>It creates a situation where gov't agencies begin to exist for their own sake, and to levy such fees/fines to fund themselves, past the point at which they are serving their desired purpose.
Would you have examples of this in the US?
Would you have examples of this in the US?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United...
I think speed laws should be based on engineering/behavior as well.
It's possible to artificially set speed limits too low and make normal people into fine-paying-department-funding criminals.
There's something called "the 85th percentile" that engineers use to assess whether the speed limit set is too high or too low.
(if the speed limit is too different than what normal people drive, the variance in speed will make the road more dangerous)
I believe it might be true in places with icy/snowy weather. Many people try to reach that magic number on the sign no matter what the conditions are. That means that people driving to the conditions are going far slower than the other people, and as you said - the difference isn’t a good thing, in addition the the fast people being a lot more likely to crash on their own.
For Montana (where I lived at the time), there was no posted day time limit; night time it was 55 MPH. While no posted limit, the law stated something to the effect of "must drive reasonable and prudent for conditions". Conditions here is kind of vague, but is pretty all encompassing: road conditions, weather, traffic, your vehicle, your tires, etc. Bright, sunny, summer day in a Porsche with good tires? At 100MPH, you might have gotten pulled over, your tires checked, and then the officer would send you on your way. Blizzard conditions? Driving 45 might get you cited. And the citation had teeth: it was automatic reckless driving, something like a $500 fine and possibly a suspended/revoked license. Previously, the fines were a joke. Something like $5 for up to 20 MPH over the limit, could be paid in cash and didn't go on your record.
Anyways, "reasonable and prudent" was eventually rule unconstitutional because we can't have nice things. So, out it went, and instead it was replaced with a 75 MPH daytime, 65 (I think? maybe it was 55 still) night time limit. It's now 85 day/65 night MPH as of last summer when I last drove through.
But, the tl;dr is: when the posted limit was put in place, highway fatalities increased (quite dramatically from what I recall). No, I don't have any references to cite, it's just my recollection of events from nearly 30 years ago...
Are you advocating for _increased_ vagueness in our laws?
For an anecdote:
I went to Dallas to watch the eclipse. I got on I-45 to go home to Houston. Traffic was going great, typically about 90MPH in a 75 zone. There were several cars doing 110+ and zooming between lanes while several others were doing a mere 55. The worst were the people doing 55 in the left lane, being passed by people doing 65 in the right lane. The weather was "fine", just cloudy but a pleasant 85F.
Then, just around Richland, there was a sudden massive downpour and visibility went down to about 100 feet. I could feel my front-wheel-drive wheels losing grip for seconds at a time, even at 75.
It was unusual for my vehicle to lose grip at that speed, but I'm used to driving on slippery gravel roads. I also had expected (planned for) it because I had looked at the weather and knew it would be raining by the time I was home. Gotta keep everyone staggered and plenty of distance between each other. So I let off the gas and coast down in speed until traction was regained.
Even so, we didn't have to go very far on the freeway before everyone was 100% stopped for about 45 minutes. The weather was moving northeast (to a good measure of perpendicularity), so the weather will have hit that whole stretch of freeway about the same time. Someone at the "front" hydroplaned and wrecked with someone else around Streetman where I-45 turns west-ward. By the time I made it to the front, all of the emergency vehicles and both damaged vehicles were nowhere in sight -- so at least there's few rubberneckers.
Driving for the _current_ weather is a bad idea, and not enough people will consider what the weather could be in 30 seconds. That's only considering the weather. The fact that's people doing 55+ and people doing double that is also a massive safety issue on a 2-lane freeway.
Even inside of Dallas and Houston, people are RIDICULOUSLY crazy. If you drive for a few hours at speed limit on the freeways, then you will pass dozens of people doing 20 below in the left lane, and also have other dozens of people scoot between you and other cars with mere single-digit feet between you and them. There will be countless instances of other vehicles coming into your lane and immediately braking to avoid hitting the vehicle that was in front of you but now is in front of them. If you're ever in slow or stopped traffic, there will be a half dozen vehicles skipping past the traffic in emergency lanes.
So, I think speed limits aren't the only thing that need fixing. There needs to be much better safety education and enforcement. There's more to my opinion but I doubt it'd be popular -- consider how empathy, greed, and modern timeliness also contribute to these problems.
california vehicle code section 40801
No peace officer or other person shall use a speed trap in arresting, or participating or assisting in the arrest of, any person for any alleged violation of this code nor shall any speed trap be used in securing evidence as to the speed of any vehicle for the purpose of an arrest or prosecution under this code.
That said, I remember a friend fought this once. A motorcycle officer gave him a ticket, and he investigated and found he had given hundreds of tickets from the same location. didn't help.
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding your point, but that does not constitute a speed trap. It very well could be that on that section of road there are just a lot of speeding drivers, and hence hundreds of tickets.
One example of a speed trap is if the speed limit takes a sharp drop without warning. For example, rural road with a 60 mph limit, and it drops to 25 mph at the town limits with no "25 mph ahead" signs, and there sits a cop with a radar gun ten meters after the "25 mph" sign.
1) is a section of highway where cops monitor cars entering and exiting, then calculate an average speed to identify people who were driving over the speed limit. Basically, they need to demonstrate instantaneous speed, not average speed, to write a ticket.
2) is a highway segment that hasn't set its speed limit based on an engineering/traffic survey done in the last 5 years, 10 if nothing nearby has changed.
Also, what laws could be changed to make it so (assuming that's a good thing). Examples: The government takes it directly from your bank account like they do if you don't pay your taxes. Another would be to use a progressive fine system like I've heard they have in some countries so that rich people don't feel like they can just pay the fines and ignore the law.
I have the highly controversial opinion that they should use civil asset forfeiture for some traffic violations. If a speed cam catches a car going over 100mph, it's a public danger, regardless of who was operating it. Sue the car, and allow the owner to recover the proceeds from the driver in a separate civil action if they can prove that another person was driving it. Only exception would be if they reported it stolen. Eventually the fine would be paid or the vehicle would be impounded for lapsed registration/insurance.
"The combination of traffic enforcement and Mayor's Court has provided 80% of Linndale's one million dollar annual budget, and underwritten its four full-time and ten part-time police officers.[14]"