I don’t disagree with your basic thoughts. Deprioritized for 10 mph over is fine. But once the cop sees you going 10 over, is he supposed to ignore it and look for a tailgater? I’m ok with that too, but eventually you need pulled over. It’s a speed LIMIT. 11 over and get a ticket? Ok. But there has to be a cutoff for speed somewhere. Driving 110 is going to be dangerous period. Unexpected things happen, and the faster you’re going, the faster they appear. But yeah, 80 in a 70 I do daily if there’s basically no traffic.
FWIW, your experiences must be vastly different than mine. I drive 10 mph over the limit almost exclusively (on the highway, not in town) and haven’t been pulled over in years. I usually see the people who passed me pulled over 5 miles down the road. And I’m ok with that.
Tailgating and swerving is a hard thing for an officer to actually witness. But, I’m pretty confident that if they see someone driving like an A hat, swerving in and out of traffic and tailgating, they’re going to pull them over. Whether they get a ticket or a warning, I don’t know. I’m fine with the ticket, though. I’m not sure they should lose their license, spend the night in jail, etc (dui laws here). Unless they’re driving crazy reckless.
I think the German Autobahn provides some evidence concerning the danger from speed alone. No speed limit. Just good drivers, high speed tires, move over if slower, and so on. Gee we modeled our interstate system after them, why not the laws. As trucks rumble through Indiana at 65 mph causing everyone else to hit the left lane. Insanity.
How about I don’t want anywhere near me any drivers – whether behind, in front, alongside, approaching from opposite direction, whatever – who are driving distracted, impaired, stupidly aggressive, unable to drive safely and responsibly for whatever reason, driving a vehicle that is an unsafe hazard, etc.
Like you said, it’s hard for them to see that stuff… Because they’re sitting under bridges pointing laser guns 500 yards downrange instead of driving with traffic. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve seen people driving like idiots right in front of cops, and they pull over the guy who’s going a little fast but otherwise driving perfectly. It’s insanity.
+1
What totally boggles my mind is the fact that several of the rural farm roads in my town have a speed limit of 30 mph, despite the fact that drivers have clear sight lines for at least 1/2 a mile, and there are few–if any–driveways or side roads. Of course, the cops occasionally place radar units on those roads to snag those who are “going too fast”.
I have a Valentine-1 radar detector, so I can drive at 35-40 mph on those roads with little chance of being ticketed, but even when driving at those speeds I am occasionally passed by an idiot who thinks that it is appropriate for him to drive 60 mph+ on those roads. I always hope for a cop car ahead when one of those jerks passes me at high speed, but–of course–those seem to be the days when the cops are absent from those roads.
Depends on whether or not the hilltop is “blind” (like if the peak is so sharp you can’t see over it). Landscapers park on the streets here so I need to be extremely careful.
The ATTEMPT to stay on the road and not kill someone is NOT good enough. There is NOTHING more dangerous then a drunk behind a wheel…followed closely by someone texting. States really need to take DUI and texting seriously.
First offense - hefty fine and take remedial classes on driving.
Second offense - 1 year in jail. PERIOD.
That’ll get the hard core drunks and texters off the road.
I am well aware. The point I was trying to make is that a drunk drivers focus is on the road, and a cell phone driver has their eyes on the phone. My cousin was killed by a drunk driver and I do not condone or promote driving drunk. Both driving situations are abhorrent. Please stay safe everyone.
So what? They are still far more likely to get in an accident and kill someone then someone who’s talking on their cell.
First off there’s a difference between talking on a cell phone and texting. If you’re talking a cell phone 99.9999% of drivers are not looking at the phone when they’re just talking. Only time they may look is when typing in the number which is a short window. Texting is a different story. But even when texting they take their eyes off the road when they are texting or reading. The more they do it…the more dangerous they are. So they are really only dangerous for the moments they are looking at their cell phone. Still dangerous…
A drunk is a dangerous the whole time they’re behind the wheel.
To throw a curveball into that assessment, apparently the latest trend is face-timing while driving. So they’re busy watching their phone to see what the guy on the other end is doing rather than watching the road. And the best part is that if you have the phone in a mount and don’t actually hold it, that’s perfectly legal according to many of the “hands-free” laws.
Watching movies while driving is against the law, but watching live-action video of your cousin isn’t. That’s where I’m coming from on the idea to stop criminalizing individual technologies and just make a blanket ban on it by saying that if you’re driving like crap, you get penalized no matter what you were doing.
I’d be fine with adding additional charges if they do a breathalyzer and discover that you were drunk, but there should be a baseline penalty to driving like an idiot that doesn’t rely on you having been distracted by specifically-banned activities, because then the latest fad activity can distract you and the cops have no recourse. And they won’t be able to do anything about it for a long time because the old farts in the legislature haven’t heard of it and will take years to become educated enough to legislate about it (and then will usually get educated wrong and made dumb laws as a result).
You’re probably pretty close. I’d guess the number to be around 1%. but fewer than 1% of all drivers on average are drunk (and if you restrict the statistics to peak times - weekend nights - that only rises to around 1.5%*). Even though the problem is statistically very small, when you get enough samples, it’s still a big problem.
For example, if there are 100 people and 1 cobra in a room, then even though the cobra represents less than 1 percent of all individuals in the room, it’s still dangerous as hell and needs to be dealt with before the bodies start piling up.
Stats discussion: These stats are based on number of drunks per mile driven, not self-reported “I drove drunk at some point in the last year” studies, which are problematic no matter what side of the fence you fall due to underreporting and lack of actual evidence as to whether or not the self-reportees were actually drunk/sober when they thought they were/were not.
Then you go back to what I previously said. Texting or face-time is not done every second you’re behind the wheel. However…when you’re drunk - you’re driving is impaired every single second.
Except that texting and face-time are done every second behind the wheel. I suspect you’re of my generation or older, and it’s sometimes hard for us to grasp how welded the millennials-and-younger are to their electronics. My college-aged niece is never without her phone. It’s always in her hand. She’s always fooling with it, no matter what she’s doing. Yes, that includes driving (and yes, I’ve told her that’s stupid, but she’s of the age where all of us “olds” are just “salty” and should be ignored).
She starts having video chats when she wakes up. Occasionally, though not always, she will stop long enough to shower in privacy. She vid-chats through breakfast, and then walks to the car while staring at the phone, and sticks the phone on an eye-level holder on the windshield so she can stare at her boyfriend while driving. The only time she stops is when she’s in class, and she’s not unusual from the others I’ve seen in her peer group.
While it is theoretically possible for her to stop being obsessed with her phone instantly in the way that it is not possible for a drunk to suddenly turn sober, in practice it’s a different story. These people are addicted to their phones just as much as any drug user is addicted to their dope. It’s a compulsion, and absent a harsh wakeup call either by being heavily penalized, or by killing someone, it’s not one they’re going to voluntarily stop even while driving.
Increasingly I see pedestrians glued to looking down at their phones while obliviously walking into traffic, especially in parking lots but also randomly crossing streets, often not even in crosswalks, without bothering to look up long enough to check if they are about to get run over.
Several times in parking lots I’ve braked to a complete stop and waited for a phone obsessed idiot to step in front of my car just a few feet or even inches away then blown my horn. Amazingly, most barely glance sideways without even looking up or reacting.
I see people texting all the time. And the biggest segment of texters around here are 30-40 yo salesmen. Teens are up there. I rarely if ever see anyone ever face time. Texting is a huge problem. But not all millennials are.
In Minnesota it’s kind of a hoot watching the PC highway department evaluate speeds. They study the outstate two lane highways and reluctantly raise the speed limit from 55 to 60 on some desolate stretches of roads. Now I know most of you folks are too young to see the sillyness of this because back in 1958 these same roads, with less able cars, had a limit of 65. So now we can go 5 mph faster or 5 mph slower than 60 years ago. Then remember many of these highways had that dangerous curb on the edge to drain water. Hit the edge of the road with nylon tires and the car would be swung over to the on-coming lane if you weren’t paying attention. Putt putt putt. $135 for going 65 on them like in 1958. In fairness though, they also had the night time limit of 55 which made some sense. Remember the old day/night speed signs?
