1.Plenty of Americans view enforcing traffic laws are nothing more than "a greedy gubbermint cash grab." For those participating, they view it as using corruption to avoid corruption.
2. You can't easily do something about it other than taking away police discretion. Unlike with a traditional bribe, where something is exchanged for something, you can't demonstrate that the person got off for the card compared to the officer just deciding to give them a break.
I've always said traffic laws mostly encourage a disregard for the law. I think they should set things like speed limits high enough that there is no reason to break them. They are LIMITS, not normal speed. Maybe post a recommended speed too.
If someone breaks the speed limit it should be 30 day license suspension and impounding their vehicle.
> I think they should set things like speed limits high enough that there is no reason to break them.
I mean... that's not why the limit is there. The limit isn't "how fast can you possibly go without feeling out of control", it's "how fast can you possibly safely go". Are they still operating with 20th century cars in mind? Yeah, but it's hard to argue that a school zone should be 60 MPH.
I've heard that it's not the absolute velocity on a freeway that's the issue, but instead the relative velocity of all drivers. A speed limit that all can comfortably hit keeps that to within a much more narrow band than a speed limit that some wouldn't be able to comfortably hit.
At least in Germany it seems that people routinely drive 100km/h on the same road as people doing 250, and they have fewer fatalities per passenger mile than we do in the US.
I would guess it has something to do with the strict adherence to the keep right/pass left rule.
Safe speed varies with weather, time of day, and even the flow of traffic. There's no one number that's going to apply to a given stretch of road all the time.
> Safe speed varies with weather, time of day, and even the flow of traffic
And by car! A truck or an older SUV will have a far worse breaking distance and does not corner well compared to any sports car or sedan. So even assuming you a perfect situational analysis, you still could not post an exact limit.
Some freeways have two limits, one for semi trucks, one for the rest of traffic. Something like that could be extended to lanes, along with prohibitions (which already exist) of towed trailers in faster lanes.
Probably not feasible to do this for every speed limit sign in the country, but there are already variable signs on places like mountain passes that change with the weather and traffic.
I agree and want to add that bad traffic laws can even cause more injury and death. There's research on speed limits that shows that they don't influence actual speeds all that much, people generally drive at what they think is a reasonable speed[0] regardless. But some people do follow them very strictly.
So on roads with speed limits that are far too low you get people driving together at very different speeds, which results in more accidents.
[0] I can't find the source right now but IIRC in one of the experiments they increased the speed limit by 5 mph on a highway, but the speeds driven only increased by 1 mph.
In Australia, for example, at least when I got my license, you were explicitly told that you are
"required to drive at the maximum possible speed that is: within the posted limit, appropriate for the weather and road conditions, and within your ability to maintain safe control of the vehicle".
we don't need the limits, just post the recommended speed. then for any extreme case, it's up to the officer to prove reckless endangerment, which is what speed limits were ostensibly designed to prevent (though practically, it's served many interests, including fuel rationing in the 70s).
It's much better to have selective enforcement of a law that says "this is a judgement call" than to have selective enforcement of a law that says "this is a crime".
The latter is literally encouraging the populace to commit crimes. The latter is hard to challenge the selectivity of in court because it is theoretically strict liability. The latter results in the unelected enforcement officials making up the criteria entirely instead of being given criteria by the elected officials.
no, i'm saying reduce instances of selective enforcement by reducing ineffective and needless laws. reckless endangerment is already a crime that's selectively enforced.
Plenty of Americans that don't run in these corruption circles view traffic laws and other intermittently enforced laws as a tool to hassle "undesirables".
No. In many situations the officer has discretion to ignore an infraction, write a warning, or give a ticket. Many aspects of interactions between people and police officers are up to an officer’s discretion.
I would have thought that they mostly take away the "rough em up" type of discretion. The public is fine with police giving warnings over fines in many cases. They are just upset when it is warning over fine along with the association card.
Mostly they are "secret".
Edit: didn't read the article, but I still think they fly under the radar for the vast majority of people and they should absolutely be a career ender for Police to hand out. Sounds like low fruit for cleaning up America.
But, it's not just the cards. Sherrifs also hand out their business cards to their buddies and tell them to flash that if they get pulled over, or firefighters and EMTs show their public service license cards when they hand over their wallet to an officer to get out of tickets. Same thing with the 11-99 license plate holders- donate to the police retirement union to get out of tickets! http://zo-d.com/stuff/automotive/1199-foundation-license-pla...
If the "cards" are banned, their still would be a system for insiders to show they have access to special benefits and treatment.
2. You can't easily do something about it other than taking away police discretion. Unlike with a traditional bribe, where something is exchanged for something, you can't demonstrate that the person got off for the card compared to the officer just deciding to give them a break.