Because it can be enforced selectively, and if everyone is guilty of something, anyone in particular can be harassed under the cover of a legal justification.
Yep. And in some places, one can see the enforcement is against minoritites and other scape goats at a disproportionate level. This also has the "bonus" of being able to make one group look like they break the law much more often and are dangerous
Yep. In Switzerland not having your ID on you is an arrest-able offence. Of course, the police never check the ID of anyone white or who blends in.
But if you look brown / disabled, then they will check you…
Aside from selective enforcement, some laws (like traffic laws) are there for your protection AND to establish liability if something goes wrong.
If the government sets the limit at 30 and everyone goes 50, when an incident occurs, nobody can sue the city for bad roads because everyone was going faster than the intended speed.
Also establishes expectations. Every on the highway knows what the expected speed is. Going 30 in a 65 is way more dangerous than doing 75 when conditions allow.
But doing 55 in a 65 isn't unreasonable, and 95 is pretty fast and at that speed handling can become difficult on cheap or poorly maintained cars.
There are also conditions where 30 is what you'll do on a highway if its a blizzard and you're stuck behind a plow truck.
You are referring to the basic speed law...
Drive as fast as the road conditions allow or some shit.
This has the unintended consequence of people not knowing about the law if it goes unenforced for a long time.
Not knowing the law isn't an excuse before the law in most circumstances.
Which makes this an issue since no one will go read the whole list of laws
Name every law.
When minor things are against the rules which are selectively enforced, it means the authorities get to pick and choose who to punish based on whatever criteria they feel like, which gives them power.
Which shines some light on how the black population (at least here in the US) gets charged with disproportionately more crimes.
It's very effective in keeping slavery via our private prison system running
You seem to be assuming that people would keep driving as they currently do if we removed speed limits entirely. I'd be willing to bet that this is not the case. Most drivers have a number in mind on how much they're willing to exceed the speed limit. For me that is 5 - 10kph, so if the limit is 60kph, then you're not going to catch me going 80. Without speed limits I probably would.
So why do we have such laws? Because they work. Not perfectly but to some extent.
Everyone always exceed the speed limit on highways.
Is this some kind of American thing?
Canada too. Sometimes it seems like the speed “limit” is actually the minimum most people are expected to go (if possible) on Ontario’s highways, especially the busiest ones. Enforcement is almost entirely done manually and barely exists, if it’s being done at all.
A lot of roads and highways are very over-engineered here with wide & forgiving lanes, with broad shoulders at the side. The actual speeds that can be accommodated in the design are far greater than the posted limit.
the hell
North American driving culture sucks. For the past 70 years cars have dominated at the expense of all other modes of travel. They’re deeply embedded into our culture, infrastructure, planning processes, transportation engineering, and daily lives. They have become synonymous with freedom of movement for a lot of people who can’t imagine any different way to get around. Speed limits and enforcement in their minds are seen as an infringement on their rights. It will be a long and uncertain process to enact change, ripe for disruption and setbacks, but the status quo isn’t working, we’ve hit the limits of cars’ ability to scale, and with the internet showing how things are in the rest of the world, some people are waking up to what’s possible when you aren’t dependent on cars to get around safely and reliably.
To expand on what Grappling said, I'll give you an example. A few years ago the city repaved a decrepit section of road into a smooth and wide open road that is wide enough for 4 lanes but made into 2 wide ones with massive shoulders. There are no pedestrians on this road and you can comfortably go 80-100km/h. The speed limit they set? 50. While it's not every road, it is definitely a lot of roads that get treated like this. It results in getting very comfortable with breaking the speed limits because the speed limits are stupid not matched to the designs of the roads.
That is a stupid speed limit tbh
In Canada, the speed limits are kind of designed for bad conditions. Because somehow, in the cities, many people are too stupid or stubborn to go below the speed limit in the snow.
So in clear conditions, the speed limit should be higher than it is.
Also, at least around where I live, the roads are designed to support higher speeds than the speed limits indicate. So we have roads designed for 50km/h, but the speed limit is 30km/h. 50km/h feels nore comfortable to drive.
Why don't we just redesign the roads to make them less comfortable to speed in? Well, how else are we going to issue tickets where officers can choose who gets fined, and sometimes even get to search a car out of the deal??
no idea where you're from, but it's true in many European countries too
It's so the police always have something they can stop you for.
So you can selectively punish.
expected ... traffic speed
You're not supposed to be speeding you know?
I'll never forget my first time driving in Southern California.
I was doing 85mph in a 70mph zone and a prius flew past me.
Where I live, if you're driving the speed limit on the highway, you'd best be in the slow lane...and you'd still have people passing you.
You should be in the slow lane I'd you aren't overtaking anyway right? I presume most places have fairly similar rules but here in Australia it's keep left unless overtaking, always. I guess keep right unless overtaking for US.
Yeah, but we've got like 4 lanes in a single direction sometimes, so there's not just a slow lane and a passing lane.
Guess what, all three extra lanes are still passing lanes. This misunderstanding is the biggest cause of traffic.
Call them what you want, it means that the majority of the people on the highway are "speeding" at any given time
Bwahahaha!
This sounds like a distinctly cultural problem where the word 'limit' clearly doesn't mean very much to the population in question.
It's a limit, not a target, and certainly not a floor as some USAsians seem to treat it.
Here in Australia you can be fined for exceeding the limit by less than 10km/h. Yes, even if you are 1km/h over, and whilst this would probably get thrown out in court you'd still have to take time off to attend court.
In the US it's technically a target, since you can be ticketed for going too fast or too slow.
It's a limit, not a target, and certainly not a floor
It depends what it is. In some nations limits are reasonable and therefore obeyed while in others they are way too low and therefore commonly ignored.
Too strict laws like this lead to people disregarding it. Even worse, it may even lead to other sections of the same subject law being disregarded, because if it is commonly acknowledged that one section of specific law is ridiculous, why not the others.
Here we have a blanket 3km/h tolerance so they measure you, take 3km/h off and then use that to see which bracket of speeding you fall into (10, 20, etc).
It honestly frustrates me so much with the speed limit thing. On a societal level, speed (and differences in speed) tend to be one of the biggest factors in car crashes, so ignoring speeding is just accepting more dangerous roads.
On a peronal level, i try to do the limit or maybe 5-10 over (20 over is the norm in my area, even in school zones). The really frustrating part is as soon as i act like everyone else a try to do 20 over i get a ticket and my insurance goes up. This is frustrating becauae it just feels as if I'm being punished for doing what most people consider to be "safe" and normal. If it was drastically obvious that 20 over is faster than the flow of the traffic, it would feel a lot less frustrating if i get a ticket.
It can actually feel dangerous doing the limit on roads notoriois for 20-30 over. People agressively pass, tailgate and cut you off. Its fucked up but you get more dirty looks for doing the limit than you do for doing 40 over the limit. I think part of this is the north american attitude of cars being an extension of yourself. Someone doing 40 over is both couragous enough to go that fast, and also wealthy enough to own something faster and wealthy enough to afford the ticket, or at least that seems like the trend.
What is a speed limit on highways?
Confused greetings from Germany.
Speed limits are somewhat enforced in Germany. Just because you can floor it at times does not mean you can go 100 in a 50.
They are enforced, of course, but there are large sections of highway with no speed limit.
I know it is old, but... : 😁
https://www.topspeed.com/cars/car-news/animal-caught-speeding-on-a-german-highway/
Freie Fahrt für freie Bürger
- ADAC 1974
In general speed limits are enforced IMO, just within a certain level. IE yes everyone exceeds the speed limit... but typically by set amounts. IE I know myself I generally go 9 over the speed limit. I expect to get a ticket if I go 11-20 over the speed limit.
That being said, yeah the social construct is probably intentionally encouraged by cops, so that say when they are pulling over random minorities for an excuse to search the car, they have an automatic excuse for why they pulled them over.
You're not expected to break them. For your example, you're not supposed to go over the speed limit. And it is, in fact, extremely easy to do so. Most people are fine with it. And, no, it's not impossible to do so. There is nothing forcing you to go faster for little to no gain and increased risk for you and other.
You expecting to go over tells something about you.
Practically no one actually drives at or below the speed limit in the US, especially on freeways. Whether or not you personally like this doesn't matter -- it's just how it is.
You're welcome to try it, but speeding is so pervasive in our culture that this will single you out and Ruggedly Individualistic Americans will get frothingly butthurt at you over it. Prepare to get tailgated, cut off, bullied out of your lane, stuff thrown at your car, etc.
It sounds like you're proud of your culture of not giving a crap about rules set to improve safety for everyone. On that account, I agree that we'll never see eye to eye about this.
What part of what I wrote expressed that I was "proud" of it?
I'm just telling you how people behave. I don't have any control over anybody but myself. For what it's worth, I'm probably one of the six people in this damn country who doesn't drive like a nut.
I haven't driven over the speed limit in a decade in the US and have anecdotally never experienced the behavior you're describing.
It's not just a matter of others getting butthurt. It's actively dangerous to be driving at a different speed from the rest of traffic, regardless of whether you're going faster or slower.
If that's true, then it would be a good idea to have everybody converge on a particular speed. It doesn't seem practical to negotiate that speed amongst a constantly-changing set of drivers, it probably needs to be chosen in advance. That seems like a natural function of government, to choose the consensus speed through a process designed to represent everybody in the community.
To communicate to drivers entering the roadway this consensus speed which everybody must travel at—for safety—the government could, say, post it on signs located along the roadside.
But that's probably just a ridiculous fantasy. How then should all drivers negotiate the consensus speed to ensure safety?
No negotiation is needed. As long as everyone agrees to follow everyone else (i.e. no one tries to overtake and you keep a constant gap with the car in front of you), then everything will naturally fall into place.
Given those conditions, everybody drives the speed of the slowest driver.
Yes? I get the impression that you mean to disagree with me, but I can't tell how.
I don't know if my explanation of the phenomenon is correct or not. I don't know much about the science of traffic dynamics. All I know is that when you're on the road, pretty much everyone ends up at approximately the same speed. That speed can differ relative to the speed limit depending on time of day, road and weather conditions, which road you're on, etc. and there's no one to tell me what speed to aim for. I just look at the flow of traffic and follow it. That's all.
I remember a young college aged guy got shot in the head for beeping his horn at someone. Happened a few years sgo.
Textbook case of a cognitive bias. If you're going the speed limit, every car that passes you is speeding. You don't see all the other cars doing the speed limit.
For what it's worth, the I-95 corridor from about Richmond to Boston, particularly the DC-Balitmore-Philly-NYC part, is probably one of the worst stretches of highway in the country for generalized insanity and phenomenally poor driving skills on display from everyone involved. It is easily my most hated patch of asphalt in the universe.
A small but measurable improvement would be made to the world instantly if every person in DC and Baltimore had their licenses revoked. Although if experience is any judge, that still wouldn't prevent any of them from still all being on 95, three inches from the car in front and raging over "only" being able to do 80 in a 55.
Because you don’t see the cars going the same speed as you. If everyone on the interstate was going 60 you would only ever see the 10 cars near you. But 10 people going 70 could pass 100 cars. Each of those drivers would see 10 cars going 60 and 10 cars going 70. Despite the fact that less than 10% of the cars were speeding.
I'm too German to understand what's here.
How do you get your licence in Germany?
Driver's license? Why?
People exceed the speed limit on highways, but usually not by a lot. If they exceed it by a lot, it is usually enforced, e.g. by speed cameras; but of course some people still sometimes get away with it, no enforcement of any law is perfect.
Do you think traffic speeds aren't enforced? Just because they can't do it effectively because they don't have the resources or man power doesn't mean they don't try.
I live in the south of France. I see cops cars using speed radars once a year. Once a fucking year. They do NOT enforce anything. If they did, half the population would be unemployed.
It's only de facto legal until something goes wrong. If a crash occurred and someone was speeding that'd be considered a contributing factor to the crash.
Even if speeding itself wasn't illegal, there would need to be a definition of what reckless driving is, and speed in comparison to the road is a good measure of that, because it's directly proportional to the lack of control of the vehicle.
its more of a suggestion of what speed you should go, and as long as everyone is going the same, its no problem
for example:
speed limit is 55, but it's open road, everyone goes 65
or on the highway, left lane is always going 90+, even though the speed limit is 70
as long as everyone is doing the same and behaving themselves, no one has a problem with anyone
that's my opinion on the matter at least
Anecdotally, I’ve almost never get pulled over in traffic, but the one time I was pulled over, I was doing 76 in a 65 at 5 AM with no other cars on the road and otherwise driving completely fine.
I guess he was bored. Or an asshole. Or both.
Edit: Fixed my paradox
I was doing 76 in a 65
And you're proud of it. YTA as they say.
Both times I've ever been pulled over for speeding the road was empty except me and i was going the average speed people drive on them. 3 people doing 20 over, a cop can shrug and say i don't wanna pick one to ticket. A single car not only sticks out as speeding more easily, but there also isn't much of an excuse for the cop not to pull them over.
Counter intuitively, its easier to get away with speeding when the roads are busy because you blend in. The biggest things you want to avoid when speeding and busy is agressive behaviors and frequent passing. Make it seem more casual and you will blend in with the flow of traffic.
There was no traffic, he was on the road alone.
Thanks, deleted. Also they said "almost never" which I totally read wrong.
I think he edited the almost in based on his edit note.
Whatever, it's not important.
Bureaucracy is a nightmare. There's national laws, local laws, technical laws, practical laws, petty laws, incompetent laws, minority laws, old laws nobody bothered to get rid of, potential laws for possible situations that might happen at some point in an imaginary future.. and so on.
Basically, it depends on who writes the law and why. All laws are subjective to humans, by humans and against anything that annoys the specific humans in charge at any given point in time.
On the highways here, the original speed limit of 55 was to save our nation's resources, not just "55 to stay alive" but also it was an efficient speed to maintain and still pretty fast.
Inside the city it works much better to make drivers feel unsafe going fast. Narrower lanes, speed bumps, roundabouts, etc.
In answer to your actual question - some laws are just old and haven't been unwound yet and others are used as pretext for profiling, police (or, more properly whoever is running them) like to be able to stop people for no reason but that can be seen as illegitimate, so they keep laws that everyone breaks, jaywalking, etc to have an excuse.
I don't think there is any one law everybody breaks really but also no person who has lived perfectly law abiding life.
Reminds me of Three Felonies a Day
People do enforce the law. Just occasionally, but that's enough to scare 90% into submission
Take jaywalking for example. Most people aren't going to be bothered by some woman crossing the street when no cars are around.
Is it worth a cops time who's within eyeshot to do anything about it? Waste of resources, she's not endangering anyone.
Same situation but cars are all over, some swerving to avoid or slam on their breaks because she blindly runs out. She gets hit or cars pile into each other.
Cops in eyeshot. Well the drivers certainly are not the ultimate cause of this accident.
That's my guess anyways.
Tools in the toolbox. You'll often hear about police saying they need more tools in the toolbox. What it means is they want to be able to enforce laws against somebody they don't like selectively.
If you enforce the speed limit religiously, especially around State capitals, the speed limits would rapidly change.
https://archive.org/details/threefeloniesday0000silv
If this topic interests you, I recommend reading three felonies a day, by Harvey silverglate
True, but traffic not following "the algorithm" is more dangerous than moderate speeding.
I don't think everyone always breaks the speed limit, but probably they do at some point during every journey. They knew this went they introduced the 20mph speed limit but they introduced it anyway because they thought it would reduce the average speed by a few mph.
How do you expect constant enforcement? I'll go over the speed limit on the motorway when it's quiet and the lane is empty. Police generally don't care if you're doing 75 or 80 in a 70, as long as you're not driving like an ass. The most important thing is keeping pace with traffic.
Not sure how cost effective this would be :/
Certainly cheaper than paying for a police cruiser and all their equipment and wages. Its also less likely for the camera to be racist, be bribed, or shoot someone.
Cars are so common and speeding ignored for long we'd probably need at least double the amount of cops to enfroce traffic if we got rid of red light and speeding cameras.
mm yea true
Counter question: do you think everyone is sensible?
Traffic speed? If you know where all the speed cameras are, you could dodge them and hope there are no other police checking you.
That's the whole fucking point. Speed traps are only there to decrease the number of people killed, and we still have idiots complaining about it.
Speed traps don't stop or prevent crime/accidents, they generate money. In fact, one could argue a police speed traps causes accidents when a group of cars in the front suddenly slam on their brakes.
a group of cars in the front suddenly slam on their brakes.
A group of speeding cars in the front suddenly slam on their brakes.
You are the problem. That's why I would enjoy if all those fucking morons had their license removed for life and they had to take the bus. I have to avoid accidents every fucking day because of them and I don't see why I have to suffer for that.
IMHO it's not authoritarian. Your speed in public space should be public. I struggle every day with fucking idiots in BMW or VW who almost hit my car because they can't drive properly. I wouldn't mind seeing them in jail if it meant some kind of control on my own speed.
Ehh, for a bit Virginia tried enforcing them with aircraft.
It stopped because it was expensive, not because it was too authoritarian.
On top of what others said there's also just virtue signaling, like banning pornography or gambling.
It saves lives, literally, like seat belts. I don't know what to say if you can't understand that.
The question is why do laws that aren't enforced exist. Gambling and porn bans are rarely enforced but exist mostly for virtue signaling. I wasn't talking about speed limits.
Everyone always exceed the speed limit on highways
You're projecting yourself
Lol,
everyone
Proceeds to disprove.
Apparently it's not everyone that speeds.
Well, tell that to my local traffic authorities. My wife basically has a subscription with them, we get home a monthly invoice for 30€ because she was driving 55-60 km/h in a 50 zone... Complete with a picture of her face and the car's license plate :)
Maybe she should stop speeding?
Or learn where the cameras are?
The point was that at some places speed limits ARE enforced.
The point is that his wife should not be a potential killer.
55 in a 50? Killer?
If it only was that easy. I don't know if 5km/h over the limit is "speeding", she just doesn't pay attention, and we've been having this discussion for years... I am trying to convince/teach her how to use the speed limiter, but she always forgets to enable that. And the cameras are not static around here. There are a couple static ones, but the vast majority are mobile. They look like small black boxes on wheels, like a power distribution point. Until you see the flash light :)
Should she be driving if she's that bad at it?
Okay buddy, simmer down.
All laws exist because someone is expected to break them. They're created when someone does something unexpected. They're (sometimes) removed when nobody is expected to break them anymore.
Like how racism doesn't exist anymore, so we can get rid of DEI!
If only that were the claim.
just magically "enforce" it with no unintended consequences, please