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Comment by lovefromatx | Hacker News Reader

Different context but Buffett's quote “If a cop follows you for 500 miles, you’re going to get a ticket,” applies here. If you are a criminal you don't violate only one law. You tend to violate multiple laws and at some point you are going to be sloppy.

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And just to be overly clear, the quote does not generalize to: "If the FBI watches you for 500 days, you're going to get charged with money laundering and conspiracy to defraud the United States".

If the FBI watches you for 500 days, they will either find something to charge you with, or they will entrap you into doing something they can charge you with, because their budget does not include as much money for "pointless investigations of innocent people" as it does for "nailing guilty-looking people to the wall, and making the agency look good in the press".

Generally speaking, the "trap" they use is to provoke you into lying to them, because lying to them is a felony (Title 18, United States Code, Section 1001). [1]

[1] https://reason.com/archives/2018/02/08/donald-trump-shouldnt...

-- edit - I realized the URL might make it look like a slanted political article, but it's more about the law than it is about politics. The article author is the same guy that runs the Popehat website.

They will also charge you with a felony if you accidentally lie to them. If you tell them "good morning" as a greeting, and the weather is actually a bit lousy outside, they could charge you.

You really need professional coaching in order to talk to them. You'll have to program yourself to say things like "in my opinion..." or "in my memory of that event..." or "hypothetically, if..."

It's really counterproductive. Because any conceivable response could incriminate the respondent, the interviewee can plead the 5th to anything they are asked, including "is water wet?"

Buffet's quote applies to non-criminals as well.

yes, that was the original point that was being made by Buffett.

One might also argue that if you notice the cop following you and continue driving another 490 miles, you will deserve that ticket. And maybe an award for fuel economy.

With the fuel economy of your average police cruiser taken into account the award should probably go to the police officer.

A friend of mine once spotted a policeman down the road, turning on his lights. Since he was on a limited-access highway, he decided to pull over very quickly and just wait the policeman out. (They were on opposite shoulders, and the left shoulder didn't extend back to where my friend was.) The policeman got out of his car and ordered him to proceed with hand gestures. My friend decided he could be in worse trouble if he didn't.

(Yes, it was really my friend and not me.)

My story of weird police interaction:

My wife was driving my pickup on the freeway late at night; I'm in the passenger seat dozing, sleeping off a party we went to.

Anyhow, she's pulling over and I see the red and blues flashing around us, and I'm wondering what's going on. She's asking me where I keep my registration. We stop, and the cop stops behind us.

Then a second pulls in behind him. I'm sitting there wondering WTF because the worst thing I can think is wrong is a burned out tail light...

Cops come up on both sides; we roll down our windows, cops shine flashlights around within the vehicle - my head is pounding, thanks guy...

Cop asks my wife: "Why did you pull over?"

My wife replies: "Because you had your lights on, blipped the siren, and pulled us over...?"

Cop then says: "...Go on, get outta here."

We're both looking at each other like "WTF was that about?" - but my wife pulls out, gets up to speed, stays at the speed limit, then gets off at the nearest exit. We take surface streets home.

To this day, I have no idea what it was about.

If I had to guess, driving slow. Her pulling over instead of speeding up was smart, but mildly suspicious to a cop without an active call.

Just a random guess, but they may have been hunting for a self-incriminating admission of drunk driving. I got pulled over for speeding once, and the first thing the cop asked was "Why do you think I pulled you over?". I shrugged, and said I had no idea. He claimed I was speeding, but let me off with a warning. In another instance where I got pulled over for speeding[1], the cop told me as much, but then asked how fast I thought I was going. I told him 65 (which was 10 over the limit of 55). He claimed that I was going 70 (15 over 55), but wrote me a ticket for 65 in a 60 zone (5 over, notice that he went with the speed that I claimed, but changed the speed limit in my favor). Apparently the fine varies based on the amount over the speed limit, so he basically gave me a lower fine. My hunch, is in both cases, they were just looking for admission of guilt.

[1] Just so people don't get the wrong idea, I am generally a very cautious driver, there were the only two speeding related encounters in 15+ years.

> "Why do you think I pulled you over?"

That's pretty standard; nearly every traffic stop I've witnessed or heard about contains that line.

I believe they do it because -- assuming you give a truthful/correct answer -- it makes it less likely you'll contest the ticket, and if you do, they can tell the judge, "when I asked why they thought I'd pulled them over, they told me it was because they were speeding". If you admit to the infraction, you don't really have much of a leg to stand on in court.

And the de jure standard answer is "because you had a reasonable suspicion I was committing a crime," or "I don't answer questions without legal counsel present."

Of course, since many cops will retaliate against smartasses, the de facto standard answer is "I don't know. Why did you pull me over?" This is always truthful, correct, and non-incriminating, because you can't be expected to read the cop's mind.

Yep, totally. I usually use the wording "I'm not sure", or, better, "I can't be sure", since "I don't know" is often not entirely truthful.

Never say a number. If you want to give the option to the cop to give you a ticket with a lower fine attached, just say "my speedometer said I was okay." And that will probably result in a citation for an equipment violation instead of for speeding.

You can't say "I don't know," either, because that sets you up for some variation on negligent driving.

The safest response for the court record is "I don't answer questions without legal counsel present," but that is likely to provoke the cop into ensuring that there will be a court record.

More in the US than elsewhere. In Germany, you obey the speed limit, and only rubes pass on the right. In the US, everyone drives 9 mph above the posted limit if they're being careful, and people pass on the right willy-nilly, regardless of what local laws say. But if the police really want to enforce that on you, they can.

There are tons of "blue laws" in the US, some from over a hundred years back. Sometimes the police decide to enforce those. One such occasion precipitated the landmark Supreme Court case Lawrence vs. Texas.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2014/jan/...

People pass on the right because people block the passing lane. It shouldn’t be possible in most cases to pass on the right.

You've never seen someone pass a stopped school bus on the shoulder?

Thankfully I haven't, but I fully believe that people can be dumb or dickish enough to do that.

Oh yes.

* http://abc13.com/news/driver-explains-himself-after-dangerou...

* http://www.northescambia.com/2017/08/driver-caught-on-camera...

* The winner, though? A fully loaded semi: http://www.startribune.com/trucker-charged-over-roaring-by-s...

"I gotta be places". Or, less politely, "Fuck you, I got mine."

My favorite sentence was this:

http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2012/11/cleveland_w...

No, wouldn’t surprise me if people did. Clearly not what I was talking about. I’ve watched a car attempt to pass on the shoulder because two jackhats were driving side-by-side on a two lane highway going 10 under they lost control and nearly hit me. I was pissed at the driver attempting the stupid maneuver and the one blocking the left lane for miles on end.

I saw that in the US once, as well as someone cutting off a funeral procession. In the latter case a cop almost instantly pulled them over, fortunately.

Rant: I see this in the Bay Area all the time. On many freeways, the fast lane is also the carpool/HOV lane, at least during high-traffic times. The idea is that the government wants to encourage carpooling and/or low-emissions vehicles, therefore restricting the fast lane to such people would encourage such things.

But I often see people get in the fast lane not because they want to go faster than the adjacent lane, but rather because they have more than one person in the car and they just feel entitled to use the fast lane regardless of how fast they want to drive. Like, they don't understand the concept of lanes being related to speed, and are just thinking, "hey I'm a carpool, I get to drive in the carpool lane!" or something.

I've seen people in 20-year-old Chrysler minivans packed full of kids go all the way over to the fast lane and proceed to drive 10 under the speed limit, followed by a parade of cars passing them on the right because WTF. I can only assume that they literally don't understand that if the other people in their lane are going faster than they are, they're supposed to move over to a slower lane. Or they just don't think about it at all. I have no idea.

Per the CHP, there is no concept of a "fast lane" or a "passing lane" on a freeway. While it is customary and polite for slower cars to drive on the right, they're not required to do so.

It varies from state to state. Some states prohibit passing on the right. Some don't. In Ohio in the late 90's, the law was that anything which you could drive on was a lane. I was slowing down in the right lane and signalling a right turn into a parking lot, right when the young lady behind me decided to drive over the empty parking spaces on the right-hand side and pass me. There was a fender-bender. The policeman summarily ruled it was my fault, because according to the law in Ohio, I was responsible for looking out for someone passing me in the "lane" comprised of the empty parking spaces. I think California Law is different, so people can have bike lanes.

Understood, I know the legalities vary from state to state. I was ranting about it purely based on etiquette. I’ve lived all over the US, and every area seemed to have a distinct traffic personality. I expected Bay Area traffic to be either very aggressive or very polite, but was surprised to find it best characterized as extreme rudeness via profound levels of incompetence and/or obliviousness to other drivers.

It's illegal in Colorado to use the left lane without passing. For a while, the cops were actually enforcing this and it was a joy to drive in Colorado. But for about the past year, the cops seem to have stopped enforcing it and the left lane hogs have returned.

It's kind of strange. In the U.S., people get angry if they get a speeding ticket for going 12 miles over the speed limit (see any conversation about speed cameras). There doesn't seem to be any push back against having speed limits; rather, it seems like most people think we should have them and then ignore them.

Speed limits are to tax tourists and provide an excuse to harass blacks. /s

That has varied. The speed limit commonly got set to 50/55 mph due to the National Maximum Speed Law in 1974 [1]. It ended up being a giant government shit show that resulted in an estimated < 1% gasoline savings. There was a lot of push to repeal that over time, which worked.

Typically you'll see 70 or 75 on US highways now. To go much higher, the US is going to have to up its road construction & maintenance game, as the German autobahn is maintained at considerably higher quality.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Maximum_Speed_Law

You mean this German autobahn? -> https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundesautobahn_20#/media/File:...

> In Germany, you obey the speed limit

German living in Germany here: er, no. Typical is slighly more than +10%. If you keep to the speed limit, people behind you will get upset.

German living in Germany here: er, no. Typical is slighly more than +10%. If you keep to the speed limit, people behind you will get upset.

My one trip to Germany was in Stuttgart in the early 2000's, and it was my German coworkers who made that observation. The car ride I took seemed to corroborate it.

Has it always been that way, or has it changed over time?

It's been that way for as long as I can remember, certainly since before I started driving myself in '87.

Foreigner visiting Germany here: I ALWAYS try to keep to speed limit, sometimes 10% slower. You have well hidden radars and you can't use radar-finding apps (forbidden by law). Last time I was driving not strictly I had two photos in 15 minutes. If this makes you upset, drop the radars, I will happily drive 10% faster.

I was being descriptive, not prescriptive. Please obey the speed limits.

Germans were kind of late to the whole RADAR party in recent history (1940s). So now they are perhaps overcompensating a bit.

Leave a small town downtown at 1 or 2 am (whatever is around the bars' closing time) with a light out -- even just a license plate light?

You may get pulled over. If you're cool about it and appear sober, you may just get a warning.

If things look more askance, you'll be put through sobriety tests.

Hell, I would get this outside SF when I was young and dumb enough to work stupid hours, and would occasionally be driving (well, speeding) home from the office around bar closing time. After a quick "follow my finger with your eyes" test, they'd let me go with a warning.

I'll stop passing people in the right lane when they stop cruising at 5 below the speed limit (or more frequently: fluctuating their speed from +10 to -10 of the limit randomly) in the passing lane.

If you are going the same speed as the person to your right, you are in the wrong lane.

People just have no clue. The number of times I've seen some overloaded U-Haul lumber over to the left lane and just sit there as it struggles to get up hills is supremely aggravating.

I don't like passing on the right and will avoid it when I can, but I also don't like being in a traffic clump and will always look for ways to escape it or avoid getting trapped in it. If I have to pass you on the right to avoid getting pincered by the clump of traffic coming up behind me, I will.

"The average professional in this country wakes up in the morning, goes to work, comes home, eats dinner, and then goes to sleep, unaware that he or she has likely committed several federal crimes that day. Why?"

Three Felonies a Day

http://www.harveysilverglate.com/books/

I heard about this several years ago. I've spent much time thinking about it since and I don't have a clue how we could go about fixing this.

It seems to me that concentrated benefits and diffuse costs seems to skew US laws towards, say, tyranny. We just don't realize it until it's prosecuted like we are conditioned to think tyranny presents itself. I imagine there are plenty of people in the US that already feel it as if living under the US legal system is already tyranny.

BTW - is "tyranny" even the right word for this? I feel like when federal prosecutors only have to actually present their case in 2% of charges to juries by using/abusing the plea bargain system to scare the defendant into submission with a ridiculous opening bid, it feels like something odious.

So I read the book, and discovered the author was full of SSSS. You have to stretch the definitions of criminal acts beyond their breaking points just to establish (local) infractions, and even violating federal regulations (which aren't criminal statutes) is something people rarely do--maybe 1x or 2x a year, usually with regards to their tax return).

Harvey Silverglate's claims are like the Hot Coffee case. It makes for a good sound byte but when you actually look into the details the truth is the exact opposite of what was claimed.

well, i don't know the context of buffett's quote, what he meant, but i can say with confidence that in the US, even the most upstanding citizen breaks several laws per day.

speed limits, imperfect stops, improper turns from a stop, unsafe lane change, following too closely, breaking too fast...

The problem with a lot of these is the definitions contain imprecise terms subject to an officers whims of interpretation.

And that's just driving. Many laws are just ridiculous and you don't even know they exist to avoid breaking them.

Google "never talk to cops" for an interesting video from a law prof and a cop.

Most of what you described aren't laws...they're regulations. I know that's nitpicking, but if you're going to make a claim about precision you should be precise about what is really happening.

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