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Comment by efrafa | Hacker News Reader

In europe you usuallly have warning before speedtrap. You can also hear about them in fm radio.

The point is to slow down, not to get you a ticket..

Though interestingly, in France it is nominally illegal to have your SatNav warn you of speed cameras. You are meant to turn that facility off when visiting.

Indeed, and the TomTom interface for reporting speed cameras becomes instead an interface for reporting 'hazards' (with no prizes for guessing the kinds of 'hazards' that people then choose to report).

The point is to stop people speeding in every location, so how does this achieve that?

The point of all traffic regulations and enforcement is to improve safety. Ensuring people adhere to the limits in high-risk areas does that.

And if the police focused their efforts in "high-risk areas" it would be hard to make the argument that speed enforcement is all about revenue.

They don't, so it's not.

That's a different tangent. Can enforcers abuse their enforcement privileges? Sure. Is the point of traffic regulations 'to stop people speeding in every location'? No.

Why not just put in speedbumps every few miles, then?

The reason there aren't speed bumps every few miles is the same reason it's not illegal to tell each other where the speed traps are: there is tension between public support for the goal, and public annoyance at enforcement.

This is also why it's not illegal to buy a car that can go 120 mph, even though there is not a single road in the U.S. with a speed limit that high.

> This is also why it's not illegal to buy a car that can go 120 mph

That, and I can take my 120+ mph car to the track. (Also, I can think of a couple times having a car able to go 120 mph has helped me get out of the way of some accidents a slower car would've got caught up in.)

Presumably if you had time to accelerate to 120mph, you had time to slow down instead?

I'd love to hear about the times going 120 mph kept you safe from an accident.

Keep in mind I'm not talking about powerful acceleration; top speed can be electronically governed. You could have a car that goes 0-60 in under 4 seconds, but is governed to 75 mph top speed by law.

There is another solution which is being implemented in my country: average speed traps. Instead of the measuring your momentary speed it measures the time you take to go over some particular distance and then calculates your average speed. If it is over the limit, you are in trouble.

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