7 ms·

I was with the author until reading this unfortunate quote: > Traffic camera laws are popular in part because they appeal to a law-and-order impulse. If we are

by czep 10y ago

I was with the author until reading this unfortunate quote: > Traffic camera laws are popular in part because they appeal to a law-and-order impulse. If we are going to stop those nefarious evildoers who jeopardize the health of the republic by sliding through yellow lights when no one else is around and driving through empty streets at thirty miles per hour in twenty-five zones, then we need a way around such pesky impediments as a lack of eyewitnesses. This is an unfair rhetorical attack that trivializes the motivations for necessary enforcement of traffic laws. Whether or not you are a fan of traffic cameras, traffic violations are in fact serious and should not be brushed off. The problem is, one day you make it easy for people to think it's ok to do 30 in a 25, then the next day they're doing 35, then 45 the next. I honestly do think people should be ticketed for 30 in a 25. It's not a trivial laughing matter. It always dismays me to see people downplaying speeding. 30 vs 25 will increase your stopping distance more than enough to kill a child. Yet, we nonchalantly think it's cool as a society to blow through red lights and everyone speeds. The author clearly separates "the slightly more respectable offense of owning a speeding vehicle" from "armed robbery, drug dealing, and other misdeeds". Would the author feel that speeding is any more respectable than armed robbery if a speeding driver killed their kids? I agree that traffic cameras are a poor way to enforce these laws, but I want to point out that they really do need enforcing and shouldn't be trivialized.

chronial 10y ago
> I was with the author until … It seems excessive to dismiss the whole article just because you disagree on this side-note.
- czep 10y ago
  Point taken. Mine is definitely a reactionary tangent that I hope not to undermine the very important point of the article. I agree that especially in Montgomery, the traffic camera enforcement is overreaching. My response was more to higlight the dangers of making speeding socially acceptable.
  - msandford 10y ago
    It already is, and trying to pretend that it isn't is a fool's errand. If enforcement gets too strict there might be a serious outcry instead of a silent taxpayer like there is now. Remember, it's all of us together that agree what the laws are. A huge majority of people speed at least in some places. That means that it's socially acceptable, to some degree. It will be very tough to put the genie back in the bottle.
    - czep 10y ago
      I may be a fool, but will fight anyway... It's not impossible to change these kinds of social mores. A generation ago, no self-respecting red-blooded American male would wear a seatbelt, I mean that's just not manly! But now we don't see that machismo attitude as much and even those with extra strong y-chromosomes don't mind wearing seatbelts. I think given the right messaging it can be similarly possible to reduce the socially acceptable attitude about speeding. My dad grew up in an era where if your car didn't have 8 cylinders and 400+ HP then it wasn't a car. But also twice as many people died in car accidents despite there now being more drivers. Much of that is due to improvements in car safety (and regulations that require safety features), but it's also due to changing social attitudes about what a car means to us. It used to be a symbol of our freedom, now that mystique is not so much around and it's really just a method of transportation. I'm the guy who will tell a friend that he's going too fast or following too close when I'm riding shotgun (actually I tell my wife this too!) And yes I am often disparagingly called a "Boy Scout" in reply, but dammit, I'm going to keep doing it because aggressive driving is needless and dangerous.
      - msandford 10y ago
        I think the mores change more because young people grow up doing something a certain way and hey presto, that's just how the world is now. Not because extremely motivated individuals like yourself manage to browbeat, shame, mock, etc people into behaving differently. Because the odds that you're going to convince someone against their will to change their mind rapidly approach zero as your desire becomes anything greater than zero. That people around you put up with your proselytizing and "backseat" driving and criticism is more a testament to their patience than evidence that your method works, at least in my opinion. EDIT: Further, I've found it far more effective to apologize for my particular paranoia (whatever it is) that most people don't share and ask them to please respect it temporarily. You do two great things, first you acknowledge that the currently accepted standard is what it is and you recognize that you're asking something of people, and then you give them the option to do whatever they feel is right. You trust them. More often than not it works, since most adults are in fact, adult. People might roll their eyes and "comply" with your vociferous quasi-demands but odds are good that if they change their behavior it's not because you convinced them to believe a different thing. But rather you've convinced them that you're absolutely willing to make a big deal out of something every time and so to avoid getting lectured -- yet again -- it's easier to just pretend to be convinced while you're around.
jrs235 10y ago
Doesn't "when no one else is around and driving through empty streets at thirty miles per hour in twenty-five zones" mean that no one else was around [to get hurt/injured]? I don't think he's trivializing traffic laws. They have a place and a purpose. If no one is around no one is around and their purpose (preventing the public from bodily injury) doesn't need enforcement. If only we would use "common sense". Using cameras to get around no eye witnesses is about raising punishment and revenue above public safety unless you don't enforce the ticket unless another person or vehicle is visible on the picture. But then we are throwing due process out the window when we can't question our accusor (witness) and see into the source code etc. That's not something to trivialize. (Don't get mean wrong, I wish there were more officers to write tickets to people who go 30 down the residential home lined streets where I live. 30 is to fast for conditions as a child could be unseen behind an object near the street or run out of a house or building into the street and 30 would be too fast to do a vehicle in time.)
- brazzledazzle 10y ago
  Unless you have a clear view with nothing that can obstruct your vision of a small child it's hard to be sure there's no kids. People make mistakes and I'd prefer if people just go 25 through neighborhoods.
  - jrs235 10y ago
    Yes. Road conditions, visibility conditions, surroundings, road design, etc all come into play. I've yet to see a speed camera on a residential street. They are usually on highways. I would bet there would be out cry from the people who live on the street (most likely they don't or no longer have younger children) that want to go 30 to get to their homes.
    - jasonlotito 10y ago
      > I've yet to see a speed camera on a residential street. And I see them all the time. You'd lose your bet.
- 10y ago
ameister14 10y ago
In the US in 2013, there were 236 pedestrian deaths of children younger than 14. Thats under 5% of pedestrian fatalities, and the vast majority of pedestrian fatalities are in the dark, with half involving alcohol. There's about a 17% risk of death if you're hit by a car going 30 mph, vs 12% at 25 mph. This doesn't seem like as big an issue as you're making it out to be. Your slippery slope argument doesn't hold up - people don't go 45 in a 25 on a regular basis. Almost every driver goes 5-10 miles above the speed limit on the highway and 0-5 miles above everywhere else. The limits are designed with this in mind. These things can get really personal, but I don't believe the law should. Nobody thinks it's cool to run through a red light. People go through yellows because that is legal to do.
- czep 10y ago
  This is a reasonable reply and I appreciate the very relevant data points. I think you're correct that speed limits are designed knowing that most people will exceed them slightly. I'm curious if there are any studies that have addressed this? Eg. traffic surveys where they either raised or lowered a posted speed limit -- how much impact does that have on behavior?
  - ameister14 10y ago
    Sure. https://www.ibiblio.org/rdu/sl-irrel.html https://www.ibiblio.org/rdu/sl-irrel.html Key points: Lowering speed limits by 5, 10, 15, or 20 mi/h (8, 16, 24, or 26 km/h) at the study sites had a minor effect on vehicle speeds. Posting lower speed limits does not decrease motorist's speeds. Raising speed limits by 5, 10, or 15 mi/h (8, 16, or 25 km/h) at the rural and urban sites had a minor effect on vehicle speeds. In other words, an increase in the posted speed limit did not create a corresponding increase in vehicle speeds.
    - tristor 10y ago
      Or another way to state this is that people generally drive at a speed they think is reasonable given the road conditions and mostly ignore posted speed limits altogether. No surprise to me, many states didn't have speed limits outside of town at all in the US until the federal government withheld highway funding until they posted speed limits. That's the reason the 55mph highway speed limit was originally established. It's also the same method by which we forced the drinking age from 18 to 21. Given a population of people, some will be reasonable in their behavior, some will not be. Setting limits on that behavior is more of a signal (or suggestion) than anything that really changes how people behave in the large. To consider otherwise is to be naive of the reality. Fun story, data shows that raising highway speed limits results in less accidents, but the accidents that do occur result in more fatalities.
jstanley 10y ago
You make the classic mistake of equating "exceeding arbitrary speed limits" with "killing people's children". People should be punished for doing harm, not for exceeding arbitrary limits. If you run someone over, damage someone's property, etc. as a result of your speeding, then the speeding can be taken into consideration. Otherwise it's just needless punishment of people who've done no harm.
- chris_wot 10y ago
  I wonder, could you extend that argument to taking explosives onto a plane? If you don't set them off, then no harm has been done but if you do and everyone dies except yourself by some miracle, then you should be punished...
  - jstanley 10y ago
    Yes, you can extend the argument to everything. Though clearly it gets more controversial the further you extend it. I don't personally think I should be punished for trying to move my explosives via an aeroplane just because you are afraid that some people might want to blow up the aeroplane.
    - chris_wot 10y ago
      So you should be able to order a 6 year old to stand in front of a speeding train and jump aside before it hits them. If they jump aside in time, no harm done and you should not be prosecuted.
      - jstanley 10y ago
        You can't order anyone to do anything.
        chris_wot 10y ago
        I can only assume you don't have children.
driverdan 10y ago
Many speed limits are arbitrarily low. People are rational (excluding outliers) and drive the speed they feel safe driving, signs be damned. On primary roads the way limits should be set is by monitoring traffic speed and making that the limit. Instead, you get the "think of the children" irrational folks forcing lower speed limits on everyone. You highlight one exception. In areas with high population density and wide, high quality roads (much of the USA) you may need lower speed limits than what people feel they can rationally drive. Instead of just posting limits you need to add traffic controls that force lower speeds (eg stop signs, speed bumps).
- sowbug 10y ago
  It's not just about safety. Speed limits that are slightly below reasonable speeds mean there is always probable cause to detain nearly anyone driving a car. And pity the poor soul who adheres to the posted speed limit. That's often a separate offense of impeding the flow of traffic.
imatworkyo 10y ago
I believe speeding is very much a laughing matter and overblown as a justification for tickets and revenue (not evn considering traffic cameras). Speed limits are arbitrary low and cause traffic and accidents due to the resulting congestion. There has been studies stating that (on the highway) a speeding driver is usually safer than someone driving under the speed limit. Also to address the stopping for children element. You seem to think stopping distances carry the full force of the starting speed. If an obstacle is ahead and im going 5 mph faster than the speed limit. Even if I hit the obstruction, its not like im going 30mph when I hit it. If I could have stopped at 25, but going 30 caused me to hit something I would only collide at 2-5 mph at best. The difference in stopping distance between 25 and 30 feet must be a few feet. Lets not act like you would hit and kill the kid cause you were driving 30mph when you started stopping.
- jrmg 10y ago
  Momentum is an unintuitive thing. See, for example http://www.brake.org.uk/events/15-facts-a-resources/facts/1255-speed http://www.brake.org.uk/events/15-facts-a-resources/facts/12...: A vehicle travelling at 20mph (32km/h) would stop in time to avoid a child running out three car-lengths in front. The same vehicle travelling at 25mph (40km/h) would not be able to stop in time, and would hit the child at 18mph (29km/h). This is roughly the same impact as a child falling from an upstairs window. The diagram below illustrates the impact at various speeds. The greater the impact speed, the greater the chance of death. A pedestrian hit at 30mph has a very significant one in five chance of being killed. This rises significantly to a one in three chance if they are hit at 35mph Or the charts here: https://one.nhtsa.gov/nhtsa/Safety1nNum3ers/august2015/S1N_Speeding-August2015_812008.pdf https://one.nhtsa.gov/nhtsa/Safety1nNum3ers/august2015/S1N_S...
  - STRML 10y ago
    That's assuming a 1.5s reaction time. Surely that's quite slow and accounts for the bulk of the difference.
    - dsfyu404ed 10y ago
rayiner 10y ago
Traffic cameras are a great way to enforce speeding laws, so long as adequate back end processes are in place for challenging the tickets. Way better than having human cops doing the job selectively pulling people over.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
jakeogh 10y ago
Tucson, AZ: We had red-light cam's and speed cam's, they both went down in flames (2-to-1 against) when it was put to a vote. I deliberately was getting "tickets" to force them to try and serve me. Got up to 14 or 15... friends joke I should make a coffee table book. Trivialized? How about trivializing the tracking of movement? How about trivializing the horrible path to computers making legal decisions? Would you would support mandatory car velocity vector tracking and reporting? This "it's for the children" stuff is getting old.
762236 10y ago
A common mistake is to associate speed limits with limiting kinetic energy. That is a secondary consideration. The primary: to rate limit the number of distractions a driver has to consider per second. For example, if you see a car backing out of a driveway, you are unlikely to notice the child playing near the street in the next yard for a certain amount of time, and the speed limit is chosen to help us manage this.
u801e 10y ago
> The problem is, one day you make it easy for people to think it's ok to do 30 in a 25, then the next day they're doing 35, then 45 the next. That sounds like the classic "slippery slope" logical fallacy. Traffic studies[1] have shown that changing speed limits do not really affect overall traffic speeds by all that much. What will change them are engineering methods that give indications to drivers that it's not safe to drive faster than X speed. So, posting a speed limit of 25 mph on a roadway that was previously posted at 45 mph without making any changes to the roadway itself isn't going to make much of a difference in terms of traffic speeds. [1] http://www.ibiblio.org/rdu/sl-irrel/ http://www.ibiblio.org/rdu/sl-irrel/
FrancoDiaz 10y ago
Whether or not you are a fan of traffic cameras, traffic violations are in fact serious and should not be brushed off. The problem is, one day you make it easy for people to think it's ok to do 30 in a 25, then the next day they're doing 35, then 45 the next. People don't think that way. The general thinking is 10-over is OK.

by czep 10y ago

chronial 10y ago

> I was with the author until … It seems excessive to dismiss the whole article just because you disagree on this side-note.

czep 10y ago
Point taken. Mine is definitely a reactionary tangent that I hope not to undermine the very important point of the article. I agree that especially in Montgomery, the traffic camera enforcement is overreaching. My response was more to higlight the dangers of making speeding socially acceptable.
- msandford 10y ago
  It already is, and trying to pretend that it isn't is a fool's errand. If enforcement gets too strict there might be a serious outcry instead of a silent taxpayer like there is now. Remember, it's all of us together that agree what the laws are. A huge majority of people speed at least in some places. That means that it's socially acceptable, to some degree. It will be very tough to put the genie back in the bottle.
  - czep 10y ago
    I may be a fool, but will fight anyway... It's not impossible to change these kinds of social mores. A generation ago, no self-respecting red-blooded American male would wear a seatbelt, I mean that's just not manly! But now we don't see that machismo attitude as much and even those with extra strong y-chromosomes don't mind wearing seatbelts. I think given the right messaging it can be similarly possible to reduce the socially acceptable attitude about speeding. My dad grew up in an era where if your car didn't have 8 cylinders and 400+ HP then it wasn't a car. But also twice as many people died in car accidents despite there now being more drivers. Much of that is due to improvements in car safety (and regulations that require safety features), but it's also due to changing social attitudes about what a car means to us. It used to be a symbol of our freedom, now that mystique is not so much around and it's really just a method of transportation. I'm the guy who will tell a friend that he's going too fast or following too close when I'm riding shotgun (actually I tell my wife this too!) And yes I am often disparagingly called a "Boy Scout" in reply, but dammit, I'm going to keep doing it because aggressive driving is needless and dangerous.
    - msandford 10y ago
      I think the mores change more because young people grow up doing something a certain way and hey presto, that's just how the world is now. Not because extremely motivated individuals like yourself manage to browbeat, shame, mock, etc people into behaving differently. Because the odds that you're going to convince someone against their will to change their mind rapidly approach zero as your desire becomes anything greater than zero. That people around you put up with your proselytizing and "backseat" driving and criticism is more a testament to their patience than evidence that your method works, at least in my opinion. EDIT: Further, I've found it far more effective to apologize for my particular paranoia (whatever it is) that most people don't share and ask them to please respect it temporarily. You do two great things, first you acknowledge that the currently accepted standard is what it is and you recognize that you're asking something of people, and then you give them the option to do whatever they feel is right. You trust them. More often than not it works, since most adults are in fact, adult. People might roll their eyes and "comply" with your vociferous quasi-demands but odds are good that if they change their behavior it's not because you convinced them to believe a different thing. But rather you've convinced them that you're absolutely willing to make a big deal out of something every time and so to avoid getting lectured -- yet again -- it's easier to just pretend to be convinced while you're around.

jrs235 10y ago

Doesn't "when no one else is around and driving through empty streets at thirty miles per hour in twenty-five zones" mean that no one else was around [to get hurt/injured]? I don't think he's trivializing traffic laws. They have a place and a purpose. If no one is around no one is around and their purpose (preventing the public from bodily injury) doesn't need enforcement. If only we would use "common sense". Using cameras to get around no eye witnesses is about raising punishment and revenue above public safety unless you don't enforce the ticket unless another person or vehicle is visible on the picture. But then we are throwing due process out the window when we can't question our accusor (witness) and see into the source code etc. That's not something to trivialize. (Don't get mean wrong, I wish there were more officers to write tickets to people who go 30 down the residential home lined streets where I live. 30 is to fast for conditions as a child could be unseen behind an object near the street or run out of a house or building into the street and 30 would be too fast to do a vehicle in time.)

brazzledazzle 10y ago
Unless you have a clear view with nothing that can obstruct your vision of a small child it's hard to be sure there's no kids. People make mistakes and I'd prefer if people just go 25 through neighborhoods.
- jrs235 10y ago
  Yes. Road conditions, visibility conditions, surroundings, road design, etc all come into play. I've yet to see a speed camera on a residential street. They are usually on highways. I would bet there would be out cry from the people who live on the street (most likely they don't or no longer have younger children) that want to go 30 to get to their homes.
  - jasonlotito 10y ago
    > I've yet to see a speed camera on a residential street. And I see them all the time. You'd lose your bet.
10y ago

ameister14 10y ago

In the US in 2013, there were 236 pedestrian deaths of children younger than 14. Thats under 5% of pedestrian fatalities, and the vast majority of pedestrian fatalities are in the dark, with half involving alcohol. There's about a 17% risk of death if you're hit by a car going 30 mph, vs 12% at 25 mph. This doesn't seem like as big an issue as you're making it out to be. Your slippery slope argument doesn't hold up - people don't go 45 in a 25 on a regular basis. Almost every driver goes 5-10 miles above the speed limit on the highway and 0-5 miles above everywhere else. The limits are designed with this in mind. These things can get really personal, but I don't believe the law should. Nobody thinks it's cool to run through a red light. People go through yellows because that is legal to do.

czep 10y ago
This is a reasonable reply and I appreciate the very relevant data points. I think you're correct that speed limits are designed knowing that most people will exceed them slightly. I'm curious if there are any studies that have addressed this? Eg. traffic surveys where they either raised or lowered a posted speed limit -- how much impact does that have on behavior?
- ameister14 10y ago
  Sure. https://www.ibiblio.org/rdu/sl-irrel.html https://www.ibiblio.org/rdu/sl-irrel.html Key points: Lowering speed limits by 5, 10, 15, or 20 mi/h (8, 16, 24, or 26 km/h) at the study sites had a minor effect on vehicle speeds. Posting lower speed limits does not decrease motorist's speeds. Raising speed limits by 5, 10, or 15 mi/h (8, 16, or 25 km/h) at the rural and urban sites had a minor effect on vehicle speeds. In other words, an increase in the posted speed limit did not create a corresponding increase in vehicle speeds.
  - tristor 10y ago
    Or another way to state this is that people generally drive at a speed they think is reasonable given the road conditions and mostly ignore posted speed limits altogether. No surprise to me, many states didn't have speed limits outside of town at all in the US until the federal government withheld highway funding until they posted speed limits. That's the reason the 55mph highway speed limit was originally established. It's also the same method by which we forced the drinking age from 18 to 21. Given a population of people, some will be reasonable in their behavior, some will not be. Setting limits on that behavior is more of a signal (or suggestion) than anything that really changes how people behave in the large. To consider otherwise is to be naive of the reality. Fun story, data shows that raising highway speed limits results in less accidents, but the accidents that do occur result in more fatalities.

jstanley 10y ago

You make the classic mistake of equating "exceeding arbitrary speed limits" with "killing people's children". People should be punished for doing harm, not for exceeding arbitrary limits. If you run someone over, damage someone's property, etc. as a result of your speeding, then the speeding can be taken into consideration. Otherwise it's just needless punishment of people who've done no harm.

chris_wot 10y ago
I wonder, could you extend that argument to taking explosives onto a plane? If you don't set them off, then no harm has been done but if you do and everyone dies except yourself by some miracle, then you should be punished...
- jstanley 10y ago
  Yes, you can extend the argument to everything. Though clearly it gets more controversial the further you extend it. I don't personally think I should be punished for trying to move my explosives via an aeroplane just because you are afraid that some people might want to blow up the aeroplane.
  - chris_wot 10y ago
    So you should be able to order a 6 year old to stand in front of a speeding train and jump aside before it hits them. If they jump aside in time, no harm done and you should not be prosecuted.
    - jstanley 10y ago
      You can't order anyone to do anything.
      - chris_wot 10y ago
        I can only assume you don't have children.

driverdan 10y ago

Many speed limits are arbitrarily low. People are rational (excluding outliers) and drive the speed they feel safe driving, signs be damned. On primary roads the way limits should be set is by monitoring traffic speed and making that the limit. Instead, you get the "think of the children" irrational folks forcing lower speed limits on everyone. You highlight one exception. In areas with high population density and wide, high quality roads (much of the USA) you may need lower speed limits than what people feel they can rationally drive. Instead of just posting limits you need to add traffic controls that force lower speeds (eg stop signs, speed bumps).

sowbug 10y ago
It's not just about safety. Speed limits that are slightly below reasonable speeds mean there is always probable cause to detain nearly anyone driving a car. And pity the poor soul who adheres to the posted speed limit. That's often a separate offense of impeding the flow of traffic.

imatworkyo 10y ago

I believe speeding is very much a laughing matter and overblown as a justification for tickets and revenue (not evn considering traffic cameras). Speed limits are arbitrary low and cause traffic and accidents due to the resulting congestion. There has been studies stating that (on the highway) a speeding driver is usually safer than someone driving under the speed limit. Also to address the stopping for children element. You seem to think stopping distances carry the full force of the starting speed. If an obstacle is ahead and im going 5 mph faster than the speed limit. Even if I hit the obstruction, its not like im going 30mph when I hit it. If I could have stopped at 25, but going 30 caused me to hit something I would only collide at 2-5 mph at best. The difference in stopping distance between 25 and 30 feet must be a few feet. Lets not act like you would hit and kill the kid cause you were driving 30mph when you started stopping.

jrmg 10y ago
Momentum is an unintuitive thing. See, for example http://www.brake.org.uk/events/15-facts-a-resources/facts/1255-speed http://www.brake.org.uk/events/15-facts-a-resources/facts/12...: A vehicle travelling at 20mph (32km/h) would stop in time to avoid a child running out three car-lengths in front. The same vehicle travelling at 25mph (40km/h) would not be able to stop in time, and would hit the child at 18mph (29km/h). This is roughly the same impact as a child falling from an upstairs window. The diagram below illustrates the impact at various speeds. The greater the impact speed, the greater the chance of death. A pedestrian hit at 30mph has a very significant one in five chance of being killed. This rises significantly to a one in three chance if they are hit at 35mph Or the charts here: https://one.nhtsa.gov/nhtsa/Safety1nNum3ers/august2015/S1N_Speeding-August2015_812008.pdf https://one.nhtsa.gov/nhtsa/Safety1nNum3ers/august2015/S1N_S...
- STRML 10y ago
  That's assuming a 1.5s reaction time. Surely that's quite slow and accounts for the bulk of the difference.
  - dsfyu404ed 10y ago

rayiner 10y ago

Traffic cameras are a great way to enforce speeding laws, so long as adequate back end processes are in place for challenging the tickets. Way better than having human cops doing the job selectively pulling people over.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

jakeogh 10y ago

Tucson, AZ: We had red-light cam's and speed cam's, they both went down in flames (2-to-1 against) when it was put to a vote. I deliberately was getting "tickets" to force them to try and serve me. Got up to 14 or 15... friends joke I should make a coffee table book. Trivialized? How about trivializing the tracking of movement? How about trivializing the horrible path to computers making legal decisions? Would you would support mandatory car velocity vector tracking and reporting? This "it's for the children" stuff is getting old.

762236 10y ago

A common mistake is to associate speed limits with limiting kinetic energy. That is a secondary consideration. The primary: to rate limit the number of distractions a driver has to consider per second. For example, if you see a car backing out of a driveway, you are unlikely to notice the child playing near the street in the next yard for a certain amount of time, and the speed limit is chosen to help us manage this.

u801e 10y ago

> The problem is, one day you make it easy for people to think it's ok to do 30 in a 25, then the next day they're doing 35, then 45 the next. That sounds like the classic "slippery slope" logical fallacy. Traffic studies[1] have shown that changing speed limits do not really affect overall traffic speeds by all that much. What will change them are engineering methods that give indications to drivers that it's not safe to drive faster than X speed. So, posting a speed limit of 25 mph on a roadway that was previously posted at 45 mph without making any changes to the roadway itself isn't going to make much of a difference in terms of traffic speeds. [1] http://www.ibiblio.org/rdu/sl-irrel/ http://www.ibiblio.org/rdu/sl-irrel/

FrancoDiaz 10y ago

Whether or not you are a fan of traffic cameras, traffic violations are in fact serious and should not be brushed off. The problem is, one day you make it easy for people to think it's ok to do 30 in a 25, then the next day they're doing 35, then 45 the next. People don't think that way. The general thinking is 10-over is OK.