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Comment by notmarkus | Hacker News Reader

"Cop on the beat: the last true dictatorship in America." -- Jimmy McNulty (paraphrased).

When you have so many laws, everyone is a criminal. And when everyone is a criminal, those enforcing the laws become the ones who make them. Why is the speed limit still laughably low in most of the country? Most drivers are consistently driving 10-15 mph over the speed limit, at least where I live. It gives cops the ability to pull you over whenever they see fit.

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Yeah, but no one goes to jail for speeding. And they can already pull you over whenever they want. This is how they catch dunk drivers. Swerving, driving too fast for conditions, driving erratically or all sorts of other subjective terms. They can set up a checkpoint and pull you over just because. Speed limits are really the least of it and don't serve your argument well.

Edit: I want to point out that I've defended speed limits here before because speed limits, like building codes, are created by engineers, not some arbitrary big government conspiracy. Like most laws, they are well thought out and for everyone's safety.

Speed limits in most areas start out as defined by engineers then manipulated to fit local opinion on how fast the road should be. I believe many areas allow public comment and petition to change the speed limit of local roads so if someone lives near by and is scared of the cars going 45mph then might raise a fuss enough to reduce it down to 25mph. (Obviously this isn't as much of an issue for state run/maintained highways)

Sure, but that's hardly some sort of government conspiracy to turn police into mini dictators.

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