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You don't want to pay a fine or be arrested, don't break the law. Very simple.
I slightly disagree. For me, the right way is not to punish and beat-them-down from the very beginning. Breaking the law and punish people is to easy. Good police need to be vigilant, and when something is happening, they should reprimand first. A government that educates the people if that is not working, you can still punish them.
There are lanes in India? Who knew!
Thailand is much the same. Lines are only seen by the timid.
LOL, true. Lanes have already been there but they are ignored by one and all. Same goes for red-lights after 10PM. There seems to be an unwritten rule of sorts that you can ignore the traffic-lights at the non-busy intersections after 10 PM. Infact, many of the traffics signals switch to the blinking yellow light after 10PM.
I have stopped on countless such red-signals at 1AM in the morning waiting for it to turn green and have been honked at by the motorist behind me.
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5,921 posts, read 13,848,998 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by 2360039
A government that educates the people if that is not working, you can still punish them.
Huh ???
Are you implying that those who drive with an attitude *out of bounds* were NOT educated by some part of the government of the area where they were *breaking the law* ???
Are you implying that those who were *caught*, did not know the law ?
Yeah, I notice the U.S. has a slew of traffic officers and a ton of cameras to capture people who go over the speed limits
Not in my state.....
Cameras to enforce traffic laws were ruled unconstitutional in Minnesota (state constitution, not u.s.) after the city of Minneapolis installed a bunch of red light cameras. Minneapolis had to turn them all off permanently and return all previously collected revenue.
Drivers have to be ticketed in MN, not cars. The burden of proof is also on law enforcement/prosecutors to prove guilt in court. Just mailing a ticket to the owner of a car shifts the burden of proof to a citizen needing to prove innocence in court instead.
Oh, I agree about the cameras, each ticket now includes your photo.
They started cracking down about 6 months ago. At the office, I have a list of the different type of camouflaged cameras they've implemented.
One day, in Sachicher Schweiss, I got tickets going both ways on a stretch that went from 50 to 30 to ticket in less than 50 meters. The return ticket was for 33 in a 30.
Thanks, Chielgirl; you remined me of an anecdote!
Was stationed at Bitburg Air Base in the late '80s-early 90's. Was tooling along on B 50 between Bitburg and Spangdahlem. Fortunately, I was going the speed limit when I rounded a curve and saw a plain white VW vanagon parked on the shoulder some distance ahead. As I got closer, I could make out a red "Canon" camera logo. And, as I passed the van, I saw two Polizei officers with their camera in the back!
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5,921 posts, read 13,848,998 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by moving123456
Cameras to enforce traffic laws were ruled unconstitutional in Minnesota (state constitution, not u.s.)
I think in our State also (Utah).
There is an area were speeding is notoriously bad, so they got *plain* citizens to help curb the problem.
*Old Grandpa* sits on his lawn with a speed gun.
He *catches* one, he radios to a patrol car around the bend.
The speeding stopped after a few weeks of a lot of tickets ...
Whether this is *legal* or not, who knows, or even who cares.
It stopped.
This was a few years ago, and now they have a stop light at that intersection, which was only a stop-*sign* before, for the cross road.
It surprises me that they finally figured out that a light was more efficient than two officers ...
I guess they had to collect fines, to pay for the lights ??
OTOH, I live on a narrow 1 1/2 lane street, and it has a slight bend in it right were *we* (five homes) live.
Problem is, we live on the wrong side of the bend (inside bend) so,
hard to see who comes along at speed waaayyy in excess of the posted speed limit, which is 25 MPH.
The other side of the road is a canal !
We have had six accidents in the last 5 years, of people trying get out of their driveway.
So all of us (five homes) asked the city if they could build speed bumps.
The answer was more of a question than an answer.
Their reply: *Did anybody die in any of those accidents ?*
So we ended up mounting mirrors so we can *see* who comes racing towards us.
One really lucky thing is that about a year ago, a policeman moved into the neighbourhood,
and his police car is visible from the road when one drives past our homes.
Speeding has dramatically slowed down !!!
I wonder, if the speed limit says 25, why do people think it is 52 ??
Bad case of dyslexia ?
Maybe *teacher 2360039* can give me an answer ??
Back to the original question.
As long as people can *afford* to pay the relatively low fines, they will continue to break the law.
I have come to the conclusion that *traffic law* (anywhere) is not *The Law*, but just a Philosophy ...
It increasingly appears, in the U.S., from purusing the threads on traffic tickets, that any number of local/state governments, knowing it's so difficult to raise taxes, have turned to traffic tickets as an alternate source of revenue for the government.
Curious, what's it like in other parts of the world? With the multitude of new car owners in China how are they dealing with traffic infractions over there, or India, Europe, Latin America, wherever?
My daughter is at school in Chengdu, Sichuan. She says the traffic is insane and no one regulates it. The Chinese have an expression for driving that roughly translates to "find a space wherever you can", which means the cars often are only an inch from one another. She said she has been in a cab and watched as a bus was hurtling toward her and thought she was going to die only to see the front of the bus stop a hand's width from her window.
In her observation, that is part of the huge difference between the US and China--here in the US, you can say anything you want about the government and trash the leaders, but God forbid you commit a traffic infraction and we have cameras everywhere recording you if you don't. Over there, everyone "respects" the government but in the little everyday things, nothing is enforced.
She bought a "secondhand" bicycle from one of the vendors on the streets who sell them--they are obviously stolen, and the cops take them, too. Her roommate's secondhand bike has already been stolen back, so she had to go get another one. Fortunately, they are cheap because they are constantly sold and stolen again.
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if that is not working, you can still punish them.
