I’m talking specifically about obeying the speed limit, doing a full stop at stop signs, etc. After receiving a speeding ticket for doing 53 in a 50, As an experiment I went a full day obeying all traffic laws 100% and it caused so much road rage. For example, there is a 2 lane road near me with a speed limit of 50 (where I got the ticket), traffic usually moves at about 60/65. There was a huge line of cars behind me and nowhere to pull over. As soon as an opening came up on the shoulder I was about to pull over and one of the cars behind me blew past me on the on the right blaring their horn. Then another truck passed me at the next opportunity and brake checked me. Both of these cars proceeded to run a red light about 1/4 mile ahead of me endangering others. By far the worst part of driving on this 2 lane road was the 25 mph work zone which is completely ignored by everyone else. It effectively resulted in me doing 25 mph in a “60” which is very dangerous.
Having needed to spend the entire day pulling over at every opportunity to let people pass I inevitably picked up a drill bit and got a flat tire.
Even matters as simple as stopping completely at a stop sign for 1 second cause immediate anger and dangerous behavior from other drivers.
What on earth are we expected to do? All I want is to avoid speeding tickets and drive safely.
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Speed limits are one of the many transportation issues that have been researched with findings that the US has ignored and the EU has implemented.
Drivers go at the speed they’re comfortable with regardless of any posted speed limits. They dont work. What does work is road design to make it uncomfortable to go faster. Narrower lanes, less vision on intersections, raised crosswalks, among other things.
I have a hard time reconciling that with my observations in Europe:
- People travel significantly faster than in the U.S., for example on the autobahn
- Taxi drivers routinely do things I consider crazy in order to get around old European cities, like driving up on sidewalks, passing on narrow two-lane roads
- There are a lot of narrow mountain roads and people seem to drive way too fast to be safe
I’ve never felt like European drivers were “more safe”.
The only differences I can think of that are positive for Europe:
- Less drunk driving
- Traffic circles instead of stop signs
The two differences you listed improve traffic flow and safety massively!
Driver education is often more strict depending on country (I’m thinking Scandinavian countries and Germany), unsurprisingly this makes a big difference.
Traveling faster is a bit of a moot point. If people drive faster and rate of incidents and road toll are lower, surely that proves that travel speed isn’t the problem in the US.
But really, the drink driving culture in America is terrifying. The state of Texas has a similar population to Australia (where I’m from), 9,560 people died on the road in Q1 2022 in texas. Australia had just under 2000 FOR THE WHOLE YEAR! Both places have similar speed limits that are considerably slower than Europe, so I don’t think it would be honest to try and say the low speed limits cause deaths. My best guess would be that drink driving is enforced at 0.05 in Australia compared to 0.08 in Texas. On top of this, Texas only enforces if officers have a cause for lawful detainment, which is a high threshold to cross compared to random breath tests common where I’m from.
Its the same drivers everywhere. Road design is the difference, and europe has a lot of traffic calming road design.
I would disagree that its the same drivers everywhere. In places like germany it is far more difficult and more expensive to obtain and keep a drivers license. Here in the US the DMV basically just checks for a pulse and you get one. A DL in the US is the primary form of identification, everyone is expected to have one. There are clearly lots of people still on the road who have absolutely no business sharing the road with others who haven’t had their licenses taken away.
I don’t think most of the EU really did anything about speed limits
I dont know about how widespread it is, but yeah EU has been doing what Im talking about https://www.pps.org/article/livememtraffic
Speed radars+ removing driver licences if too many infractions?
Not perfect, but a step in the right direction
We absolutely need a points system in this country. Dui, lose your license AND your car for a month. Hit a pedestrian, come see us in 5 years.
I know these harsh consequences can be even harder in the US than Europe, but as someone who has never been able to drive I know it’s not a life ender to lose the privilege for a short time. It’s worth the grief to get people taking it more seriously.
It can be a life ender depending on where you live. My wife doesn’t drive and my last house I stayed was 30 minutes from the closest town. Uber can get me home if I am ok with waiting for an hour and a half for a driver to take up my ride request but they won’t even let me put in a request to get from my home to that town. I would have been fucked if I lost my license or car since my wife’s and I no longer have families in our lives and our neighbors all had issues with my wife for being black so it’s not like we could just ask for rides.
I’m curious. Are you located in a city center with decent, or even just existing public transit? I’m in Canada, not even 1h outside the nearest large city. Public transit is basically non-existent, so no car means I’d have to move much closer to downtown (and pay twice the rent).
I did go without a car for years, back when I lived in the city. Took the bus, metro and train. Walked a lot more. Rode my bike or my longboard for really short commutes. Used car sharing services when I did need one. But for 90%+ of the province (in terms of area, not population, admittedly), it’s just not an option at all.
However I do think that consequences for DUI are way too lax, even up here lol
This is definitely the major problem with taking away driving privileges in the US. That leaves most people completely without any form of transportation.
European here. You Americans sure do love stop signs! And I did a full stop. Every time. People honked and looked at me like I was a criminal weird 😢
Four way stops are even more exciting.
NotJustBikes have a video about the only stop sign on the Nederlands.
I have never been honked at for stopping at a posted stop sign. Maybe that’s how they do it in some other regions of the US, but that’s not how it works in the Pacific Northwest. Are you certain you weren’t honked at for doing something else and just mis-associated it with stopping at a stop sign? Was it a 4 way stop and you didn’t go when it was appropriately your time to go?
It was in LA. No one did a full stop at stop signs. Even saw police cars drive right through. Why not make one road a priority, and then have yield signs on the others? Makes more sense
WTF are you talking about, I e stopped at every stop sign for 30 years. This is all in your head. And complete fiction.
Exactly. Especially this complaint about stop signs. That’s not something that a normal motorist would encounter during a normal day of driving. If you ever happen to encounter a stop sign, as rare as they are, and feel that you then can’t spend a minute to make a proper stop there then the real problem certainly must be in your mind.
Not sure where you live but in America stop signs are everywhere. You can’t go anywhere without hitting multiple.
American residential streets often have stop signs at every intersection
I think it depends largely on where you live. There’s a reason it’s called the “California Stop.” And arpund Boston, the shoulder is a completely additional, auxiliary lane, which so. many. people. use.
There’s a funny video where a group of people got on the Atlanta 285 loop, spread out across all lanes, and did the speed limit for a few miles. They had a camera set up on an overpass to watch the procession come around a curve. They say they did it to show how stupid the speed limit on the loop was, and I’m sure it was infuriating for the miles of cars backed up behind them, but… yeah. It showed few people there obeyed the speed limit. I don’t know if this is the original; I don’t remember it being edited by a spastic gerbil, but that’s what I could find before I lost interest.
Getting a ticket for going 3 over is silly. That part does seem contrived, and if contested OP could easily get that thrown out. I suspect either OP was being a douche in some other way, and the cop put something down to harrass them, or they dropped a “0” in the retelling.
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You do? To be frank, I rarely do unless I’m unfamiliar with the intersection, and neither do 95% of the other people I see on the road. I live in the US.
Realize that a lot of traffic laws are more or less designed to make everyone a criminal. That leaves it up to the cop to decide who they like to pull over.
Sprinkle in a little racism and bam! This is America.
One time when I lived in Utah, I literally got pulled over for driving the speed limit. Literally. The cop told me that I needed to go with the flow of traffic instead. He didn’t give me a ticket, but it was still an annoying interruption to my day, and I assume it gave him a power boner of some sort.
But another time, living in the same area, I got pulled over by a different cop for going with the flow of traffic, because speeding isn’t justified even when everyone else on the road is.
As another comment said, you’re fucked if you do and fucked if you don’t. Although, I do prefer the alternative of going with the flow of traffic to avoid road rage incidents as you’ve pointed out.
I think I would have demanded a ticket in your case. I would have really liked to see how that played out in court.
You’d probably be more likely to get a ticket for a broken tail light or going 51 in a 50 than any sort of court catharsis
You realize these guys are allowed to kill you at will, right?
That’s when you ask for a name and badge number and report them. They’re not allowed to pull you over for nothing.
But they are allowed to lie to you, and allowed to pull you over for perceived infractions. So, yes they can pull you over for “nothing”.
In Germany, it’s against the law to not do a full stop at traffic signs. You will fail your driving test doing this and you’ll definitely get pulled over when you’re seen doing it.
Op is full of shit. I’ve stopped at every stop sign the entire time I’ve been driving and there’s never been any issue. This is a troll. Plain and simple.
American cops are a bit more lenient, but you will get penalized for it on the driving test.
It depends on the jurisdiction. Small towns will absolutely ticket you for a lack of a full stop.
In Argentina it’s against the law too. I have never seen anyone, ever, stop at a stop sign. At most people slow down a little more than usual. Not even cops stop at stop signs. But if you don’t stop in your driver test, they can theoretically deny your license. So this is definitely a regional thing.
Fwiw, I visited a lot of South American countries, and Argentina is one of the most respectful of traffic laws. But yeah, stop signs are merely a suggestion at best. People slow down way more in a “dangerous crossing” sign, than a stop sign.
Not even cops stop at stop signs.
You’re talking like if cops respect the laws they’re supposed to enforce.
In Brazil too, but we don’t ever get pulled over for that, so nobody really stops, just slows down and if they see someone coming they stop. I’ve seen cops running red lights just because there was no one crossing.
It is very much against the law in the US too. The point is that any attempt to follow the law causes serious safety issues around road rage.
Same in the UK. But here most signs are ‘give way’ so there can be confusion when there’s an actual stop sign.
I think the UK has completely eliminated the US style stop sign. I haven’t seen one in years.
Well that sent me down a random Wikipedia dive.
In the United Kingdom, stop signs may only be placed at junctions with tramways or sites with severely restricted visibility.[30] Until 2016, each stop sign had to be individually approved by the Secretary of State for Transport.[31][32] This requirement was removed by the 2016 amendments to the Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions;[33][34] the responsibility for approving stop signs now lies with local authorities
I remember Tom Scott did a video about a really dangerous junction with one a few years ago. The road layout there has now been fixed so it’s not needed.
I’ve never seen one in the wild though.
You should obey the basic rules such as speed limits, stopping for red light, etc. Driving faster is associated with higher rate of road fatalities.
The real solution is that our society must abolish the reliance on cars. We should opt for safer modes of transportation that do not make it necessary for us to trust every random person to have the patience and skill for operating a car that can kill people so easily.
The Fuck Cars community is so prevalent over here on Lemmy it’s crazy. I wonder why that is.
Btw you guys do you, no hate or whatever I just see this sentiment everywhere on other people’s posts.
I think it makes sense. Just think about what makes the average Reddit user interested in a platform like lemmy, and ask yourself if it makes sense that it correlates with fuck cars. I think it makes sense.
It is fairly easy to obey the road rules. The problem is that if over time the laws aren’t enforced then it is easy over time for thos laws to erode, and then suddenly it feels weird to obey them.
It’s actually impossible to obey road rules, by design. Any cop will tell you that, if they follow you for long enough, they will have an excuse to pull you over. Being too close to the lane markers. Marginally over the speed limit. Cracked windshield. Something dangling from your rear view mirror. Phone/GPS mount on windshield or dashboard. Following distance. Weaving inside your lane. They can even tailgate you and bust you for speeding if you speed up. I even know someone who got a ticket for not speeding up with a cop car tailgating him - with no lights on - for blocking an emergency vehicle.
You can obviously make it more likely you will get pulled over. Excessive speed, dangerous driving, or being of an ethnic minority all should be avoided. But honestly, the only thing actually protecting you is the herd around you and the cop not wanting to be bothered.
Yep! I’ve only ever been pulled over two times in my life. Both times were shortly after moving from a different state, both times were some absolutely bogus claim by the cop, both times let me off “with just a warning” against the crime of Driving With Out Of State Tags. It’s absolutely intentional since they expect an out of state person wouldn’t be able to contest it in court. Pigs, all of then
I really disagree that its impossible to obey road rules. Every single thing you listed that you can be ticketed for can easily be considered dangerous and unnecessary for driving…
I think you can take that 53 mph to court. Thats way too close to be legit.
In most jurisdictions police can do you for even 1mph over. There are a number of things in their favour, as they’ll have multiple pieces of evidence (device readout + police statement minimum) against only you and your word. Some places will also give you a far worse outcome if you lose in court than if you just accept the ticket. At the very least you should talk to a lawyer first about how best to take it to court and the likelihood of winning.
End of the day, with the way car speedo’s over-read, for you to be doing 53 mph your needle would’ve been reading ~56, which is well over.
reddit post about possibly uncalibrated speed meters
Yeah wtf, cops in socal don’t typically even bother unless you’re doing 15 over. Must have been desperate to hit their ticket quota
All I’m getting from this is that, on the day you obeyed all traffic laws, you were the good driver and the others were bad. Things didn’t run smoothly because the others didn’t obey the traffic laws, not because you obeyed them.
If that many people are ‘breaking the rules’ then maybe we need to look at the rules rather than asking 95% of drivers to change their habits. I know in my state the speed limit is capped at 65MPH on the freeway, but the second you cross the border, the “maximum safe” speed on that same freeway somehow jumps 5-10MPH. How is that possible?
The reality is that it’s a game like the other commentor pointed out. We’re allowed to break the rules and drive 80MPH with the rest of traffic so long as the state can quickly and easily generate additional revenue off of it by catching a few stragglers each day and charging them hundreds of dollars in fines.
The reason that many people can’t stick to traffic rules like speed limits and full stops, as I see it, is more a result of people lacking patience, they are stressed, they are under constant pressure. And they lash out in road rage against others because they are protected by their little metal box and no one can get to them.
Society needs to slow down and individuals need more empathy. If you have kids, make sure to teach them those two things.
You just had some bad luck. I have passed dozens of police while going 3-5 MPH over the limit and they never took a second look at me. Same thing riding with others. The main thing in driving is try to be a decent person and try not to stand out. If you encounter an unsafe asshole, stay away from them. If you are in the middle a line of cars going 10MPH over the limit, you are probably fine. If you at the front of a line of cars going 10MPH over the speed limit, you are more likely to get pulled over because you stand out as the first speeder.
The point is even doing 1mph over the speed limit is breaking the law, and there’s no excuse for it. If you were doing 51 in a 50 and all of the other traffic was doing 65 mph it makes absolutely no legal difference and there is no argument to what everyone else was doing, because the fact is that you are actually exceeding the speed limit in that scenario. Your driving is dangerous because you were driving too slow, but your ticket would be because you were driving too fast. Its the whole point of my original post, what are you supposed to do exactly?
There are excuses that are perfectly reasonable to go over by 1 mph. Speedometers are not perfect, and neither are radar detectors. All my cop friends have told me they are trained to give 10% of the speed to normal variation, so at 50mph you would be within the limit to go 55. This has been my personal experience while driving too.
But why would police look at a line of 100 cars going 65MPH and pull you out of the middle for going 51? Unless it’s for impeding traffic, which is a thing.
It’s not technically right, but you go with the flow of traffic and try not to stand out. Everyone technically breaks traffic laws, including the police. Unless you have exceptionally bad luck or you are traveling past the same speed trap or really strict cop, you likely will not receive any more tickets for 3MPH over. Stop signs though, I always come to a 100% complete stop, if the people behind me don’t like it too bad.
I’m confused why America has such strict rules on it. I’m pretty sure Australia has 5-10% leniency for inaccuracies in measurement.
You generally won’t get a ticket for a few over the speed limit. You can do it hundreds of times without getting a ticket, but an officer can at their discretion pull you over for 1MPH over if they want to. I’ve heard of people successfully arguing in court that infractions like 53 in a 50 are within the margin of error, and others put into question the calibration of the speed detection equipment.
They do if you’re white. This kind of enforcement usually is reserved for the most heinous of criminals. Those who committed the dangerous crimes of dwb. Driving while black. /S
More than that, if you’re at the front of the line, that indicates you’re holding up traffic (even if it is “worse speeders” you’re holding up) and creating a dangerous situation.
If you’re speeding and someone is tail gating you, just let them pass.
So you don’t need to obey the laws because others don’t? You’re being childish, it isn’t that big of a deal.
I will say that ticket you got is bullshit though. That’s just a dick cop.
I don’t think “not wanting to be the target of others’ road rage for actually following traffic laws” is childish, tbh
It is when you’re constantly getting harassed on the road for just going even 5 above the speed limit.
Should absolutely dispute that. It will most likely get thrown out.
Standards of driving sound bad where you are
If everyone followed the law, there would be no problem. The problem is that bad and unsafe driving is normalized in our society.
I feel this places blame directly on the users of the road instead of the designers of the road. People just drive in ways they feel are safe. We could absolutely drive better as a society but realistically the countries with safe driving have designed the roads a lot better than we have. This is likely because America is so damn huge and we have very little federal regulation on what a road needs to be safe. So a road in the US could be gravel or worse, just two tire marks in the grass. A road also could be a 50 mile an hour street with intersections every block or two making them extremely unsafe and inefficient.
Our road design is trash and it’s really the root cause.
One thing though is the speed that feels safe for a driver does not always line up for what is safe for other users of the road. Bigger cars make drivers feel safer at the expense of everyone else.
Europe has a way of dealing with that too. Bigger cars aren’t road legal. They also make roads more narrow. It’s not a driving culture that truly separates Europe and NA. It’s that the design of the roads in Europe provided a better driving culture. So the thing that defines the culture is the conditions in which you can communicate.
Heh ye, it’s always funny to see Americans (in large vehicles) get stuck on the smol and narrow roads in the west of Ireland.
It’s not just the design but also the factany were laid down before cars were a thing so they tend to wind and twist.
Everyone would follow the law if it was enforced consistently. The authorities know that, and enforce it inconsistently so that they can fine people at random. It’s a money-making scheme.
You’re not supposed to obey traffic laws. They’re designed to fund local governments and give police arbitrary power.
Many laws are. But basic things like speed limit serve a very good purpose: reducing fatalities caused by cars. Speed limits are proven to do this.
Yes but the speed limits posted are outdated, arbitrary, and just too slow
Not at all. What makes you think they are arbitrary? Have you reviewed the method by which they are usually determined? Speed limits are often times too high, and contribute to a high number of preventable deaths. Speed limits must be lowered, not raised. Preventing deaths is more important than saving 2 minutes on your trip.
I wholly disagree with this. Cars have gotten faster, more capable, and more reliable over the years but physics and forces involved when you hit something (like a pedestrian) haven’t changed. If anything we should be going slower since cars have gotten heavier.
I was thinking more about freeway speeds.
