9 ms·

Be Safe, Break the Law

168 points by cwan 15y ago

jisaacstone 15y ago
ticket revenue does not go to the police department == solved problem
- aero142 15y ago
  I've thought the same thing before. I get the feeling cops don't like traffic ticket writing, so having money going to the department ensures that their managers make sure they write tickets. This makes me think the tradeoff is between very few tickets being written for the cases where it is dangerous vs. writing tickets when safety isn't a factor because it generates revenue.
- orangecat 15y ago
  Yes. I've always thought the proper way to enforce penalties like traffic fines would be to literally destroy the offender's money. Then no specific entity benefits from the punishment; the gain is widely spread out by making everyone else's dollars very slightly more valuable.
- qq66 15y ago
  Ticket revenue does not, in general, go to the police department, it goes to the municipality (although the police department is a good chunk of the municipal budget). There was one case a few years back where a police department stopped writing tickets because the town didn't approve their pay increase. When the town sued they said, "Nobody's speeding!"
- Symmetry 15y ago
  There was a brouhaha in the last couple of years ago at some municipality where the state passed a law saying that all the money that the police seized was to go to the local school, but some police departments were refusing to hand the money over. I seem to recall that the police managed to win the dispute. EDIT: Found the original source. Apparently I misremembered several things, but the point is intact in that the police found a way to avoid turning over the money as the law required. http://kcsweb.kcstar.com/projects/drugforfeit/forfeit.htm http://kcsweb.kcstar.com/projects/drugforfeit/forfeit.htm
fleitz 15y ago
Another great example of money trumping public safety is red light cameras, it's well known that the best way to reduce intersection fatalities is to increase the time length of the amber light. However if you take the average amber length of a red light camera intersection it is below the average length of non-red light camera intersections.
- Permit 15y ago
  I'd be hesitant to imply causality like that. Red light cameras could be very well placed at high accident intersections as an attempt to reduce accidents. (I'm not claiming their effective at it, but that could be one of many reasons they're placed there.)
  - watchandwait 15y ago
    Several studies show causation. http://beta2.tbo.com/news/nation-world/2008/mar/12/na-red-light-cameras-increase-accidents-usf-study--ar-142340/ http://beta2.tbo.com/news/nation-world/2008/mar/12/na-red-li...
  - URSpider94 15y ago
    I'm too tired to find the cite now, but Car and Driver has done numerous articles on this subject. In fact, the contractors who run red-light camera systems have sometimes prevailed on authorities to reduce yellow-light durations on camera-equipped intersections to increase the violation rate. These systems are usually run by contractors, who include a guaranteed-revenue clause in their operating agreements. If the cameras are actually effective in stopping people from running red lights, then the operators will go back to the local government to demand that they make up the shortfall. All in all, a dirty business that's clearly not safety-driven.
  - anothermachine 15y ago
    At some point the preponderance of evidence is such that is the authorities' responsibility to prove their side of the case. http://blog.motorists.org/6-cities-that-were-caught-shortening-yellow-light-times-for-profit/ http://blog.motorists.org/6-cities-that-were-caught-shorteni...
TamDenholm 15y ago
I'm behind this. I'm one of those people that believe an unjust law should be ignored. Its clear that in this instance there is a legitimate reason to ignore this law and a (bad) reason to enforce it (money). However, what baffles me is when there doesn't even seem to be any benefit, and in fact is major liabilities to keeping an unjust law for no real reason other than principle, the example i'm referring to being the "war on drugs". Sadly, civil disobedience doesn't work any more, remember, if you break the law, hell even if you just disagree with it, you're not a patriot, you're a traitor.
spenrose 15y ago
I'm a daily MR reader, so I like them, but this is classic Libertarian exercise in manipulative framing. Gasoline consumption does, in fact, increase non-linearly with speed at highway speeds. Police departments do have to pay their officers salaries. He could just as easily have written it this way: - the real cost of gasoline is about $10/G. when you count pollution, military expenditures to protect supply, etc. - Big Government and lying politicians bring that down to $4 to curry favor with voters - that means voters drive bigger cars faster than they otherwise would - that leads to an ethos of unlimited speed - all of the above leads to highway casualties - drivers who try to drive responsibly risk being run over by maniacs driving 4K lb behemoths at 80 mph. Note that the above does not represent my views, but it fits the evidence as well as Tabarrok's take.
- eru 15y ago
  Yes. And you should probably internalize most of those externalities via a higher price for petrol (i.e. tax it).
  - spenrose 15y ago
    Thanks for all the replies. My common rejoinder is that Libertarians, including A.T., support the political choices that create the current situation (untaxed gas externalities, police budgets funded by fines, highways for private cars over public transit, etc.), and while supporting rational policies in theory (high gas taxes etc.), when forced to choose, choose the small-screwed-up-government party that believes in subsidized SUVs killing people over the big-inefficient-government party that wants higher gas taxes and better train service. We live in this country, with this political landscape. Small yet incredibly efficient government is not a choice (though both the Clinton and Obama administrations have worked hard on effectiveness). Own the choice you are making instead of playing purity games, guys.
    - eru 15y ago
      Don't bash the Libertarians for choosing a party. You might want to bash them for other things that you don't agree with. If I was living in the US, I'd probably vote mostly Republican, too. Gotta choose the smaller evil. But honestly, a binary choice is just no way to express political opinion: Why should my views on abortion correlated with my views on free trade? At least getting a multi-party system would be worth a try.
rosser 15y ago
I've argued for a long time now that, regardless of the posted speed limit, driving at a speed lower than the rate at which traffic is flowing — particularly in an "inside lane" — should be a primary offense (that is, behavior that's probable cause for an officer to pull you over). While you may think you're making traffic "safer" by observing the posted speed limit, you're actually increasing the risk to yourself and everyone around you by causing eddies in the flow of traffic as people merge into normally slower-traveling lanes to pass you on the "wrong" side. Those local instabilities in traffic flow significantly increase the likelihood of an accident because they engender unpredictable (or at least less predictable) behavior in your fellow drivers. Yes, traffic probably would be safer if everyone drove at the posted limit, but so long as a significant enough number of people aren't, behavior that complicates traffic flow increases risk for everyone. (Then again, some of the worst offenders in that regard tend to be the police, themselves, in my experience. I can't count the number of times I've been caught in some huge knot of traffic pacing a cop who's driving two or three MPH under the posted limit, as if he's daring people to pass him...) Of course, I've also argued for just as long if not longer that one should have to pass a university-level course in fluid dynamics in order to get a driver's license, and I don't see that happening any time soon, either.
- younata 15y ago
  > I can't count the number of times I've been caught in some huge knot of traffic pacing a cop who's driving two or three MPH under the posted limit, as if he's daring people to pass him... I saw that all the time on my way into work (internship) this past summer. I just passed the cop. What annoyed me was other people who refused to pass the cop. I also saw, in equal amount to cops going too slow, was cops going too fast, oh well.
- zeteo 15y ago
  > regardless of the posted speed limit, driving at a speed lower than the rate at which traffic is flowing should be a primary offense One gets tailgated often enough for driving "only" 10 mph over the speed limit. I can only begin to imagine the extremes to which such a short-sighted rule would lead.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
heyrhett 15y ago
"The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt." --Ayn Rand
- VladRussian 15y ago
  >you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. actual modern implementations aren't about guilt, they are more practical - by selectively enforcing these laws government can target anybody at any moment. There is a saying in Russia - "Given a man, it is always possible to find a law [he's broken]." ("Byl by chelovek, a statya naydettsya" :)
bryanlarsen 15y ago
My pet peeve is the inverse: it seems that police regularly ticket on the freeway where high speeds are safe, but rarely ticket in the city core where speeding is much more dangerous. The difference between a 25mph and a 35mph collision with a pedestrian is that the former probably isn't fatal and the latter probably is.
- stephen_g 15y ago
  I totally agree. We have the opposite problem as well where I live - around schools there are zones that are 40km/h (25mph) at certain times in the day, and you see cops around there all the time, nabbing people going 45km/h at 2:02pm, an hour before any school kids will be in the area... If the periods were more sensible (say, spanning the 30 or 45 minutes when kids are being set down and picked up, not two hours on either side) it would make it a lot better, but as it is, it feels more like revenue raising than anything else.
  - jtbigwoo 15y ago
    The saddest part about school zone enforcement is that the police almost never enforce the speed limit during pick-up and drop-off times because it'd cause traffic tie-ups.
  - Loic 15y ago
    Do not underestimate the police like that. They know very well what they are doing. They control most of the time outside pick up time to not bother you and just some times to times at pick up time. The goal is mostly to condition you to think that you could be controlled. This is just the goal, putting in your brain that you could be controlled. Just that will make you go a bit slower, even during pick up time. Oh, and this I got it from a German policeman because I asked him why they were not controlling during pick up time.
  - bryanlarsen 15y ago
    Hmmm, I would think that 2:02pm is one of the best times to start ticketing. 1. Kids are out and about during this period. There aren't as many of them, so that's the time when drivers are more likely to miss them. 2. Drivers tend to drive the speed of prevailing traffic. By slowing down traffic at 2PM, you're slowing down the traffic, and that effect will persist for a little while at least.
InclinedPlane 15y ago
One of the biggest problems with the war on drugs and with traffic fines is that they create perverse incentives for law enforcement and for local governments, because revenue generation then becomes coupled to the way laws are written and enforced. Everybody knows how this works with traffic "offenses", local governments use red light cameras, speed traps, and speeding ticket quotas as a source of income. This then converts a significant portion of the resources that should be used for keeping people safe into effective tax collection. The same thing happens with the war on drugs due to asset forfeiture laws. On the one hand you have a police officer tasked with the hard and often thankless job of enforcing the law, investigating unsolved crimes, meticulously sorting through evidence, walking a beat, etc, etc. On the other hand you have a police officer tasked with the comparatively simple jobs of, say, pulling over "suspicious" looking drivers on the highway and looking for pot in their car, or executing exciting no-knock raids on, in the average case, un-armed drug dealer's houses. In the process generating enough revenue through the seizure and auction of vehicles and houses to pay for raises, more officers, new guns, helicopters, swat teams, armored personnel carriers, etc. The natural equilibrium is going to be that as many officers as possible spend as much time as possible in those typically easier and more glamorous and exciting jobs that generate revenue. This is hardly hypothetical, as over the course of the war on drugs we've seen a dramatic shift in the amount of effort the legal system puts forth in enforcing drug laws and prosecuting drug crimes and we've also seen a dramatic increase in the militarization of even small-town police departments. Assault rifles are more common. No-knock raids are more common. SWAT teams are more common. Use of APCs is more common. And this despite no significant increase in drug dealers becoming more heavily armed or more violent over that time period (except in Mexico which is in a drug-gang induced civil war). The law should be pragmatic not dogmatic. The law should be molded to aid society not to mold society into some perfect, moral vision. Whenever the law tries to overstep those boundaries the result has always been strife and disaster.
- sliverstorm 15y ago
  Combating drugs is not just about a perfect moral vision of society. Getting rid of meth, for example, would be a big aid to society. (As best I understand it) If there is a problem with drug laws and enforcement, I would hazard that it is with classification of certain drugs and the incentives for pursuing different classifications. For example, as best I understand, marijuanna does not have nearly the negative social consequences of meth, yet marijuanna was schedule I for a time and meth is schedule II.
jpr 15y ago
If driving faster is safer, your vehicle is overengineered.
bryanlarsen 15y ago
My biggest beef with poor speed limits is that we end up teaching our children that "breaking the law is OK." I will eventually teach my children that, but only when they're older and can understand the nuances. I DO NOT want to teach it to a six year old, but that's about the time that they notice that Daddy always breaks the law by driving above the speed limit.
- Symmetry 15y ago
  "To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt." -Elizabeth Cady Stanton
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

168 points by cwan 15y ago

jisaacstone 15y ago

ticket revenue does not go to the police department == solved problem

aero142 15y ago
I've thought the same thing before. I get the feeling cops don't like traffic ticket writing, so having money going to the department ensures that their managers make sure they write tickets. This makes me think the tradeoff is between very few tickets being written for the cases where it is dangerous vs. writing tickets when safety isn't a factor because it generates revenue.
orangecat 15y ago
Yes. I've always thought the proper way to enforce penalties like traffic fines would be to literally destroy the offender's money. Then no specific entity benefits from the punishment; the gain is widely spread out by making everyone else's dollars very slightly more valuable.
qq66 15y ago
Ticket revenue does not, in general, go to the police department, it goes to the municipality (although the police department is a good chunk of the municipal budget). There was one case a few years back where a police department stopped writing tickets because the town didn't approve their pay increase. When the town sued they said, "Nobody's speeding!"
Symmetry 15y ago
There was a brouhaha in the last couple of years ago at some municipality where the state passed a law saying that all the money that the police seized was to go to the local school, but some police departments were refusing to hand the money over. I seem to recall that the police managed to win the dispute. EDIT: Found the original source. Apparently I misremembered several things, but the point is intact in that the police found a way to avoid turning over the money as the law required. http://kcsweb.kcstar.com/projects/drugforfeit/forfeit.htm http://kcsweb.kcstar.com/projects/drugforfeit/forfeit.htm

fleitz 15y ago

Another great example of money trumping public safety is red light cameras, it's well known that the best way to reduce intersection fatalities is to increase the time length of the amber light. However if you take the average amber length of a red light camera intersection it is below the average length of non-red light camera intersections.

Permit 15y ago
I'd be hesitant to imply causality like that. Red light cameras could be very well placed at high accident intersections as an attempt to reduce accidents. (I'm not claiming their effective at it, but that could be one of many reasons they're placed there.)
- watchandwait 15y ago
  Several studies show causation. http://beta2.tbo.com/news/nation-world/2008/mar/12/na-red-light-cameras-increase-accidents-usf-study--ar-142340/ http://beta2.tbo.com/news/nation-world/2008/mar/12/na-red-li...
- URSpider94 15y ago
  I'm too tired to find the cite now, but Car and Driver has done numerous articles on this subject. In fact, the contractors who run red-light camera systems have sometimes prevailed on authorities to reduce yellow-light durations on camera-equipped intersections to increase the violation rate. These systems are usually run by contractors, who include a guaranteed-revenue clause in their operating agreements. If the cameras are actually effective in stopping people from running red lights, then the operators will go back to the local government to demand that they make up the shortfall. All in all, a dirty business that's clearly not safety-driven.
- anothermachine 15y ago
  At some point the preponderance of evidence is such that is the authorities' responsibility to prove their side of the case. http://blog.motorists.org/6-cities-that-were-caught-shortening-yellow-light-times-for-profit/ http://blog.motorists.org/6-cities-that-were-caught-shorteni...

TamDenholm 15y ago

I'm behind this. I'm one of those people that believe an unjust law should be ignored. Its clear that in this instance there is a legitimate reason to ignore this law and a (bad) reason to enforce it (money). However, what baffles me is when there doesn't even seem to be any benefit, and in fact is major liabilities to keeping an unjust law for no real reason other than principle, the example i'm referring to being the "war on drugs". Sadly, civil disobedience doesn't work any more, remember, if you break the law, hell even if you just disagree with it, you're not a patriot, you're a traitor.

spenrose 15y ago

I'm a daily MR reader, so I like them, but this is classic Libertarian exercise in manipulative framing. Gasoline consumption does, in fact, increase non-linearly with speed at highway speeds. Police departments do have to pay their officers salaries. He could just as easily have written it this way: - the real cost of gasoline is about $10/G. when you count pollution, military expenditures to protect supply, etc. - Big Government and lying politicians bring that down to $4 to curry favor with voters - that means voters drive bigger cars faster than they otherwise would - that leads to an ethos of unlimited speed - all of the above leads to highway casualties - drivers who try to drive responsibly risk being run over by maniacs driving 4K lb behemoths at 80 mph. Note that the above does not represent my views, but it fits the evidence as well as Tabarrok's take.

eru 15y ago
Yes. And you should probably internalize most of those externalities via a higher price for petrol (i.e. tax it).
- spenrose 15y ago
  Thanks for all the replies. My common rejoinder is that Libertarians, including A.T., support the political choices that create the current situation (untaxed gas externalities, police budgets funded by fines, highways for private cars over public transit, etc.), and while supporting rational policies in theory (high gas taxes etc.), when forced to choose, choose the small-screwed-up-government party that believes in subsidized SUVs killing people over the big-inefficient-government party that wants higher gas taxes and better train service. We live in this country, with this political landscape. Small yet incredibly efficient government is not a choice (though both the Clinton and Obama administrations have worked hard on effectiveness). Own the choice you are making instead of playing purity games, guys.
  - eru 15y ago
    Don't bash the Libertarians for choosing a party. You might want to bash them for other things that you don't agree with. If I was living in the US, I'd probably vote mostly Republican, too. Gotta choose the smaller evil. But honestly, a binary choice is just no way to express political opinion: Why should my views on abortion correlated with my views on free trade? At least getting a multi-party system would be worth a try.

rosser 15y ago

I've argued for a long time now that, regardless of the posted speed limit, driving at a speed lower than the rate at which traffic is flowing — particularly in an "inside lane" — should be a primary offense (that is, behavior that's probable cause for an officer to pull you over). While you may think you're making traffic "safer" by observing the posted speed limit, you're actually increasing the risk to yourself and everyone around you by causing eddies in the flow of traffic as people merge into normally slower-traveling lanes to pass you on the "wrong" side. Those local instabilities in traffic flow significantly increase the likelihood of an accident because they engender unpredictable (or at least less predictable) behavior in your fellow drivers. Yes, traffic probably would be safer if everyone drove at the posted limit, but so long as a significant enough number of people aren't, behavior that complicates traffic flow increases risk for everyone. (Then again, some of the worst offenders in that regard tend to be the police, themselves, in my experience. I can't count the number of times I've been caught in some huge knot of traffic pacing a cop who's driving two or three MPH under the posted limit, as if he's daring people to pass him...) Of course, I've also argued for just as long if not longer that one should have to pass a university-level course in fluid dynamics in order to get a driver's license, and I don't see that happening any time soon, either.

younata 15y ago
> I can't count the number of times I've been caught in some huge knot of traffic pacing a cop who's driving two or three MPH under the posted limit, as if he's daring people to pass him... I saw that all the time on my way into work (internship) this past summer. I just passed the cop. What annoyed me was other people who refused to pass the cop. I also saw, in equal amount to cops going too slow, was cops going too fast, oh well.
zeteo 15y ago
> regardless of the posted speed limit, driving at a speed lower than the rate at which traffic is flowing should be a primary offense One gets tailgated often enough for driving "only" 10 mph over the speed limit. I can only begin to imagine the extremes to which such a short-sighted rule would lead.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

heyrhett 15y ago

"The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt." --Ayn Rand

VladRussian 15y ago
>you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. actual modern implementations aren't about guilt, they are more practical - by selectively enforcing these laws government can target anybody at any moment. There is a saying in Russia - "Given a man, it is always possible to find a law [he's broken]." ("Byl by chelovek, a statya naydettsya" :)

bryanlarsen 15y ago

My pet peeve is the inverse: it seems that police regularly ticket on the freeway where high speeds are safe, but rarely ticket in the city core where speeding is much more dangerous. The difference between a 25mph and a 35mph collision with a pedestrian is that the former probably isn't fatal and the latter probably is.

stephen_g 15y ago
I totally agree. We have the opposite problem as well where I live - around schools there are zones that are 40km/h (25mph) at certain times in the day, and you see cops around there all the time, nabbing people going 45km/h at 2:02pm, an hour before any school kids will be in the area... If the periods were more sensible (say, spanning the 30 or 45 minutes when kids are being set down and picked up, not two hours on either side) it would make it a lot better, but as it is, it feels more like revenue raising than anything else.
- jtbigwoo 15y ago
  The saddest part about school zone enforcement is that the police almost never enforce the speed limit during pick-up and drop-off times because it'd cause traffic tie-ups.
- Loic 15y ago
  Do not underestimate the police like that. They know very well what they are doing. They control most of the time outside pick up time to not bother you and just some times to times at pick up time. The goal is mostly to condition you to think that you could be controlled. This is just the goal, putting in your brain that you could be controlled. Just that will make you go a bit slower, even during pick up time. Oh, and this I got it from a German policeman because I asked him why they were not controlling during pick up time.
- bryanlarsen 15y ago
  Hmmm, I would think that 2:02pm is one of the best times to start ticketing. 1. Kids are out and about during this period. There aren't as many of them, so that's the time when drivers are more likely to miss them. 2. Drivers tend to drive the speed of prevailing traffic. By slowing down traffic at 2PM, you're slowing down the traffic, and that effect will persist for a little while at least.

InclinedPlane 15y ago

One of the biggest problems with the war on drugs and with traffic fines is that they create perverse incentives for law enforcement and for local governments, because revenue generation then becomes coupled to the way laws are written and enforced. Everybody knows how this works with traffic "offenses", local governments use red light cameras, speed traps, and speeding ticket quotas as a source of income. This then converts a significant portion of the resources that should be used for keeping people safe into effective tax collection. The same thing happens with the war on drugs due to asset forfeiture laws. On the one hand you have a police officer tasked with the hard and often thankless job of enforcing the law, investigating unsolved crimes, meticulously sorting through evidence, walking a beat, etc, etc. On the other hand you have a police officer tasked with the comparatively simple jobs of, say, pulling over "suspicious" looking drivers on the highway and looking for pot in their car, or executing exciting no-knock raids on, in the average case, un-armed drug dealer's houses. In the process generating enough revenue through the seizure and auction of vehicles and houses to pay for raises, more officers, new guns, helicopters, swat teams, armored personnel carriers, etc. The natural equilibrium is going to be that as many officers as possible spend as much time as possible in those typically easier and more glamorous and exciting jobs that generate revenue. This is hardly hypothetical, as over the course of the war on drugs we've seen a dramatic shift in the amount of effort the legal system puts forth in enforcing drug laws and prosecuting drug crimes and we've also seen a dramatic increase in the militarization of even small-town police departments. Assault rifles are more common. No-knock raids are more common. SWAT teams are more common. Use of APCs is more common. And this despite no significant increase in drug dealers becoming more heavily armed or more violent over that time period (except in Mexico which is in a drug-gang induced civil war). The law should be pragmatic not dogmatic. The law should be molded to aid society not to mold society into some perfect, moral vision. Whenever the law tries to overstep those boundaries the result has always been strife and disaster.

sliverstorm 15y ago
Combating drugs is not just about a perfect moral vision of society. Getting rid of meth, for example, would be a big aid to society. (As best I understand it) If there is a problem with drug laws and enforcement, I would hazard that it is with classification of certain drugs and the incentives for pursuing different classifications. For example, as best I understand, marijuanna does not have nearly the negative social consequences of meth, yet marijuanna was schedule I for a time and meth is schedule II.

jpr 15y ago

If driving faster is safer, your vehicle is overengineered.

bryanlarsen 15y ago

My biggest beef with poor speed limits is that we end up teaching our children that "breaking the law is OK." I will eventually teach my children that, but only when they're older and can understand the nuances. I DO NOT want to teach it to a six year old, but that's about the time that they notice that Daddy always breaks the law by driving above the speed limit.

Symmetry 15y ago
"To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt." -Elizabeth Cady Stanton

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]