Posted on 09/18/2017 1:46:52 PM PDT by LibWhacker
Since when is the law supposed to be fungible?
Even better — from a certain point-of-view — than a radar trap based on an under-posted speed limit is a radar trap with a changing speed limit. One that can be dumbed-down at random and with no prior notice, at the whim of the same government workers who enforce the limits and profit from that enforcement.
It’s called Variable Speed Limits and the Feds — through the Department of Transportation — are not only encouraging the states to adopt them, they are bribing them to adopt them.
Cue Dr. Evil voice — one billion dollars mulcted from taxpayers has been earmarked to mulct taxpayers a second time via “pilot” VSL programs — and at least nine states (New Jersey — naturally — but also Ohio, Wyoming, Oregon, Utah, Florida, Minnesota, Washington and Georgia) are already deploying VSL.
You may have already seen Variable Limits in action. Instead of the usual metal sign with whatever the number chosen at random happened to be at the time the sign was put up silk-screened permanently on it, an electronic sign — with a display that can be changed, literally, at the touch of a button.
At 4:30 p.m., the sign reads — as an example — 75 MPH. But at 4:33 p.m. (and just after you drove past it) the Oz who controls the sign decides the new speed limit shall be 65 MPH. Blink. Just like that, your moment-ago legal rate of travel has become illegal “speeding” — and not only are you subject to a ticket you are more likely to get a ticket because — as far as you know — you aren’t “speeding” and so why worry about that cop up ahead pointing his radar gun at you?
This gets into interesting turf.
The first is the element of intent, formerly a necessary thing to establish culpability; the idea that a person violated the law on purpose.
But in order for this to be a viable moral concept, the law has to be knowable. A law that is changeable is unknowable. It is — effectively — no law at all. It is the codified whim of whomever has the power to punish people for violating laws that are fundamentally unintelligible.
Kind of like tax law already is. If they want your money, they’ll find some justification to take your money. It’s not about “the law.” It’s about who has power — and is willing to use it.
The second thing has to do with the way speed limits are posted — or rather, are supposed to be posted.
What’s supposed to happen before a speed limit is posted is a traffic study. Monitors set up that observe and record the free-flow speed of traffic on a given stretch of road. The posted limit is supposed to be based on the free-flow speed of 85 percent of the traffic observed — the 85th percentile speed — so that most traffic isn’t ”speeding.”
The idea being that most people naturally drive at reasonable speeds and that speed limits should parallel the organic flow of traffic.
That actually is the law.
It’s called the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (“uniform” italicized to emphasize uniformity — that a thing is consistent, the same), issued by the U.S. Department of Transportation to “… establish national standards for all traffic control devices, including road markings, highway signs and traffic signals.”
States and counties and cities and towns are supposed to use the MUTCD to set speed limits in accordance with the 85th percentile rule but that runs counter to the collection of revenue via “speeding” tickets, which is a major racket for states and counties and cities and towns all across the country.
Some towns and counties and even cities — Washington, D.C. is one — notoriously derive a shockingly large percentage of their annual budgets via roving road taxation; they police for profit. Which you’d think would register with people as a problematic conflict of interest, as regards their interests.
It’s remarkable that it — generally — does not.
Laws that are clearly designed to separate them from their money by dint of legislatively putting eight out of ten and usually more like nine out of ten people into the category of “violator” — by dint of limits set purposely below reasonable speeds, let alone the 85th percentile speed.
This Variable Speed Limit thing will net that tenth person. It will open up a whole new revenue stream by making it possible to issue “speeding” tickets at will to any driver — unless we all drive well below whatever the limit-for-the-moment happens to be. If the electronic sign says 65, drive 55 — in order to be within the safe zone (as far as being a target of the road tax) when Oz pushes the button and the limit drops to 55.
Now imagine Variable Speed Limits tied in with automated speed enforcement — the camera systems already in place in many states that don’t even require an armed government worker to do any work to separate you from your cash.
You unknowingly transgress the just-changed limit by 10 MPH and are duly processed by the speed camera a mile past the sign. A week or so later, you get an extortion note in the mail.
Pay up, chump.
Most of these automated ticket spewers are not subject to the once-mandatory rules of evidence, either. That is, it’s no longer the burden of the government to prove you did something but rather your burden to prove — to the satisfaction (usually, not) of an “administrative” bureaucrat that you did not.
All of this is already reality in the UK — the source waters for many of our policing for profit (and police state) woes.
As far as what can be done?
Just as it’s very sound policy to have a really good tax lawyer on retainer to deal with the IRS, you might want to acquire a really good radar detector. With speed limits changing at the whim of Oz, you might want to know where his flying monkeys might be lurking.
$250 for speeding, paid by credit card.
$5,000 to $10,000 and months of court time.
Which do you chose?
Just start driving 20mph everywhere
Screw em
You can cut the Federal government completely out of the loop by eliminating the whole concept of a national transportation system. Good luck with that. There's actually a move among some members of Congress to legislate a "devolution" process that would do exactly that. The most vocal opponents of this process are Republican senators from landlocked states that would be absolutely screwed in this process.
The first national road was legislated by Congress in the very early 1800s during the Jefferson administration. There was quite a debate about the roles of the Federal and state governments in roads back then, and the Federal government won out simply because the establishment of a National Road from Baltimore to the Ohio River valley was one of the conditions under which Ohio was admitted to the Union. Even an anti-Federalist like Thomas Jefferson recognized that without road connections between the interior of North America to the cities and ports in the U.S. along the Atlantic seaboard, there was a serious danger that most of the continent would end up under the control of Great Britain.
7 hours at 55 mph = 385 miles
7 hours at 75 mph = 525 miles
140 miles difference, on a (for me) short road trip.
I often drive for as long as 14 hours so double those numbers, though my average speed usually works out to between 60 and 70.
Another reason to have a dash cam.
There is a road by my place that the speed limit changes 5 times in 6 miles, including a ONE BLOCK section that the limit is set significantly higher than on either side of it.
I will only mention the school zones that the signs are obscured the day they install them...
“They use them against the SeattLunatics on I-5 in Washington.”
Funny - I’m not sure I ever viewed those things as a speed limit sign - more just as a warning of what the traffic was like up ahead. I suppose now I should pay more attention to my actual speed! (Or not - if all the traffic is moving at 60+ the worst thing one can do is be going 50.)
It cleared up in an hour but dang, it seemed like six hours to me.
I choose to not pay a fine for “violating” an unconstitutional “law”.
It was unnerving. Afraid to move, afraid to stop. Couldn’t see a thing. Hearing but not seeing occasional crashes across the median on the eastbound lanes didn’t help.
Read more carefully. The prohibition upon ex post facto laws appears twice in the United States Constitution. Article I, Section 9, Clause 3 prohibits Congress from passing any ex post facto law, 22 while Article I, Section 10, Clause 1 applies the same limit to the States. There is no prohibition applied to counties or cities in the Constitution. It would be up to the state to impose such a limit upon smaller entities within its borders.
One more reason to have a quality dash cam.
“The point is that these funds allow many states to construct transportation infrastructure that they wouldn’t be able to afford without it.”
That is patently false. If the monies were kept in their states (lowering federal taxes), state taxes could capture it and fund the projects. Instead we get the corruption of Congress that turns federal funding into pork barrel projects and as far as fuel taxes go many of the projects it funds often have zero zip nada to do with transportation.
In theory, neither do I.
I won’t have a choice, as you seem to.
Good for you.
“There was quite a debate about the roles of the Federal and state governments in roads back then, and the Federal government won out simply because the establishment of a National Road from Baltimore to the Ohio River valley was one of the conditions under which Ohio was admitted to the Union.”
Yes the Balitmore and other east coast bankers wanted Congress to do what they could have raised the funds to do, as “opening Ohio” transportation-wise was intended to serve their eastern industrial interests. They most likely would have built their own toll roads to Ohio - floating bonds with tolls to pay for them. Getting Congress to do it added to their profits.
“Thomas Jefferson recognized that without road connections between the interior of North America to the cities and ports in the U.S. along the Atlantic seaboard, there was a serious danger that most of the continent would end up under the control of Great Britain.”
If that is what Jefferson said then he lied. How did Great Britain almost recapture the colonies in the War of 1812? Jefferson was a pacifist who had mothballed most of any U.S. Navy and further gutted the military. He had to be brow beaten in private and in public before going after the Barbary pirates with what fledgling navy we had. What was Great Britain depending on? Jefferson’s weakness.
“Thomas Jefferson recognized that without road connections between the interior of North America to the cities and ports in the U.S. along the Atlantic seaboard, there was a serious danger that most of the continent would end up under the control of Great Britain.”
If that is what Jefferson said then he lied. How did Great Britain almost recapture the colonies in the War of 1812? Jefferson was a pacifist who had mothballed 2/3rd of the U.S. Navy. Britain humiliated the U.S. in 1807 in the last year of Jefferson’s administration, setting the public outcry stage for his successor finally having no choice but to go to war in 1812 and repair the weakness that Jefferson the pacifist had created, for Britain to try to exploit.
-PJ
They have variable speed limit signs on the top end of I-285 around ATL on which I travel to work. I have yet to see anyone pay any attention to them. I have not seen speed enforcement on that stretch of road over decades. It’s simply too dangerous and would cause an instant jam if it’s not jammed already.
bfl
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