The systems not the problem it's all you speed demons, why can't you just slow down and drive like me" I say to the latter "F--K You aswipe!" "Get out of my way and you won't have to worry about me running into you! The bottom line is that we all need to come together on the real issues and stop allowing the people who are never in danger of being fined and loosing a weeks pay for speeding anywhere at any time! Like Troopers who are always in their patrol cars and judges who can just go into the court house pull the ticket from the file where there kept and destroy it. Actually any officer can do that. My uncle is a cop so this I know first hand. Incidentally, have you ever seen a patrol vehicle of any kind stopped on the side of the road getting a ticket from another officer? Enough said for now! Anyone else has any slants on all this. Email me at cumileo@yahoo.co Also, I have a 13MB clip that I recorded from TV 12 in West Palm beach about a speed trap study done in Boca Raton (city of the rat) Florida that I would be glad to send too anyone interested. |
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New member Username: CumileoPost Number: 2 Registered: Jan-06 | Here is more realtime information on the subject of speed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limit#85th_percentile_rule http://www.motorists.org/ |