Anti-Speed Camera Activist Buys Police Department's Web Domain 680
Brian McCrary just bought a website to complain about a $90 speeding ticket he received from the Bluff City PD — the Bluff City Police Department site. The department let its domain expire and McCrary was quick to pick it up. From the article: "Brian McCrary found the perfect venue to gripe about a $90 speeding ticket when he went to the Bluff City Police Department's website, saw that its domain name was about to expire, and bought it right out from under the city's nose. Now that McCrary is the proud owner of the site, bluffcitypd.com, the Gray, Tenn., computer network designer has been using it to post links about speed cameras — like the one on US Highway 11E that caught him — and how people don't like them."
Use ads (Score:5, Insightful)
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Hopefully he isn't stupid enough to offer to sell it back to the police station (which would sink his UDRP case).
Re:Use ads (Score:4, Insightful)
He might not got sued. He'll just be unable to drive anywhere in the town without getting pulled over by every cop that sees him, his garbage won't get picked up, and his house will be re-appraised.
Re:Use ads (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Use ads (Score:5, Insightful)
yes, but on whose side?
Re:Use ads (Score:5, Informative)
Why towns and governments keep using .Com domains is beyond me.. there is state.us (like il.us) and .gov domains for this purpose.
First Congratulations Post (Score:5, Insightful)
Awesome! I tip my hat to this dude, nice one...
Re:First Congratulations Post (Score:4, Insightful)
So do I. Some asshole that puts me and my family at risk so he can save 5 minutes in travel time. Way to go!
He is either driving stupidly (which can but does not have to involve speeding); or driving well (which can but does not have to involve going the speed limit). In no case does the speed of his vehicle alone make him a risk to you and your family.
In addition, do you discount your own attentiveness so readily? If so, I pity your family. As I posted a couple of days ago - most two-party accidents require TWO people not doing what they should be -- even if legally only one person is at fault. If you drive defensively and alertly, even his potential stupidity should be something you take into account and react to. At no point should your alertness falter -- even idling at a stop light, it's *still* your responsibility to be alert and check your mirrors (unless you don't value the lives of you or your family).
I say this all as someone with a family of my own - and who's gotten into an accident where someone else was entirely "at fault". No matter whose insurance paid out, it was *my* responsibility to be aware of the fact that the other driver was being dumb and adjust accordingly. (Note that this doesn't excuse the other drive for being dumb in the first place - it's just being aware that I played a role too -- and from there learning to play that role better.)
Take responsibility for yourself. Someone else's stupid driving should very rarely put your family at significantly higher risk unless you let it.
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Right... Because I can control the other driver's speed. And their state of mind and mental condition. Also, I have direct control and final say about the mechanical condition of their vehicle.
Of course you don't. (And still this focus on speed as somehow causing trouble - it's not the speed, it's the driver.) By being aware that you DON'T know these things, and by specifically being alert to the situation most likely to "go wrong" for any given combination of road and vehicle conditions, you can avoid accidents -- even those that wouldn't have been your fault to begin with.
No. I AM NOT in any way responsible for the stupidity of other people or their stupid actions.
You're right, you are not.
All I can do is be aware and alert.
Agreed.
People need to smarten-up and take responsibility for their own actions.
Yes they do. But failing to respond to a potential hazard on the road is an action too.
Wouldn't want to be him on the next traffic stop.. (Score:5, Funny)
It's gonna be a real bummer for him when he gets stopped for speeding, he acts "suspicious", they search his car, and then they just happen to "find" some cocaine in the trunk.
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Was the guy speeding? (Score:2, Insightful)
The guy broke the law (probably) and was observed in a public space doing so. It's not like they put a camera in his residence.
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Not everyone agrees with current speed laws, he's protesting the way he thinks is best. Personally, I think he's right.
Re:Was the guy speeding? (Score:5, Interesting)
Traffic law enforcement is a complicated issue in my mind. I don't have a lot of sympathy for speeders who don't like paying speeding tickets, but I do think there's a reason that speeding is the only moving violation you really see enforced these days (and I don't think "safety" has much to do with it).
That aside, there are lots of things wrong with typical camera-enforcement schemes. They tend to be operated by private firms who profit off of the tickets. (This is a bigger problem with red-light cameras, because light timings can be manipulated for revenue-genration purposes, but I digress...)
Also, they usually don't even try to prove who's driving. For example, here in St. Louis County, a camera-enforced ticket is a non-moving violation. It's like a parking ticket - the ticket is against the vehicle, not the driver. They don't try to prove who's driving and they don't care - the owner of the vehicle gets the ticket. This also means no points on the license; the "enforcement" is purely monitary.
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The U.S. Department of transportation's Federal Highway Administration review research on traffic speed in 1998.[19] The summary states:
* That the evidence shows that the risk of having a crash is increased both for vehicles traveling slower than the average speed, and for those traveling above the average speed.
* That the risk of being injured increases exponentially with speeds much faster than the median spee
Re:Was the guy speeding? (Score:4, Informative)
Except that red-light cameras do not have any effect on driver safety, but they do cause a *large* numbers of rear-end collisions. (I've seen claims that they increase the chances of a rear end collision anywhere between 200% and 800%). See this [motorists.org] for an explanation of how camera proponents lie with statistics.
Re:Was the guy speeding? (Score:4, Insightful)
People who deal with public policy have to deal with the world as it is, not the world as they would like it to be. In a perfect world, people would leave enough room in front of them so that if the other driver panic stops, they don't rear-end them. The problem is, won't don't live in a perfect world, and saying "Oh well, I'm going to pretend it is" (which is essentially what you are saying) does not make for good public policy.
Or, to point out another real world analogue to what you are saying: From a public health perspective, it would be great if everyone was monogamous and had protected sex. By your logic, it would be perfectly OK to cut public funding for AIDS testing and notification because, after all, if everyone is monogomous and has safe sex, there's no reason anyone would ever need AIDS testing or notification. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why this approach is flawed.
That doesn't say what you think it says. (Score:5, Insightful)
Your evidence contradicts your premise.
Your evidence clearly states everyone going really fast is just as safe as everyone going really slow. It also states that not speeding can be dangerous.
Also your evidence doesn't even address fatalities yet your premise mentions it.
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On the other hand, regarding the speed cameras: Just like the red light cameras most jurisdictions classify it as a "civil" penalty with a much lower burden of proof than a criminal charge. Most times it doesn't even make a visual record of who was driving the car, and if you can't provide who "may have been" driving it, you're stuck with the ticket because they don't have to prove the registered owner of the car was the person dri
What a schmuck. (Score:2, Interesting)
Domain hijacking isn't cute, particularly for something so petty as a parking ticket.
I wonder why the city had a .com to begin with - it would've been more appropriate to have a .us or .gov
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This isn't domain hijacking. Hijacking is when you impersonate the legitimate owner to have the domain transferred, use some sort of DNS poisoning attack to redirect the traffic to an alternate site or use some other nefarious method to deprive the legitimate owner of the use of the domain. The domain owner allowed the domain to expire. McCrary purchased it legally and legitimately. No high jacking involved.
Re:What a schmuck. (Score:5, Funny)
It's a .com because speed traps are commercial revenue generation schemes.
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He didn't hijack a domain, he bought one when ii became legitimately availably. He didn't pretend to be the owner and get the details change.
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I think the police department having a commercial domain (.com) is more than telling of their priorities...
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I wonder why the city had a .com to begin with - it would've been more appropriate to have a .us or .gov
Well, since the police became a tool for revenue generation, it would seem that .com is highly appropriate.
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It isn't hijacking if the previous owners let it lapse, it's just recycling.
Someone's gonna get in trouble... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that's hilarious and in a true 1980's movie fashion the police would bungle stealing it back, fess-up to getting caught, the commissioner would step-in, and everyone would have a good laugh. ...Or, in 2000's fashion he'll be marked as a terrorist and in the cross hairs of watch-list databases for the next decade.
Don't screw with the cops man, at best it's a College frat gone bad. However technically right you may be this is playing with fire while surrounded by dynamite.
-Matt
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I'm not suggesting that this particular case is the best example. However, if the cops are overstepping their authority and infringing on the rights of citizens, I damn well hope there's a Mr. McCrary willing to nut up and talk about it.
Uhh.... (Score:2)
Re:Uhh.... (Score:5, Interesting)
He gets enjoyment for the $80. He got nothing but frustration for the $90. Sounds to me like the former is money well spent, and the latter not so much.
Police, Inc.? (Score:4, Insightful)
Is the Police Department now a commercial entity? Why do they buy and privately operate a .com name?
The police is a branch of the government. For security and trust alone, they should have a .gov in order to avoid being impersonated. And this couldn't have happened either.
Re:Police, Inc.? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hurrah for Speed Cameras! (Score:2)
I used to hate the idea of speed cameras until I saw how they were slowing traffic on a major street near my home. Now I wish they'd install them on my street. Maybe I could walk across the street without taking my life in my hands. Don't want a ticket? Then slow the f*ck down!
Saw this and other stories today (Score:2)
In addition to this story, I also read about another "somewhat related" story where another municipality had a 20+% decline in ticket revenues from the previous year. They are blaming some new software installed on their police network indicating that it is so slow and cumbersome that it decreases the number of tickets that can be issued by a single officer in a day.
While this story might give further cause to grin or giggle, I have to take issue with the use of the word "revenue" in conjunction with the p
NMA (Score:4, Informative)
Make driving laws about safety and engineering, not revenue creation.
Join the NMA [motorists.org].
Step 2 (Score:3, Interesting)
Programatic perspective:Speed, bad test for saftey (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Bluff City is south of Bristol Motor Speedway (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of those races see upwards of 60,000 fans, usually over 100,000. They dont need cops to issue speeding tickets, they need cops to direct the stop and go traffic that surrounds such events.
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Most of those races see upwards of 60,000 fans, usually over 100,000. They dont need cops to issue speeding tickets, they need cops to direct the stop and go traffic that surrounds such events.
That's what I was thinking... How low is the speed limit there that, in the crush of raceday traffic people are exceeding the limit
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The cameras in question are nearly 10 miles before the speedway, on one of the two main roads leading to the speedway.
11E is a 4 lane divided highway with a speed limit of 55 or higher except where it passes through stoplights. Bluff City conveniently has a total of 2 stoplights on 11E, although neither one is really necessary.
The two cameras here, along with many more that have been placed in the region over the past couple of years have only been placed in high traffic areas where the speed limit drops be
Re:Bluff City is south of Bristol Motor Speedway (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't understand people that think speed limits are moral imperatives that fall on the same line as murder or arson. You people act like I just raped somebody if I want to go 55 in a 50 mile an hour zone.
I live in Houston on I-10, and due to a huge environmental/safety push they lowered the speed limit from 70 to 55. It was a joke, the highway is built for speed and it has excellent lines of visibility and intelligently designed merging sections, and they make you crawl down it. Nobody did the speed limit so they upped it to 60, which didn't really help. As a result you get fast swerving traffic trying to move at the natural pace down the highway, moving through slow road bumps.
If they would pick a reasonable speed limit based on the design of the road, and not the result of some safety pissing campaign then I bet you could get people to actually follow it.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bluff City is south of Bristol Motor Speedway (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the real solution is to put the money generated by fines out of the hands of the police department that writes them; you'll see really quick what laws are important to the PD if they aren't seeing money coming in from writing traffic tickets. The only department that should be self funded is maybe the parking ticket guys, since there would be zero incentive to enforce those laws without it (and even that is ripe for abuse). Instead of pulling over people doing 5 mph over the speed limit you'd get them focused on pulling over people driving in ways that are actually dangerous, and of course you'd free up a lot of officers to patrol bad neighborhoods, respond to non-emergency calls (usually took about 90 minutes in Milwaukee at least), and do all the other things that the police should actually care about.
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I agree with you completely. Let's take away the money from fines and donate it to the homeless shelters in the city (if you let the city have it it just becomes part of their budget and the incentives for how fines are generated don't change).
Now, how much of a tax increase can I put you down for? Police departments aren't cheap you know, and recently it's become a fact of life that money from fines has to replace money lost from income and property taxes. Especially with unemployment high and people lo
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Sorry, I still feel it makes more sense for the city government to decide how big the police force should be, rather than have the police force decide their budget and then fund it by fining people for things that 99.9% of the population are guilty of, including the officers writing the tickets (including when they're on duty). What you're basically saying is that the police department is payed for by a tax on the stupid, that might make a large number of people feel warm and fuzzy, but in my opinion it's
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17 year old girl!
But she said she was 18!
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if you make the way ahead less obviously marked and force drivers to approach each corner or junction with an eye to where it is safe to drive you force a slowing-down through common-sense that is hard to
Re:Bluff City is south of Bristol Motor Speedway (Score:5, Insightful)
Having said that, I agree with everything else you wrote. Some of the speed limits around here are insanely slow. Cars are different now - they can handle it. It's just the people I worry about. Everybody thinks they're a better driver than everyone else, but none of them are really as good as I am.
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You haven't driven in Oregon, have you? They will give you a ticket for 2-3 over.
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Liar. [mcclatchydc.com]
Re:Bluff City is south of Bristol Motor Speedway (Score:5, Informative)
Or you're in Arizona and you don't have your passport on you to prove your citizenship and the judge won't accept the birth certificate your sister managed to convince the county to release to her (since it's not like they're going to let some illegal out on bail and leave the state to pick up their birth certificate) and you nearly get deported to Russia before a Senator steps in and convinces the judge to accept the certificate and release you.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2008/01/24/25392/immigration-officials-detaining.html [mcclatchydc.com]
All it takes to fuck you over is a cop willing to claim he "suspected" you were Russian. Or Canadian. Or British, or whatever other country white people come from. Obviously you picked up the southern accent while you were here trying to blend in.
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No, it is not.
While it is true that sometimes the border guards along the Mexican border of the U.S. will let you back in without a passport, just a license, they don't have to. It mostly depends on their mood, how polite you are to them, and the color of your skin.
What's really fun is when you're traveling in a car with several other people and they decide to let some of you back in because you remembered your passports, but keep the ones who didn't b
Re:Bluff City is south of Bristol Motor Speedway (Score:4, Interesting)
Up here in Dallas, they seem to set speed limits based on driving revenue. Central Expressway, I-35(E/W), and 635 are all 60 MPH. Dallas North Tollway, 121, and PGBT are 70. The difference being you pay about $1.50 per 10 miles on the latter group. Gee, wonder why they upped the speed limit? Maybe to get more people to use them and get more money for the NTTA?
Doesn't stop everyone and their brother from doing 85 on Central, of course.
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I live in Houston on I-10, and due to a huge environmental/safety push they lowered the speed limit from 70 to 55. It was a joke, the highway is built for speed and it has excellent lines of visibility and intelligently designed merging sections, and they make you crawl down it.
The highway may be built for speed, but the cars are not.
Standard cars can survive a front-end collision at about 50mph, and much above that they start to fall apart. They have about 50 inches of crush space in the front, and it takes all 50 inches to decelerate a car from 50mph. Above 50 mph, the engine goes through the passenger compartment and the passenger compartment falls apart. Once the passenger compartment falls apart, the likelihood of survival is much lower -- almost nil. There are engineering li
Re:Bluff City is south of Bristol Motor Speedway (Score:4, Insightful)
You people act like I just raped somebody if I want to go 55 in a 50 mile an hour zone.
Well, unless by driving recklessly you cause an accident and actually kill someone.
So, is "reckless driving" related for driving too fast for reaction/stop times or is it related to tailgating, aggressive driving, and weaving in and out of traffic which is what happens when artificially low speed limits are applied on perfectly safe roads?
I hypothesize that more accidents are caused by said aggressive, distracted, impaired, or unskilled driving outnumber accidents genuinely caused by speed way more by several orders of magnitude. But such a study will never be conducted on the fear that police will lose justification for bullshit speed traps.
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Both.
"I hypothesize that more accidents are caused by said aggressive, distracted, impaired, or unskilled driving outnumber accidents genuinely caused by speed way more by several orders of magnitude. But such a study will never be conducted on the fear that police will lose justification for bullshit speed traps."
I grew up in 1960's A
Re:Bluff City is south of Bristol Motor Speedway (Score:5, Funny)
yeah but that doesn't take into account the people that died in accidents that would have been murdered had they not... sheesh haven't you ever seen Final Destination.
Re:Bluff City is south of Bristol Motor Speedway (Score:4, Interesting)
With some googling I found out that in the year 2000 [unitedjustice.com] 15,517 people were murdered while 41,611 died in car accidents. That means that if we could prevent all car accidents the benefit in human lives would be almost three times greater.
You might only be driving 55 on a 50 mph zone, but a lot of people are driving much faster and statistics show it is fairly dangerous.
Where are these stastics that say ignoring the speed limit and driving the road for what it was built for is "fairly dangerous"? I seem to have found some statistics that claim quite the opposite [gov.bc.ca](pdf warning).
Moreover, by your rationale, I shouldn't be allowed to eat butter or salt as more people die from heart attacks than from car accidents or murders combined. Or to flip it, since you'll likely try to spin this as something I'm doing to you; no one should be allowed to serve things containing cholesterol or salt.
-- ...only life can kill you
Re:Bluff City is south of Bristol Motor Speedway (Score:5, Informative)
Let's do a check of your facts...
Find me a report that says increases in speed limits increase actual speeds. According to the US DOT, they did a study that found increasing the speed limit did NOT affect the average speed of traffic. http://www.motorists.org/speedlimits/home/effects-raising-and-lowering-the-speed-limit/ [motorists.org]
Next, I would trust traffic engineers too, unfortunately, there IS probably some anonymous guy in Texas setting the speed limit.. A politician. Engineers don't set speed limits.
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"Citation needed."
ha ha ha, and correct.
From what I've seen, stock car fans/crowds are generally better behaved than those at other major events.
Re:Bluff City is south of Bristol Motor Speedway (Score:4, Funny)
I'm no Nascar fan, but, puh-leeze. Citation needed.
That's just backwards - you'll never manage to get a Citation up over 55!
Re:Bluff City is south of Bristol Motor Speedway (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Bluff City is south of Bristol Motor Speedway (Score:5, Informative)
Having been to Bluff City and the Bristol race for many years now,
I can assure you that during race weekend a car goes anything but fast. The traffic in and out of the track is brutal, starting Friday and going well into Monday. 6+ hours before the race, traffic is already backed up for several miles, in both directions. After the race, it can take several hours to get out of Bluff City and be on your way. There are about 500 police officers (local, county and state) and a squad car about every 500 feet for a good mile in each direction because the pedestrian traffic is so heavy. I've arrived at the track 6 hours prior to the green flag and have parked 2+ miles away and walked, just because the traffic so obnoxious.
These camera's in Bluff City have very little to do with Nascar, and I would imagine speeding tickets on race weekend generate but a tiny fraction of the revenue these cameras otherwise generate.
jeff
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The reason why they have speed cameras is because they get lots of racing fans because the town is located just south of Bristol Motor Speedway. Nascar racing fans have a general disregard for speed limits and I bet that on a big race weekend one police car could not write tickets fast enough.
Have you ever tried to leave a large sporting event or concert? It doesn't matter how fast you *want* to go -- you're stuck going as fast as the repeated failures to merge/yield allow you to go. That is - about 5 mph. This continues onto the highway as well when we're talking 60k + people in a mass exodus.
Re:Bluff City is south of Bristol Motor Speedway (Score:4, Insightful)
"Traffic cameras are a slap in the face of freedom."
Why?
If the speed limit itself is not the problem, how does the technology of the enforcement mechanism make any difference? I don't understand why having a human issuing tickets protects freedom. It just seems more expensive and potentially less impartial.
Re:How come... (Score:5, Insightful)
Thats not really accurate. Speeding by itself is not unsafe. Speeding in sub-optimal conditions is unsafe.
Also, if the limit is 50, but the flow of traffic is going 70, the few cars that ARE going 50 are impeding the flow of traffic and are themselves a hazard. Arguing whether its right or wrong is moot because its just the way it IS.
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If the speed limit is 50, it was set there for a reason.
My grandmother was nearly killed by a driver going 70 in a 55 zone. Sure "everyone" drives that fast on that mountain highway, but that means that "everyone" is also running the very real risk of running in to someone turning left in an area with rather limited visibility.
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Erm... sorry man but I have to point out that the National Speed Limit of 55mph was intended to reduce gasoline consumption by 2.2% in response to the 1973 oil crisis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Maximum_Speed_Law
So in this case the "reason" wasn't safety, it was financial which I believe may be in line with the main article and the opinion of many other posters here.
Re:How come... (Score:5, Insightful)
If the speed limit is 50, it was set there for a reason.
And usually that reason is arbitrary zoning, not how fast you can drive safely. Two local examples:
There's an interstate highway running through my town, and an interchange was recently completed, with a divided 4 lane street going over the highway. On the north side of the interchange, there's an elementary school, houses and apartment buildings. On the south side, nothing has been built yet. There is literally nothing around for miles - except for back the way you came.
And yet the speed limit is set at 35 for the entire length of the street. How does that make any sense whatsoever? On one side you have kids crossing the street to go to school, and on the other there's still farmland as far as the eye can see - the speed limit could easily be 70 mph instead of 35 mph.
A few miles away, there's a rural highway with a 55 mph limit that forms a T intersection with another street, and the speed limit drops down to 45 mph. Except that other street is currently being converted from 2 lanes to 4, and is totally impassable. Not only is the speed limit still 45 mph, but they haven't turned off the stoplight at the intersection!
People justifiably bitch about speeding tickets because:
1. Limits are seldom based on safety, and usually on arbitrary zoning
2. Limits can be set deliberately low on purpose, in order to rack up more tickets
3. Which means that most speeding tickets aren't about safety, they're a sin tax
I do, however, enjoy listening to anti-all-taxes Republicans bitch about speeding tickets, though. Vote to deny your state and local governments necessary funding, and they will look to other sources....like speeding tickets.
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And usually that reason is arbitrary zoning, not how fast you can drive safely.
While this is often true, the object of speed limits is not always just how fast you can drive safely. The next most common reason for speed limits is traffic control -- for example, either setting a low limit discouraging people from taking a particular route (for example, a shortcut through a residential area that could connect two highways) or lowering speed to allow for a greater traffic density.
The latter is particularly important on densely traveled highways at rush hour, which is the reason behind
Re:How come... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not trying to troll here, it just seems to me that there are many reasons a jurisdiction might set a speed limit to a specific number.
I don't imagine that it is outside the realm of possibility that a jurisdiction might set an artificially low speed limit to:
1. Generate ticket income. [tinyurl.com]
2. Increase gas mileage. [tinyurl.com]
3. Reduce CO2 emissions. [tinyurl.com]
4. Encourage use of public transportation. [tinyurl.com]
Institutionalized reckless driving, my favorite! (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, if the limit is 50, but the flow of traffic is going 70, the few cars that ARE going 50 are impeding the flow of traffic and are themselves a hazard. Arguing whether its right or wrong is moot because its just the way it IS.
And jumping off a cliff isn't dangerous until you hit the ground. Just because it's not immediately damaging to exceed the speed limit doesn't mean the consequences aren't much greater if and when you do hit someone (or ram a guardrail) at that greatly increased speed.
As for "right or wrong", it's wrong if the increased frequency and severity of accidents ruins human lives for no good reason other than getting people to work slightly earlier. "That's just the way it is" can never be an adequate response
Re:How come... (Score:4, Insightful)
Ummm, yes. Our rights ARE more important than a few hundred lives. That was kind of the whole point of the revolutionary war.
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No, it's not. That why cops and criminal citations were invented. You might want to ask the camera-using governments why they have turned their backs on this tried and true technique.
Re:How come... (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless you happen to live in an area with an excellent public transportation system, and also happen to work somewhere with one, it seems like driving is positively necessary to, you know, pay the bills and all.
You might argue that one could walk or ride a bicycle or something, but that simply does not reflect the way that the vast majority of people get around. The average commute in the US is 16 miles [amazon.com]. That is a distance that is not casually covered in anything but a motor vehicle.
Re:How come... (Score:5, Insightful)
The issue is more where will it stopped. Let's have cameras on all of the street lights "just to protect us". Then, as time passes, "Sir, I noticed that you were watering your lawn at 6:50 AM. You do know that you are breaking an ordinance. Here is your $100 fine." But, heck you are breaking the law. "Excuse me Ma'am. But, we noticed that you put your canary's cage outside. Here is your $10 fine. Yes, I know that the oridnance has been around since 1815, but it is still on the books." It's the law.
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Yes, because we don't live in a democracy where we can have any effect on what the laws are, or whether bad ones get repealed.
Your answer is not to get rid of bad laws, but rather to oppose any effective enforcement mechanism that removes potentially biased humans from the system?
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Speeding never killed anyone. Being stupid behind the wheel of a car, however, has killed a lot of people.
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There is an opposite approach to this: it's crime prevention by curbing freedoms, in this case, a freedom to go with a speed that a person considers reasonable from his experience.
If a person is guilty of a traffic accident while exceeding the _advised_ speed limit, let him suffer more sever consequences compared to that he would get at a lower speed.
Speed limit is not an undisputed "the only" way to control the safety on the road. Germany for many years did not have one on its autobans (they changed that r
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"Speeding cameras are against the constitution" - so? Speeding is against the law and kills hundreds of people. Is your constitutional right more important than a hundred lives you endanger?
You lost me here. If it is indeed unconstitutional (I'm not convinced it is, but I could see a conflict with the right to face your accuser), then why wouldn't that right be more important? Not the right to speed in particular, but the right to be found guilty for your speeding fairly.
Let's rephrase the proposition: Is the city's desire for a lazy way to catch speeders more important than your constitutional rights?
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How come it's always those who break the rules that complain the most about new techniques to uphold the rules?
"Speeding cameras are against the constitution" - so? Speeding is against the law and kills hundreds of people. Is your constitutional right more important than a hundred lives you endanger?
Just shut up and follow the rules!
Speeding doesn't kill anyone, driving beyond your ability to safely handle the car given the conditions does. Depending on the driver and car along with the current conditions that speed limit could be far too low or even too high. I would far prefer to see the limits raised and stricter training/testing required for a license, the things I see done on the roads are downright scary and a lot of these people shouldn't be driving.
Re:How come... (Score:5, Insightful)
Is your constitutional right more important than a hundred lives you endanger?
Almost certainly. SCOTUS has been very unsympathetic in the past to prior restraint of constitutional rights.
Mere "hundreds" of lives could be saved by restricting many of our constitutional rights. Unfortunately it's a slippery slope, and before long we're housed in tents, eating beans and rice and doing nothing else because it "may endanger the lives of hundreds of people."
Why stop at speeding? And what counts as speeding, anyway? Thousands of lives could be saved by cutting the speed limit to 30 MPH; surely you wouldn't advocate killing thousands just to go 25 MPH faster, would you?
And while we're at it, let's take a real close look at speed enforcement. We can use the "what is the right speed" as a jumping off point, asking ourselves if the speed limits we've set have any relationship to reality -- do they reflect the safety & engineering of our automobiles? Do they reflect the roadways we drive on (road quality, distractions, traffic levels, etc)?
When enforcing the speed limit, are we having a long-term impact on driver's speed choices, or merely a short-term impact? Is the enforcement structured around actual long-term "improvement" in speed choices or other criteria, such as revenue, citation volume, employee management (make-work for idle officers, a kind of punishment for politically inept officers, overtime generation for loyal officers, etc)? Is it merely an excuse to stop people at will for further interrogation? What about speed enforcement as it relates to the level of resources available for other kinds police work given that there's never "enough" resources for law enforcement (or that's what they told me when no one would actively investigate my car's theft or a break-in at my home).
It really doesn't take a ton of time if you think about it to realize that MOST speed enforcement has nothing to do with public policy or safety generally.
Re:How come... (Score:5, Insightful)
Think of all the crime we'd stop if every household was required to have cameras? We could eliminate the need for 911 calls in so many cases too! And just think of hundreds of thousands of jobs we could save or create to monitor the video feeds!
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Because its dangerous to identify with criminals.
Sex offender registries have gotten way, way out of hand in the US. kids that sent other kids pictures of their parts are now on lists, and can never, ever be near children again. It will haunt them the rest of their lives, can't live near schools, show up on job searches, neighbors will see them on the sex offender registries, etc.
Some states, they retroactively put people on the lists that have already served their time. Sometimes, it was kids that had a
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Actually it's not cybersquatting per se.
he's using it to complain, not compete.
Re:How Is This About Rights Online??!! (Score:4, Interesting)
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If I live in a small down, and I buy an empty lot on the corner of Main and McDonalds, it's a good business decsions, but if I do it with a domain name, I'm an extortionist.
Please, someone bought all the land in a hope that it will become valuable letter. The fact that you paid 1000 dollars means it had a value of 1000 dollars, not 6 dollars.
If the price went up, then there would be less new sites. It would in no way hurt the people smart enough to grab something that might go up in values.
They paid the pri
Re:Can't... (Score:4, Insightful)
speeding is not a crime. is a manufactured crime designed to generate revenue. nothing more.
Re:Can't... (Score:5, Insightful)
speeding is not a crime. is a manufactured crime
You actually typed this, which is hilarious.
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Yes, from context I agree that is a good assumption. His message would have thus been more correct if he'd left out the first sentence.
I was just pointing out how funny it is to phrase it that way.
But to be absolutely clear, I COMPLETELY agree with the sentiment: speed limits are purposely set artificially and needlessly low for the dual purposes of generating revenue and providing police an excuse to make contact with arbitrary members of the public any time they want.
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speeding is not a crime that I agree with. if I don't agree with it, it must be wrong.
There, fixed that for you...
As I see it, if you don't like it, work to change it. Until it's changed, however, it is still a law.
Law for well-being, not the people's whims (Score:3, Insightful)
Except for the fact that the "crime" can be eliminated by simply increasing speed limits.
The fact is, the law should conform to the will of the people, not the people to the will of the law.
Well, no. The law should promote the overall well-being of the people. There is a difference.
One of the basic examples of this is "the commons problem". If you have a shared resource, and everyone has unrestricted access to it, the resource will ultimately be over-used and abused until it is worthless. Basically, there's going to be someone, somewhere out there who will use this resource selfishly and irresponsibly - and so anyone at all who wants to benefit from the resource must do the same, and try t
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Speeding
Jaywalking
Murder
Failure to signal before turning
Public intoxication