A lot of these (though not all) become easier to deal with as your income goes up, either because it has a minimal impact on you, or you can have people deal with it.
For years I almost blew a head gasket trying to convince my mother that there is a whole industry designed to keep people poor. She didn't grow up poor, but she grew up working class in a time before that industry pervaded absolutely everywhere. My mom became very successful later in life (just after I'd left the house). I didn't grow up super poor, but I was aware at a young age of not having things most other folks had, and I could sense my parents' anxiety about finances. Then as a young adult, I hit this industry like a brick wall and spent many years dirt poor, like stealing-spaghetti-from-the-grocery-store poor, with any edge I gained pretty quickly shaved off by some damned nickel-and-dime thing. And I was raised not to ask for (or expect) help or support from anyone. My family was/is a very sink-or-swim kind of family, and incidentally I very much credit that and my own insecurities about money (and service in the infantry) with any and all of my successes in life. But anyway, in a bizarre twist, it wasn't until I had become successful that she actually took me seriously about the industry designed to keep people poor! She just couldn't bring herself to believe that it's in anyone's financial interest to keep people poor. But it's absolutely true and absolutely exists. I lived for years surrounded by it and even today, every time I login to Facebook it's like a news feed of the latest shenanigans of this industry. Lots of friends back home in my black-hole hometown stuck there with zero options. Incidentally, even though it seems like my mom sometimes lives in a completely different universe, the older I get, the more I appreciate her perspective for how much it teaches me about myself and the world.
I'm not sure it is in the interests of the kinds of players that keep people poor to do so. They mostly just seem to be taking advantage of whoever they can without motivations in that direction. For example the medical industry grabs peoples money, which causes quite a lot of poverty, because they like money, not because they want their customers poor. Is there an example of an industry that does want people poor? I can't think of many examples - maybe in apartheid South Africa it was in some of the whites interest to keep the blacks poor as cheap labour but I don't think that kind of thing really applies in the US?
That's why a speeding ticket used to be $25 in North Dakota with no court date, compared to $400 in NY with a mandatory court date and points without reaching a plea.
Doing 72 in a 55 (17mph over limit) came with a sticker price of $400 fine, 6 points on the license, plead guilty by mail or in person pre-trial hearing in the absolute middle of nowhere in NY. Plea bargained to $225 "parking violation" that went straight to the town's budget. Sickening considering most roads in MA have a 70 mph speed limit
I’m sorry but for this particular problem I have no sympathy. Don’t speed. It doesn’t matter if most people speed occasionally and it doesn’t matter if there are legitimate obstacles to time management in your life that make not speeding difficult. Speeding is statistically more likely to cause death. It’s one of the leading causes of vehicular manslaughter and the mortality rate increases superlinearly as speed increases.
If I could I would make the penalties for speeding, not using a blinker, etc. significantly more onerous than they are now. We live amidst an epidemic hysteria that fosters the belief that a speed limit is a speed minimum. I would happily make someone’s life extremely difficult if they demonstrated a disregard for the dangers of speeding (and unfortunately it seems a majority of drivers do). I would be thrilled if speeding more than 5 mph above the limit incurred mandatory community service for every offense in addition to a fine that scaled aggressively with the offender’s income.
But don’t let this screed of mine detract from your broader point. I agree people are taken advantage of for things like parking tickets. I just won’t extend that sympathy for things in the category of, “Most people do this, and it’s frustratingly arbitrarily enforced, but it recklessly endangers the lives of other humans.”
If 70mph is dangerous, why do many states allow it as a speed limit?
If you slam on your brakes first, starting at 60mph instead of 70mph could save a life.
EDIT: Oh, it's a troll. Wasn't as clear when I posted this. I need to learn not to feed the trolls... sorry all.
What else can we police to make everything Just That Much Safer (TM)?
1) equally safe, all else being equal,
2) equally safe, in an where one of those speeds is faster than the legal speed limit,
3) equally safe, when there is a disparity in surrounding traffic speed (possibly due to #2).
I want to be extremely clear if that's really your position, because if it is you're hand waving away the danger of a ~16% increase in speed.
A pedestrian will die or be gravely injured at nearly any speed. A car crashing into another car, especially in opposing directions, is extremely dangerous above say 45mph.
You either go on the road and accept this risk, or you don't.
Or of course, you end the multi billion dollar car lobbyist industry and I will happily ride a moped to work instead.
People who drive 110mph on the highway in traffic are objectively dangerous. Most cars don't brake well from that speed.
70 mph is not fast if I am leaving adequate distance between me and everything else.
More generally the graph from that first source is telling: look at how sharply it increases, even after 50 mph. Other than interstates, most roads aren't 65 mph zones! And simply allowing any speed limit above 55 mph has a meaningful increase in vehicular collision mortality [2].
I can empathize that you consider the fines to be arbitrary and extortionist, and I understand that you think you're leaving adequate distance between yourself and other cars. But 96% of American drivers believe their driving ability is above average [3]; people substantially overestimate their driving skill and safety in general. Therefore though I understand why people feel the need to speed (and I used to!), I really cannot sympathize with arguments for leniency towards speeding penalties.
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1. http://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/publications/r...
2. https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdf/10.2105/AJPH.79.10...
3. http://heatherlench.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/svenson.p...
By extension, you should take every back road while you drive, rather than the freeway, because there is a minute chance that you increase probability of human death by going 65 on the freeway rather than 35 on back roads.
There is existing reasearch which indicates two things: 1) Most people drive at the speed they feel comfortable driving at but some obey speed limits (even if they are comfortable driving faster) and 2) It is differences in speed, not speeding, which causes most accidents.
Considering these factors, speed limits can artificially increases differences in speed among drivers. When the federal speed limit law was repealed, many states who raised their speed limits saw decreases in both accidents and fatalities.
That's not to say speed limits are causing accidents, but I think it's possible that they could be in certain context. It's not as cut and dry as "speeding kills".
Is it not illegal to be a pedestrian on a freeway where you are? Motorways are one of only three parts of the UK road system where pedestrians are forbidden.
No, that’s not an extension to what I’m saying. That would be safer yes, but you can afford to go faster with fewer pedestrians around.
> Considering these factors, speed limits can artificially increases differences in speed among drivers. When the federal speed limit law was repealed, many states who raised their speed limits saw decreases in both accidents and fatalities.
If you read the research I cited you’ll see that no, actually most states observed higher mortality in the transition from 55 mph to 65 mph speed limits. You can forward arguments that speeding isn’t the real culprit, or that there are worse problems. But you can sidestep that entirely by simply not speeding - then all risks related to speeding evaporate.
So to be clear I agree with you that speed disparity is a problem, but I would advocate both reducing speed limits and imposing extraordinary fines (and other punitive measures) to make the risk reward calculus of speed disparity very unattractive. Speeding directly causes the traffic disparity you’re talking about.
The problem then becomes others tailgating and driving into the space in front of you, effectively diminishing you braking room.
Remember that some speeding tickets come from cops raking in cash at the bottom of a hill where the speed limit suddenly drops by 15mph according to a sign that's hidden behind a tree. I think it's possible to call this out while also acknowledging that driving too fast is dangerous.
About parking tickets: one day my office mate parked her car on the street where she always did. But when she went to leave for the day, she found a ticket on her car, and its cause: a brand new parking meter right by her car. It had been installed while she was inside.
(She successfully contested the ticket.)
I've been in the car for 3 tickets, and I'll include one more I recently heard about from a family member. In one case, the driver took a turn on red at 2am when the streets were completely empty. In another, there was a very large and steep hill, and the driver didn't break sufficiently to not go over the speed limit. (The road was straight and the visibility was perfect.) In another, the speed limit quickly changed from 35mph to 15mph for no apparent reason.
In all these cases, these drivers weren't putting anyone in danger. I don't think the cops were waiting in these spots by coincidence; I think they were trying to make money for the city.
In the fourth case, the driver sped on a windy street, and totally deserved the ticket.
Now I must decide whether I care more about my life or the law. It's not a great position to be placed in because you need to arrive at your destination 30 seconds faster.
The legal limit often has no relation to it and no basis in science or common sense. Not to mention a failure to account for progress in vehicle development, tire technology, etc.
The socially agreed upon limit is the legal limit.
The speed limit is often arbitrary and that's part of the problem. We become immune to posted limits because the ones posted on highways and major roads are obviously inappropriate and not updated as technology and zoning changes. Then, many drivers ignore them when they do matter e.g. neighborhoods, school zones, curves.
You're almost never going to be affected by someone simply speeding - it's drivers who speed _recklessly_. I'm fortunate enough to have never gotten into an accident even though I've driven all around the world. The person that's going to cause an accident is the one speeding AND weaving between cars or tailgating.
Either way, it's irrelevant. The point of the thread is that speeding tickets are little more than a financial instrument for local, and sometimes state, governments.
I was surprised when I spotted the first camouflage colored camera and stood on the brakes. Luckily I didn't get a letter.
None of the towns had a sign indicating the end of the low speed regime. In a biergarten I asked someone when the low speed usually ends and he told me that at the end of the town there's a sign on which the town's name is striked through. This is also the end of the low speed regime! Then I continued and I arrived at a larger town. There I seem to have missed the end of the low speed area because people started to overtake me.
I thought it's their own fault because it's the people in these towns who have asked for the low speed on their roads.
I would argue that driving close to the vehicle in front ("close" being a function of speed) is much more dangerous than speed itself.
Yes there is. The autobahn may be roughly 50% without speed limits, but every other road has speed limits.
Unless otherwise indicated these are 100 km/h between villages, 50km/h in cities and villages.
There is a speed limit of 50km/h in towns and villages, which is often dropped down to 30 in pedestrian rich areas, in front of schools and so on. There is a 100km/h speed limit on normal roads outside of settlements. These are one-lane in each direction with not separation.
On the Autobahn, you have at least two lanes in each direction with separation. There is no general speed limit but there are many speed limited stretches, usually to 120km/h. These limits are on about 50% of the Autobahn.
Fines for speeding are not really high, but you do get "point", so multiple violations can lead to losing your drivers license.
To get a license, you take a minimum of 12 driving lessons and a theoretical course. There is theoretical test and a practical test.
I think the high-quality drivers education + the safety features of cars + the mandatory inspections of the cars (yearly) help offset the safety risk of the higher speeds.
1. I’m not talking about that, I’m talking about speeding,
2. Statistically, speeding is dangerous.
This is not hard nor is your life at risk if you do 80 in a 80 zone instead of 90 kph. (Unless it is, which is why Ambulances don't really have to adhere to traffic law where I live)
Don't drive too fast and you don't get speeding tickets, problem solved, no?
(There may be no proof that tickets make roads safer but appropriate speed limits do)
Furthermore, do you have any studies supporting your claim that expensive tickets don’t reduce speeding?
Isn't that part of the problem. Lack of sympathy?
Everybody makes mistakes from time to time.. and research shows that higher penalties have little effect.
Someone else pet peeve is people parking illegally because it blocks their drive way. Or blocks emergency vehicles...
For breaking the law?
You do have a speedometer in your car, if it's not accurate you can get that fixed for cheap.
I never drive over the limit according to my dashboard instruments no matter how many people behind me get angry.
Though sometimes the speed limit is very, very low and it gets annoying to have your eyes constantly on the speedometer.
And no, I categorically reject your appeal to “people make mistakes.” A speed trap is a mistake unfairly penalized. Parking under a partially hidden fire zone sign is a mistake. Speeding is a willful decision that evidences either ignorance or disregard for the impact of higher speeds and traffic disparity on mortality risk.
I really don’t think calling this a “pet peeve” like when someone blocks a driveway is at all comparable.