posted
In what I believe was one of your landmarks you metioned wondering as a lad if speed limits changed as you passed the sign or when you could see the sign.
It just occured to me you never followed up on that with an answer. In all that time at law school, or as a bonefide lawyer, did you ever find out the answer to that?
That question is still bugging me.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
I was taught in driver's ed that the speed limit took effect as you passed the sign. That's the only way it really makes sense, anyway.
Posts: 5462 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
I would be interested in knowing to. I often see that cops will pull people over the second they pass it. I've never heard of someone being pulled over with it just in sight. Although often in the case of small towns and cities, the change in speed limit is effective at the town or city boundary/limit. In which case it turns into a jurisdiction issue, like my stop sign ticket at a state border.
Posts: 3134 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
I can't find anything written either way. I've seen a judge reduce a ticket in response to the defendant's assertion that the speed measurement occurred before the sign, but the judge reduced almost everyone who was polite to judge and officer and didn't contest the actual speed.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
I heard that you can increase your speed to a higher limit as soon as you can see the sign, but that you have up until the point of the sign to lower it. No idea if that's correct.
Posts: 3950 | Registered: Mar 2006
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posted
I've expressly heard from officers that use that method for determining whether to pull someone over. Which doesn't mean that this is actually the rule, of course. Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
I got a ticket for speeding prior to the sign. I went to court to refute it, but the judge had decided to dismiss it before I came in- I was only 5 miles over the speed limit. So, not sure what way the judge would have ruled based on that point.
Posts: 1001 | Registered: Mar 2006
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posted
I seem to remember my Hawaii driver's manual saying that the speed limit changing when you passed the sign. I could very well be wrong, and it might vary from state to state.
Posts: 866 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
You can get a judge to throw out a ticket if you're only going 5 over the speed limit?
I've gotten two speeding tickets, once on the Ohio Turnpike for going like 15 over ( I was following the flow of traffic!) and one for going I think 13 over when I was late to work in a 30mph zone. I never bothered to contest either, it never made sense when I was obviously in the wrong.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:Originally posted by MightyCow: I heard that you can increase your speed to a higher limit as soon as you can see the sign, but that you have up until the point of the sign to lower it.
That's what I was taught in traffic school. Pretty sure it's in the CA drivers' handbook (and I'd bet that sort of thing is defined on a state-by-state basis) too.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: ( I was following the flow of traffic!)
No offense intended Lyrhawn, but as an insurance agent I just got done laughing very hard when I saw that. I hear it all the time. Not that I am comparing what you did with more serious crimes, but if you were at a party and everyone was smoking crack, would you tell the judge you were just going with the flow?
Posts: 3134 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
I think the following examples will show that the practical application of this stuff is as follows:
Speed may increase as soon as you see the sign Speed should drop to the posted limit as you pass the sign.
Example 1: You are on an on-ramp. The ramp has a speed limit, but you are expected to be at highway speed when you try to merge. You will usually see a speed limit sign somewhere visible up ahead of the ramp and it's your goal to get to that speed (or really with the flow of the traffic) so that you can merge safely without impeding flow.
(Note however, most ramps don't have an actual regulatory speed limit sign -- black on white background -- but merely an advisory one -- black on yellow background. It's therefore possible to contest a speeding violation on a ramp, but you might get hit with "speed to fast for conditions" anyway).
Example 2: The "reduced speed ahead" signs preceding a work zone. They put all these warnings up because they really mean it -- they want you going 55 (or whatever) through the work zone, so you are warned ahead of time. Then, if you are in the work zone and over the limit, they hit you with double fines (if they catch you). They will not stop you in advance of that work zone for going faster than the work zone's posted speed (unless, of course, they posted an actual lowered limit before that).
Since it is impossible to go from a prior speed to the posted lower one in an instant, there IS an expectation that you will begin to slow down prior to the sign. I suspect that if you were really aggregious about it, you might get pulled over, but, really, I would be surprised if the officer didn't just wait to see what you did as you passed the sign.
Anyway, I think this is current practice everywhere.
The "5 miles over" thing is a hold-over from the days of inaccurate speedometers, I think. It used to be sort of a "grace" thing to allow motorists a little slack.
Nowadays, they do it because if you stopped everyone who went 5 mph over the limit, you'd swamp the system.
Back when I was a young 'un, the rule was 3 mph over. That's been relaxed a bit.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
Yeah when I was in drivers ed the instructor specifically said that no cop is going to hassle you for going 5 over the speed limit.
I pretty much always drive just over the speed limit but cap it at 5 over, cruise control is a pretty awesome thing when used for that purpose because its easy to absent mindedly go 10-15 over the limit.
Of course I started doing that when after 8 years of never getting a speeding ticket I got two in a two day period and was out $250.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
I was so angry when I got a ticket for 5 miles over the speed limit because I had always been told 7. And, he pulled me over right after I passed the sign changing. Since the cop was extremely visible, I had been watching my speed, so I asked the cop to point out exactly where I was when he clocked me. He told me he knows how to do his job and if I had a problem take it up with the judge. When I got to court, the judge's clerk was like, are you serious- he ticketed you 5 mph? Were you really going ten and he dropped it to be nice? Then the judge dropped the charges and I was happy.
edit to add: It was the last day of the month I got the ticket, so the cop may have felt the need to increase the number of tickets for the month. Oh- he also wrote down my description wrong- he said I was a brunette. I am very blonde.
Posts: 1001 | Registered: Mar 2006
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posted
There was a road in the town I went to high school in where they would ticket you for going even one mile over 25. Probably not all the time, but it did happen.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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quote: Pretty sure it's in the CA drivers' handbook
Not the last two times I read it (but they do seem to revise it about every 3 years; our tax dollars at work, eh?)
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: ( I was following the flow of traffic!)
No offense intended Lyrhawn, but as an insurance agent I just got done laughing very hard when I saw that. I hear it all the time. Not that I am comparing what you did with more serious crimes, but if you were at a party and everyone was smoking crack, would you tell the judge you were just going with the flow?
Do you think it'd work?
Nah, I wasn't really complaining. Like I said in the post, I know I was going to fast, and I have no real grounds for complaint.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: ( I was following the flow of traffic!)
No offense intended Lyrhawn, but as an insurance agent I just got done laughing very hard when I saw that. I hear it all the time. Not that I am comparing what you did with more serious crimes, but if you were at a party and everyone was smoking crack, would you tell the judge you were just going with the flow?
Now someone (Bob perhaps) may correct me if I'm wrong, but your crack party example isn't a very good analogy. Smoking crack is both illegal and probably dangerous, so there's no reason to do so other than to "fit in" at the party. Speeding to keep up with the flow of traffic, while illegal, may in some circumstances decrease, rather than increase, the level of danger, both for the driver and the surrounding people. It wouldn't be at all inconceivable for a driver who wasn't paying very much attention (perhaps he was smoking crack?) to miss seeing that one car was going 15 under the rest of traffic and hit him.
posted
The "5 over" is also because radar guns have a built-in margin of error of 4-7 mph. Or at least they did when they first entered widespread use.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: ( I was following the flow of traffic!)
No offense intended Lyrhawn, but as an insurance agent I just got done laughing very hard when I saw that. I hear it all the time. Not that I am comparing what you did with more serious crimes, but if you were at a party and everyone was smoking crack, would you tell the judge you were just going with the flow?
Last time I took the driver's test (which was admittedly not recent there was a question which read)
What is the safest speed?
a. The posted speed limit b. 5 mph under the posted speed limit c. 5 mph over the posted speed limit d. With the flow of traffic
And the correct answer was of course d. So before you compare driving the same speed with everyone else on the road to taking the same drugs as everyone else at the party you need to show me some official entity that has at some time endorsed this practice as the safest approach.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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posted
I just found the following in the current Utah Driver's handbook
quote:Slow driving is not always safe driving. If your speed is so slow that cars are piling up behind your car, you are unsafe, discourteous and breaking the law. In general, you should drive at a speed similar to that which the other cars around you are driving. However, you may not legally drive faster than the posted speed.
There is a certain irony in the way this paragraph admits it is sometimes illegal to drive in the safest fashion.
It is common on Utah highways for nearly all the cars to be driving 75 in 65 mph zones. While I strongly advocate slower speed limits for a variety of reasons and fully recognize that traffic would be far safer if everyone was going 65 rather than 75, its also abundantly clear that one car going 10 mph slower than the flow of traffic creates a safety hazard.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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posted
If you are driving the speed limit, and are in the right lane, I really don't see how that can be unsafe no matter how fast every one else is driving. Once you start driving slow in the left lanes, with people having to go around you on both sides, things definitely get unsafe.
Posts: 3134 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
A friend of mine was driving the posted speed limit, on city streets, and given a ticket for obstructing the flow of traffic, because everyone else was speeding. Posts: 3950 | Registered: Mar 2006
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quote:Originally posted by MightyCow: A friend of mine was driving the posted speed limit, on city streets, and given a ticket for obstructing the flow of traffic, because everyone else was speeding.
That's ridiculous to my mind.
And I say this as somebody who absolutely agrees that people going 10-15 below the speed limit on the freeway should be pulled over and possibly ticketed.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Kwea: The "5 over" is also because radar guns have a built-in margin of error of 4-7 mph. Or at least they did when they first entered widespread use.
FWIW, at least some cruisers today use LIDAR (either solely, or in addition to RADAR), which has much better accuracy (due to higher frequency waves and tighter beamwidth).
Posts: 2926 | Registered: Sep 2005
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