WTF...

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SmileWavy THUMBS UP

65 is artificially low in good conditions. It should be higher if not unlimited. It is an arbitrary limit and should be arbitrarily enforced. Police officers can let people go for speeding or give warnings if it is not dangerous. An arbitrary gray limit should not be enforced with strict black and white (wrong or right) cameras and GPS.

We need better drivers training. Everyone should have skidpad practice and should be able to demonstrate good control while sliding. Besides this, common sense about how to conduct one's self in traffic is not common enough. People sit in the left lane at 65 with no one in front of them and a line of cars behind. Even if they were speeding at 90 they should get over to the right for a second to let the people behind go by at 100. Then they can back over and drive 90 and never see the 100 mph people again. It is only a minor task to get over for a moment. Whether or not you think 90 mph is safe doesn't matter with this example because whatever the speed is, the danger comes from the traffic held up which might try to get around the "slow" 90 mph driver. If fact, obstruction of traffic causes more deaths than speeding. A CHP officer told me this last good fact after giving a lecture to my friends who slowed down in the left lane in their cars when they saw the cop. I pulled over to the right before slowing so he didn't bother me at all, even though he told me that he knew I was going 70 in a 50.

I'll get off my soap box now. I just feel very strongly about this because I commute 100 miles a day and see dangerous behavior all the time. Reckless and careless driving or driving without concentrating on driving is dangerous and made more dangerous by speeding, but I've seen many drivers going 85 with much more safety than drivers going 65 in a careless manner.

Ron,

I was on my way to Cape Cod for Vaca. The whole way down I was using the blocker technique for speeding. I let some rube who is going fast, get ahead of me. Then I follow at a safe distance so hopefully the cop will go after them. (nice of me I know). I was doing 90 mph most of the way. Then I lost my rube. So I was passing a cluster of cars that where going about 80 when I got hit. I pulled right over. The Stateie was very nice explaning how he got me 1200' ahead and how I was the fastest car so far. I thought he was just going to give me a warning because I had a perfect record for 10 years. (Thanks V1) Oh well time to pay up.:mad:

OK.. makes sense...

at least did you see any rubes turn into bear bait? That's my favotite technique for the speed chess game.. somehow I love the entertainment when that happens.......Ron

Re post of one of my own earlier replys about Ka & Laser... just an FYI...

......On the other hand, in most any police dept in "non-rural" area's they are replacing their 90's technology Ka band radar units with new LASER guns.
Mfg's of these are offering incredible group buy discounts to cities/counties that make it very attractive and in light of the fact they also push the fact that it is near un-argueable in court and almost guaranteed to increase municiple revenues, enabling purchasers(i.e. cities) to recapture their cost outlay for the LASER purchase much sooner than they did when purchasing their Ka band radar units.

This was all told to me by a 20yr. LAPD officer who spent 10yrs as a motor officer(now a detective) back in May during traffic school.

So if this is in fact true........ my question is, just how much longer are the V1's & Passport's going to be of any effect? specifically because the LASER warning on present day "top of the line" units only have the ability to detect the "instant-on" of the LASER, which for alot of users only notifies that you've just got a ticket.
:)

Ron,

LOL

I like the entertainment of the interplay of traffic. I try and predict what other drivers are going to do. It keeps me from being bored.

brawlins,

Being that you're from the Atlanta area I can see why you don't know any better or don't care. I lived there for 4 years and I know how the commute is every day. I just think it's sad that getting in my car and driving to the store is such a dangerous task. It shouldn't be.

It's disappointing to hear this sort of talk from a bunch of people who claim to be knowledgable about cars. If we were knowledgable about cars, we'd know that most cars like your average toyota are not capable of a safe, evasive lane change at 80 or 85 mph. And like somebody already noted, even if the car is capable the driver generally is not thanks to our lax driver's ed. Those are the two primary reasons we have speed limits. Not everybody drives a Porsche and goes to DE. It's an imperfect system, and speed limits are one way to make it safer.

By the way, how many of us have complained to our elected officials about speed trap money raising schemes? Many states, including yours brawlins, have laws against revenue raising through speed traps. Look it up, you'd be surprised. Remember too that your legislature tried to cap speeding fines at $50 not too long ago, nomatter what the speed at which you were clocked. It's not like the police have unchecked power.

Rondinone

Roundnione,
Some states may have laws against speed traps, but the burden of proof is on the driver ro prove he was the victim of a speed trap. Not a very even situation because few if any drivers will go through a long and expensive legal process. This is a law that sounds good and fair but is not very effective. In today's world you can't get an attorney interested unless there is big money involved, unfortunately the driver caught by a speed trap must put up the dollars up front to contest the ticket. Not very likely!

Totally incorrect. The laws are based on the percentage of income from speeding tickets vs. overall department income within the jurisdiction of that police department. If that percentage breaks a threshold, in Georgia, the state revokes the local department's licence to use radar guns. It's to prevent one city that's on a major artery from using that artery as a source of income.

I've been thru a bunch of speed traps.. even had the PD follow me out of town at nite because he couldn't get his 911 coffee conversation.. and then he was pissed off when I pulled off the road as he tried to sneak up on me in the twisties out of town..

BUT the best speed trap I've seen was in the SE. I'm driving with the morning commute on a single 2 way/single lane where the limit drops to 15mph before entering this itty bitty town.. The road suddenly turns into a steep down hill.. and there is the towns finest blasting very blue collar commuters.. the average age of the cars must have been 10 yrs old/ maybe 15 yrs old.. like these are low income people who have to allocate gas money and they're getting shook down.. that pissed me off.. the other traps I don't have a problem with head wise........Ron

Really! Georgia indeed seems to be quite progressive. Probably due to a guilty conscience arising from years of abusing the law through to overuse of speed traps to generate revenue. I think such a threshold may sound good but but I wonder how it works. Frankly, I'm a bit surprised that Georgia police departments appear to be running profit and loss statements, just what is "overall department income"? I doubt if many other states follow this example and I still believe it sounds fairer than it really is. Income from traffic tickets is important to cities and states (especially now in a recession) and the decision to ticket is in the hand of the individual policeman who may or not be fair. But what happens to the cop who consistently writes fewer tickets than his fellow policemen? I don't think he gets a medal!

funny story..
years ago my friend had a rep for not writing tickets for anything but extreme driving.. so eventually he got the "word".. so his wife was wilder than him.. so he writes up his wife and the story got around town pretty fast.. it was a local joke for years..........Ron

Right. Exactly what I am trying desperately to say. Ain't nobody gonna be able to break traffic laws for long!

You got a few good years left and the your p-car will be good for over 55 at the track only...

SmileWavy

that sucks..

thanks for the standing SmileWavy.. they may force me to walk and smile .......Ron

rondinone -
I guess my original response to you was rude, and I apologize for that. Here's the gist of my point: There's no "safe" speed. But none of us likes to drive at 5 mph, so what is the "right" speed? When it was 55 mph, the speed limit zealots said 55 was the number - When it was 65-70, the zealots changed their minds again. On the Autobahn it is 130kph or unlimited (last time I was there). So the issue becomes "The Rule of Law".
FYI - For Georgia - Tickets cannot be issued for less than 10mph over the speed limit. This all came about as a result of 1960's and early 70's speed traps in South Georgia. The Governor at the time (Lester Maddox) erected a billboard before one of the speed trap towns warning motorists that they were about to enter a Speed Trap town. Some of the locals tore down the billboard at night. The governor replaced the billboard and had the Highway patrol guard it 24 hours a day.

brawlins,

Of course apology accepted. You're right that 55mph was arbitrarily low. But it was (originally) set for fuel efficiency reasons, not safety, in response to the oil embargo. The federal government set it, then leveraged highway money to bring the states into line. When that ended a few years back the states were free to set their own speed limits again. We saw Montana remove speed limits from certain highways, and the response was just what you'd expect from a public with little driver's training: dopes on bald tires and bad shocks driving at totally unsafe speeds with no real understanding of the danger they were in.

I'm happy to concede that there is no universal safe speed. It's a complicated interaction between road conditions, automotive capability, driving capability, and whomever is out there on the road with you. But enforcement of any alternatives would be too expensive. And leaving it up to individual discretion is outright dangerous, at least in this country with our I'm-the-victim attitudes. People routinely overestimate their own abilities.

A good friend from Germany expained that driver's education in Germany was rigorous, and they considered a driving license a genuine privilege. Just the sort of thing we could use here.

I remember that 10mph rule from Georgia.

I think that the industry safe speed is the speed 82% of the cars are traveling at...........Ron

So with all the badgering I give the PD/HP what with pulling me over all the time one lets me off today with a warning. I was driving like a genuine a-hole and he told me as much (not dangerous per say but not pleasant either, you know speeding a bit a changing lanes to get around the pokeys in the left lane).

He does me, lets me know he's not happy and then says to behave. Maybe it's karma as the last 2 I got were totally bogus.

Back on target though...

If what we spend on enforcement could be used for driver education instead we'd have much safer and saner roads. The current system is mobile taxation at it's worst because some of the money collected goes right back into better ways to collect more money (laser guns, etc.) and it's happening under the guise of 'public safety'!

Driver education in this country is a joke. Especially considering the lethal potential. In all truth, I can't believe that we still use such an unsafe form of transportation at all!

If Laser (LIDAR) is the wave of the future than we should all get something like the passport SRX which has a laser shifter (scrambler) to confuse the instant on radar guns!

Now, here's a really funny story (if you're not sittin' in my shoes). I just got my '87 911 a couple of weeks ago and I was on my way to get the SRX installed. The directions that I had were a little confusing so I was searching desperately for the street I was to turn on. I was driving down Lindburg blvd. in St. Louis, which is a 4 lane divided highway with limited access and traffic lights only about every mile or two. I discovered too late that the speed limit on this road is 40 and the policeman said he tagged me at 60. This happened less than 4 blocks from the place that I was going to to have the radar/laser detector installed. :eek:

I want to add one vent to this: I think a lot of accidents are caused by pokeys in the left lane playing the job of "speed limit enforcer" while they are violating the law that orders slower traffic to the right lane. As others try to get around them, they swerve in and out of lanes increasing the probability of an accident.
Speaking of the Germans, the Autobahn rules are very strict about pokeys having to get out of the left lane if faster traffic approaches from behind. Use of blinkers is mandatory.