I saw my neighbor Tom pulled over this morning. Getting a ticket. Likely a speeding ticket. We all push the speed limit in that stretch of highway. A few miles up the road traffic backs up ( intersection of 2 busy freeways ) and often makes people late for work.
That's what he tells me. He's in a jam between when the day care opens and when he has to be to work. Both He and his wife are squeezed since they bought a house out here.
Lakeshore is funny. Homes on the lake are worth millions and the same basic house across the street is actually cheaper than closer into the city.
They fell behind during Covid and are trying desperately to catch up. So I know they don't need an arbitrary $300 ticket. The house they bought as a fixer-upper still needs $10,000+ for materials plus time and that's on hold until he's caught up.
The POS he drives regularly sets him back just keeping it running. Not to mention hers.
He's done a little work for me whenever time allows. And he's diligent and returns the tools clean where they came from.
My comment is why does bad stuff happen to decent hard working people. At most he was a few miles an hour faster than traffic and given the grief his boss is giving him. I understand. Why can't the cop? If he was a woman The most he'd get is a stern warning.
Tom1200
UltraDork
4/21/22 11:40 a.m.
In reply to frenchyd :
So prior to my racing I would routinely get speeding tickets, I was also broke. I can only speak for my local court system but they will allow you to make payments.
As for decent hard working people; stuff happens to everyone, people with more money don't say anything because they can afford it and people who are broke-ass dead beats don't say anything because they have no intention of paying the ticket.
mtn
MegaDork
4/21/22 11:58 a.m.
I'll withold my thoughts about the revenue department that the Police are, but holy cow can I commiserate with the get-kiddo-to-daycare and also be at work on time conundrum. I often take my laptop with me and either take zoom calls from my car (cell phone as hotspot) or the coffee shop. The daycare we go to is 15 minutes away because it was the only one with availability. We're on the waitlist for one that would be a 10 minute walk, but that will end up costing us another $400 a month, if we ever get in (been on the waitlist for 20 months now).
Speeding tickets are mostly a speeding tax to fund governments.
Texas actually has a law limiting the percentage of revenue of a town that can be funded by ticket revenue. Anything over that goes to the State.
There is a town in Louisiana, Golden Meadow, that was famous for giving tickets out for 1 or 2 mph over. I drove through this multiple times in the 70's in very hot 65 Mustang. Every time I went through the local cop tailgated me for the 3 miles through the town while I was going probably 18mph in a 20mph zone..
In reply to frenchyd :
Look around you, the answer to your question is pretty clear. Why? By design.
Is a speeding ticket really bad stuff? I've gotten plenty over the years, and the one constant through all of them was that I chose to drive faster than the local constabulary thought prudent. I may have been driving in a perfectly safe fashion, with the flow of traffic, but...
In reply to Streetwiseguy :
It gives your insurance company an excuse to double your rates for the next five years.
As an auto technician, a speeding ticket may make me unemployable, or only able to work at crappy, low-paying shops where they don't care about the quality of employees.
Tom1200 said:
In reply to frenchyd :
So prior to my racing I would routinely get speeding tickets, I was also broke. I can only speak for my local court system but they will allow you to make payments.
As for decent hard working people; stuff happens to everyone, people with more money don't say anything because they can afford it and people who are broke-ass dead beats don't say anything because they have no intention of paying the ticket.
Yes racing saved me from plenty of tickets. I'd come back from a race weekend and wouldn't speed for a very long time. Soon as I noticed myself going over the speed limit I knew it was time to go racing again.
Pete. (l33t FS) said:
In reply to Streetwiseguy :
It gives your insurance company an excuse to double your rates for the next five years.
As an auto technician, a speeding ticket may make me unemployable, or only able to work at crappy, low-paying shops where they don't care about the quality of employees.
Amen!!! It's the cost of the ticket, plus insurance raise, plus damage it does to your employability. All so some officer meets the "quota" his boss set for him.
yes, I know it's the law. But really who doesn't speed?
mtn said:
I'll withold my thoughts about the revenue department that the Police are, but holy cow can I commiserate with the get-kiddo-to-daycare and also be at work on time conundrum. I often take my laptop with me and either take zoom calls from my car (cell phone as hotspot) or the coffee shop. The daycare we go to is 15 minutes away because it was the only one with availability. We're on the waitlist for one that would be a 10 minute walk, but that will end up costing us another $400 a month, if we ever get in (been on the waitlist for 20 months now).
Yes it's a major burden, raising kids. Once they are out of day care it's like a major pay raise. We only had two girls 5 years apart. My late wife worked for health benefits and day care costs. Barely covering the bus fare during that period. The rest was on my back.
Speeding gets you tickets, extenuating circumstances don't suddenly make it legal. I've had a few speeding tickets and for the most part see that it was nobody's fault but my own. It's not a bad thing happening to a good person, it's a normal person being caught doing wrong. We all do it, it stings when we get slapped for it, but it wasn't the cop's fault that he was speeding.
I don't speed.
My job is driving a fire truck.
I like my job.
If I get a ticket I get demoted back down to being a paramedic on the ambulance.
I do not like poop or vomit on me so I did not like being on an ambulance.
It's easy to follow the letter of the law. I really hate poop and vomit.
Seems like a real first world problem...
Not going to comment on the pros/cons of the laws/policing as there's enough politics online. I've not gotten a speeding ticket in years with a few simple rules:
* Know the norms of your area. I can do < 10 over on surface streets here and I'm never getting a ticket. I can do < 85 on the highway and I'm very unlikely to get one.
* Never speed in small towns, ever. Deal with the absurd revenue generating 20 mph limit on a 4 lane road through the small town, not worth the small time save.
* Run a radar detector on longer trips where speeding actually cuts off hours. For me this is a V1 with YaV1 app. Set up such that there's fewer false positives, alerts to known cameras, even alerts on suspicious aircraft. I don't use it daily as its annoying to switch between vehicles and bike mounts, but is usable daily and will "learn" stationary falses such that its not an issue.
The RD/app combo has saved me numerous tickets. Hilarious to see it light up 3+ times in a mile going through small Texas towns.
Speeding isn't even against the law in most states. But most people don't bother to read..... read.
dculberson said:
Speeding gets you tickets, extenuating circumstances don't suddenly make it legal. I've had a few speeding tickets and for the most part see that it was nobody's fault but my own. It's not a bad thing happening to a good person, it's a normal person being caught doing wrong. We all do it, it stings when we get slapped for it, but it wasn't the cop's fault that he was speeding.
You are absolutely right.
I just wish it was less arbitrary. Good looking ladies. Never seem to get tickets.
Really expensive cars. ( Bentley, Benz, Bugatti). Seem to get away frequently.
Young guys in cheap cars seem to get an extraordinary number of tickets.
I guess that's just the way the world works.
frenchyd said:
dculberson said:
Speeding gets you tickets, extenuating circumstances don't suddenly make it legal. I've had a few speeding tickets and for the most part see that it was nobody's fault but my own. It's not a bad thing happening to a good person, it's a normal person being caught doing wrong. We all do it, it stings when we get slapped for it, but it wasn't the cop's fault that he was speeding.
You are absolutely right.
I just wish it was less arbitrary. Good looking ladies. Never seem to get tickets.
Really expensive cars. ( Bentley, Benz, Bugatti). Seem to get away frequently.
Young guys in cheap cars seem to get an extraordinary number of tickets.
I guess that's just the way the world works.
Bud, that must be local to you. All the police I know (and that's a lot) will whack a woman as quick as a man and fancy cars get no breaks. Why would a police give a break to someone in a 100k+ car ? Why would a woman catch a break ?
frenchyd said:
dculberson said:
Speeding gets you tickets, extenuating circumstances don't suddenly make it legal. I've had a few speeding tickets and for the most part see that it was nobody's fault but my own. It's not a bad thing happening to a good person, it's a normal person being caught doing wrong. We all do it, it stings when we get slapped for it, but it wasn't the cop's fault that he was speeding.
You are absolutely right.
I just wish it was less arbitrary. Good looking ladies. Never seem to get tickets.
Really expensive cars. ( Bentley, Benz, Bugatti). Seem to get away frequently.
Young guys in cheap cars seem to get an extraordinary number of tickets.
I guess that's just the way the world works.
I think that's something imagined. Good looking ladies and expensive cars get plenty of tickets. Where is the data backing up that they don't?
No Time
SuperDork
4/21/22 2:55 p.m.
Depending on how long he's on that stretch of road it may not even be saving him a measurable amount of time unless he's really pushing beyond the limit.
As Anthony said, read...
It may be possible to fight the ticket and win. Read the laws, review the info on the ticket, and put together a good strategy.
In Mass the goal is not to necessarily prove you weren't speeding, but to prove that the reading may not have been you, or that the officer didn't follow all the proper procedures (i.e. observing for a certain distance to estimate a vehicle is exceeding the speed limit before using radar or LiDAR).
If the stretch of road is really busy, and the reading was taken from a substantial distance, then it only takes a small amount of movement to be reading the speed of a different car.
I have been cited many times, paid many court costs....lots of speedo calibration / malfunctioning equipment. There are no driving infractions on my record. My insurance has never gone up. I went to court one time and realized that going to court is a sucker move, just send a lawyer. Prepaid Legal works for me, and costs next to nothing on a monthly basis.
If you drive a lot, it's going to happen....or at least it is for me.
They pick on people that they think can afford the ticket, but not the representation.
Most states law say something like "driving at a speed greater than reasonable or prudent." That isn't one number. The judge knows it, the cops do not. Open roads, good weather, sunny, good tires, well maintained car...... or crappy car, bald tires, icy and dark..... those are very different speeds. The sign is guideline. Many of them are posted in violation of the law too. A lot of counties in TX have gotten in trouble for lowering speed limits contrary to state laws.
Read.....
Unless you were in the car with him, you don't know exactly how fast he was going....he may have said it was only a few miles over the limit but that may mean two over, or ten over. As far as that goes, going around the lake on Lakeshore Blvd and Shoreline Dr there are a lot of twists and turns and blind entrances - it's not like it's a wide open freeway.
ddavidv
UltimaDork
4/21/22 3:58 p.m.
I mostly just view it as a High Speed Road User Tax. I'm going to have to pay it eventually, but for all the times I speed and don't get caught it still balances out in my favor.
I used to drive around 100 miles per day for my job. I paid attention to where cops like to sit and where the VASCAR lines are painted on the road and didn't speed there. Only got snagged once when I let my guard down and still managed to be ticketed for far less than my actual speed.
The worst is getting a ticket out of state. They pretty much know you aren't coming back to fight it in court so it's a slam-dunk. And let's not even discuss Virginia.
Pete. (l33t FS) said:
In reply to Streetwiseguy :
It gives your insurance company an excuse to double your rates for the next five years.
As an auto technician, a speeding ticket may make me unemployable, or only able to work at crappy, low-paying shops where they don't care about the quality of employees.
My point was more that bad stuff is something out if his control... He had every option to not get the ticket.
