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Comment by Retric | Hacker News Reader

http://fightyourspeedingticket.com/fifty-miles-over-the-post...

Speeding often has surprisingly low fines. Get caught doing 115 in a 65 mph area in Florida. That's ~1,000$ for a first offence. Second time they revoke your license for a year and more than double the fine, next they revoke it for 10 years and charge you 5k.

But, first time around it's kind of meh, IMO. Of course you will probably also get reckless driving which is stiffer. http://www.leg.state.fl.us/Statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Displ...

Considering the high risk of killing someone you would think the could come up with a better deterrent.

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My cousin when he was a teenager in Minnesota got a reckless/careless driving offense when he was speeding in his new Camero around the Mall going 80MPH. He lost his license for a year, had to pay a 2K fine, had to go to a defensive driving school course and then had some 50 hours of community service to do on top of it all. He's uncle has repeatedly said he would have been better off just getting a DUI. My uncle maintains the judge was the "hanging" judge type and my cousin's other two speeding tickets didn't help him much.

The funny thing is, he never got so much as a jay walking ticket after that, so the punishment definitely straightened him out.

A DUI would have likely been an additional $8000 in fines and an additional class(es) with MADD hammering home the potential effects of drunk driving.

I think it's a lot easier to play off speeding as a youthful indiscretion than drunk driving, as well.

Here in Ontario there are big signs on the highways that say if you're caught driving more than 50 kph (~30 mph) over the speed limit they take your license and your car (!) right there by the side of the road.

That's news to me! Admittedly, I haven't been on a highway in Ontario in ~2 years, but I definitely never saw signs like that then (of course, I definitely saw people exceeding the speed limit by 50kph on more than one occasion, and given how quickly my uncle made it to my grandparents' house in Ontario the last time he headed over from Montreal, I suspect he may have too ;).

- Canadian raised in the US, spent a fair amount of time in Canada

It's relatively recent, to crack down on ridiculous speeders and racers. Honestly those people deserve the book thrown at them.

Going 50km over is an instant roadside suspension and a $2,000 - $10,000 fine.

I've always wondered why production cars for road use can ever go over 100 mph. Put a governor at 65 mph and you never have to both enforcing speeding tickets again. I'm not advocating for this, but if it's so bad they will take away your ability to drive over it why not limit it mechanically?

Because fines provide revenue?

There are actually places in the US where the speed limit is 80 and 85. That's not 100, but it's quite a bit more than 65.

I was not aware. I make the same case with 85 as I did 65. Throw in a GPS and you could make the distinction.

Then in 10 years, someone, somewhere decides that 90 is acceptable on a specific road. Now all cars with limiters need to be modified. Want to be able to change it remotely? Now you add an attack vector. Throw in a GPS? Now you're asking for additional government monitoring that is mandatory and might be (will be) used for spying purposes.

You could design a GPS speed limiter that doesn't track location, TomTom's had an "overspeed" warning 10 years ago, it would go orange if you went over the speed limit and go red and make a bong noise if you went way over, My old boss used to drive fast so I saw that quite a lot (in the end I told him I wouldn't share a car with him if he didn't stick to the speed limit).

Nissan GT-R's have (at least in Japan, where it is as far as I know mandatory, not sure if they are removed in international sales) limiters that deactivate when they are on a white-listed race track.

Speed limit on the highway by my house is 70. If you are doing less than 75 during rush hour you will be passed by a stream of cars. I've been overtaken while doing close to 90.

They do that in Germany. Higher end cars come with a governor that caps the speed at 250 km/h. (That's around 155 mph, for the unenlightened.)

That's still below the legal speed limit on some German roads. But it's above the highest recommended speed of 130 km/h (~ 80 mph).

The governor is merely a gentlemen's agreement between the big car manufacturers, and any garage will take it out no questions asked.

You may actually need to go 100 MPH in traffic. Speed limits are 85 in places, and 15 over that may be required to maneuver.

Speed limits on interstate class roads seem pretty dangerous to me - you can watch people thinking "but I'll get a ticket" and backing off at bad times. Of course, I guess of there were no signs with numbers on them they'd drive 115 and kill themselves.

Large sport bikes have governors. Want to guess the limit? 186 mph.

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