Why is it socially acceptable to break the speed limits on roads? It is a crime, after all!?

AZRAEL ÃƒÂŽÃ‚Â¨

Its not acceptable... most drivers have a serious problem if they think they should get away with speeding...

run over a Child or anyone... then these drivers cry like babies...

look speed cameras are there to stop people speeding... i welcome more of them... i do not care if people say it is over zealous of the police, and they are designed as an extra tax...

It's a pretty simple philosophy really... don't speed, you don't get points... after all speeding is illegal!

I wonder how these drivers would feel if it was them hit by a speeding car... or if it was there child that was mown down and killed...

I thoroughly believe stronger penalties should be issued for killer drivers... After all it is classed as a lethal weapon... and if you run someone over on purpose the same principles apply as if you shot someone... so why is the law too lenient? thats your question...

Thanks... some of my first questions related to this question... feel free to browse!

Peace!

edit... fao miss B (above)

that is the kind of attitude that i mean exactly... you will suffer the rest of your life if you do kill someone... if not in jail... then emotionally... it's the same irrational thought process that causes the accidents in the first place... YOU SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN ISSUED WITH A LICENCE>>> PERIOD!

Fao stephen k also above...

that is just plain ridiculous... no matter where you speed if it is a motorway or a back country lane... you have a 70% more likely chance of killing someone... obviously i do not give a jot if your right wheel explodes whilst doing 100 mph down an autobahn, as your selfish speeding caused your death or injuries in the first place... it's the ones doing the driving legally that end up in a pile up because of your actions that i care for... you, you plainly do not matter! Sorry but that is the way it is... if you do not care that you could kill me speeding... then the book should be thrown at you, and deservedly so...

alan P

Exceeding the speed limit is not only against the law it is life threatening as well.
I suppose the problem is that it is difficult for even the most conscientious person to keep below the speed limit 100% of the time. When you are driving its very easy to go with the flow and let your speed drift up.
Stealing a chocolate bar on the other hand requires a deliberate act of will. Stealing is the exact opposite of not stealing but driving at 35 mph instead of 30 mph only requires a slight extra pressure on the accelerator.
Most people do not understand just how dangerous driving is. 3000 people die on the roads each year in the UK and about 40000 in the US. We don't notice because its a few people here and a few there. If this number of people died because of terrorism or air crashes we'd be afraid to leave our homes.

MissBehave

I cannot get over how people complain about this. YOu are right they are breaking the law and yet they have to be warned that there is a camera ahead????? What is the point of warning them they are only going to slow down and then speed up again.

Moth

People often think that they are better drivers then they are and so can go as fast as they like. Maybe harsher punishments for people who kill or injure people as a result of their bad driving would help. In regard to motoring offences the law is a joke.
Kill you speed and not a child and all that!

gotseatbelts

There are some really interesting answers here! I can tell you that my police agency gets less than $5 for a $75 dollar speeding ticket when it comes down. Does it generate revenue, yes it does. But they have to pay me 3 hours of overtime to appear in court which calculates out to about $85 dollars. Many fugitives and other criminals have been caught and arrested on minor traffic offenses. You are driving a 2000lb death machine when you speed and think that you are Mario Andretti or whoever. People think its socially acceptable because many do it on a regular basis. Of course they are usually the first to complain about it. Even though everyone knows its the law, I should be out looking for murderers and rapists if I can quote a recent stop. I told him as I did above that we do catch these type of folks, and many of them are caught in their car driving too fast or having a tail light not functioning.

squirrellondon

Driving over the speed limit is a civil offence, which isn't seen as being as bad as a criminal offence such as theft, assault and so on. Plus - driving fast makes most people feel good, so it's far more common than complaining for being reprimanded for stealing. The biggest reason that people can openly complain about being caught by speeding cameras is that they cost people a lot of money, anything from Â£50 upwards even for being a few miles over the limit - people feel that the police should use their resources to target vicious and dangerous criminals, rather than those who break the speed limit. Local councils make millions of pounds by issuing speeding fines every single year - and people don't like the idea of others making profit from their misfortunes, plus council tax is continually on the rise on an annual basis.

"Call me Dave"

There are different categories of law. Some are rooted deeply in history, thou shall not Kill, steal, commit adultery, which people obey because they believe that it is morally right to obey, and laws which are arbitrary, such as speed limits, parking restrictions, building regulations, declaration of income for tax purposes etc which are seen as arbitrary and have no historic roots.
Speeding is generally of no consequence unless an accident occours, at which point the increased energy caused by the increased speed causes more damage but we dont differentiate between a Land Rover Discovery at over 2 tons and a Mini at about half a ton, the mini doing 45 will do less damage than a Disco at 30, neither do we properly take account of the fact higher speeds mean less time spent on the road and many "accident" situations occour in terms of incidents per minute rather than per mile, so the linear link between high speed and accidents does not exist.

KrautRocket

It's my personal feeling that better cars cause speeding.

When you were driving that 1980s OldsmoBuick at 65mph, you knew it because the engine noise and wind noise was very noticeable inside the car.

Today's cars are quieter so the perception is that you are not going that fast. Despite the advances in cars, the physics have not changed. Your vehicle behaves different when you're doing 100mph vs 65mph. The dynamics are totally off.
In addition, car makers advertise safety more than they used to so people feel safer at high speeds even though car makers do not test 100mph crashes.

The quiet interior give people the false sense of security/control. They should open the window or door and see how fast the pavement is moving.
People are freaking out about gas prices... try driving 65 and wow, all of a sudden you get better mileage - and wait, my brakes/tires last longer... how did that happen?

Breaking the speed limit is what is known as an Absolute Offence. It is wrong and illeagal. Speed limits are there for a purpose!

Maple

One of the problems is that speed laws are routinely broken because they are seldom enforced. There are too few traffic policemen and too many jurisdictions, so they just give up trying to enforce the law. Then when someone does bother to ticket a speeder, the offender feels picked on.

As for people knowing that they are better than average drivers, that's a laugh. I bet the guy who tailgated me for a mile, passed on a solid line, and then immediately came to a stop in front of me so he could make a left turn thinks he's a superb driver!

One way to stop speeding would be to print expressway tickets with the earliest time you are allowed to exit at each interchange. If your destination is 130 miles away and the speed limit is 65 mph, the ticket could be stamped with a time for that exit of exactly two hours after you entered the road. If you attempted to exit before the time on the ticket, you would incur an automatic fine. (The present time should be displayed prominently at each toll gate so nobody could argue about what time it actually is.) The cost of new ticket-printing machines capable of doing such a thing would be minimal. The only reason it doesn't happen is that the toll road operators believe that people will not pay to travel at the speed limit.

Speeders need to realize that even if they (ha!) are extremely proficient drivers, there are new drivers on the road, older drivers with cataracts, etc. who cannot react swiftly to some speed demon . And tires do fail and other mechanical problems develop - not serious at a prudent speed, but a big risk of a pileup if you're going like a bat.

As for getting places on time, if we all knew we couldn't speed, we'd allow a few more minutes for the trip. Problem solved!

Let's try and make it less socially acceptable to speed! As it is, speeders make rude gestures to law-abiding drivers - it should be the other way around!

Stephan K

Well first of all there are different kinds of 'speeding'. If you drive on a freeway which is a complete straight line without many curves and the speed limit is ridiculously low, why shouldn't you speed? I find that completely acceptable. Take Germany for example. They have NO speed limit on many freeways (Autobahnen). And on a 4 line road you can go 110,120 without a problem.
Another thing is inside the city-limits. In streets where chilren might pop up from behind a car.. If you would endanger other people I think that people should accept the speed limit.
But there are a lot of roads where you could go faster without endangering anyone.. So, why not go faster..

Andy FF1,2,CrTr,4,5,6,7,8,9,10

I'm not one of those who joins in sympathetically... I get upset with the ones that have ways of getting out of tickets when they get pulled over....

I've found the best way to avoid tickets is to drive responsibly in the first place...

thebossovallbosses

problem is people dont see it as breaking the law aslong as no one gets hurt

Mike10613

Speeding is getting worse. They put traffic calming everywhere - block off side roads - force everyone on to main roads and you have to speed between traffic lights and cameras - to try and get to work on time or an appointment. Simple solution - double the price of fuel, gasoline, diesel and aviation fuel and scrap taxes on income and savings. Scrap the car excise licence and the TV licence and put all those Dosey pen pushers and defector van people in the queue at job centre plus!

capinundees

It seem that almost every one loves adrenalin. The need for speed seem to be the easiest way to achieve this. People seem not to like police officers <of course this doesn't apply to everyone> so its a common interest to complain about them. And in extreme cases some police officers like to mess with you and try to make you screw up. How many people get nervous just because one pulled out behind them?

strawman

Speeding is not a crime, it's a civil offence, when you are asked on job application forms if you have a criminal record you will notice that traffic offences, like speeding, are excluded.
If all you had to do to prevent road deaths and injury was reduce the speed of traffic then your argument would be valid but it's not true. One of the safest countries in the world to drive is Germany, where as has already been pointed out they have de-restricted sections of their motorway network.
Many other factors contribute to road accidents, stupidity, drink & drug driving, tiredness, inattention, tailgating, using mobile phones, aggressive driving, defective mechanical parts (less than 5%).
Speeding is picked on because it's easier to monitor than other factors, but where appropriate travelling above an arbitarily set limit is not dangerous IMHO.

dwh12345

Speed limits were set long ago when cars had lousy tires,bad suspension,poor brakes,weak headlights,etc..Todays cars can safely travel at a higher speed and everyone knows it

bloop87

Its socially acceptable to break the speed limits because everyone does it! Well, almost everyone, except for those snails driving. The problem is that most of those speed limits are outdated, meaning that those speed limits were for the cars of yesteryear. Modern cars can drive a lot faster and a lot safer at higher speeds. Why people want sympathy for getting a ticket, I think is mainly to get some sort of consolation, after all, the officer did pick you, lucky you, out of all the other speeding motorists out there! Plus, I think that we got our speeding habits from Germany's Authobahn, after all who doesn't like to go vroom vroom. For some people, it gets the adrenaline going, to them driving fast and surviving is sort of like cheating death. Other people who speed just thinks they own the road and think they can do whatever they want. Yes, death is a possible outcome due to speeding, but what else doesn't have death as a possibility? You might think your perfectly healthy, a long time law abiding citizen, walking down the street and sudden have a heart attack, what gives with that!? Digressing, but the point is most people like to be a little rebelious, and some can only be rebelious in a very small obscure way, such as speeding.

barnabus finkle

whoa....thats a long question

mr_carburettor

Speeding isn't always the 'killer' many would have you think it is. Think of it like this: 30MPH outside a school at kicking-out time may be far more dangerous than, say, 90MPH on a dry motorway.

Additionally, a lot of traffic police patrols seem to have been replaced by speed cameras, so it's not uncommon to hear of folk being fined for minor speeding offences (eg: 34 in a 30 perhaps).

The speed camera partnerships will try and convince you that speeding is a big killer, because of course, they've got to justify the cameras lining their pockets.

Obviously, doing silly speeds in residential areas is dangerous, don't get me wrong, but let's not forget, there's also the danger from drunk, drugged and incompetent drivers.

If you want to make the roads safer, then put more human cops on the roads, though then again, Britain is said to have one of the best, if not the best road safety records in Europe.

Mike Hunt

You smoke too much. Everyone speeds.

kreevich

Actually speed limits are set for the driving ability of average drivers, at best. Those who know that their skills are better than average, or even think so, feel it's okay to speed.

amibothered111

because its ur car and u can do wat the f uk u want to do with it

lre1979

to long to read got bored half way through

Little Miss B

I take it you don't drive?!

Have you tried driving everywhere at 30mph, it would take FOREVER!!

Fair enough, in areas with high population, but country roads and motorways.... no need!

And that was a stupidly long question, in fact it wasn't even a question, more of a rant!!

So when you've finished with the soap box pass it over cause I'd like to explain the dangers of Speed Cameras!!

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