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Comment by nonce42 | Hacker News Reader

I find it strange that the US has laws that many people break and the law is only enforced sporadically. Some examples in California are speeding, missing front license plate, age of consent laws, use tax on out-of-state/internet purchases, and illegal immigration. Having a bunch of laws that people break with impunity has a "broken window" effect, leading to less respect for the law overall. (Whether or not these laws are just is an orthogonal issue, which I won't get in to.)

Regarding speeding, I don't see how the current system can hold up under technological advances. There are a dozen trivial ways to tell if someone is speeding, from the toll booth data of the original article to cell phone GPS to computer vision to road sensors to smart cars. It doesn't make sense for the police to perform inefficient, dangerous traffic stops when all this data is available, but the system would collapse if everyone received 10 traffic tickets a day.

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There is absolutely nothing new in tech advances that makes it easier to enforce speeding laws. In the 80s I read some book about beating speeding tickets, and they did the math about the profit margin on a radar gun. It turned out that the average radar gun generated a net profit on the order of $1000/day/gun. The obvious question is why aren't there radar guns on every police car? The answer is obvious: local politicians don't like to get tickets, either.

> It turned out that the average radar gun generated a net profit on the order of $1000/day/gun. The obvious question is why aren't there radar guns on every police car?

I agree with your sentiment. But please bear in mind, that the profit per radar gun would probably go down, if enforcement was less sporadic.

One of the problems is that the US has so many laws on the books that law enforcement has no choice but to enforce it sporadically. If every law was enforced as written then I would imagine about 80% of the US population would be in the justice system in one form or another at any given moment.

But it does provide a way to pick-and-choose when enforcing laws.

This makes it easier to target enemies.

Not all cars are required to have a front license plate, just FYI. For example, when I got the license for my MINI, they only sent me one, and said that I didn't need to have one on the front.

Sort of ironic. When I bought my mini, it only had one license plate, and I've since received several tickets for that reason. #california

Hmm. I might be wrong! Everything I'm looking at online seems to suggest I should have one. But they only sent me one!? I dunno.

Regarding CA, the vehicle code says something to the effect that the ticket a). must be given by an officer b). must no have financial incentive attached. Just ask the court that dismissed my red light camera ticket for "lack of prosecution". On that note: http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/feb/01/san-diego-red-lig....

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