Sounds like a violation of the “cruel and unusual” provisions of the 8th Amendment.
I can see that traffic laws exist for a reason (our safety), and that they need to be enforced with REASONABLE penalties (fines and/or imprisonment). But “reasonable” isn’t in any way what is in Virginia’s laws.
Exactly. Some people won’t be able to pay and will lose their licenses. Then they have the choice of losing their jobs or driving without license. They end up in prison for driving without license, and go on to live a life of crime since they can never pay off their fines and so can never get their law abiding lives back.
These people will go mostly unnoticed since they were living on the edge anyway, but overall crime will go up in Virgina because some greedy pickle pounding lawyer named Albo used the power of his position to enrich himself.
See how lawyers ruin lives and impoverish and endanger society? They should all be shot for the sake of the rest of us.
How about effective penalties? One side of this discussion repeatedly reports the general and habitual violation of posted speed limits as an argument for ... for what? The status quo? Clearly the current penalties in many if not most places aren't effective.
The same side of the discussion thinks that instead of severe penalties for holding the law in contempt a reasonable solution which respects the varying ages and situations of the different people on the highways is to make laws which work fine for young people driving sports cars, but maybe not so well for people in their mid-70's driving Buicks.
The argument seems to be that most of us at one time or another broke the speed laws, so the laws should not be enforced, and most of us were young once and had cool cars, so the guy in his 50's trailing 1500 lbs of sheep breeding stock from Charlottesville to Marengo IL behind his F250 ought to give way to the clown driving a Nissan Z-something or other 5 feet from his rear bumper. The SOB can wait, Just as soon as I finish passing this lady driving 55, I'll get over to the right, and I sure won't do it any faster because somebody in a two-seater thinks he's one of the Andrettis and I81 is the Brickyard..
Nope. Not impressed and not convinced. I have a right to use the highways my taxes paid for in vehicles legal for those highways and I have a right to do so without fear of some young idiot harming me and my property because he thinks that everyone who isn't like him should get out of his way and that the laws should be rewritten to suit him.
I'm not saying this response is right. But the argument that I should be allowed to ignore the law because so many others do strikes me as weak. And the argument that obeying the limit is morally suspect because it creates a hazard for those who don't obey the limit is downright perverse. Now I have an obligation to break the law because so may others do? Yes, it would be safer if everyone drove the same speed. So why do those who ignore the limit get off setting the speed I drive at? Let them change THEIR speed. The argument just doesn't bear examining.