GPS Study Shows Drivers Will Slow Down, At A Cost

On short, less than one hour trips, I drive conservatively. Mild amounts of additional speed, or reduced speed makes no difference versus even one traffic signal, so I hang out in the right lanes and watch the onramps, like a good little hyper-miler, and often go below the posted 'limit'. I'm wide awake enough to pay attention and react.

On longer, multi-hour trips, I drive like a bat out of hell. Going even a little faster makes a huge difference in trip time and fatigue on a long trip, and keeps me 'awake'.

A seven hour trip, or even longer, tiring myself out playing games with the 'fuel economy', versus a five and a half hour trip, alertly watching for police? Out comes Mr. Hyde.
If going at or above the speed limit will shave HOURS off the trip, there's no debate for me. I'll spend the extra $5 on the next fill-up for my Prius, and incidentally, NOT fall asleep behind the wheel, or get run over by faster traffic, all seeking the same time savings.
So I get 45+ instead of 50+ MPG as I pass everyone over the uphill mountain ranges, and carry on zapping around traffic for the whole trip. I do conscientiously let them all pass me again on the downhills, setting the cruise control for the speed limit. That's where the highway patrol is usually waiting, after all. Though the other fringe benefit I've seen driving 'economy' cars like a maniac is, the cops HAVE pulled over speedier looking cars that I only just passed. That Prius couldn't possibly have been the one that registered THAT speed on the RADAR... must've been the Porsche. (They were speeding, too! But I was speeding more. My car doesn't advertise the demoniacal speeding so much. It blends in with the crowd.)

Not here in NY. Saw a state trooper with a Prius pulled over on the way home from work last week.

Not always the case, anywhere, really. I've only ever had one ticket in 30 years of driving. For passing uphill going 80 in a 55 zone. In a one mile long passing lane, after I'd been stuck behind someone going 35~40 (going faster, then slower, then faster, then slower), who was too scared to drive uphill on a highway with gradual curves, but who FLOORED IT, once he got to the relatively straight passing lane. Turning it into a drag race for whether I'd be stuck behind him for 15 more miles. Usually a safe bet, but the cop got me from around a blind corner with the RADAR, head-on, and had time enough to gesture right at me to pull over. So just bad luck all around.

I never sped again in that jurisdiction. I always made damned certain I was a slowpoke nuisance, going exactly 54. Always yielded in the useless passing lanes, but there's almost always someone else going barely faster or slower to block up traffic behind. It made me happy to be evil like that, while I lived there.

Mostly, I just make sure I'm not quite the fastest, most insane car. As long as there are others to make me look 'tame', or 'keep up' within a pack of fast cars. A decent trickle of substantially faster, more aggressively driven cars (going 90+) is usually present to keep the heat off me doing around 80 in 65~70 zones on the long stretches. No guarantees, but the chances are low enough, overall.

Agree with pingnak's views in last couple of posts. One is I think much less likely to get a ticket in a Prius than in a Mustang even if driving in the exact same manner. And the dyed in the wool standard for not getting a speeding ticket is, other than obviously not exceeding the limit, simply not being the fastest on the road. If you're 80 in a 70 and lots of cars are passing at 85 you're golden.

It sounds like you deserved that ticket, big time. 25 over the limit is a great deal. That car was badly behaved speeding, up to prevent you to pass, but sometimes you need to slow down and let them have there way. Don't be emotional.

Don't know what the roads are like, but 54 isn't being that much of a nuisance. There are always those crawling at 45 that piss me off.

This is a major factor in cultural speed variations. On roads with thousands of cars per hour going well over the limit, there is no way for a few officers to enforce the limit, so more tolerance is allowed. Then drivers who spend nearly all their driving time in these conditions come to expect this is the norm.

Most of my road trips are on comparatively sparsely traveled roads with little or no cover, where the tolerance factor has not grown to the same levels as above. It seems that many complaints about 'unfair speed traps' come from drivers who don't understand the difference and won't or can't reset their 'normal speed' expectations to conditions lacking cover.

Yes, I definitely deserved the ticket, and was 'emotional' at the time, being in a bit of a hurry, and this kind of nuisance driver was fairly routine, as was the 'solution' for getting around them. It's amazing all the things you can think of to spend $300 on, and all the things you can think you'd rather be doing instead of a retarded half day of 'traffic school'.

So I deliberately became a much worse nuisance, and never had the problem with the slow drivers anymore. All the open highway ahead of me, and a miles-long (I am not exaggerating) queue of cars trapped behind me, all because they wanted to go faster than 55.

You'd apparently be surprised how many cars stack up behind you over 20 miles of of one lane mountain highway, and how annoying that is to the locals. But if that's the way they 'officially' want it, who am I to argue?

Hey I know it. I normally go about 4 over the limit in those conditions, which I'm sure for you absolutists out there makes me a bad guy speeder. you'd be amazed how much less frustrating it is to go 59 in a 55 than 54, even though its less than 10%. I did get a ticket for 5 over the limit in Nebraska, I can't believe that cop. I'm sure I was singled out for out of state plates. I was passing in the middle lane of a 3 lane with people going my same speed in the left lane. Yes, I was driving a car that looked fast not a prius.

We get that too. Most of our trips have to go through the reservation, and the tribal police are just looking for something to do. You don't want to drive through there with a burned out headlamp.

Tom

burned out headlamps here are an invitation for a drunk test to police

I was on a highway through a Navajo reservation in the middle of a string of Arizona cars going 70 on a 2 lane highway. A reservation cop going the other way turned around, passed the two cars tailgating me and pulled me over.

After he wrote my ticket and I signed it, I said I noticed that he didn't pull over the Arizona (instate) cars going the same speed I was going and asked him how fast I could go without getting stopped with out of state plates.

After a few seconds of awkward silence, he laughed and said "60, have nice day"

... even at noon on a sunny day, as I found out on the reservation nearest dad's house.

I showed him the replacement bulb I tried to put in that morning, explained the heat-damaged socket that prevented a holiday repair, and promised to be home by dark (which was reasonable for the distance). I received no ticket, just a verbal advertisement for the tribal gas station.

Where I grew up, out of area plates were very obviously given less leeway. The spouse, growing up on the other side of the continent, had a similar environment. We both drive under the belief that this pattern still exists, especially in the non-urban areas we prefer.

Here's a little hint: If you kept the plastic dealer FRAMES that show you're from out of town, it's the same invitation for tickets. All you're doing is giving free advertising for that dealer, with nothing in exchange, other than telling the out of town cops in your own state that you're from another city/county, and as easy pickings as an out-of-state plate.

There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to have that frame telling the Madera cops you're from the San Diego, for instance. Yet I see these frames on so many cars, and they're legible from a fair distance. Eye-catching, even. People get the license plate in the mail for their new car, and for some inexplicable reason they keep the frame emblazoned with the city and dealer name when they attach them, and they're still on even years later, when they're disintegrating.

Then its pretty clear, from your experience speeding tickets are all about revenue and nothing about safety. If it was about safety local drivers that make the road unsafe, at a minium would get equal tickets, or rely more.

With so many out of state plates here, there would be an outcry for tiketing out of stat students and tourists. Its sad in most of the country its all about charging out of staters instead of those that are more dangerous. This doesn't need to be, it is a corruption of the rule of law, and we should all speak out against it. What is more damaging to the rule of law? Corrupt police or those that break arbitrary laws. Jefferson had a good anwser to this.

The problem isn't really rooted in corrupt police. It's corrupt law. Evil laws make evil police. They don't have a choice. If the state makes blowing your nose in public a capital crime, the police will arrest you for it, or being in possession of kleenex (nose blowing paraphernalia), and use boogy soaked tissue as evidence against you in a court of law. And they'll ultimately kill people over it.

The same can be said of busting barely 'adult' kids for a little pot, and giving them a felony sentence and record. Drug policy with long mandatory sentences has turned our criminals desperately violent, and converted the police forces into SWAT happy thugs. Prohibition made organized crime a huge problem in the 1920s, and is still making it a vast and horrendous and ever worse problem today.

Whole communities see the police as the ENEMY, because all they do is put away their kids for long prison terms over petty possession, and do nothing about the crime that happens when those same kids graduate from the penal system and come back with no jobs and nothing to look forward to in life. The only equal opportunity employers who'll look the other way with a felony record are gangs.

Another fun phenomena is 'SWATting'. Since police have taken to showing up to every arrest scenario with a SWAT team, a popular prank is to use open wireless networks and fake caller ID numbers to phone in bomb threats, emergencies, etc.
swatting

Though they've occasionally served warrants to the 'wrong' house for drug busts and slaughtered people and their pets. Even when it's the RIGHT house for the warrant, guilty or not, they tear the place apart and terrorize everyone present, because they don't want to risk any evidence being destroyed.
Drug War Victims « Drug WarRant

Most police officers are good people, but when the corrupt police department tells them to have and illegal quota of speeders or to target out of state plates, or blacks, or Hispanic drivers, we have a problem. Many go along. Whistle blowers are often punished.

Laws give them the RIGHT to have quotas. All in the name of 'safety', and of course revenue for the city/county/state. Sort of like the laws a few years back that let them sieze property from people SUSPECTED of drug crimes, without any due process whatsoever. Homes, cars, anything. No trial required. They universally want ballistic, confiscating property from anyone they could come up with a flimsy accusation about.

Such laws are still in force. And you thought the fourth amendment meant something?

If you have more than $300 cash in your possession, the cops can simply TAKE IT. You're probably doing something 'criminal' with it, and lo and behold, any chemical test on money is almost guaranteed to find drug residue on it. So they took it because it's 'drug money', even if they only took it because it was money. Literal highway robbery, supported by the state. Airport checkpoints are the same. So be sure to deposit that cash somehow before travelling. Though travelling from where you sold that car or participated in that swap meet, to the nearest ATM is plenty far enough to get pulled over.
police confiscate cash - Google Search

Many places this is illegal and written into law. The law is often violated by police departments. Here is an example.

NYC Police Department Caught Imposing Traffic Ticket Quotas | Confessions Of A Traffic Lawyer

And let's not forget quotas for busting drug offenders for possession. Busting potheads for a little weed is so much safer and easier than figuring out where they get the drugs from. Just pull kids over and sniff. It's easy to con kids and most other idiots into giving up their rights and allowing a search, and then even getting them to confess.

DUI checkpoints rarely net more than a couple of DUIs for backing up traffic for miles. They do net various other kinds of tickets and arrests and warrants. Just an excuse to search and examine cars.
Statistics don’t justify sobriety checkpoints - Aurora Beacon News

DUI checkpoints have only taught the drunks to get off the arterial highways and drive through neighborhoods. Or to at least google/facebook/twitter realtime DUI checkpoint locations with their phones before heading out. Heck, even TV and radio cover the locations of checkpoints, LIVE. At least they are getting the absolute stupidest drunks off the road, but checkpoints are by far the most ineffective method for catching them.