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It's a revenue generator, that's all it is, and the states know it. Approach it as you would an unjustifiable increase in property taxes, based on planting one shrub out front. It's not a morality or safety issue.
The cops in my state rarely ticket in school zones, where I would argue speeding is dangerous because of the high rate of unpredictable events, and where a pedestrain collision is truly awful. And nobody seems to follow the speed limit in school zones here, by the way. Instead, they ticket where it's easy - out on the open road. If the speed limit is 55 and you're going 65, it usually makes no difference to them whether you were the only car on the road, whether it was raining, or whether you were in a pack of cars. I routinely see people tailgating when cops are around, and nothing becomes of it. I'm convinced that the reason speeding is picked out among all possible offenses is not because it's the most dangerous thing, but because it is a quantifiable phenomenon - the radar gun, a calibrated speedo or a timer can provide an exact number. Look at your penalty (tax) schedule on your ticket, and the fine goes up with mph above the speed limit. It's hard to quantify something like tailgating, for example.
To be fair, some cops do take into account the circumstances in which speeding occurred, but I think that this is uncommon.
Read "A Speeder's Guide to Avoiding Tickets", which is written by an ex-NY state patrolman and is available through Amazon.com. He presents the idea of speeding tickets as revenue generation and nothing more.
Driving skills in the U.S. are not all that great, and I think most people have a laissez-faire attitude about the whole thing. If the death rate in commercial aviation accidents was as high as what we see on our public roads, there'd be an uproar. Do you remember when the airline crew was seen coming out of the bar at the airport prior to their flight, and it caused a huge scandal, as it should have? Well, people walk out of bars into their cars in every town, 7 nights a week, and we all think it's alright, as long as their blood alcohol level is lower than some number which varies from state to state. Meanwhile, we all recognize that alcohol impairs your judgement in a concentration-dependent fashion.
We should regard driving safety and skill in a similar way that we regard it for pilots. Sorry to go on so long.
, Thu, 7 Dec 2000 10:16:17
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