And again, I am stunned, stunned I say, at the blasé attitude here on OCDO towards scofflaw drivers.
I expect full compliance with about 99% of all traffic laws as I believe they are based on solid, objective evidence of improving public safety. Red means stop. Stop signs mean "stop" not merely "slow and yield". One should keep his car in proper repair with lights working correctly, etc. Signal lane changes and turns. Use the proper lane, observe proper following distances, and stay on the correct side of the road.
And I have nothing but contempt for those who exceed posted speed limits in school zones, residential areas, and most other surface streets. The survival rate for pedestrians struck by a vehicle plummet from about 90% when the car is traveling at 15 to 20 mph, to 10% when the car is in excess of 50 mph.
But having endured the tyranny of Nixon's/Carter's federally mandated double-nickel in a State where my hometown was 300 miles from my State capital, and 400 miles to the northern border of my State, before AC was standard in most cars or any school buses, I picked up a few tickets for not dramatically slowing my speed down on long, lonely stretches of rural highway and InterState freeway.
Since the repeal of that asinine speed mandate that most Easterners can't even begin to understand the problems imposed, I've had nary a ticket. Turns out my first speeding ticket was for doing 80 in a 55 zone. That exact same stretch of road, with 3 times the traffic volume, is now posted at what our State Department of Transportation has determined, via both professional study and empirical evidence/experiment, to be a perfectly safe, reasonable, 80 mph. My behavior hasn't changed. But now my preferred speed is legal.
During the federal slow mandate, Las Vegas Review Opinion Page Editor (and later, one-time Libertarian VP candidate) Vince Suprynowicz penned an article in which he claimed that a large percentage (I forget the exact percentage) of traffic deaths in Nevada at the time were single car run offs. People were falling asleep making long drives across deserted, desert roads. It wasn't just Nevada.
With posted limits between 70 and 80 mph, the drive time between my home town and Salt Lake City is less than 4 hours. When the limit was 55, the driving time was 5-1/2 hours. But the difference in real travel time is more significant. At sub 4 hours, the drive can usually be reasonably made without stops, meaning that total travel time is less than 4 hours. However, at 5-1/2 hours drive time, a stop is generally required to at least use the restroom, often to get something to drink or eat. This means that real travel time jumps from sub-4 hours to 6 hours+.
For a single-day, round trip, the difference in travel time is more than 4 hours. This makes a difference in safety. At today's speed limits, I can leave home at 8 am and arrive by noon. I can spend 4 hours at a business meeting, a family funeral, or other event, leaving at 4 pm, arriving home by 8 pm. That is an 12 hour day which is not a stretch for most people. But under the federal double-nickel, add 4 hours to that day. I had to leave by 6 am meaning I was waking earlier than normal. I didn't get home until 10 pm, now into the danger zone for drowsy driving after a 16+ hour day that started early, after a shorter than normal night's rest.
This ignores the nearly hypnotic effect of trying to drive 55 mph on roads that were designed,
designed to be driven at 70+ in an era before seatbelts, with radial bias tires, without anti-lock brakes, and without airbags.
The 55 mph, federally mandated speed limit was literally a killer here in the vast open spaces of the West. Its federally mandated enforcement also fundamentally changed the relationship between decent people and their peace officers. It ushered in an era of speed traps with speed limits set for fundraising, rather than being set based on objective safety criteria.
In a similar vein, there is now ample evidence that too many jurisdictions have used red-light cameras for revenue rather than real safety. Some have gone so far as to shorten yellow light times to increase the number of tickets written. There is some evidence to suggest that such use of red light cameras have actually increased the number of crashes and injuries as drivers insist on stopping short rather than properly proceeding through a yellow light, for fear of an expensive and unjust ticket. Fortunately, Utah effectively bans the use of such cameras.
I don't fault anyone who drives in a safe manner, while disregarding the rare, but offensive traffic law that actually reduces, rather than enhances public safety. With the repeal of the double-nickel and States/communities free to set speed limits based on sound engineering principles, there are very few traffic laws that endanger the public. But a couple do remain.
On the flip side, some legitimate, safety driven traffic laws are so rarely enforced that violators of such laws almost never get a ticket. It is rare for anyone to get a ticket in Utah for texting while driving unless they cause a crash. It is almost unheard of for anyone to get a ticket for refusing to yield the passing lane, even though that offense carries the same penalty as exceeding the posted limit on a freeway by 10 mph. Impeding the flow of traffic is far more hazardous than exceeding the posted limit by 5 or 10 mph on a limited access freeway. But tickets are far more common for the latter than the former.
Charles