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Comment by mcdougle | Hacker News Reader

You do raise a good point. I know that, when I started driving, my dad taught me a neat trick: drive 8.5 mph over the speed limit, and you'll never get pulled over. That's (supposedly) because a ticket for anything less than 10mph is simply not worth it for the cops. If you go any more than 8.5mph over, though, you might accidentally cross that 10mph mark, and if a cop's around he'll get you.

And, sure enough, any ticket I've ever gotten is because I was going over 10mph faster than the speed limit.

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>'That's (supposedly) because a ticket for anything less than 10mph is simply not worth it for the cops.'

Depends on your cops.

I've witnessed tickets for 5 over (40 in a 45), 4 over (49 in a 45) and a stop, thankfully without a ticket for 1 over (31 in 30).

I'm given to thinking of it as a lottery. Someone is getting pulled over, today me, tomorrow someone else. I'm just glad I haven't had a case of 'marijuana smell' for 10 years or so.

I'm also in the "drive a little under 10 over" camp, and I totally accept that once every 10 years (or whenever), I'm going to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and get a ticket for it. I'm OK with that. It's not fair, but it's well below the bar of meaningful injustice for me to really care about it all that much.

What's not fair about getting a speeding ticket when you are driving over the speed limit?

A largely-randomized system where most participants aren't punished but some are singled out for large fines is pretty unfair.

Performing a bad action does not cause someone to forfeit all arguments as to fairness.

I believe it's implied that the limit itself is unfair.

I think it more depends on your jurisdiction. When I'm driving somewhere new, I'll make sure I'm not going faster than average (even if that's below the speed limit). In places that I'm more familiar with, I'll do 9 over.

Where are these slower roads though? If I were a cop, I'd be much more likely to pull people over for speeding in more residential areas, which tend to have these sub-55 speed limits.

I agree. Going 10 over on the freeway/highway hardly matters for the most part because it's not like that 10 mph is the difference between being able to or not able to stop if something runs out in-front of your car, you're already going at least 65 mph anyway. It's a different situation if it's a smaller road or a side-street with lots of houses around. Going 25 vs. 35 could very well be the difference between being able to stop fast enough if a kid runs out on the road.

To elaborate on why it "isn't worth it for the cops"... friends who are in law enforcement have explained to me that it's too easy to get a ticket thrown out for anything under 10mph due to arguments of device/speedometer precision.

Most (all?) cars have speedometers which already overstate speed of a vehicle. This is I believe because of laws which forbid speedometer to overstate shown speed (by some margin) but not understate it so if you are driving 8.5mph above the limit it's probably actually even less than that.

I think it also depends on the area. I did get pulled for 3 or 4 over the speed limit once. I think it was mainly because I was on a military base. Fortunately I did not actually get ticketed.

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