Driver Re-Education: The Hypocrisy Of Speed Enforcement
August 13th, 2008 Posted in Eric Peters, Speed Limits, Traffic Tickets
By Eric Peters, Automotive Columnist
Recently, I spent eight hours attending “driving school.” Unfortunately, it wasn’t Bob Bondurant’s school.
And it wasn’t really about driving so much as it was about spending eight hours dutifully pretending that the entire shebang wasn’t anything other than a low-grade version of the “re-education” seminars for thought criminals they used to have in places like East Germany before the Berlin Wall came down.
You’re supposed to pretend you did something wrong; they pretend they’re doing something righteous by showing you the (supposed) error of your ways. Everyone plays patty-cake and no one gets shot — or sent off to the gulag.
In the East German version, usually there’d be a jackbooted Stasi officer — and the looming threat of a long stint in a prison — for motivation. Here in the People’s Republic of Virginia, we had to make do with an amiable off-duty local cop — who did a better than average job of going through the motions — and maybe even believed some of the stuff he was saying.
I was there, like most of the others, to disappear a recent speeding ticket.
It wasn’t a big ticket (all of 64 mph in a 55 zone) but these days, you are a dumbo if you give the insurance company any pretext whatsoever for jacking up your premiums. A minor speeding ticket might cost you $150 “up front” — but it is the “over the road costs” (in the form of higher insurance premiums for the next 3-5 years) I was looking to dodge. By agreeing to spend an entire Saturday (9-5) attending this session, the court would dismiss the 64 in a 55 — and no record of anything would be on my DMV rap sheet.
So, there I sat — along with about 30 others — fastening my bib in preparation for a very large (and extended) serving of bullshit.
The first course came in the form of the instructor-cop’s rhetorical question to us asking whether we “speed.” Of course we do — that’s why we’re here. Everyone in the room admits they speed, routinely, as a matter of course — including the cop.
But the natural follow-up to that is never discussed: If everyone is speeding (cops included) then might there be something wrong with the speed laws?
Most of us don’t commit murder; we generally don’t steal — or drive on the shoulder running down pedestrians, either. Law or no law. Yet this law almost all of us disobey every time we get behind the wheel. But instead of questioning the law, we are to bow our heads in shame and pretend we are guilty of something?
How? Why?
No one says anything, of course. It would be like an East German asking how come the Dear Leader (or whatever he was calling himself) Erich Honecker gets to live in a big house and get driven around in a Zil limousine while the rest of the proletariat in the worker’s paradise — where everyone is “equal” — gets a drafty walk-up flat with cold water only and a ride in a smelly old bus (if they’re lucky).
Then the cop regales us with stories about people he has let go — including a stripper from West Virginia he pulled over late one night for doing 15 over the limit. She told him “honestly” that she had been working all night and just wanted to get home. Understandable. We have all “been there/done that” (though maybe not the stripper part of it).
Struck by her honesty, the cop lets her go with a warning. Very nice of him, eh? Now, everyone else is cooing — but I am marveling at the disconnect.
On the one hand, the cop is hectoring us about the eeeeevils of speeding — telling us that it is the “number one” reason for most accidents and that it is important to obey all speed limits for that reason, etc.
And yet, like most cops, he implicitly gives the lie to all this (or else, he’s just corrupt — and which is worse, really?) by freely admitting that he often lets people off simply because he sympathizes with their story.
Note — not because they weren’t actually driving faster than the posted limit (and thus, driving dangerously, according to the spiel). They were. He just decides to give some people — but not others — a “break.”
Even the cops know the speed limits thing is a con — else why let some people go? (Do they ever let bank robbers off with just a warning if they have a good sob story?)
Of course not. When the crime is real, the rules are inflexible. But like us, when it comes to speeeeeeding, they have to play this stupid game. Only it’s not them getting the tickets — or groveling in an attempt to avoid one.
Then came the second course of cant — served up with lots of double-talk gravy and all the fixins’…
The cop is telling us all that it’s real important and a moral imperative, even, that we give a wide berth to addled older drivers doing substantially less than the posted limit because “we’ll all be old one day, too.” Well, yeah — but what has that to do with safe driving?
Why is it bad (and highly ticket-worthy) for a young, alert, competent driver to exceed any speed limit, anywhere — but it’s ok for a fearful, past-it, probably half-blind old person to drive considerably slower than the posted limit — almost certainly creating a road hazard in the process?
No answer.
No one dared make the observation, of course. Gotta play along.
Next course was a “safety” movie at least 20 years old. It was narrated by a walking (and still alive) Christopher Reeve and featured half a dozen other now-dead celebrity pitchmen, including John Ritter and Paul Newman (well, ok maybe Paul is still technically alive… ). It went downhill from there.
The cars, for example, were all mid-late ’80s vintage. So no ABS. So most of the gib-jabbering about what to do in panic-stop situations was as out of date as Ocean Pacific shorts and Philip Michael Thomas.
More such movies followed — with “five minute” breaks in between that often lasted for 30-45 minutes, leaving the class to just sit and scribble, talk among themselves or just nod off to sleep. Very much like high school. Not much educating going on; lots of wasted time.
But maybe that was the point all along.
If the hassle of being fined by the courts and crucified by your insurance company isn’t enough to kill your will to live — or at least, any desire you might still have to enjoy driving — then maybe this gulag archipelago for a day thing will do the trick.
It sure made an impression on me… .
Comments?
www.ericpetersautos.com
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52 Responses to “Driver Re-Education: The Hypocrisy Of Speed Enforcement”
By Eric on Sep 16, 2008
For those who say there is no such thing as a variable speed limit, I would like to point out that, in many places, you can be pulled over for excessive speed, even if you are driving within the posted speed limit. Under adverse conditions (night, fog, rain, ice, etc.), the maximum safe speed is entirely at the discretion of the police. If one of them thinks you are going too fast for safety, you could be ticketed for reckless driving (a Class I Misdemeanor).
By Jeff on Sep 7, 2008
Flash -
You are correct. When the 55 limit was implemented in 1974, insurance companies did not lower auto insurance rates.
By Flash Fludd on Sep 7, 2008
Many interesting comments.
However, there doesn’t appear to be any question about the insurance company’s policy of raising the rates of drivers who receive speeding tickets.
Is this policy based on any statistical correlation between speeding tickets and accidents? The answer: no, as there is no such correlation.
Cheers,
Flash
By George 2 on Sep 6, 2008
Mr. Randy has said on one of his posts that he is now taking secondary roads with posted speed limits of 50-55 because he’s much more comfortable and safer there. Now your making sense Randy…stay there.
Governor of NJ Jon Corzine’s accident is perfect proof that under posted speed limits cause accidents. In my opinion this is accessory to murder by State legislators because thousands have died on our highways that otherwise would be alive today if speed limits were more reasonable.
Here we have a trooper trying to go 90-100 MPH on a big multilane Autobahn type highway with an under posted speed limit of 55, the speed differences of this situation caused the Jon’s accident. This would never have happened on the Autobahn with traffic flow of 90-100 mph with lane discipline.
By John G on Sep 3, 2008
In an interview in the June/July, 1999 issue of LANDLINE, the magazine of O.O.I.D.A., Julie Cirillo, new program manager at the FHWA Office of Motor Carriers and Highway Safety, said,
“. . . . . . We have fallen into a situation where for a variety of reasons we are setting speed limits that are not realistic. . They are setting speed limits that are too low. . We’re legislating them, and once you legislate speed limits, invariably the speed limit is at about the 50th percentile. . So, here you have a traffic regulation that’s enforceable by law and half of the people are exceeding it when you put it in place. . That makes no sense to us. . So, what we’re trying to do is get the states to agree that they will set speed limits in accordance with the 85th percentile, which is where most people travel. . Most people are sane. . Most people will not put themselves in undue hazard. . . . . . . . “
“. . . . . . We have deteriorated the value of speed limits and now find the disregard for speed limits is spilling over into other traffic-control devices — disregard of red lights, disregard of stop signs.
If we have any hope of moving the population back to where it ought to be, we have to set reasonable speed limits.”
Federal Highway Administration
Report No. . FHWA/RD-85/096 Technical Summary, “Synthesis of Speed Zoning Practice” which states:
“Based on the best available evidence, the speed limit should be set at the speed driven by 85 to 90 percent of the free-moving vehicles rounded up to the next 5 mph increment. . This method results in speed limits that are not only acceptable to a majority of the motorists, but also fall within the speed range where accident risk is lowest.”
1990 ITE PUB# PP-020 (sponsored by FHWA and AASHTO)
“It would be premature to draw any firm conclusions since the research is still underway. . However the findings to date suggest that, on average, current speed limits are set too low to be accepted as reasonable by the vast majority of the drivers. . Only about 1 in 10 speed zones has better than 50 percent compliance. . The posted limits make technical violators out of motorists driving at reasonable and safe speeds.
For the traffic law system to minimize accident risk, then speed limits need to be properly set to define maximum safe speed. . Our studies show that most speed zones are posted 8 to 12 mi/h below the prevailing travel speed and 15 mi/h or more below the maximum safe speed. . Increasing speed limits to more realistic levels will not result in higher speeds but would increase voluntary compliance and target enforcement at the occasional violator and high risk driver.
One way for restoring the informational value of speed limits requires that we do a better job of engineering speed limits. . Hopefully, the result of this research will provide engineers with the knowledge and tools needed to set maximum safe speed limits that are defensible and accepted by the public and the courts.”
Everybody who has done any research knows that the accident risk posed to a motorist based on speed represents a parabolic curve. There is a sweet spot with the lowest amount of accidents that corresponds to the 85-90th percentile speed or about 10-15 mph above the average speed. If you speed up or slow down from this point accident risk increases, more drastically by slowing down than speeding up.
The site below has a good collection of speed research graphs from various organizations such as FHWA, AASHTO, ITE, and Transportation Research Board. All of them illustrate a parabolic curve of speed risk. There is no direct or exponential graph of speed vs. accident risk, unless of course someone who is disingenuous cuts the parabolic graph in half only showing the right side of the graph and does not reference where the speeds fall in relation to average speed.
Scroll a little more than halfway down the page:
http://www.hwysafety.com/BHSPI_SettingSpeedLimits_CTCDC_060223.htm
I won’t even talk about the absurdity that all our bridges are designed to be “somewhat safe”.
By Randy on Aug 22, 2008
James Young when you get a vehicle that runs on energy that is replaceable and not something that we get from foreign countries who blackmail us then you can drive as fast as you like as long as that speed is not causing unnecessary accidents and deaths.
By Randy on Aug 22, 2008
John G you are missing the facts. The only thing that an engineer can possibly determine is what the fastest speed someone can drive on a road and be somewhat safe under ideal conditions. The fact is the faster a group of people drive on a roadway the more dagerous it is. This being said you can not have everyone drive at 10 mph. You have to find a limit that will be fast enough to get people where they are going but at the same time limit fuel usage and deaths and accidents. The faster you have the group travel the more fuel that they are goig to use and the more accidents or severe accidents that occur. You can have all the engineering studies you like but all the engineers would say that traveling faster is more dangerous. If you have everyone drive at 60 mph they are going to be far safer than people driving 90 mph. If you are on an interstate in the middle of nowhere with almost no traffic you can drive faster and be safer than driving faster with more traffic and turns and road merges. That is the major reason you have lower speed limits through cities.
You talk about bridge safety. An engineer may determine minimum strength a bridge would need to be to be somewhat safe but it is up to the people that are paying for the bridge to determine if they want it at a minimum strength or are willing to pay more for a bridge that is 50% stronger than the minimum. An engineer would determine that you could drive from point a to point b in a 50 hp car.
By John G on Aug 22, 2008
Randy,
Speed limits are set for ideal conditions. This is not open to interpretation or opinion, it is standard traffic engineering practice. It is incumbent on the motorist to vary speed as necessary according to conditions. Variable speeds can help aid a motorist if such are posted like the night speed limits in Texas. However, if there is only one single speed limit posted, it is for ideal conditions. Buy a copy of the AASHTO and MUTCD manuals which according to federal regulations are the manuals for design standards and setting speed limits. Most of what you say is factually false.
Statutory speed limits are in violation of federal law because there is no engineering study done. Federal law states:
Section 2B.13 Speed Limit Sign (R2-1)
Standard:
After an engineering study has been made in accordance with established traffic engineering practices, the Speed Limit (R2-1) sign (see Figure 2B-1) shall display the limit established by law, ordinance, regulation, or as adopted by the authorized agency. The speed limits shown shall be in multiples of 10 km/h or 5 mph.
I called the Florida Department of Transportation and they openly admit there is not an engineering study and the limit is solely based on the statute that was created by politicians who have no traffic engineering credentials.
Only people who are benefiting from the abuse of the system would ever favor politicians setting speed limits over traffic engineers. Would you want to drive over a bridge that was voted on how strong it should be by a group of people who have no engineering credentials?
By James Young on Aug 21, 2008
Sweet Chocolate Jesus! Get over yourself. I’m not the issue here. The problem is the set of economic forces that have been foisted on the world that have undermined Adam Smith’s markets and replaced competition with manipulation and political power, enabled by the ignorance of foolish people who believe that giving up our freedoms will make us freer. We need to attack those companies that have inhibited technological improvement, further extending our dependence on oil.
When we get electric automobiles, will you support scientifically-based traffic rules?
By Randy on Aug 21, 2008
James YOung you can go overseas and kiss their back sides then so that the rest of us can still get around. They love people like you that give them more power and control.
By James YOung on Aug 21, 2008
{James thanks to your use of oil and lack of interest in saving any and promoting using more we can be held hostage by foreign countries.}
Damn! How did you find me out? How did you figure out that I am the singular person in America who has been manipulating supplies to drive up the price, forgoing building new refining capacity, and spending billions on lobbyists and politicians to give me breaks so that I can live off the public teat? I must have underestimated you.
On the other hand, how do we balance freedom to act on our own behalf – the must fundamentally American idea in the our lexicon – against the fears of the mongers who want us all to live by their set of rules? I reject your absurd ideas. And I am not alone. Fully 2/3rds of drivers think your proposed ideas are stupid and they won’t follow them.
By Randy on Aug 21, 2008
James thanks to your use of oil and lack of interest in saving any and promoting using more we can be held hostage by foreign countries.
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080821/oil_prices.html
James says:
{I have been fighting for rational traffic control for 50 years. Don’t tell me that I don’t care.
Saving fuel is an individual issue. For me, the gallon I save between LA and Las Vegas is just not worth the wear and tear on my psyche by driving at a speed that is so far out of the range of homeostatic balance that I would be tempted to stab somebody in the face with a soldering iron. You’ve already indicated you know nothing and care little about the concept but it affects all of us.}
By Randy on Aug 21, 2008
Jeff I have not been to Detroit so you may be right because I do not know. From what it sounds like on the news though the roads are probably empty because of the poor economy in the area so with empty roads or nearly empty I am sure it may be safer to drive somewhat faster.
Where do you get your information that the roads that your travel are posted illegally? Have you been using that in your defense of the speeding tickets or have the police left Detroit also?
By Jeff on Aug 21, 2008
The freeway speeds in Detroit are 80-90 mph.
The Constitution of the United States gives me the right to not follow illegally underposted speed limits.
By Randy on Aug 21, 2008
James all I can say is that if you have such a problem on your psyche to follow the laws that we have then you are the one that should not be driving. It is also obvious that you do not care. Speed is more important than lives or injuries or the economy or our environment to you. You have said that in the past. As you said a few hundre more deaths or a few thousand more injuries is an equal trade off for drving 5 or 10 mph faster.
{I have been fighting for rational traffic control for 50 years. Don’t tell me that I don’t care.
Saving fuel is an individual issue. For me, the gallon I save between LA and Las Vegas is just not worth the wear and tear on my psyche by driving at a speed that is so far out of the range of homeostatic balance that I would be tempted to stab somebody in the face with a soldering iron. You’ve already indicated you know nothing and care little about the concept but it affects all of us.}
By James Young on Aug 20, 2008
Randy writes: { Jeff what a joke. Speed limits are illegally underposted? So that gives you the right to illegally not follow them? :-) Getting speeding tickets is not helping your cause.}
Any limits not in compliance with MUTCD are by definition illegal. All 50 states, DC and PR, are signatories to this compact.
By James Young on Aug 20, 2008
Randy writes: {James I have not seen any numbers where accidents were declining.}
That’s because you don’t look at the right things and don’t care to ascertain the truth for yourself. Go to NHTSA and look at the latest “Traffic Safety Facts.”
{ The less dire results are because of government mandates.}
Who cares? That driving is much safer now than it ever was before is all the more reason to remove any impediments to higher speeds and higher productivity. Low speeds carry a very heavy cost, something that you seem to ignore.
{ You have not been watching the other drivers actions because you are too busy reading statistics that are usually meaningless.}
I watch things that are important and that are verifiable rather than mere conjecture by anti-speed Nazis. I go out of my way to observe other drivers’ behavior because I can learn from it. Since I have never crashed into anybody or anything, I must be doing something right.
{ Accidents were shown to go up in the majority of states that increased speed limits.}
Completely bogus.
{The facts are that around cities like Chicago and others there are accidents every day on the interstates around the town.}
Crashes happen in places where there is a huge concentration of population. To know that 40 pitches were fouled out of play tells us nothing about the game. Using these as indicative of something important is worse than worthless, it is dishonest.
{ If everyone was driving slower most of them would either not have happened or they would have been 5 minute exchange of information and off they could have gone.}
You don’t know that. They might not have crashed if they had stopped for a Twinkie; therefore, Twinkies save lives.
{Thousands of people die on our roads but you do not care one bit. The reason I came here though is because slowing down saves a lot of gas. You do not care one bit about that either or what it does to our economy.}
I have been fighting for rational traffic control for 50 years. Don’t tell me that I don’t care.
Saving fuel is an individual issue. For me, the gallon I save between LA and Las Vegas is just not worth the wear and tear on my psyche by driving at a speed that is so far out of the range of homeostatic balance that I would be tempted to stab somebody in the face with a soldering iron. You’ve already indicated you know nothing and care little about the concept but it affects all of us.
By Randy on Aug 20, 2008
Jeff what a joke. Speed limits are illegally underposted? So that gives you the right to illegally not follow them? :-) Getting speeding tickets is not helping your cause.
By Randy on Aug 20, 2008
James I have not seen any numbers where accidents were declining. The less dire results are because of government mandates. You have not been watching the other drivers actions because you are too busy reading statistics that are usually meaningless. Accidents were shown to go up in the majority of states that increased speed limits. You do not believe such statistics so fine. The facts are that around cities like Chicago and others there are accidents every day on the interstates around the town. If everyone was driving slower most of them would either not have happened or they would have been 5 minute exchange of information and off they could have gone. Instead they slow down traffic big time. Thousands of people die on our roads but you do not care one bit. The reason I came here though is because slowing down saves a lot of gas. You do not care one bit about that either or what it does to our economy.
By James Young on Aug 20, 2008
{If they set the speed limit at the maximmum speed that most everyone feels comfortable at during ideal conditions then they would be eligible for driving too fast for conditions more than half the time.}
Who cares what they’re “eligible “ for? What we want to know is their behavior under different conditions. Yes, when conditions change, so does their behavior. That is why the number of crashes is declining in raw numbers and certainly in the crash-rate.
{How many people that you know of that would drive slower than the speed limit is even when conditons are not good? Obviously no one on this board.}
Think what you will of the posters to this board, but the demographic and statistical evidence shows that drivers are reacting in appropriate ways and are crashing less often and with less dire results. Obviously, something is working well and all those pieces of sky falling that you see are nothing more than some rain.
By James Young on Aug 20, 2008
I-80 across Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada. I-8 across AZ and CA. I-15 across CA, NV, UT, ID. I-20 and I-30 across Texas. I-10 across CA, AZ, NM, TX. Any road in Montana. Texas state highway 118 from Alpine to Study Butte. I-90 across SD, WY and MT.
By Randy on Aug 20, 2008
James Young I have not seen any roads that I have ever traveled where the prevailing speeds are 85 mph. Maybe they are just in Texas.
By Randy on Aug 20, 2008
James young you are the one that does not get it. If they set the speed limit at the maximmum speed that most everyone feels comfortable at during ideal conditions then they would be eligible for driving too fast for conditions more than half the time. How many people that you know of that would drive slower than the speed limit is even when conditons are not good? Obviously no one on this board.
By Jeff on Aug 20, 2008
Speed limits in most, if not all, states are illegally underposted. That’s to bring in more revenue. The 55 speed limit was supposed to be temporary. As we all know, the oil “embargo” of 1973/74 ended in March, 1974 but the 55 limit stayed around. When politcians found out how much extra revenue underposted speed limts bring in, they made up all kinds of excuses to prevent repeal of 55.
By James Young on Aug 20, 2008
Randy writes: {So James do you have a variable speed limit then when conditions change? Is it slower when it is night time? Is it slower when there is more than the traffic during the test? Is it slower when it is cloudy? Is it slower when the pavement is wet?}
No, the limits do not change with changes in conditions. What does change is drivers’ behavior because of that pesky little concept of risk homeostasis.
Since you seem to not even understand the question – Why use the 85th percentile? – I’ll respond anyway. Engineers discovered that the risk of crashing is represented by a ski jump-type graph, a long trend downward, minimization point and a slight uptick at the end. When this graph is overlaid onto the distribution of speeds that minimization point – i.e., the point at which risk is the least – occurs at the 85th percentile. And this has been demonstrated over and over again for urban and suburban highways. New evidence for interstate-grade roadways points to that minimization point occurring at the 95th percentile or even faster than previously thought. In simpler terms, any driver who is closer to that point in the speed distribution is also safer EVEN THOUGH HE IS DRIVING FASTER.
It has become obvious that you have no desire to learn anything, to think critically about the processes, to synthesize information from many sources, and to question conventional wisdom. Instead, you have shown yourself to be a rather poor apologist for the anti-driving cabal and want to revert to techniques and standards that have proven to be failures. Nobody except those with a financial stake in lower limits wants to go where you want to force us to go. If you want to drive 55 mph on a highway designed for 100+ mph and with prevailing speeds of 85 mph, then do so but stay in the very far right lane out of the way of real traffic. You would still be a hazard and you have the responsibility to minimize your impact on the rest of us. Better yet, stay off the roads altogether and leave the rest of us alone.