Poll
Question: Warn Other Drivers of Speed Traps?

Yes, I would warn them.  
  10 (47.6%)
No, speeders should be caught.  
  4 (19%)
Not sure.  
  1 (4.7%)
Other. (please specify)  
  6 (28.5%)



Total votes: 21
« Created by: Rat Man on: Jun 29th, 2012, 10:32am »

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Do You Warn About Speed Traps? (Read 604 times)
Rat Man
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Do You Warn About Speed Traps?
Jun 29th, 2012, 10:32am
 
http://gma.yahoo.com/texas-woman-arrested-warning-drivers-speed-trap-160551293-- abc-news-topstories.html
     Do you flash you lights or as in this case hold up a sign to warn other drivers of speed traps or if you don't drive yet, would you?  I don't speed.  Personally I consider speeders a menace.  I want the police to catch them and never give oncoming drivers warnings about speed traps.  Speeding is illegal and dangerous.  I'm on the cops' side in this.
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Re: Do You Warn About Speed Traps?
Reply #1 - Jun 29th, 2012, 10:44am
 
I selected other because I use public transportation. But when I lived in GA I saw this a fair bit.
 
 I'm conflicted on the issue. On the one hand I agree you shouldn't speed, physical limitations on reaction make it dangerous for everybody else on the road. The faster you go, the less margin for error. Because of that they should be caught and sanctioned. But in GA it seemed to me, and I heard the opinion repeated by others as well, that cops aren't really looking to end speeding. Instead they treat speeders like hunters treat game. You'll "hunt" one area for a while, and then leave it alone for several months to allow the "game" to repopulate, and then hunt it again. That bothers me.  
 
Still, I don't think I would warn others.
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Re: Do You Warn About Speed Traps?
Reply #2 - Jun 29th, 2012, 10:50am
 
I warn others selectively. In metro Atlanta the speed limits are ridiculously low and the traffic pattern is (usually) ridiculously fast. The cops tend to ignore people moving with the flow of traffic and only stop the people moving slightly faster than the speed limit. This behavior pisses me off.
 
If I pass by a speed trap and I see someone moving slower than the other cars then I will flash my lights at them. If everyone is moving the same speed then I won't do anything (and unfortunately neither will the cop). I don'twarn others outside of Georgia as a rule.
Edited:
Quote from perpetualstudent on Jun 29th, 2012, 10:44am:
But in GA it seemed to me, and I heard the opinion repeated by others as well, that cops aren't really looking to end speeding. Instead they treat speeders like hunters treat game. You'll "hunt" one area for a while, and then leave it alone for several months to allow the "game" to repopulate, and then hunt it again. That bothers me.
That's a perfect analogy for what the cops do in Atlanta.
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Re: Do You Warn About Speed Traps?
Reply #3 - Jun 29th, 2012, 11:10am
 
Honestly thought this only happens in SA. No. Speeders should be caught. We kill about 600 - 800 people a month on SA roads.
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Re: Do You Warn About Speed Traps?
Reply #4 - Jun 29th, 2012, 11:17am
 
 If I drive or see a cop, I'll tell the driver and they usually warn whoever they see next. I live out in the country so the only 'speeders' on the roads are usually 4 wheelers, not very dangerous.
    Accidents with deer are very common and we usually warn anyone for those becuase it could be their life at stake. Most of the speeding tickets around here are given to people going just over ticket range because they are in a hurry.
 
To tell the truth, I've never actually had the occasion to pass both a real speeder and have just passed cop so I can't really say.
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Re: Do You Warn About Speed Traps?
Reply #5 - Jun 29th, 2012, 11:25am
 
Speeding is SOP in California and the Highway Patrol doesn't crack down on speeders unless they are otherwise doing things like unsafe lane changes or tailgating. It's not uncommon to see a group of cars at 80 mph on Interstate 5 (ask me how I know). Of course we're geared to high speed travel over long distances and our roadways reflect that.
 
We don't have "speed traps" per se where I live, and I wouldn't notice one if we did, so I wouldn't normally be warning anyone.
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Re: Do You Warn About Speed Traps?
Reply #6 - Jun 29th, 2012, 2:48pm
 
Not sure.
Speeding is illegal and I had a bad car accident due to high speed, that lead to the death of a close friend.  
But here in Italy this is the situation: empty suburban roads with speed limits of 30 km/h, then 70, then 50, then 70 again, and 30 and so on and so on. With well hidden police cameras at every turn. All this because years of bad government led the towns to have less fundings, and they have to make money one way or another.
And I forgot police cameras put at the beginning of straight roads. At the beginning, leaving kilometers of straight road to increase the speed of your vehicle.
So I occasionally warn about speed traps, but just motorcycles  Grin
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Re: Do You Warn About Speed Traps?
Reply #7 - Jun 29th, 2012, 3:06pm
 
I'll warn truckers and single vehicles if the officer is being lazy and just camping at one of the lame usual spots.... but if he's hiding in a very odd spot or making clever or creative cover (like when they back up into real tall grasses) I figure they earned the right to catch a few speeders
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Re: Do You Warn About Speed Traps?
Reply #8 - Jun 29th, 2012, 4:26pm
 
Being in the biz, I think they should pay the wages of sin, as it were...
 
However, that opens the whole can of worms about traffic enforcement and whether or not the way we do it is a good idea...
I have read rather a lot on this subject, and we discuss it pretty frequently on the Randi forum.  A great deal of traffic enforcement does little or nothing to accomplish it's stated purpose; that of accident prevention.
Further, it has become a lucrative source of revenue production in many areas.
 
Just as a for-instance... The city of St. Louis contracted with an outside firm to install the "red light" cameras at intersections all over the city, and set up a special court to handle the cases.   The company receives a percentage of the fines/fees.  
An investigation by one of the local newspapers a year later found that of the 10 "most-dangerous" intersections in the city....None had been equipped with cameras.   In fact, all the cameras had been installed at the busiest intersections, dangerous or not.
This of course makes folks see the whole operation as geared to revenue production rather than safety...
And in fact St. Louis is now considering dropping the whole thing because of the public outcry.
 
It's been shown that just speeding is not a large contributing factor to accidents.   Driving too fast for conditions is....
Right now, "inattention" ranks almost alongside drunken driving as a prime factor for accidents.   Cell phones, GPS, fiddling with the sound system, fighting with the kids in the back of the van, etc, etc.
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Re: Do You Warn About Speed Traps?
Reply #9 - Jun 29th, 2012, 11:30pm
 
Bikewer, we had those cameras in Los Angeles and they weren't worth the hassle. There were even special license plate covers sold that were said to mask the plate number to make the photos useless (don't know how effective they were). Anyhow, it was a cash cow for the operator, a lot less so for the city, and no discernible reduction in accidents took place.
 
I didn't mention speed traps as a source of local revenue before, but it's an entrenched practice in certain parts of the country. Entrenched and abused.
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Re: Do You Warn About Speed Traps?
Reply #10 - Jun 30th, 2012, 2:30am
 
Not a driver, but my dad is always 10mph faster than the speed limit (although it's usually in the fast lane). I don't think drivers should be warned, and I would somewhat consider it impeding a policeman. I dunno. But then again, it's your own stupid fault for not noticing the speed trap in the first place. If you're driving fast and you consistently notice speed traps, then hell, maybe you are a semi careful driver (or darn lucky). If you can't notice them while driving fast, then maybe you aren't paying close enough attention to the road... Usually the highways have a grass strip/divider in between the directions, so that a cop can be behind a bend or near a ditch, harder to see, but not near impossible.  
 
On the other hand, in China speed traps are pretty comical. Usually cars will drive at around 80kmh, when the legal limit is 70 (on a Shanghai highway at least). There are radar stations every amount of kilometers. There's always a radar sign a few hundred meters in front of it, so drivers will guess at where the radar station is and slow down....to a crawl. It's ridiculous because they'll go down to walking pace for a brief moment, before rapidly speeding up again. Then again, Chinese roads are very dangerous. Traffic rules are mostly ignored, and going at 80kmh you'll have bumper to bumper (around a meter in between cars) traffic on extremely crowded highways. scares the nuts out of me when I sit in the front row of seats on a bus.  
 
On a side note, on a really crowded Beijing highway two kids who just graduated high school with really good scores went on a race during rush hour, that aforementioned 80kmh traffic (New York and DC got nothing...), only with even less distance between bumpers (hairbreadths). Note that in China testing and graduating with very good scores is crucial. For a month they'll have endless testing, most of them complete bullS trick questions. If they do poorly then in China they have little chance of getting even a mediocre job, there's such a massive population that not everyone is needed, and seniors and experienced people are more likely to be hired. Likewise, colleges are extremely competitive and hard to get into. Doing even slightly poorly may mean you'll be stuck the rest of your life doing very piss poor jobs (few workers rights), maybe 16 hours a day, everyday on a back breaking assembly line. When they graduate with good scores, it's very relieving. Anyways,  they were caught by police, and sentenced to a month of jail. As soon as they were released they were immediately employed by a fairly prestigious racing company to be racecar drivers. Lucky son of a gun.
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Re: Do You Warn About Speed Traps?
Reply #11 - Jun 30th, 2012, 2:58am
 
I think speeding laws are stupid.  Or, put a better way, stupidly and arbitrarily enforced.  Cops stop people not when they're speeding, but when it's time for revenue collection for the state.  It's a form of taxation at this point, and I think that's pretty absurd.  Plus, the whole idea of a speed trap is that cops are picking places where speeds naturally tend to go up (bottoms of hills, ends of long straightaways, etc), so they're penalizing people for going a speed that was probably the highest they were going to reach organically anyway.  If they set up a speed trap at the TOP of a hill then maybe I'd understand, but it's pretty clear they're not concerned with safety so much as revenue collection, and probably the "thrill of the chase" that they feel on an individual level for catching people.
 
I don't warn others, I never think to, and I don't speed much myself.  I typically keep a limit of 5 over the speed limit as my hard and fast ceiling.
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Re: Do You Warn About Speed Traps?
Reply #12 - Jun 30th, 2012, 10:47am
 
As I've only been driving for less than a year, I've yet to encounter one, but would probably do nothing to warn others.
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Re: Do You Warn About Speed Traps?
Reply #13 - Jun 30th, 2012, 2:38pm
 
As Hurlin Tom says... The "speed trap" and "kangaroo court" (often some local magistrate holding traffic court in his own house..) are things of Americana.    
In many small towns and cash-strapped counties, traffic enforcement has become an important source of revenue.   The poor sod cruising through on vacation or whatever is hit with an out-of-proportion fine and "encouraged" to pay on the spot as it would be massively inconvenient to set a court date and return to the podunk area for an actual trial.
Locally, one of the small town departments within St. Louis county was caught "manipulating" a school-stop signal to catch unwary motorists.
Another, not far from where I live, had for many years a 35 mph main street running through the town.  The town enacted a 25 limit, and put up such a confusing welter of signs that by the time motorists had read them all they had been caught by the part-time police officer, who's sole duty was to run radar on this main drag.
You could likely list hundreds, maybe thousands of similar situations around the country.
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Re: Do You Warn About Speed Traps?
Reply #14 - Jun 30th, 2012, 3:03pm
 
Quote from Masiakasaurus on Jun 29th, 2012, 10:50am:
I warn others selectively. In metro Atlanta the speed limits are ridiculously low and the traffic pattern is (usually) ridiculously fast. The cops tend to ignore people moving with the flow of traffic and only stop the people moving slightly faster than the speed limit. This behavior pisses me off.

If I pass by a speed trap and I see someone moving slower than the other cars then I will flash my lights at them. If everyone is moving the same speed then I won't do anything (and unfortunately neither will the cop). I don'twarn others outside of Georgia as a rule.
Edited:
Quote from perpetualstudent on Jun 29th, 2012, 10:44am:
But in GA it seemed to me, and I heard the opinion repeated by others as well, that cops aren't really looking to end speeding. Instead they treat speeders like hunters treat game. You'll "hunt" one area for a while, and then leave it alone for several months to allow the "game" to repopulate, and then hunt it again. That bothers me.
That's a perfect analogy for what the cops do in Atlanta.
 
 
Yep. I lived in the Atlanta area for several years. The best commentary on the asinine speed limits in the atlanta area is this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoETMCosULQ   they add a lot of chaff, but the heart of it is worth saying. I don't think I've ever seen someone do the limit on 285, I've seen 80 and 5 miles an hour a lot more often...
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