Can You Buy A License to Speed?
priceonomics.com
priceonomics.com
This is about human lives. Once you eliminate birth-defects, car accidents are the leading cause of death for people under 35. Particularly for young kids, who obviously aren't driving.
Car accidents kill 34,000 Americans per-year. That's like if 9/11 happened once a month every year.
And speed matters. Stopping distance and kinetic energy go up with the square of velocity. A pedestrian hit by a car going 20 mph will almost certainly live. A person hit by a car going 40 mph will almost certainly die.
The decline in auto fatalities (and pedestrian fatalities) has continued, even as speed limits went up dramatically in many states.
I would imagine that the rate has dropped precipitously for people in cars, but has been rising for those outside the cars.
FWIW I've been hit twice as a bicyclist, both were the fault of the driver. One turned into me while I was in the bike lane and the other tried to overtake me and clipped the front of my bike dragging it under the front tire. I was very lucky both times.
Speeding does mean that in the event of an accident, the outcome is likely to be worse for all involved.
And there's no excuse for speeding in a residential area, or anywhere you might see pedestrians (or expect them and be unable to see them). This qualifies as "driving like an idiot".
You want to drive fast go to a track, on the public roadways follow the damn law.
The "jerks with fast cars" group that you're targeting is breaking the same laws that 99% of other drivers break. In some ways, other drivers are worse.
Nobody obeys posted speed limits, except on side streets. Very few people pay enough attention to their driving; they're mostly talking on cell phones or daydreaming or talking to a passenger. Jerks with fast cars, at least, are focused on driving. Collisions at those speeds may not be survivable, but I don't want to get into any collision at highway speeds; their driving patterns are more predictable, and I prefer them over distracted or ADHD drivers who make quick lane changes without proper awareness.
- People merging on or off the highway at unsafe speeds (usually, too slow), without looking and picking a spot in traffic to merge into;
- People "being polite" at intersections;
- People not using their turn signals;
- People cutting in traffic, swerving, cutting off other cars, tailgating, or otherwise driving too aggressively;
- People trying to beat the light;
- People talking on the damn phone -- I don't care who you are, you can't do that and pay full attention to the road at the same time;
- People daydreaming, hanging out with their passengers, otherwise not paying attention to traffic both ahead and behind them.
Fast drivers are almost the least offensive nuisance on the road.
How often do you think this happens?
The NHTSA has a talking points primer for prosecutors with a few numbers on unsafe driving. The numbers are outdated, but they give us something to work with: 13,000 people were injured or killed between 1990 and 1997 because of aggressive driving -- a broad category that includes not just speeding, but also tailgating, lane changing, and improper passing.
That's 2,000 people per year for that period, and since that period, the number of vehicular fatalities has fallen off of a cliff: "The 32,367 traffic fatalities in 2011 were the lowest in 62 years" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in...).
Every single time I have looked, I have been unable to find any evidence whatsoever that doing 85mph on the freeway in safe conditions significantly increases the chances of injuring yourself or others vs. doing 70 in the same conditions.
Yet speeding is this one traffic behavior that people really seem to get riled up about.
I have a suspicion that the actual reasons for this are that speeders tend to be unrepentant, and that it's a flagrant breaking of the law -- it's visible and people notice it more than possibly any other driving habit. Those things together seem to trigger some people's moral crusader button.
I won't quite go so far as to defend speeding. I'm never the fastest driver on the road (anymore). But if someone really wants to get going about the dangers of speeding, I'll be happy to point out all of the other driving behaviors that are at least as dangerous -- probably at least one or two of which the person themselves is guilty of, as we all are.
As a driver, it's easy to mentally group all the frustrations on the road together, when some are just annoying and some are potentially lethal.
Maybe they are, maybe they aren't, but I doubt speed is a good predictor of attention or skill. Poor drivers have a greater risk of causing an accident than skilled drivers at all speeds. We still punish skilled drivers the same as poor drivers because it's hard to differentiate between them. Take a driver of unknown skill who's driving 1 standard deviation above the speed limit. He could be above-average, and be just as safe as an average driver going the speed limit. He could also be below-average and believe he's safe - but would actually need to go one standard deviation slower than the speed limit to match the safety limit of the skilled driver. So, we punish them both the same, because we can't know.
USA Germany
Towns 25 – 45 majority 31, some 18 - 43
Single Carriageway 55 62
Dual Carriageway 65 - 80 unlimited, 80 advisory
USA 105
Germany 45
I wouldn't be surprised if Germany is substantially more dangerous per-driving-kilometer than the USA, but with far fewer driving-kms per person.
Also, remember that in many locations the "speed limit" isnt' really the defining thing that controls how drivers handle the road - many dense twisty urban environments are tight-enough to navigate that drivers instinctively take it slow and never even approach the speed limit. This tremendously reduces the odds of a fatality, although it does make minor scrapes pretty common.
I don't know how significant it is, I just want to say this because people shouldn't think that they can go as fast as they want as long as they drive well. Sometimes you simply have to slow down.
(I got reminded of this last year when I wrecked my car by hydroplaning on the highway. Technically I was within the posted speed limit, but clearly I was going too fast for conditions. Speed definitely caused the accident unless you want to blame the highway department for poor drainage or mother nature for the weather. Which, of course, I do, but I still should have gone slower.)
Agreed, but I classify that as "driving like an idiot" - driving too fast for conditions is in a category beyond speeding. Part of driving well is knowing - outside of concerns for a ticket - when it's possible to speed safely (and by how much), and when it's not.
At least homeopathy doesn't kill bystanders.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority#cite_note-...
A good driver can - even when that speed is actually lower than the posted speed limit.
Don't we all get observed and evaluated by a driving instructor before being licensed (think about what that word means) to drive? I'd say that meets your criteria
Nope.
Delta-V, delta-t, crumple zone energy absorption and airbag/safety device deceleration capability matter.
The only energy that can do damage starts with the difference in speed between vehicles. Then you have to take into account how much time it takes for the difference in speed to reach zero (that's the delta-t). This is a combination of braking (if any), grinding, sliding (tires sideways, rubbing against barriers, etc.) and crumple-zone deformation. And then you have safety devices such as airbags and seat-belts which are mostly about reducing the rate of deceleration.
Of course, initial velocity is important. However, focusing on that alone, I think, is focusing on the wrong variable.
Road conditions, for example, are crucial. I've ridden in taxis in Munich at 180 mph. The roads and traffic supported it. No issues. On the other hand, a couple of months ago I was on a BMW on the north-bound 5 fwy just before the Grapevine. I started a lane change when a crack/level difference between the lanes grabbed the tires. This caused a violent unintended lane change. Had my reflexes been any slower or had another car been there it could have been a horrible accident. I wasn't going much faster than 60 or 70 (I was about to get off the freeway to get gas). And, BTW, this is a section of the 5 that was repaired under the American Reinvestment (...) act. Well, they actually managed to cause more damage rather than repair the road. On this section of the 5 it feels like you could loose you kidneys even while riding in a minivan.
Even on the interstate, there are road workers, tow-trucks, and (ironically) police-officers pulled over. For them? Delta-V is just V. And they do have to get out of their vehicles to do their work, so crumple zones are irrelevant too.
And this isn't hypothetical - accidents when pulled-over on highways are a major cause of death for all of those professions.
Bizarrely, 40mph in a residential zone is a minor offense while 100mph on the freeway (which isn't exactly good, but not as dangerous as it sounds with a good car) with zero traffic can cost you your license in almost any state, and put you in jail in some.
The difference between a 60mph collision and a 100mph collision is significantly larger than the difference between a 20mph collision and 30mph collision.
In fact, with a lot of today's technology, a 20mph collision can be avoided by collision detection systems... and 30mph collisions are effectively transformed into 5mph collisions automatically.
But nothing is going to save your life from a 100mph collision.
I'm not saying that there's any good reason to go 100+ mph. In general, I think it's a terrible idea. I'm saying that it's not as bad in terms of bulk risk-to-life as 40 mph in a residential zone.
Beyond just roll cages and crumple zones... Formula One drivers have far more restrictive seatbelts and safety measures than the typical driver.
The fatality rate for the typical on-the-road driver reaches ~100% at 65mph collisions. With racing-level safety equipment and car design... sure, it can get better. But that sort of stuff is irrelevant from a public safety perspective.
I find it hard to believe that two cars rubbing when travelling the same direction would be fatal.
Likewise, if you jump out of a moving vehicle at 65mph, you'll get banged up badly but might not die, because you don't lose 65mph of speed the first time you hit the ground, since you're hitting it obliquely. On the other hand, if you jump from enough height to reach 65mph and hit the ground directly, you're almost certainly dead.
Surely sometimes they are in to immovable objects, of course, and those ones are pretty bad.
Even worse are side impacts on trees, electrical poles and light posts.
The fitted curve predicts the fatality rate to be ((delta-v / 71) ^ 4), suggesting a 100% death rate at 71mph.
Dropping down to 65mph drops your fatalities to 70%. Dropping down another 5mph to 60mph drops you to 50% fatality rate. The 5mph after that is a 36% chance of fatality.
So the 65mph limit is a rather magical number in terms of surviving a worst-case scenario. Going above that, fatalities go up dramatically. Going below that... fatalities are significantly lower.
That said, I would believe that a head-on collision at around those speeds has a high chance of fatality being that it's a 130mph collision.
They crashed a 100mph car into a wall, a 50mph car into a wall, and then two 50mph cars into each other.
I suggest watching the videos to visually see the proof. The 50mph vs wall is similar to two 50mph cars crashing into each other.
32mph vs 32mph car would have a very low chance of fatality, although the two cars would probably be totaled. When I say ~65mph as a problem, that is the 65mph vs 65mph cars hitting each other head on... or 65mph vs a tree / wall / bridge (which has an equivalent chance of death)
Remember, the kinetic energy of you and your car goes up with the square of your speed.
The reason 2 cars hitting each other is similar is more due to their mutual crumple zones, so they're helping each other slow down at the same time.
I suspect this would also be dependent upon the car, since newer cars have better crumple zones to help survive accidents better. There's a lot of details that go into actual damage. Most people, when they're in an accident, don't go headlong into a wall. They hit a pothole and spin out, or nudge another car and go spinning, or hit a side wall at an angle, where their speed toward the wall isn't actually 65 mph, and so on.
At the end of the day, it's not that 65mph is the near-death number, as far as car speed is concerned, it's more, as everyone else has been saying, the delta-v. The easiest way to hit 65mph in that way is hitting a tree head-on, or wall head-on. On the freeways, this isn't likely the case, and even the edges of roads where two roads split and there's a barricade are protected by several crunch zones in the road itself.
Edit: ah, I didn't notice that you had been saying delta-v as well. Either way, I still think I follow what you're saying now
Maybe in the middle of Montana or Texas where it's 50 miles between towns, but not anywhere with off/onramps. People are very bad at merging and it'd be very difficult for many vehicles, especially trucks to get up to speed if 90 was the limit.
25mph => 45mph : 1400 "units" increase
65mph => 100mph : 5775 "units" increase
So at least in terms of kinetic energy and therefore destructive potential, 100mph on the freeway is more dramatic than 40mph in a residential zone.
A car that weighs more is safer because its velocity changes are slower (barring collision with an immovable object) and because it will usually have better crumple zones that absorb more energy before turning the passenger compartment into a compactor.
If higher kinetic energy or momentum caused higher lethality, heavier people would die more often and/or heavier cars would be more lethal (for its own occupants) in wrecks at the same speed.
Since it's not always possible to know what speed a car was going when it crashed, and since I haven't found any tables or graphs of either speed or KE [or momentum for that matter] vs lethality, I doubt there's enough data to draw any conclusions about KE being better at predicting lethality. I don't understand what the focus on collision energy is for.
Crumple zones can be independent of weight. A lighter car is more able to stop (less energy for brakes to dissipate) or avoid a crash (can sustain higher cornering forces, tires being the same).
100 vs. 65 mph on freeway: you certainly die vs. you probably die, depending on the accident. Freeway accidents are very bad at either speed. Luckily, there shouldn't be any pedestrians, children running into the street, or bicyclists.
The danger of freeway speed has more to do with differentials. Accident risk goes up 2x every 15-20mph of raw speed but 2x every 3 mph of speed differential (in either direction). If you're in traffic and driving 100 mph, you're probably an asshole because most people won't be, but it's the speed variance (and weaving, tailgating, and other asshole behaviors) that makes it dangerous.
The survival rate of a 40mph collision is around 50%. The survival rate of a 80mph collision is 0%.
There is a _big_ difference between a 60mph cruising speed and 100mph cruising speed.
Obviously I'm not saying that the speed should be 20mph everywhere. I'm talking about dense, residential areas, such as New York City.
Most likely, however, you're not going to be driving 20 miles in a city center. If you're driving more than 10 miles, you'll probably want to use a highway, and the US highway system is extensive enough that you can.
As for biking, I have less of a problem with people biking over 20mph in the city. (However, you're correct that, in practice, there's no way someone's going to average 20mph for a city bike commute. Most people aren't in good enough shape to sustain 20mph on the flat.) I regularly hit 30-35mph on downhills (say, Central Park at the north end) because I know what I and the bike can handle. Bikes are small and agile (it's easy to swerve and avoid hitting someone) and much less massive than a car.
For only $25 or something like that, you can get a piece of paper you can put in your wallet to show you're a member. For around $2,000, you can get a license plate frame.
He said even with the piece of paper, if you're pulled over, you have a pretty good shot of being given a warning. You just need to make sure you show it to them when they pull you over.
With the license plate, he said he would never pull over someone with the license plate, because law enforcement doesn't have enough money as it is and they'd rather not piss off those who have money to donate.
I didn't really believe him (grandfathers and all), but I donated anyways (for a piece of paper, not the license plate). Now I see this article, and I'm starting to think he was serious.
A friend of my older brother later went on to become a police officer and bought a house three houses down from my parents. He actually mentioned to my sister that if any of us needed out of a ticket, to give him a call. My father, being reckless as he is, would often get tickets that would be dismissed. Every time he would wind up mowing the lawns of the neighborhood police or otherwise doing some handiwork or helping fix a car or something similar. He flat out told me the cops would talk to their fellow officers and the tickets would be dropped per discretion of the officer.
Somewhat related, many of my friends I went to school with went on to join various branches of military. A while back he told me how a police officer noticed a military decal of the truck and flat out told him he wouldn't give him a ticket because of it.
It is all just anecdotal "evidence", but officers are humans just like you and I and will certainly do things to their benefit, like letting off someone who makes donations to a cause that benefits them. Is it really a stretch to extend the more or less "We protect our own" mentality to rich donors?
"What do I do? When they ask me for my license do I just...hold it out and say 'let me go please'?"
It certainly isn't nearly as bad as what I've seen in other countries however... where you simply pull out a few (hundred) pesos and the cop lets you go.
The story I was told was that police officers were given a number of these mini shields for their family members. The idea was that if the family member was asked for ID by another cop, presumably for doing something wrong, opening their wallet would reveal the mini shield and get the person a little (or a lot) of leeway. Wink, wink.
Friend of mine is a county cop near Houston. He told me, "The bigger the stack of 'I Donated to the 100 Club' stickers or whatever on their back window, the bigger the chance they're going to be a dick and they'll get a ticket anyway."
I'd say that having a Texas Mason license plate (not frame), being polite, saying "Sir" or "Ma'am" as appropriate, and handing over my CHL (as required by law) with my license/insurance - showing that I've undergone a background check already - has more of a chance of getting me out of a ticket than any stack of stickers.
Unless I run into an officer that is anti-CHL - but so far, that hasn't happened. Had one ask me "Sir, do you have your weapon on you?" "No sir, I'm not allowed to have it on property at work." "Well, you never know when you might need it."
Please don't use cryptic acronyms. Not everybody's from Texas.
Wikipedia explains it well: "Gov. Perry also signed H.B. 1815 after passage by the 2007 Legislature, a bill that allows any Texas resident to carry a concealed handgun in the resident's motor vehicle without a CHL or other permit.
The bill revised Chapter 46, Section 2 of the Penal Code to state that it is in fact not "Unlawful Carry of a Weapon", as defined by the statute, for a person to carry a handgun while in a motor vehicle they own or control, or to carry while heading directly from the person's home to that car.
However, lawful carry while in a vehicle requires these three critical qualifiers: (1) the weapon must not be in plain sight (in Texas law, "plain sight" and "concealed" are mutually exclusive opposing terms); (2) the carrier cannot be involved in criminal activities, other than Class C traffic misdemeanors; and (3) the carrier cannot be a member of a criminal gang."
Cars are the safest they've ever been and are only going to get safer, unfortunately i think that driving ability is getting worse because of technology that keeps us safe in cars but i think an actual test to demonstrate you are a good driver would help. Hell, even make it only valid for 1 year and you have to sit the test again, and the test costs £5,000. You'll STILL get plenty takers and hopefully make the road safer for the people that are going to speed regardless anyway.
edited to add: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_curve
They didn't.
It seems like it would be hard to do from say, data relating to getting pulled over by cops etc, since they may not pull over someone with one of these frames. But if you could compare frame owners vs everyone else, it could be interesting.
> The CHP 11-99 Foundation has donated over $21 million in emergency assistance to the families of police officers, particularly officers killed in duty
Why do Police officers (and families) need donations to care for them?
Shouldn't their job/benefits do that?
If everyone were trained, it wouldn't be so bad... which leads me back to better driver's ed at high speeds, like in non US countries.
If I had to guess (having been in a number of accidents caused by other people) is that accidents are more common at lower speeds (because they are at intersections and other conflicting right of ways where you are more likely to be going slow) but fatalities are more likely at higher speeds where the safety systems fail to protect those involved.
However high speed accidents are not automatic death sentences as some posters have implied. I was in a head on collision on a small two lane residential street with no other traffic. Both vehicles were going 35mph, so effective collision speed was ~70mph. I was on a motorcycle and the oncoming truck was on a cell phone. He veered into my lane, and I tried to move left but parked cars limited my ability to avoid him. After the collision, I flew for a distance, and on landing my head hit the point of the curb. The two things that saved my life was (obviously) my helmet--without it, by brain would have been on the street--and I had crash bars that were severely deformed after the accident, but they kept my left leg from getting pinned between the bike and the truck.
So relatively high speed accidents can be survivable, especially with modern technology. The only injury I had was a badly sprained hip.
Personally, I have a bronze star plate on my car, and I don't push my luck too much any more, but I also know for a fact it got me out of a ticket for an expired inspection.
I feel like, if you're in that person's shoes, even if you know damned well they do, saying "yes" would be equivalent to answering "yes" to, "Would you like to lose your job or at least be put on leave within the next week?"
1) Don't drive stupid. It's perfectly possible to drive very fast without driving badly. If you're swerving a lot, accelerating then stomping on your brakes, jerking from lane to lane... it's an indication that you're not planning ahead and are therefore driving badly. You deserve to get pulled over. And for heaven's sake, don't race unless you're willing to get pulled. Be a little grown up.
2) Go as fast as you want - but don't be the fastest car on the road. Always let a cop-catcher run about a 1/4 mile to 1/2 mile ahead (don't tailgate them, that'll get you pulled over for speeding and being an ass).
3) Don't use a detector. They give you a false sense of security and will guarantee that if you do get pulled, you get a ticket. Not only that, 90% of the time no officer is going to leave the radar "wide open" on all passing cars - which means your detector won't go off until after you've been tagged.
4) Don't speed in residential areas. There's just no gain.
Bonus tips:
1) As much as possible, stay out of the left hand lane. That's just easy pickings right there. edit: that doesn't mean it's okay to zip around people on the right. Just don't sit there with the pedal on the floor. be there when you need to be - but don't be there when you don't .
2) When in an area that you can't see possible hiding spaces get adept at feathering your speed down a bit and letting a car (ok) suv (better) , van or truck (best) on the left side shield you from that spot. Edit: again to clarify this doesn't mean zip around on the right. You're actually going to be gong slower or matching these cars, preferably from two lanes away. If you don't have two lanes, don't do this.
3) At night it's especially easy. I don't know if it's the same in all staets ,but every one I've driven through cops have their headlights on while they wait. If you look far enough ahead - and you should be anyway otherwise you're driving poorly and deserve a ticket - you can see a copy waiting a half mile off or more.
4) If you think you've been tagged, don't slam your brakes. In addition to being a hazard, the cop has already tagged you - and the sudden flare of brakelights is a surefire giveaway to the fact that you know you were speeding. (This one is the hardest for most people...)
In the 1980s "A Speeder's Guide to Avoiding Tickets" came out, written by a state patrol officer. I think most of what I do up there is a variation on what's in that book. If you speed a lot but are willing to do so intelligently and safely, you should get it. It's excellent and still as valid.
Anyway - that got long-winded. TL;DR: speed smart and safe, don't be an idiot, and pay attention and you don't need to spend money on a fancy license plate frame. (Or a FOP sticker in other states...)
- Speeding ticket free (and driving fast and smart in muscle cars) for more years than I can recall.
Say in a 20 mile commute, 14 miles is on the highway with a speed limit of 65mph, 3 miles is on a road with a speed limit of 45mph, and 3 miles is on a residential road with a speed limit of 35mph. Furthermore, to simplify this, let's say you only speed on the highway. Going 65mph will result in 12.9 minutes on the highway, going 80mph will result in 10.5 minutes on the highway. By speeding, you exposed yourself to financial risk, and yourself and others to physical risk in order to save 2.4 minutes.
Now, let's say you encounter 6 stop lights on your commute, each with an average red light time of 1 minute. Let's say on average, you get caught in half of them each time you make the trip and that there are no backups requiring you to stay at any given light for more than 1 cycle. So your average red light time per commute is 3 minutes.
You've now spent more time waiting at red lights than you have saved by speeding on your commute.
On long trips, speeding can save you hours instead of minutes, so it seems more justified. But for a savings of 2.5 minutes that can easily be negated by red lights or other drivers? Why put yourself and others at risk for such a small reward?
The United States needs a few https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%C3%BCrburgring 's
I imagine that shooting guns at targets is fun too - but most people wouldn't find that to be an acceptable excuse for shooting guns at targets in a public park.
I also think speed limits (on highways) should be higher, or be condition-specific. ... and I think we should have better driver's ed in the States, and harsher penalties for drunk driving.
But that's just me.
Because freedom.
> I imagine that shooting guns at targets is fun too - but most people wouldn't find that to be an acceptable excuse for shooting guns at targets in a public park.
What do you think the "we use them to hunt" justification is for the American love of owning guns? The overwhelming majority of people who trot out this justification aren't depending on a good hunt for any real productive purpose; they go hunting because it's fun.
Note when I say park, I mean a city park, not a state park or wildlife park or wherever hunting is actually permitted.
Update: There is also aerodynamics to think about. Aerodynamic drag is almost twice as great at 70mph as it is at 50mph.[1]
As you noted on long trips it can make a large difference. That's the only place I tend to bother these days - when I'm doing it to save time.
Pass on the left. If you're passing people on the right then you're driving dangerously. (With an obvious exception for the occasional person going 60 in the left lane that you're forced to go around)
I think that's what he meant.
1) You do not need to change lanes to avoid cars at on-ramps or cars on the shoulder
2) You do not need to switch lanes to pass slow traffic (semi trucks, etc.)
3) There is more room to maneuver in case of emergency
1 and 2) So everyone should have to change lanes to get around you, but you shouldn't have to change lanes for anything?
3) Typical 3 lane highways have 4 actual lanes, the right most one being the breakdown lanes and can be used in an emergency. That means being in the middle lane gives you one lane to your left and two to your right, vs. one to your right and two to your left. Same difference, no added benefit.
If tickets for dangerous driving were given instead of for speeding, then people might optimize for what is safer, not just what would not give them a ticket.
As an addendum, if you do get pulled over:
1) Remove your hat if you're wearing one.
2) Get your wallet out and put it on the dash as soon as you come to a stop.
3) Roll all windows down, turn on your interior lights, and shut your engine off.
4) Put your hands on the steering wheel until you need to reach for your registration.
5) Admit and deny nothing, which seems tough, but is actually easy, a grimace or a shrug is all the response you need to give to "I had you going 85hph".
Cop: "Can I see your license and registration?" You: "It's in the glove box." Cop: "Go ahead and grab it."
It's not about submitting to their authority, it's about doing things that benefit you in the end. You don't have to do any of this stuff, but don't complain when things don't go your way.
Otherwise, when you reach behind your back for your wallet, the officer has no idea what's going to be in your hand when it reappears.
Instead I suggest: wait until they arrive then explain what you're going to do, and do it slowly. You can also - if you're charismatic - use that time to talk a bit. Not to make excuses, but just to talk.
Deleted comment
A guy I know, his dad was paralyzed from the waist down, lives in a care facility and shits in a bag for the rest of his life because someone joker high on whatever didn't want to be arrested.
So folks might appreciate that a cop might be tense during a traffic stop.
Yes, burst radars are very common these days and won't show up unless someone ahead of you gets lit up, but guess what? Unless you're alone on the freeway, there's a pretty solid chance someone ahead of you is gonna get lit up before you do and it will give you a warning to slow down.
I drove with a V1 for years and it saved me from many, many tickets. (I didn't get a single one the entire time I owned one.)
My point being; radar detectors are useful tools. It can be a worthwhile investment if you buy a good one and know how to make use of it.
(For anyone wondering, I sold my V1 to a friend when I decided the german sports car phase of my life was over.)
Bel Pro RX75 Plus off the internet for a few hundred bucks and installing it was as easy as running a few wires.
Radar under the fiberglass hood at the very front of the vehicle, it's away from everything ferrous, LIDAR receivers|emitters in both front fascia vents and on the rear license plate frame further concealed by a generic-looking custom frame.
The display cannot be seen from any angle unless you slouch like a gangster in the driver seat. There's absolutely no trace, no cheezy over-stretched coil from the visor down that can be seen from Nevada.
Might upgrade to BEL STi-R Plus.
Keep an eye out on state or local laws of course, with any bit of advice.
More importantly, a cop seeing a detector will often pull you over for the fun of "gotcha." Being HN, here's proof. My ex uni roommate is on CHP in Martinez. Copy & paste from iMessage: "LOL, definitely" Mostly, it's cop psychology is really all that makes the difference between getting hassled and not.
I do get what you're saying, and it's clearly true on some level, but your statement rings all kinds of alarm bells for me, most notably that almost everyone considers themselves a good driver, and many feel that their skill justifies that they be exempt from the rules. But people are terrible judges of their own skill, and I would urge anyone who feels justified in driving outside the normal speed range to seek independent verification that their driving skill is outside the normal range.
I have a name for them. I call them "forward probes".
If you know what you are doing you can actually "launch" forward probes. All you need is to identify a young driver in a hot or pretend-hot car and match their speed while driving next to them. I'm not talking about racing or speeding. Almost without fail some of these guys will punch it and take off like they have to prove something.
Having launched a "forward probe" you just keep it at a comfortable distance in front of you and enjoy the ride.
Edit: to be fair: when someone pulls next to me and sits there matching speed for a prolonged period I'll often pull ahead as well. That's not because I have something to prove, but just because I'm not comfortable being boxed in by someone apparently oblivious to the idea of 'escape routes'.
'course I also don't take off at max speed, usually just enough ahead to have a sizeable gap between us. And because people are people, that's typically enough that they'll drop back and cease matching speeds anyway .
I would throttle up in the right lane and not have a speed differential not too great compared to traffic, because someone that cuts you off to make an exit could be fatal.
Also, there are some areas, like near UC Davis, where a cop on 80 will stand behind the rise of an overpass berm to hide his vehicle around a bend and nab people using laser. Thankfully the twice this happened, laser jamming may have been allegedly deployed and he checked his gun for errors while I might have turned the alleged system off and coasted.
If someone were unlucky enough to have been pulled over:
If the cop is male, you can try a sob story ("I'll lose my job because I need to make FAA status") or actual sobbing. If the cop is female, emotional persuasion is less effective.
Also if someone happens to get a ticket, best move would be to be unmemorable as possible and fight it. There's a zillion technicalities because there are so many ways to screw up (not) measuring and writing the ticket.
Heck, a friend of mine even legally has no front license plate and gets out of every fix-it because a previous ruling allowed it. Mine has a front-center threaded tow-receiver hook frame, so you can guess where it's at most of the time. :)
But except in the case of specific speed traps where they're pulling over multiple people, "don't be the fastest car on the road" typically protects you from this. If there are no other cars on the road or if you are the fastest, then proceed with caution.
Addendum: tolerances tend to be lower if you're from out of state, so that's something else to be aware of.
Addendum 2: Some states really don't mess around so always know the rules. In Virginia for example, going over 80 , or 20+ over the limit (whichever is lesser) can actually land you in jail and at minimum mandates a court appearance.
I recall one time on 95-S in MD there were four or five cars. One guy at the front with radar radioing back.
The others were literally just waving everyone the first officer tagged to the side of the road.
I just kept on driving. They weren't interested in chasing... with so many people volunteering for tickets, there was no need.
Strangest setup I've ever seen for ticketing.
Even better.. if you do see someone ahead of you randomly slam/tap their breaks.. slow down. This has saved me a number of times.
There's an old, fun phrase my dad used for this years ago: "let him beat the bushes, let somebody else rake the leaves, and you sit in the rocking chair."
i.e., don't be the fastest car in sight, and also don't the last in a line of fast cars. Just sit in the middle and take it easy.
I would hope that one day we have RFID chips in speed limit signs that cars can are obligated to read and electronically limit the speed of the vehicle.
For example, this a much shortened version without reference to speed:
- don't tailgate - don't weave - don't race - use your brain and pay attention. All the time. As far up the road as you possibly can.
Whether you're driving fast or slow, following those rules - ingraining those rules into your driving habits - will make you a safer driver.
If you don't drive like an asshole, speeding tickets are just an inconvenient, Poisson-frequency toll. Yes, you can safely drive 80 mph in light or no traffic... and if you do so, you might get one ticket every ~3-5 years. You're not likely to accumulate points. Good-driver-got-unlucky tickets are rare and usually minor enough that it doesn't cost-justify the plate. Even if your insurance company is a dickhead, you can usually go to court and get the charge reduced to something without points... unless you habitually drive like an asshole (or speed in the wrong state; be cautious in Virginia.)
It's not surprising that this article would focus on Sand Hill Road, where the running ideology is that one should be able to buy one's way out of anything.
I drive like an old lady because I'm in Northern VA, and I've still gotten tickets here.
That sounds like a pretty considerable constraint on going as fast as you want...IME there isn't always a person who wants to go a hair faster than you readily available (especially if you're at the top end of the spectrum in your muscle car - do you drive strictly in areas with lots of fast drivers?). I mean, I'm fully in support of the rule, I call that car the "rabbit," but if you're intentionally following someone you're not going as fast as you want, right?
Although to be honest I've found that just being nice (& maybe driving a real clean volvo) has gotten me out of a speeding ticket every time I've been pulled over
That said, I've been driving for 20 years, and pulled over one time. That one time, an out of state cop (in my home town) pulled me over because the license plate frame (from the dealership I bought the car at) partially obscured the state name and he couldn't tell what it was. I suppose it could have been another state that ended in -nois, like lilinois, iiiinois, or something else, but more than likely, it was 5AM in a small town in Maine and I was circling around one-way streets looking lost or suspicious (I hadn't been back there in many years). The cop gave me directions to the street my grandfather lived on, and told me to enjoy my trip.
The secret here is surprisingly simple, and applies to most everything else in life. Don't be a dick. Drive around the same speed as other cars, and if you're the only one on the road, don't do more than 5-6 mph over the limit on the highway. It won't cost you that much time, and if you're the only one on the road it's probably dark and/or rural anyway so you SHOULD be more cautious, and in the end, you win either way, at the great expense of.. a few minutes time.
Another tip I've learned, is do as others do - especially on highways. Think about it, when you're driving across country, how many other cars around you are undertaking that length of a trip? It's far more likely most of them live in the area, and know what's appropriate - both for safety, and for cop-avoidance.
> Those are just as useless, they actually make me want to stop the car to see what the person is trying to hide...
His take was that organizations within the police department are just like fraternities on a college campus: You have people who are with them and people who vehemently dislike them. So you're taking a gamble. Still, it seems like it's worth it if you're a speeder.
✋ Don't leave me hangin', bro, it's Friday after all.
Like I not only have a Porsche I have $2500 and I am a serious racer.
If pricenomics had presented one piece of actual data vs conjecture this would be compelling but barring that this is just linkbait and probably good marketing for more stupid vanity license plates just like the la times article they reference
Situation 1: Cop walks up. You mention your cop friend. Trouble will ensue because you're obviously trying to say "I'm friends with policemen."
Situation 2: Cop walks up. Asks why you're doing obviously bizarre thing. Say it's because your cop friend asked you to so that police can know you're empty handed. You've now responded to a question and managed to mention that you're a friend with the police. He can't hold that against you because he's the one that asked.
edit: two door
2k to spend on a license to speed instead of spending it on rent and food? Yes, you do need to have some excess wealth to be able to do that.
If this is as trivial as you're making it out to be then why is this story worth reading and discussing?
This + LIDAR jammer = no tickets.
However, most systems have an "alert then disable after X seconds" system - giving you time to slow, then disable the jam, allowing the LEO to get a 'speed' eventually (and chalk it up to his crappy LIDAR gun)
Take a look at the grilles of some exotic / fast cars. If you see devices inset that look like IR blasters -- those are LIDAR jammers.
The cost of making even one frame would be far less than $2,500. Even better, why not make a batch of them and sell them illicitly?
The economics don't seem to add up.