Randy Harris asks:
Is it unethical* to own a radar detector?
That’s a neat little question. First of all, Zic’s answer is not far from my own. But there’s an additional nuance to the device worth a rumination. A radar detector is like Napster. Sure, you can use Napster to distribute files legally. But the reason most people get it is so they can steal music from the artists who make a living selling it. Or, you might use a device like this to smoke tobacco or some other legal product. But let’s get real.
No one wants a speeding ticket. They are expensive, they are inconvenient, they cause the speeder’s auto insurance rates to increase. Consider why they cause insurance rates to increase: they are an indicator of unsafe driving and increased risk of property damage and bodily injury, wherein lies the moral problem with speeding. There are two strategies available to any driver for avoiding speeding tickets. The radar detector is one. The other is to not speed in the first place. Speed limits, and tickets given to enforce them, are the law’s way of creating an incentive for you to select the second strategy.
The only reasonably likely purpose of a radar detector is to assist a driver in evading a speeding ticket. This creates a strong inference that the driver wishes to drive in excess of the speed limit and avoid the legal consequences for doing so. That is to say, she intends to speed. intending to speed is not just negligent, it is reckless. It is consciously choosing to engage in unreasonably risky behavior.
The wrinkle on the “speeding is the problem” answer is that using the radar detector as a “reminder” to control one’s speed far too easily becomes the only regulation of a driver’s speed, precisely because the driver is one who intends to speed. It causes the driver to indulge her habit of speeding, rather than to curb it. This is very different than not speeding in the first place.
The radar detector teaches a driver over time how to drive quickly and escape punishment. The fear of that punishment ought to be a step along the way to realizing that speeding is something that shouldn’t be done in the first place.
The radar detector, then, is not inherently immoral. It is, however, an indicator of a callous disregard of the safety of self and others. It is an indicator of immorality, as sure as a bong is an indicator of marijuana use or a file-sharing program is an indicator of media obtained without payment of royalties. It is a facilitator of immorality, in that it make it easier and more likely for someone to recklessly disregard the safety of others. Ultimate blame rests with the driver, not the device. The device likely aggravates the moral blame attaching to the driver.
Also, they don’t help if the cop is using LiDAR.
* I have taken the liberty of substituting “moral” for “ethical”. By “morals” I refer to issues of right and wrong, good and evil. “Ethics” to me refer to codes of conduct which permit or prohibit specific behaviors. For instance, it may be “unethical” of me as an attorney to represent two parties who are suing each other, with those ethics defined by codes explicated by either my state bar or state Supreme Court. But maybe I don’t know they’re suing one another and I’m not privy to any knowledge that affects their dispute. You could argue that I’m not being “immoral” in that situation because I’m not actually doing anything to harm either client. But while not necessarily a moral problem, it is still an ethical problem.
But is speeding necessarily dangerous? As a habitual speeder, I know that even when I exceed the speed limit, I do so safely and make sure that I am in control of the car. Now, this may make me a petty criminal, but it doesn’t mean that I am doing something immoral as I am not putting other people’s lives in danger.
Not if someone’s tailgating you. AND you know the road, and your car, really, really fucking well.
Convincing the maniac behind you not to pass you when it’s a bad idea, can be a net positive for everyone.
I used to be really good friends with a guy that worked at the DOT.
One day we were talking about the speed limits on exit ramps.
He explained to me that these things are figured on a “worst case scenario” basis.
In my industry, “worst case scenario” usually means a fire or a breach. I’m pretty sure he was referring to something else.
At any rate, the grade and speed are calculated well ahead of time on a very conservative basis.
Not necessarily true. But it’s probably calculated for the biggest truck they can reasonably expect, during a heavy rainstorm.
That’s nowhere near worst case. Worst Case, you stay the hell off the road.
Speed limits on curves are generally “hey, dipshit, slow down!” or “hey, slow down, we MEAN IT!”
Except for the 15 mph curve down at the bottom of Peter’s Mountain. That’s a tight hairpin, and if you’ve been riding your brakes like you don’t know there’s a second gear, you’re a dead man.
Speeding isn’t always a sign of dangerous driving. My father, who logged something over 750,000 accident-free miles as a traveling auditor/safety inspector, used to say that driving in traffic is a herd activity, and the safest thing you can do is “go along with the herd.” If everyone wants to drive 55 in some particular 45 mph zone, you’re a much greater source of danger to the other drivers if you insist on doing 45.
This is true.
You see it more in California than any other place in the universe.
That is essentially how I drive, which is consistently faster than the speed limit but always on pace with everyone around me.
Is using a GPS navigation product that pings when you are above the speed limit for a given section of road also immoral?
Another way to avoid speeding tickets:
Make sure someone else is driving way worse than you are.
The best way to avoid speeding tickets:
Don’t speed.
Another way to avoid speeding tickets:
Make sure someone else is driving way worse than you are.
True story:
When I was something of a less than fully cautious “yout”* my father handed down to me his Italian sports car. I was driving it from Boston to Newport on a sunny summer day, cruising along quite briskly. As I was about to pass an International Harvester Suburban, I noticed in my rear view mirror an unmarked State Police cruiser gaining on me with his grill emergency lights a’flashing but no siren. I got that sinking feeling, but proceeded to pass the Harvester anyway. When I was parallel to the Suburban, the happy grinning oafish driver waved hello, beer bottle in hand. I smiled, waved back and continued ahead. As I was anticipating would happen, the Suburban’s driver must also have waved to the Mass State Trooper, because the Trooper stopped following me and pulled over the Suburban instead.
Phew!
Was it ethical of me to let the poor schmoo get caught for DUI so I could avoid a speeding ticket? Yes, I may have saved someone’s life even if only for purely selfish reasons. Should I have warned him? No.
*Sorry, Yout = Youth (from “My Cousin Vinny”).
Is it unethical* to own a radar detector?
No. It is our right to receive signals of any kind. What we do with the information is where the ethical issue comes up.
Is it ethical of the Government to send out police at the end of the month to trap speeders in order to cover revenue shortfalls caused by intemperate spending?
Is using a GPS navigation product that pings when you are above the speed limit for a given section of road also immoral?
Absolutely not.
The GPS signal is no different than the radar detector, although I have an easier time imagining innocuous uses for it such as navigation, particularly in unfamiliar territory.
The moral issue is what you do with the information you get from the device, and the extent to which the driver relies upon signals data as a substitute for good judgment and safe driving.
Burt: I take note that you did not answer my question. On the chance that your failure there was inadvertent, I repeat it:
Is it ethical of the Government to send out police at the end of the month to trap speeders in order to cover revenue shortfalls caused by intemperate spending?
in order to cover revenue shortfalls caused by intemperate spending?
The speeders are still speeding. If they were being stopped and ticketed when they weren’t speeding, this would be unethical.
But your question really goes to the matter of enforcing laws to fund government and quotas; which, taken to it’s logical conclusion would mean encouraging a certain level of law breaking in order to have a steady revenue stream. And I do think that this is unethical. Far better, IMO, to fund law enforcement in a manner that rewards successful enforcement that actually reduces criminal behavior.
Apologies, LA.
For that purpose, no, it is not ethical. That’s if we could establish that were the purpose of enforcement and it is far from clear to me that this is the real reason behind the scheduling of traffic enforcement efforts by police.
There’s much more involved in collecting that revenue than field enforcement. The time cycle of collecting ticket enforcement is variable, although concededly that would be mitigated by sufficient volume and consistency over time of enforcement efforts.
Actual enforcement patterns I’ve heard described in court — “On Wednesday of that week, all officers on duty were advised to patrol primarily for speed, on Thursday of that week, the primary emphasis was seat belts,” etc. — suggest a higher degree of randomness in enforcement than what you describe.
Spending and budgeting cycles for the state government are as often quarterly or annual rather than monthly, but again that could be mitigated by intelligent planning.
Furthermore, it’s not at all clear to me that traffic enforcement is actually a consistent revenue generator the way that, say, cigarette taxes are. Maybe they are, and I confess I’ve not done the math. But if one compared total collected traffic fines to the actual cost of field enforcement, I’d be not a bit surprised to find that the state takes a net loss or at best broke even. I’ve looked at my state’s budget more than the average voter for several years now, and I’ve never seen traffic ticket revenue listed as a source of revenue at all.
Your question also uses the phrase “trap speeders.” This is a pretty loaded choice of words — it implies “entrapment,” which is when a law enforcement agent encourages the target of a law enforcement effort to break the law. That’s clearly not what’s going on, as the speeders need no encouragement to speed. The other load in that phrase is the suggestion that the tactics used by the police to apprehend a lawbreaker are somehow unfair. I’ll sidestep notions of “good sportsmanship” because enforcement of the law isn’t supposed to be fair. It’s supposed to follow notions of due process, which means the police need probable cause of a crime in commission. Direct officer observation of the crime being committed strikes me as not only providing probable cause but also typically dispositive evidence of that very crime.
But accepting the premises of your question, explicit and implicit, as given, then no, I do not think that would be ethical. That would not be enforcing the law for the purpose of increasing public safety, it would be enforcement for the purpose of generating revenue, which obviously leads to all sorts of institutional corruption issues.
In 2002, police in the city of Detroit gave out a total of 126,007 traffic tickets. Last year, the number of tickets grew to over 245,000 – a 94% jump. The increase was even larger in small towns like Plymouth which saw the number of tickets go up from 440 to 2,500 — up 480 percent — over the same amount of time. According to Detroit area police the reason for the increase is dwindling property tax revenue. That lack of property tax revenue has forced local governments in Michigan to use average citizen drivers to fill the coffers. You might call it a new, “random driving tax.”
“When I first started in this job thirty years ago, police work was never about revenue enhancement,” Utica Police Chief Michael Reaves told the Detroit News. “But if you’re a chief now, you have to look at whether your department produces revenues. That’s just the reality nowadays.” [click]
If that is the case, isn’t the solution a better-funded police department?
Sure, but police finding comes from the town. Tickets come from the town and from people passing through.
I see. You guys want my traffic judge rant.
I agree that it’s not necessarily immoral to speed. But it is often enough that I didn’t think going down that rabbit hole in my answer was going to be productive. I’ve said it elsewhere and I’ll repeat it here: safety tends to happen at slower speeds.
Speeding creates two big safety problems. The first is that vehicles are harder to control at high speeds than low speeds, and thus collisions are more difficult to avoid at high speeds than low speeds. The second is that high speeds necessarily result in collisions that do more damage to both property and people. That’s just physics, and relatively simple physics at that. There are clearly other factors that we consider when looking at how fast vehicles should go — straightness of the road, number of lanes, access points like driveways and intersections, frequency of pedestrian usage, all sorts of things. But physics doesn’t care about the statistical frequency with which pedestrians access a particular stretch of road. If there is a pedestrian there at the moment you lose control of your car, then even a lawyer knows that force equals mass times velocity and your vehicle has a lot more mass and a lot more velocity than the pedestrian.
Reasonable people can disagree on the extent to which speed limits are arbitrary and the extent to which they are serious attempts by people with safety in mind to control traffic so as to maximize safety, and the degree to which safety rather than arbitrariness will vary by jurisdiction. But there is inherently a strong element of safety planning in any even remotely rational attempt to regulate traffic.
One way we can know that speeding is unreasonably risky is if speed limits are set in part based on observation of actual driving behavior. That’s how it’s done in California: Caltrans sends out crews with radar guns, unannounced to both the public and the police, to observe actual speeds on actual roads, when driving conditions are good (a clear sunny day). Unless there are objective conditions legally requiring the setting of an arbitrary limit (e.g., within 100 yards of a school) the speed of the 85th percentile measured is rounded up to the nearest 5 mph increment and that’s pretty much going to be the speed limit for the next year on that road. The theory is that people already know how to drive safely and do so on their own. I question the validity of that theory.
A big reason why I question CalTrans’ rationale is that 95% of people out there think that they are in or above the 95th percentile of safe drivers. The overwhelming odds are that you think you are a safer driver than you actually are and in fact, the odds are pretty good that you’re not just wrong about how good a driver you are, you’re very wrong.
This is a flaw, and a very dangerous one, with the manner of thinking Michael Cain reports — it is not safer to “go along with the herd.” The herd can be wrong, and it’s best to assume that the herd actually is wrong. After all, 95% of the herd has overestimated their abilities to handle their vehicles safely in the event of something going wrong. And when you subscribe to the rule that it’s safest to do what people who almost certainly have overestimated their own level of skill and safety are doing, you have subscribed to a rule that delegates safety decisions to people who almost by definition are in over their heads. Don’t let other people do your driving for you. Don’t “go along with the herd.” Be a lone wolf. Avoid being in packs of cars in the first place — that’s part of what it is to be a safe driver, increase the distance between yourself and other vehicles, so as to increase your reaction time should something go wrong. Particularly when other vehicles seem to insist on driving fast, those are the vehicles you want to stay the hell away from. If they’re driving fast, the safest way to get away from them is to slow down and let them pass you.
Murali here demonstrates vulnerability to self-overestimation of driver skill, as he claims that he is “not putting other people’s lives in danger” when he speeds. He is far from unique in that respect. But respectfully to Murali and others who think like him, that statement is simply not true. Physics, unlike your auto insurance company, doesn’t care who is at fault for the collision. Force equals mass times velocity. Lower velocities means less force transferred means less damage and less injury. Higher speeds means higher force means more injury means more danger. Safety tends to occur at slower speeds.
Here’s a protip: if I’m your traffic judge, I’m going to assume that your level of driving skill is less than average, because that’s who the traffic safety laws are aimed at — below-average drivers. What’s more, I know as a traffic judge that the people who are actually in the 95th percentile of safe drivers tend to drive at or below the posted speed limit because that’s part of what safe driving is, and therefore those 95 percentilers don’t wind up in front of me in the first place. The overwhelming likelihood is that someone who has allowed themselves to be caught speeding was someone who wasn’t paying enough attention to see the cop before they got pulled over, which means that they weren’t paying enough attention to see actual hazards, which means they were a safety risk. Do not come in to my traffic court and try to sell me the rotten deli meat that you’re a safe driver because you were driving fast. Tell me instead that your attention had lapsed for a moment and you appreciate the risk you caused, and I’ll be happy to assign you to traffic school to keep the points off your insurance record. Or tell me why the cop’s LiDAR gun gave her the wrong reading, although no one has yet been able to actually pull that trick off. Maybe you’ll be the first one, I’m all ears, and if you can do it, I’ll acquit you.
Similarly, when attempting to justify the morality of your high speed, you should assume that you have overestimated your level of driving skill. You should assume that the simple fact that you are driving faster rather than slower is an indicator that you are not in that 95th percentile and that at best, you’re a driver who practices average safety habits. The standalone fact that you are speeding is a strong indicator that your actual position on that safety ladder is below the midpoint. I’ll concede that it’s not a determinative indicator, but it is a strong one.
Now, let’s say that instead of me being your traffic judge, I’m instead the driver in front of you and I’m driving 10 mph slower than the posted speed limit, despite whatever frustration you feel it’s nevertheless your nondelegable duty to not hit things with your car, so what you ought to do in that situation is slow the fish down. So call me names, flip me the bird, flash your lights, I really don’t care all that much about that. But please don’t think that as between you and me, I’m the one behaving unsafely. Why? Force equals mass times velocity, and you’re the one arguing for a higher multiplier in that equation.
This, by the way, is why I think and act as I do on the bench as a traffic judge: I don’t know you. I do not trust your driving skill. And I’m going to have a share a road with you on the way home from court, as are people I love. You scare me.
So is speeding immoral? Not necessarily, because the speed limit might not correlate with the speed of reasonable safety. Maybe the speed limit has been set at an arbitrarily low rate. Maybe the prevailing conditions are such that a higher rate of speed than the posted limit is safe. And maybe you’re one of the one in twenty drivers who is really excellently skilled and safe — although if you are one of those one in twenty drivers, the great likelihood is that you’re not the one speeding in the first place. Despite the flaws in the process of their creation, speed limits tend to be roughly congruent with speeds that are reasonably safe.
Don’t hit things with your car. Don’t let other people do your driving for you. Make your own decisions about what is safe. Physics doesn’t care about your opinion of your own skill. Questioning your own abilities is the best way to increase them. And above all: safety tends to occur at slower speeds.
even a lawyer knows that force equals mass times velocity
Which is why he’s a lawyer and not a physicist.
That’s right. Acceleration is not the same thing as velocity. Fine. My bad.
Doesn’t change my point that safety tends to occur at slow speeds, not high speeds.
In an auto-versus-pedestrian situation, acceleration and velocity may as well be the same. The pedestrian is effectively motionless. As is the ground, which is why even an auto-versus-auto collision with a low net speed of collision (say, an at-speed rear-end collision on a freeway) can still be horrific to fatal: lateral vectors or other variables like tires that blow out can cause a driver to lose control and flip.
It also don’t change my point that you are probably not as good a driver as you think you are, and if you’re speeding, it’s very likely you’re not a good driver.
The biggest issue in a collision is not force but kinetic energy, which is mass times velocity squared divided by two. Which makes your point stronger: 70 MPH is almost twice as deadly as 50 MPH.
On the original ethical question, I can go either way. But on the above paragraph, I must respectfully dissent – an accident between two cars going the same direction at only slightly different speeds will be a mere fender bender. An accident between a car driving with the flow of traffic at or near the speed limit and a car driving significantly below the speed limit will be much worse. There is, after all, a reason why one of the most dangerous things you can do on a major highway is park on the shoulder despite the fact that your velocity at that point equals zero. “Velocity” in the force equation, at least for purposes of car accidents, is the delta between the two speeds.
the worst thing you cand o is step out into the road. I almost hit someone who did that, scared the fucking bejeesus out of me.
I am not a safe driver.
This is true as far as it goes. If there was going to be a good demonstrator of the tired old saw “exception that proves the rule,” this is a good candidate for that. And I’ll not deny that there are plenty of low-delta same-direction rear-end fender-benders happening out there. I’ve been in one myself — I was the culpable party, and the other driver waved it off since there was not even superficial denting or paint transfer.
If what we’re talking about is physics, then when the vectors line up just right, it can be the case that a higher velocity reduces the overall energy in the collision system. If you’re headed at zero degrees north at 65 mph and I rear-end you headed, let’s say, one degree north at 75 mph, the differential in vectors is slight enough that our respective actual driving skills can compensate, and the net-10 collision isn’t going to be a big deal.
What sits poorly with me is that in order for this to be true, the vectors have to line up just right. If they don’t, now you have lateral forces at work and it’s a really dangerous situation. If we increase that vector differential by only a few degrees, or reduce my degree of control because I’m braking hard, or introduce a rough patch on the road, or winds introducing a third sideways vector, or… or any number of other things, then we’re no longer talking about a simple low-delta rear-end fender-bender. Or consider the risk of an impetuous rear-position driver (who has overestimated his skill) wishing to go faster making a mistake in the passing maneuver. A corner-punch unleashes all sorts of lateral vectors. Now there’s sideways momentum, spinning, flipping, lots of energy, lots of damage, lots of injury.
It doens’t make sense to me to take your chances that the vectors are always going to line up just right. It makes more sense to me to be wary of other drivers and keep my distance from them when I can, and to moderate my speed, which after all, are the only things I can really control. I advise you all to do the same.
With a difference in speed that great, what happens is that the driver in front loses control of their vehicle.
One sharp turn of the wheel from the driver in back, and the driver in front goes off the road.
I love this:
What’s more, I know as a traffic judge that the people who are actually in the 95th percentile of safe drivers tend to drive at or below the posted speed limit because that’s part of what safe driving is, and therefore those 95 percentilers don’t wind up in front of me in the first place.
Anecdotally, I know this to be true; two close friends of my younger, the gear head, are a rally instructor (taught Ken Block how to drive) and one the top-ranked drivers in Rally America — in the top 10 driving a 2-wheel drive car. I’m grateful, because they got it through my son’s head that you drive the speed limit on the road. You presume other drivers have less then average skills. And you go to the off-road track to have fun driving. They’ve taught him (and me) how to handle cars in out-of-control situations; to always have a plan of what you’re doing, where you want the car to be, to feel the contact each wheel has with the road.
But I have a point to pick that it’s not necessarily immoral to speed; that’s presuming you are alone on the road. Don’t. There’s always the potential of other drivers, animals, or changes in the road surface since you last drove it.
(I’m really disappointed nobody seems to have followed that link.)
Burt,
How many people have you gotten arrested using this philosophy?
“Now, let’s say that instead of me being your traffic judge, I’m instead the driver in front of you and I’m driving 10 mph slower than the posted speed limit, despite whatever frustration you feel it’s nevertheless your nondelegable duty to not hit things with your car, so what you ought to do in that situation is slow the fish down. So call me names, flip me the bird, flash your lights, I really don’t care all that much about that. But please don’t think that as between you and me, I’m the one behaving unsafely. Why? Force equals mass times velocity, and you’re the one arguing for a higher multiplier in that equation.”
People tend not to get traffic tickets for driving too slow, Kim.
EDIT: See below.
Oh, I wasn’t talking about THEM. I was talking about how many people you had managed to goad into speeding (or illegally passing) in order to get around “mr. Slowpoke”
I’ve been in the car for two arrests of other drivers (in other cars, naturally).
Perhaps your trolling needs work?
Yes, sometimes drivers have passed me in visible exasperation at my snail-like behavior. None that I have ever seen have ever been arrested or even ticketed (which, now that I consider it, is technically also an arrest).
My intention, I hope it’s clear, is not to anger or frustrate or to induce arrest. It’s to first avoid collision and second minimize the damage if there is one. If you’re invulnerable, then of course this isn’t going to be nearly as important to you as getting to the stop sign twelve seconds before me, but I’m not, so I guess we all have to set individual priorities. And I think it’s great that you’re doing well enough financially that you can afford the ticket. I’m not, myself, but hey, I’m glad for you that you are.
Not an arrest, but a seizure.
Everyone in the car is seized in a traffic stop.
Passengers must be released after a reasonable time to ensure that there is no cause to keep them.
If they feel like they’re not free to go then they are free to do so, that’s a detention.
I know you send “tend”, but my first traffic stop (I don’t recall whether I got a ticket or not — I think not) was for “impeding the flow of traffic”. I think I was doing 20 in a 40 zone.
It can be done!
So you’re that guy! At least I drive at or approaching the posted speed limit.
Many states have such a minimum speed on the books.
In some states, it’s posted on highways.
And for fuck’s sake, drive a Safer Car!
“Be a lone wolf. Avoid being in packs of cars in the first place — that’s part of what it is to be a safe driver, increase the distance between yourself and other vehicles, so as to increase your reaction time should something go wrong.”
It always amazes and frightens me when I see how close some people drive. I always give myself lots of distance, especially if I’m going fast. I simply know I very well might need it and I will never have been sorry for taking it. And I keep that distance. If I’ve got 5 car lengths between me and the guy in front of me and if he brakes, I brake, even though I’ve got space, because I’d prefer to keep that rough distance (unless we’re at a stop light or something). I also tend to look more than one car ahead, so I don’t have to wait until the last set of brake lights flash in a long row of cars, when it is often much harder to stop in time. If I see cars 3 or 4 cars ahead breaking, I know I’m probably going to need to brake and slow myself. If I end up not needing to brake, again, no loss.
My wife’s family, Californians for two decades now, drive like maniacs. If they see a red light ahead of them, one that just changed is likely to still be red when they hit it, they still don’t break until the last bit of road. Seriously? Why? They and everyone else on the road (greater LA area) also drive like they’re boxcars on a train… nary an inch between them. At high speeds! I don’t get it.
You should rarely, if ever, need to slam on your breaks. If you’re aware of your surroundings, and not just immediate surroundings but cars a few car away in all directions, you can more safely drive fast, because you’ve given yourself the necessary cushion. (And when I say fast, I mean 10 MPH over the speed limit, maybe 15 on an open interstate).
My wife’s family, Californians for two decades now, drive like maniacs. If they see a red light ahead of them, one that just changed is likely to still be red when they hit it, they still don’t break until the last bit of road. Seriously? Why? They and everyone else on the road (greater LA area) also drive like they’re boxcars on a train… nary an inch between them. At high speeds! I don’t get it.
Yeah, the typical following distance on a California freeway gives me the nervous twitches, but that’s mostly because I’m not used to it. OTOH, I’ve driven all over the country, and I give California drivers great credit for generally being absolutely predictable. That’s an underrated attribute for safe driving in crowded conditions. I might go so far as to claim that California drivers get away with the close spacing because they’re so consistent. You need more extra space when you’re having to deal with the unexpected.
RE: predictability – yes, yes, yes.
When I drove in and around Manhattan, either by myself or riding with natives, all drivers are predictably aggressive – that is, you can assume that all will take any possible opening to get ahead and fish you over. And, you can do the same – it’s just the expected behavior. So, you can predict his actions, and he yours, and it all seems to mostly work OK, though it’s def. hair-raising for those of us not used to it.
When I drive in CA, people are generally much, much more polite; again, I can predict what they will do, and adapt my behavior to imitate theirs, and all works mostly OK.
But my home state has many famously bad drivers, of varying skills and styles; and it just fishes everything up, by significantly upping the randomness quotient – you can never predict with any certainty how others will act or react. It is true chaos.
Sounds like Rhode Island. Or Georgia.
“But my home state has many famously bad drivers, of varying skills and styles; and it just fishes everything up, by significantly upping the randomness quotient – you can never predict with any certainty how others will act or react. It is true chaos.”
Massholes?
When I drive in CA, people are generally much, much more polite;
That’s an excellent description for it; California may well have, on average, the most polite drivers in the country.
In New Orleans, drivers are surprisingly polite. While Canal Street and Poydras were reduced to one lane during construction, cars would line up single file for well over half a mile coming off I-10. Everyone just knew. If the odd driver, usually out of state plates came along and didn’t know about the lane reduction, the line would open up for him. Very little honking here, either.
Regarding brake slamming, I should also add that a good defensive driving course will tell you this should rarely be your first reaction. If you know your surroundings well enough, you should consider other options first. If the lane to your right or left is entirely clear, maintaining or gradually braking and shifting is preferable to staying in your lane and slamming. But folks have been trained to see red and punch the brakes, a very dangerous practice.
Less so than it used to be though, now that ABSs are fairly widespread.
Illinois is the worst state that I’ve ever seen about this.
The tailgating capital of the US.
I don’t stand for it.
I learned that two cars traveling at the same speed is a road hazard.
I’ll stomp on my brakes or even pull over to let them pass.
I just gradually slow down until they get the point.
Stomping on one’s brakes to deter a tailgater strikes me as a quite dangerous technique to get spacing. After all, the fact that the guy is tailgating you in the first place is a strong indicator that he’s not a good driver, because he’s following you too closely. He’s also very likely irritated at you for driving slower than him, so his mind is focused on being pissed off at you rather than being wary of what your car might do to hurt him, as he ought to be. People who aren’t good drivers shouldn’t be relied upon to react to dangers quickly or appropriately. IMO, moving aside to let the other vehicle pass at the first reasonable opportunity to do so is a better way to go and safer for you.
Tailgating is not a terribly good indication of “bad driver” from my way of looking at it. “Bad Drivers” panic. They do unexpected things. Neither of which is truly indicated by overconfidence or lack of paying attention.
We’ll have to disagree on this then. Tailgating is a really good way to deprive yourself of both reaction time to, and visual clues about, hazards ahead of you — particularly the biggest hazard, which is the vehicle directly in front of you being driven by a driver who’s probably a little bit scared of you and who therefore has an increased chance of panicking — or who is a little bit pissed off at you and might do something dumb like stomp on his brakes to push you away — or worst of all, both.
oh, i can agree to that. tailgating is stupid, and I haven’t done it since I was first driving (got told to follow someone, and was scared that I’d lose sight).
“which they are serious attempts by people with safety in mind to control traffic so as to maximize safety”
‘maximize safety’ can’t be used in isolation – maximum safety would be a complete ban on the production and use of automobiles.
speed safety warnings are actually given in yellow signs, which afaict are advisory, not directive in nature (I could be wrong about this)
It’s hard to say there’s a big moral basis in the speed limit as it went from 55 mph when I was a kid to anywhere from 65-75 mph now – on the same exact roadways. or are the soccons right, are we in the middle of an era of moral decay in America?
(Nothing in the above should be construed as advocacy for speeding in a construction zone – those limits and extra penalties *are* there for good reason.)
Then substitute “optimize safety and utility.” After all, Americans seem willing to tolerate 30,000 or so traffic deaths a year, at least from a policy level.
The 55mph speed limit was for fuel conservation. A lot of safety people liked it, but that wasn’t the primary rationale. Sort of like how polluted counties are having to lower the speed limit because of emissions.
One District Attorney back home truly won the hearts of many by saying that he wouldn’t prosecute anybody for going below the old speed limit because tickets and prosecutions are supposed to be about public safety and if the EPA wants lower speed limits they can manage the prosecution themselves.
(At a later point he won the heart of his 30 year old secretary and his career came to an ignoble end.)
You make a lot of good points, Burt. I have a tangential point about driving slower than most fellow drivers just to stay under the speed limit. Where I live near DC, the expectation of everyone–police troopers as well–is that highway traffic in precipitation-free, well-lit, non-congested conditions will go 10-15 (sometimes 20) MPH over the posted speed limit. Show me someone going 10 or more MPH slower than everyone else, and I’ll show you a cell phone in that driver’s hand. Maryland traffic laws actually do allow a ticket to be issued to a driver solely for going dangerously slower than other traffic even if they’re driving at or near the posted speed limit. It probably never happens, but it’s theoretically possible. What I suspect does happen here is that drivers going slower than “the pack” reveal themselves to be breaking some other law (i.e. distracted driving or intoxication).
The most important thing for a driver to do is Pay Attention. If someone is going much slower than everyone else on the highway because they’re not paying enough attention (maybe they’re using cruise control), then they are the most likely car to get hit on that road. It’s a bad idea to drive that way. If you’re driving a bit slower but paying attention, changing lanes as needed to allow faster drivers through and new cars to merge, that’s not nearly as bad. If everyone is going 20 MPH over the posted speed and you want to stick with the posted speed, find a different road to use, because even if everyone ought to be going slower, they aren’t, and insisting on being the lone wolf will greatly increase the chances of an accident.
I’ve sat in traffic court dozens of times and adjudicated (or seen adjudicated, when I’ve been an observer) hundreds if not thousands of tickets. In that time, I’ve seen exactly one ticket for going too slow — and I remember it because it was so unusual. The uncontested evidence was that the driver going about 30 mph on a freeway, in a car that had become mechanically disabled, belching smoke, stuff like that. She’d passed two off-ramps in two miles, to continue putt-putting along apparently to her ultimate destination, wherever that was. The cop said that he’d seen several heavy vehicles (bobtail and eighteen-wheel trucks) dodging to avoid her, which was about the only material point of the cop’s testimony that she did dispute. IIRC, the cop came down from an overpass to ticket her after observing this and being alerted to it by a helicopter. Had the evidence reflected the defendant had taken the first reasonable opportunity to exit the freeway and access a surface street to drive at that speed, I might have found her not guilty but that’s not what she said she did.
This is an example of what I mean when I talk about law enforcement not having to “play fair” or use “good sportsmanship” in response to Libertarian Advocate’s question elsewhere in the comments thread. Civilians don’t have helicopters serving as spotters for them. If we were talking about playing a cat-and-mouse game, helicopter spotters are a massive advantage. But it’s not a cat-and-mouse game, it’s safety. There’s nothing at all wrong in my mind with the police using those sorts of resources.
Wow, OPRE.
My back home state does, or did, have “fair play” rules, sort of. Police cars assigned to traffic enforcement had to have the shield, logo, or lights-bar on their car visible. So they could hide behind a bush, but not a building. (And, of course, cars had to be marked.)
Cars that didn’t have a lights bar (because the lights were inside) couldn’t even be parked on the side of the road in such a way that you couldn’t see that they are police cars.
This lead to green traffic enforcement cars with some rather interesting logos on their side parked at very slight angles.
It’s entirely possible that things in California are as you say they are. It is possibly a result of growing up where I did that I am very cynical about this. To be honest, when I have lived in places that weren’t in the South, it has always seemed much more above-board. In Deseret, they could hide behind rocks (which was a shock to me)… but they didn’t seem to be hiding at questionable places where drivers are more likely to be trapped by a rapidly-falling speed limit than actually driving unsafely. So in Deseret, a visibility requirement wouldn’t necessary.
(My home state actually did a number of things to combat questionable traffic enforcement practices. That was only one of them. Of course, loopholes generally formed as well.)
But Burt, aren’t you only seeing a subset of those ticketed as a traffic court judge? Since you can simply pay your ticket by mail or online, the only reasons to walk into traffic court are to fight the charge or because you’re too disorganized to take care of in until day-of. Is it too much to believe that the sort of person who’s inclined to drive well below the posted speed limit is also disinclined to fight tickets?
I’ve been ticketed more times than I like to admit, but I’ve only ever shown up to traffic court once: When I got a ticket for going 50 in a 40 zone but was going 50 in a 45 zone. Otherwise it’s simply easier to pay the speeding ticket or fix the headlight or get rid of the roommate and replace the registration tags he stole.
I used to drive back and forth from Chicago to Louisville. One night I was pulled over for a weak headlight in Indiana, no ticket was issued. I asked the patrolman, “Now that I’ve got you here, I drive this road every weekend, I’m generally doing about five, ten over the limit and still people pass me all the time. Just how fast does anyone have to go to get a speeding ticket?”
“It’s marked 55. I never pull anyone over unless it’s 75 or over.”
This is a flaw, and a very dangerous one, with the manner of thinking Michael Cain reports — it is not safer to “go along with the herd.” The herd can be wrong, and it’s best to assume that the herd actually is wrong.
This is a valid rejoinder, but the truth is somewhere in the middle.
Because if you are consistently driving 20 mph slower than everyone else on the freeway, even if 55 is a safer speed by a number of legitimate metrics, you are going to generate a lot of unsafe driving practices all around you.
People are going to pass you on the right, they are going to tailgate you, they are going to over-accelerate and over-brake, etc.
Thanks for the excellent response Burt!
I have never owned a radar detector, and never plan to own one. When I first learned about them, I was shocked that they were even legal, thinking that they were nothing more than “law-breaking aids.” Since then, my opinion hasn’t changed much, although I am not that inclined to believe that they should be banned.
I never worked out the appeal of speeding. Maybe that second semester of calculus sorta did it for me: the faster you’re going the longer it takes to stop. It’s also why I keep good tires on my truck.
Part of the problem may be perceptual. Long ago, I learned how to manoeuvre in the dark. Human vision can adapt to darkness but it’s a long process and even a little bit of stray light can screw it up. Spent a lot of time working with robotic vision systems, they’re awfully fussy about their light requirements. We evolved to deal with the world at running speed: at that pace, we’re surprisingly good, even at night.
But in a motor vehicle, even with good headlights, it’s a miracle we drive as well as we do. We’re three times more likely to be killed in an auto accident at night. Yet for some reason, people speed more at night. We’re lulled into a false sense of security: what we don’t see doesn’t seem to bother us. Our reaction times are nowhere as good as we think they are, especially when we’re distracted or in a hurry. You’re most likely to die in an auto accident on a Saturday in August.
It’s also why I keep good tires on my truck.
This. The only point of contact you have with the road is the tires. Condition appropriate, good quality, and correct air pressure.
“…they cause the speeder’s auto insurance rates to increase. Consider why they cause insurance rates to increase: they are an indicator of unsafe driving and increased risk of property damage and bodily injury, wherein lies the moral problem with speeding.”
Is this ethical? One speeding ticket is one data point. That might have been the only instance that the driver did anything unsafe or to increase the risk of property damage/bodily injury, and even those might have been mitigated by the specific circumstances of the situation (speeding on an empty stretch of desolate highway has less risk than speeding through a residential area during a busy time of day). Is it ethical (or substitute a better word for “ethical”) to assume the worst of a driver based on one data point?
You mean, is it ethical for the insurance company to raise rates based on the single speeding ticket? Personally, I think so — the ticket is just the time the driver got caught speeding, so it tends to suggest that the driver speeds at other times as well. And high speeds tends to generate higher-energy collisions, which mean greater loss experience for the insurer. So I see this as a meaningful enough data point to justify an increased underwriting risk.
I see the argument against that: it’s not a certainty that the speeding ticket is demonstrative of either typical or atypical behavior. But from an actuarial perspective, I see it as a pretty revealing data point.
A lot of insurance companies will give you a pass on a single ticket. Particularly if it’s the only one in X-years. Which, to me, suggests that the market is working itself out. One ticket perhaps being bad luck, but two tickets suggesting a pattern.
As you might imagine, I’ve heard some version of this question (or complaint) often over the years.
The answer is that yes, it’s ethical. If you’ve had a speeding ticket over the past three years, you’re considerably more likely to be involved in an accident, be arrested for driving under the influence, and being the cause of a fatality than someone who has not. Each speeding ticket you add increases those odds. The comeback question, then, would be: is it ethical for people that are obeying the law to financially subsidize your disregard of it?
Of course, if it’s true that you simply got caught at that one tiny moment you were ever speeding, it’s actually an easy enough thing to fix with your insurer. Simply have a “black box” installed. They’ll subsidize it, so the cost over time will be negligible to zeroed-out and then some. Once it’s in, they will track your driving habits 24/7, and will base your premiums accordingly; even if you’ve just had your speeding ticket, you can install the black box and see your rates go *down* over the next six months.
Not surprisingly, no one in my experience that has brought your objection up has ever been willing to take this route.
Ha. Black box.
Don’t most of us have something similar with us all the time? How long do you think it will be before someone requests cell-phone data to lower their car insurance? (And for the paranoid: if you go about with it turned on, you’re carrying a tracking device.)
I think the black boxes are a great idea (but ought to be voluntary; an insurance carrier can require them presuming there are other options for insurance in the state; just can’t be mandated by the state). Then your premium more accurately reflects how you actually drive. The occasional speeder and perpetual speeder carry different risks but might have identical or similar driving records, due to the low frequency of tickets given.
Meh.
One guy can smoke like a chimney and might not get sick this year, and the guy in the next cubicle can eat only organic and might be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. You still charge the first guy more in health insurance premiums.
A guy can work on sloped roofs pulling shingles without a harness and not get hurt; a receptionist can slip and break her ankle on the job. You still charge higher comp premium to roofers.
Insurance works on the law of large numbers, which do not lie.
Oh, sure.
My wife and I were arguing about this last night, watching the season 1 finale of “Homeland” (mild spoilers). “Why isn’t anyone listening to her! She knows what’s happening!” my wife would yell. “She *THINKS* she knows. And she’s legitimately insane. And based on what everyone else does know, there is no reason for them to listen to her. Yes, they’re wrong, but they’re making the right call.”
I get how insurance works. I’m just saying that I would prefer a system of black boxes. And I bet the insurance agency would, too.
This is where I get ornery. I’ve become a lot more conscientious about my speed since getting the Subaru (little thingie on the dash made very clear the fuel-inefficiency of going fast). But I am still as skittish about black boxes when I was one of those “let’s aim for 5-10 over the speed limit” people.
On another note, I did find it interesting that Progressive, in their little driver-monitor thing, specifically made a point of saying that they didn’t care about speeding. Not because speeding is not statistically indicative of anything (because it is), but I think because most people are really skittish about having such things looked at it and it would have reduced participation immensely.
What, exactly, makes you ornery, Will? Black boxes? If they were wholly voluntary, do you see that as a problem? I agree that I’d be very ornery if they were mandated by the government. But if folks WANT to get a black box because they think it will lower their rates, they should have the opportunity to do so. And if insurance companies want to charge less to people who observe every safe driving behavior and more to folks who skirt most but avoid the law, they should have a mechanism to do so.
The danger is not that the data thus generated will be used as represented or as intended. There’s mission creep to worry about as well.
What Burt said.
My main concern is that it will turn into “Oh, it’s voluntary all right. We’ll double your rates and and then give you a discount if you do it…
On the other hand, I think it’s the sort of thing that can or should be legislatively stopped. It would just be an unwelcome development.
Hmmm… maybe this is where I go crazy libertarian. Presuming you have a variety of car insurance options to choose from, then the companies should be entitled to incentivize or punish behavior related to that which they are insuring. If they want to implement black boxes because they think it will allow them to better assess risk, what argument is there against that? Hell, if they want to implement them because their mere presence will encourage some folks to drive better and safer, go for it. Provided they adhere to whatever privacy policies they agree to with their customers etc, etc, I see little reason to object. Isn’t car insurance simply a contract between two voluntary, private parties?
Black box information regarding speed is not all the useful unless there is a way for Progressive to compare it to the applicable posted speed limit.
One thought I have on black boxes is that they can alter driving behavior in ways that actually reduce safety. For example, if a history on hard braking can increase insurance rates, then a driver could be reluctant to brake hard even when it is necessary to avoid an imminent collision.
Randy, yeah, but if they clock you regularly going 80mph then you’ve got a problem. Anyhow, we’re going to reach the point where they will be able to do just that. (If you really want to see my ornery/paranoid/extremist side, talk to me about the government putting GPSes in our cars for a vehicle-mile tax.)
Kazzy, the reasons you list are why the government can’t or shouldn’t prevent the blackbox from occurring. It’s free enterprise. But a negative development all the same.
Will,
Sure, but how much moreso than any other development? “The new iPhone 5! With a new charger! So everything you used to connect it to is obsolete! Unless you buy this handy-dandy converted that we sell for just $39.95.”
Randy,
On most roads, my GPS knows the speed limit, sometimes to within a few feet (i.e., I’m traveling on a road that is 55 and immediately upon hitting the sign for 35, the GPS changes). I imagine the blackboxes do or could have the same technology programmed in.
Kazzy, well, it’s not a genetically engineered virus or anything, but a negative development all the same.
Whether the iPhone 5’s new charger is a positive development or a negative one depends on what you consider the pluses (a faster charge?) and minuses (new hardware) to be. Not my smartphone ecosphere (though I am broadly critical of Apple for using a proprietary standard). (And, come to think of it, I think that Apple has changed the industry in a number of negative ways, though I am coming around to the idea of the iPhone belatedly becoming a net positive.)
When I look at the pluses and minuses of a blackbox, I tend to think of it as a minus. I see potential for abuse and I don’t see a whole lot of upside. Roger strongly disagrees, though, and he could be right. (If you’d have told me that a dashboard fuel-efficiency meter would change the way I drive, I wouldn’t have believed it.)
I see what you’re saying. Sorry for the confusion. I agree that black boxes will do both harm and good; some folks will be greatly harmed and others will be greatly benefited. On the whole, time will tell as to what the net effect is, as well as how we should ultimately view it (I’m no big fan of utilitarianism and thus think the net effect isn’t the sole determinant of something’s goodness or badness). I think it is reasonable for you to suspect that it will turn out to be a negative development.
Regarding speeding in general, I think we’d be better served with better speed limits and stricter enforcement. We all know 55 means 65 in most places, even the cops. Except the cop that doesn’t know that. Or the driver that doesn’t. Which seems more problematic than simply saying, “This speed limit ought to be 65 and we’ll enforce any speeding beyond that.” Obviously, there will be a bit of leeway due to the margin-of-error inherent to radar guns, but it is certainly not 10MPH.
The margin of error the police use is generally 7 mph in slow residential areas and 10-12 in highway-freeway settings. These numbers are not arbitrary.
Surprisingly, automobiles MPH readings are not required to be accurate; they are only required to be accurate within a certain range. So if you own, say, a Dodge minivan and you’re going at what you believe is 55 MPH and a small sports car convertible is next to you and *they* are going what they believe is 55 MPH, you will actually pass the sports car. Manufacturers often use the accuracy “flexibility” they are given to create different feels for different cars. A small sports car will have it’s meter down at the low end, so that when you are driving it for the first time and you look at the meter you will think, “Wow! It still doesn’t feel like I’m going 65, this must be really well designed for speed!”
I had no idea. I assumed accuracy within a few miles either direction. That might be something better served by tightening.
Regarding speedometer accuracy, my wife once got a ticket for a broken speedometer. The cop who pulled her over was driving in the opposite direction of her on the road, meaning zero opportunity to actually get an accurate reading. She was speeding (transitioned from a 55 to a 35 and didn’t notice) but the copy had nothing he could have backed it up in court with, outside of saying, “Well, it seemed like she was going fast.” So he wrote her a ticket for a malfunctioning speedometer, which carries a high fine but one just below what it would cost to get a speedometer verified. Crafty. And exceedingly frustrating; part of the reason I asked about the lack of due process in traffic courts. He didn’t have to prove that the speedometer was broken. He didn’t have to prove she did anything wrong. He just had to say she did and then the onus was wholly on her to dispute it. And he deliberately charged her with something he knew to be false because he lacked the ability to charge her with something he knew to be true. And when I spoke with the clerk, she explained that was fairly standard protocol, meaning this guy wasn’t particularly rogue or anything. Cops are cops; they are not judges; they do not get to design guilt or innocence or penalty.
End rant.
And a car that has a reputation for being under-powered will be at the high end, to fool you into thinking it does have some guts?
Maybe; I don’t know. The only data I’ve seen has been at the sports car end.
I think it’s also revealing that in most “speed schools,” police officers preparing for traffic work pass if they demonswtrate that they can visually estimate the speed of vehicles within 5 mph of the actual speed. If the “cushion” is 7 mph over the posted limit, the officer can be very confident that the tickets she writes are righteous.
Oh, and on that note: chances are good that your speedometer is not accurate and almost certainly has not been calibrated recently. A cop car? Maintained to a different, and better, standard than yours.
That may be true, but his speedometer doesn’t tell us anything about how fast Zazzy was going because they were going in opposite directions.
Going the same direction, I see what you’re saying. But as Will said, going opposite directions compounds the problem. It isn’t impossible to assess the speed, but much, much harder. And clearly he knew it, which is why he didn’t give her a speeding ticket.
He accurately pegged her as going “too fast”. But I doubt that stands up in court. “How fast was she going?” “Too fast.” “What speed?” “Much more than the legal limit.” That wouldn’t fly, I presume.
What would the penalties be for an officer giving a knowingly false ticket? Even if he is trying to help you out (e.g., give you a ticket for not wearing a seat belt instead of speeding), it still strays too close to judge-jury-executioner for me. I recently had a speeding ticket plead out to an illegal parking ticket. Which I appreciated. But it was still strange that I plead guilty to something everyone in the room knew I was 100% innocent of. That, to me, seems really sorta fucked up.
In Oregon, troopers in the rural areas have a a kind of built in radar in their SUVs that take their own speed into account and then calculate the speed of oncoming cars. In certain parts of our state, most tickets don’t come from a guy sitting by the side of the road; they come from a guy you just flew by on an open highway.
Tod, that’s kinda awesome.
Yeah, they can do it with the right radar gun, though in Kazzy’s case that doesn’t appear to be the case. On the general subject…
When a cop is going about his daily business and pulls somebody over… I’ve never experienced that or seen that occur in a case that was unfair or cat-and-mouse. It’s when they’re waiting on the side of the road that can indicate that they have a money-machine going (though often it’s simply a place where speed control is an issue and so it’s worthwhile to post someone there for the public safety).
I’ve been pulled over twice (or so) in circumstances that you have described. Both got me fairly and squarely going faster than I should have been going (regardless of the speed limit). No complaints there.
Apart from that, I’ve had waiting-on-the-side-of-the-road incidents that seemed quite fair, others that were taking advantage of a questionably low speed limit, and some that were outright traps. But except when it’s extraordinarily trappy, I take the “random road usage tax” philosophy.
To date, the only pull-over I am angry about actually involved an incident where I freely admit that I was (probably) speeding but there was simply no way I was going as fast as I was accused of going. My car wasn’t capable.
I did actually hire a traffic lawyer once. Got me out of one where I was clearly in the wrong. Apparently, if you know what you’re doing, there are a number of ways to get off on a technicality (or otherwise be more trouble than you’re worth).
Kazzy, technically you can get a speeding ticket when going below the posted speed limit, if a cop decides that you were driving at an unsafe speed*. At least back in my home state you can. Just like you can get a DUI even if you register well below the legal intoxication threshold. However, if you are obeying the law as posted and as understood, they are generally disinclined to go forward because it’d likely be more trouble than it’s worth.
* – This would most likely apply to adverse weather conditions.
** – Basically a cop determining that you’re inebriated even if you’re below the limit. This would come into play if alcohol is acting in conjunction with medication or something. Since there’s no threshold on such things, it’s basically a cop and a dashboard video tape.
Will,
I recognize that. Unsafe driving isn’t limited to speeding. But if a person is wearing his seat belt, gets pulled over for speeding, and the cop “gives him a break” and writes a ticket for failure to wear a seat belt because the penalty is lighter… isn’t that a bit perverse? Not just from an “unequal application of the law” standpoint (which itself is problematic, harkening back to JHG and JB’s convo) but from a “cop signing his name to a document he knows to be false” standpoint.
Sorry, Kazzy, I was nitpicking. I didn’t have a good answer for your broad question. Seems wrong, but I’d take it if an officer offered it to me. Officers do sometimes draw down your speed as a courtesy. Happened to me once, and I didn’t object even though he was lying on ticket about how fast I was going. Actually, I guess that wasn’t a lie because at some point after his lights went on and I pulled over, I hit the speed I was cited for.
My father used to say that sometimes it’s handy not to have your proof-of-insurance with you. That way, if a cop is feeling generous, he has something to give you a ticket for that isn’t a moving violation. Further, prove you were insured at the time of the pull-over and the ticket gets dismissed anyway. Of course, with instance insurance checks like they have nowadays
Oh, I took the plea and the “illegal parking” violation (which was a smaller fine and no report filed to my insurance) and ran. But it still felt like that’s not supposed to be how the legal system works. It’s one thing to plead someone down to a “lesser included charge”; but something that the person is wholly innocent of just seems a bit off. But I’d be curious to hear Burt or other ethicist/moralist/legal/philosophical thoughts on the matter.
And, contrary to many folks, when I hear “discretion” I tend to think “potential for abuse”, thus frowning on the notion. But I’m weird like that.
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