How is it even possible/practical to obey traffic laws?

Speed limits are one of the many transportation issues that have been researched with findings that the US has ignored and the EU has implemented.

Drivers go at the speed they're comfortable with regardless of any posted speed limits. They dont work. What does work is road design to make it uncomfortable to go faster. Narrower lanes, less vision on intersections, raised crosswalks, among other things.

European here. You Americans sure do love stop signs! And I did a full stop. Every time. People honked and looked at me like I was a criminal weird 😢

WTF are you talking about, I e stopped at every stop sign for 30 years. This is all in your head. And complete fiction.

Realize that a lot of traffic laws are more or less designed to make everyone a criminal. That leaves it up to the cop to decide who they like to pull over.

Sprinkle in a little racism and bam! This is America.

One time when I lived in Utah, I literally got pulled over for driving the speed limit. Literally. The cop told me that I needed to go with the flow of traffic instead. He didn't give me a ticket, but it was still an annoying interruption to my day, and I assume it gave him a power boner of some sort.

But another time, living in the same area, I got pulled over by a different cop for going with the flow of traffic, because speeding isn't justified even when everyone else on the road is.

As another comment said, you're fucked if you do and fucked if you don't. Although, I do prefer the alternative of going with the flow of traffic to avoid road rage incidents as you've pointed out.

In Germany, it's against the law to not do a full stop at traffic signs. You will fail your driving test doing this and you'll definitely get pulled over when you're seen doing it.

You should obey the basic rules such as speed limits, stopping for red light, etc. Driving faster is associated with higher rate of road fatalities.

The real solution is that our society must abolish the reliance on cars. We should opt for safer modes of transportation that do not make it necessary for us to trust every random person to have the patience and skill for operating a car that can kill people so easily.

I think you can take that 53 mph to court. Thats way too close to be legit.

All I'm getting from this is that, on the day you obeyed all traffic laws, you were the good driver and the others were bad. Things didn't run smoothly because the others didn't obey the traffic laws, not because you obeyed them.

So you don't need to obey the laws because others don't? You're being childish, it isn't that big of a deal.

I will say that ticket you got is bullshit though. That's just a dick cop.

You just had some bad luck. I have passed dozens of police while going 3-5 MPH over the limit and they never took a second look at me. Same thing riding with others. The main thing in driving is try to be a decent person and try not to stand out. If you encounter an unsafe asshole, stay away from them. If you are in the middle a line of cars going 10MPH over the limit, you are probably fine. If you at the front of a line of cars going 10MPH over the speed limit, you are more likely to get pulled over because you stand out as the first speeder.

Standards of driving sound bad where you are

You're not supposed to obey traffic laws. They're designed to fund local governments and give police arbitrary power.

You should protest the ticket in court. Going along with traffic is a valid defense. Get documentation of the behavior mentioned in your post. Doing what you did is more dangerous than going 3 over. The local bureaucracy has a problem there and you can use this issue to shine light on it.

I follow all traffic laws to a tee, just to be the change I want to see in the world. Pedestrian deaths (negligent manslaughter IMO) by cars are at an all time high in my country. As a bonus, I usually end up right next to the asshole speeding and weaving in and out of traffic at the red light

Write to your local member.

Care less about what others do.

Move to a first world nation or state. (Most of the US isn't).

Definitely get a dashcam.

Post dashcam footage on YouTube.

Send a bill to the city to the tyre.

Complain about people's dangerous road behaviour until the behaviour is enforced or speed changed.

It's a game unfortunately.

Sometimes you get nailed for something fucking stupid like 53 in a 50. (Maybe that is worth contesting). Sometimes you deserve it (like me doing 40 in a 25 one time). But there's no justice. Loads of people get away with breaking loads of laws all the time before they finally get caught.

So it's a game for us. But actually it's a money maker for the government doing the enforcing.

One thing works well for me: using Google maps to navigate everywhere I go has the benefit of speed trap notifications.

It is fairly easy to obey the road rules. The problem is that if over time the laws aren't enforced then it is easy over time for thos laws to erode, and then suddenly it feels weird to obey them.

I've been driving for about a decade and a half now, including a few years here and there working jobs with a lot of wheel time. Either pizza delivery or cable technician or driving around a box truck.

I have never gotten as much as a speeding ticket. I typically don't speed more than 5~10 mph over the limit. If it's a 35 or 40 in a city area though I will typically stay the speed limit. Sometimes I go a little ham on country roads in the middle of nowhere. I drove through central Florida once at like 4am and I peaked at like 120mph because I hadn't seen another car for at least an hour.

I think it probably depends on your jurisdiction, but nobody really respects the laws. On the interstate near my house, the speed limit is 65 but it might as well be 80. Cops will pass you and people will pass the cops and nobody cares.

I think the speeding laws are just to give the cops a reason to pull you over if they want you - OR a way to get people that are really being crazy. For example if you're going 110 in a 65 you deserve to get pulled over and given a ticket or worse, depending on context.

If everyone followed the law, there would be no problem. The problem is that bad and unsafe driving is normalized in our society.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6611240-three-felonies-a-day

It's a feature, not a bug.

Your not expected to obey all laws all the time, its a tool in the toolbox for selective enforcement punishment, taxation.

Ironically, self driving cars will do more to make traffic laws more sensible, since the cars will OBEY every law, no matter how silly... and that will back up traffic until the law is fixed.

I've always thought that if you want to fix bad laws, go to the capital city where the law makers are and obey the law very carefully, such that the cost of obedience is paid by the lawmakers.

I do it when I have to drive. If people get angry that's their problem.

You mean pulling over as in stopping at the side of the road to let people pass because you were abiding by the speed limit? That sounds so wild to me.

I absolutely love driving the speed limit exactly when someone behind me thinks I want a longer trunk, maybe a tiny bit slower if they're persistent.
They're usually able to keep a bigger distance all of a sudden.

That said, the speed is usually at most at 10kmh above the limit so I guess it's not too bad yet. Aside from the occasional idiot that thinks curves with little visibility are superior to straight sections where you can see the next 500 meters for taking people over.

The last ticket I got was from parking within 15 feet of a fire hydrant. There's no sign or marker indicating where 15 feet is, so I had to basically eyeball it and hope that I was far enough from the hydrant. Yeah, that's one that's almost impossible to practically obey.

It’s damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Welcome to the real world.

Where do you live? I do the speed limit all the time. Only get a random pissy BMW once a month or so.

Just ignore them. If they want to be idiots, let them. Doesn't mean you have to as well.

Do it anyway. If a driver crashes into you because you're obeying traffic laws, they're at fault, and their life gets ruined because they're an awful person. If someone blows through a red light, same deal. If traffic gets backed up for several miles because nobody wants to travel at the speed limit, fuck 'em, they should have left earlier. I enjoy the impotent fury that other drivers feel towards me when I'm going 35 in a 35.

It might be "immoral" and "sociopathic" for me to think this, but if someone is gonna get themself killed because they can't stand to come to a complete stop at the stop sign, GOOD, I hope they die. The world is better off without them in it. Of course, never block someone from passing you even if they have to break the law to do it. You never know when someone is bleeding out from a chainsaw wound.

I'm going to remember this question next time I see one of those "BuT cYcLIsTs!" idiots.

When I was in drivers' ed they told us that even if the speed limit is, say, 35 mph, it's safer to go 45 mph if everybody around you is also going 45 mph. I think most cops are also aware of this, so I wonder if you were just picked on to fulfill a ticket quota or something. Also differences that small in mph are very questionable for a ticket because speedometers can vary wildly and most if not all speedometers have a very minor margin of error. For example you could have been radar tracked at 53 but your speedometer could have been closer to 51 or 50

Have you tried following traffic laws in GTA games? That is insane indeed.

It's incorrect to think of most road laws as being in place for safety, instead recognize that it's largely a tax by another name. It is never safe to drive 20mph below prevailing traffic, regardless of what the sign on the side of the road instructs.

To avoid fines, pay attention and try to avoid routes where there are often cops collecting a toll, especially during quieter times when you're one of a smaller number of commuters (and more likely to be the sucker who gets pinged). If you're white, congratulations, you're way less likely to be the unlucky party who gets pinged.

I can’t believe you got a ticket for speeding 53 in a 50! What state do you live in that police are that eager to give a ticket? Cops will only be that strict where I live in 25mph zones, usually school zones or a place where the highway goes through the middle of town.

They say something around here like: +8, you’re great. +9, you’re mine. And that is actually pretty low for how much I’ve seen people speed here (+15 sometimes, even on 2-lane highways like you’re talking about). I got ticketed for a +13.

It's been like 20 years that, at least where I am there is automatic speed camera and a zero tolerance policy, people get fine and loose points even for small speeding so if you want to keep your licence, no choice

Not stopping at a stop? This looks dangerous like hell. Please think about the kid on a bike who might have the right of way, let her live

I also follow traffic laws. People often rage at me completely unprovoked, and I've been in more collisions than I can count.

What matters is you are not responsible for the actions of others. Yes driving 60 in a 25 is incredibly dangerous. See what happens when you slam on the brakes for the work zone sign, it's absurd.

But it's not our job to police that. The best we can do is follow the law, try to avoid the idiots, and collect the insurance money when they do hit us and move on.

Uh, what? This whole post feels like rage bait or you live in a very angry and unsafe area. I don't experience any of this.

No one gets a ticket for a 53 in a 50 and if you actually did it would get thrown out in court. Definitely fight that.

2 Lane roads. I hate em. But but that's all I have within 10 miles of me. I pass people, people pass me, no one is blaring their horn and brake checking (which is extremely dangerous) at all, much less daily.

Never in my 30 years of driving have a had someone lose their shit over stopping at a stop sign or a red light. I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen someone run a red light.

And while people do speed in work zones, doing 60 in a 25 work zone will lose you your license here. That would be an exceptionally stupid thing to do.

This reads like an angry exaggerated rant by someone pissed they got a ticket. If it's not, I'm sorry you live in an area full of unsafe angry people.

What on earth are we expected to do?

Pay the fines. It's a money-making scheme, not a public-safety scheme.

I'm not sure where you live, but in many places if the speed of traffic is faster than the speed limit, you're expected to follow that, if you can do so safely, because driving slowly causes the reckless behavior you mentioned and can actually be more dangerous

I was going ten to fifteen over in the right lane on a major street and I literally felt fear for my life the way people around me were driving. People were raging at me for not running red lights! It was insane.

After receiving a speeding ticket for doing 53 in a 50

This sounds too ludicrous not to be made up.

I've received a LOT of speeding tickets in my life. The only time I've EVER gotten a ticket for doing <5 mph over the posted limit is when I was actually doing +14 over the posted limit but the cop wrote it for 10 less than actual because he had to write a ticket but didn't want it to be excessive....so the final ticket ended up being 54 in a 50 zone.

I can't imagine anyone not being able to beat a +3 over speeding ticket in court. I probably wouldn't even call my attorney for that and would just fight it myself.

I think traffic laws in many cases cause more issues than they solve, though I don’t know enough to really say which types of laws are problematic.

I do notice that a lot of drivers which go over the speed limit because it’s too low tend to overdo it, driving too fast instead, for example. On roads where the speed limit is fairly high most people seem to drive at a speed close to it.

I also read a study a few years ago which claimed that removing speed limits actually causes most people to drive slower, but I can’t find it right now.

In the US speed limits are usually set by what speed the average motorist drives.

It's plenty easy, but it's not as if I give enough of a damn about them to actually follow traffic laws unless there's a cop there

"After receiving a speeding ticket for doing 53 in a 50..."

How to tell me you're not caucasian without telling me your not caucasian.