Example: Traffic Speed. Everyone always exceed the speed limit on highways. Why do we still have the limit? Like, either enforce it, or remove it. This stuff doesn’t make sense at all.
Because it can be enforced selectively, and if everyone is guilty of something, anyone in particular can be harassed under the cover of a legal justification.
When minor things are against the rules which are selectively enforced, it means the authorities get to pick and choose who to punish based on whatever criteria they feel like, which gives them power.
Which shines some light on how the black population (at least here in the US) gets charged with disproportionately more crimes.
It’s very effective in keeping slavery via our private prison system running
They exist just in case they need to crack down on you.
I always think of dog leash laws this way. In many places they aren’t enforced and the majority of dog owners let their dogs off leash. However, if the owner loses control of their dog and it gets into trouble, like biting someone or another dog, then the law can always say, you’re liable because your dog was supposed to be on leash.
I think the same goes for speeding and other laws. It basically puts liability on the lawbreaker if they take a certain risk. If nothing bad happens, fine. But, if something does, then it’s your fault.
It’s so the police always have something they can stop you for.
So you can selectively punish.
You’re not expected to break them. For your example, you’re not supposed to go over the speed limit. And it is, in fact, extremely easy to do so. Most people are fine with it. And, no, it’s not impossible to do so. There is nothing forcing you to go faster for little to no gain and increased risk for you and other.
You expecting to go over tells something about you.
You expecting to go over tells something about you.
I don’t drive, but every time I’m in my parent’s car, they drive the speed limit, then I see cars flying by on the highway, and I’m like wtf.
I double check the spedometer, it points at just below 60, the sign says speed limit is 60. How is everyone going so fast. They must be speeding.
Not just one or 2 cars. Like almost every car.
Edit: This is in the USA, the Interstate-95 / PA-NJ Turnpike btw.
For what it’s worth, the I-95 corridor from about Richmond to Boston, particularly the DC-Balitmore-Philly-NYC part, is probably one of the worst stretches of highway in the country for generalized insanity and phenomenally poor driving skills on display from everyone involved. It is easily my most hated patch of asphalt in the universe.
A small but measurable improvement would be made to the world instantly if every person in DC and Baltimore had their licenses revoked. Although if experience is any judge, that still wouldn’t prevent any of them from still all being on 95, three inches from the car in front and raging over “only” being able to do 80 in a 55.
Textbook case of a cognitive bias. If you’re going the speed limit, every car that passes you is speeding. You don’t see all the other cars doing the speed limit.
Practically no one actually drives at or below the speed limit in the US, especially on freeways. Whether or not you personally like this doesn’t matter – it’s just how it is.
You’re welcome to try it, but speeding is so pervasive in our culture that this will single you out and Ruggedly Individualistic Americans will get frothingly butthurt at you over it. Prepare to get tailgated, cut off, bullied out of your lane, stuff thrown at your car, etc.
It sounds like you’re proud of your culture of not giving a crap about rules set to improve safety for everyone. On that account, I agree that we’ll never see eye to eye about this.
What part of what I wrote expressed that I was “proud” of it?
I’m just telling you how people behave. I don’t have any control over anybody but myself. For what it’s worth, I’m probably one of the six people in this damn country who doesn’t drive like a nut.
On the highways here, the original speed limit of 55 was to save our nation’s resources, not just “55 to stay alive” but also it was an efficient speed to maintain and still pretty fast.
Inside the city it works much better to make drivers feel unsafe going fast. Narrower lanes, speed bumps, roundabouts, etc.
In answer to your actual question - some laws are just old and haven’t been unwound yet and others are used as pretext for profiling, police (or, more properly whoever is running them) like to be able to stop people for no reason but that can be seen as illegitimate, so they keep laws that everyone breaks, jaywalking, etc to have an excuse.
I don’t think there is any one law everybody breaks really but also no person who has lived perfectly law abiding life.
Bureaucracy is a nightmare. There’s national laws, local laws, technical laws, practical laws, petty laws, incompetent laws, minority laws, old laws nobody bothered to get rid of, potential laws for possible situations that might happen at some point in an imaginary future… and so on.
Basically, it depends on who writes the law and why. All laws are subjective to humans, by humans and against anything that annoys the specific humans in charge at any given point in time.
Anecdotally, I’ve almost never get pulled over in traffic, but the one time I was pulled over, I was doing 76 in a 65 at 5 AM with no other cars on the road and otherwise driving completely fine.
I guess he was bored. Or an asshole. Or both.
Edit: Fixed my paradox
deleted by creator
There was no traffic, he was on the road alone.
Thanks, deleted. Also they said “almost never” which I totally read wrong.
I think he edited the almost in based on his edit note.
Whatever, it’s not important.
Both times I’ve ever been pulled over for speeding the road was empty except me and i was going the average speed people drive on them. 3 people doing 20 over, a cop can shrug and say i don’t wanna pick one to ticket. A single car not only sticks out as speeding more easily, but there also isn’t much of an excuse for the cop not to pull them over.
Counter intuitively, its easier to get away with speeding when the roads are busy because you blend in. The biggest things you want to avoid when speeding and busy is agressive behaviors and frequent passing. Make it seem more casual and you will blend in with the flow of traffic.
Well, tell that to my local traffic authorities. My wife basically has a subscription with them, we get home a monthly invoice for 30€ because she was driving 55-60 km/h in a 50 zone… Complete with a picture of her face and the car’s license plate :)
I got caught once by a speed camera doing 65 in a 50 zone. The camera was in an unmarked van parked on the motorway lay-by (conveniently just after some temporary road works). A few days later the postman delivers a fine in the mail, so I ignored it as it wasn’t sent by recorded delivery (so no proof of receipt). Now, by law in the UK, the police have 21 days to inform you of the offence and three weeks later I get another letter from the cops informing me that I have an unpaid fine. So I write to them and tell them that I never received it and that I have no recollection of being on that road. They then send me photographic evidence of my car being caught at 65 mph in a 50 zone and that I am obliged, by law, to declare who was driving. I write back and inform them that it was so long ago I have no memory of who might have been the designated driver, let alone even being on that road, and that because more than 21 days have passed they have failed to inform me of the offence. They write back with some nonsense about having proof that the letter was sent, but I argue that this isn’t proof of receipt and that I’d be guessing if I declared who I think might have been driving that day. Result being that I never heard from them again.
Maybe she should stop speeding?
Or learn where the cameras are?
The point was that at some places speed limits ARE enforced.
If it only was that easy. I don’t know if 5km/h over the limit is “speeding”, she just doesn’t pay attention, and we’ve been having this discussion for years… I am trying to convince/teach her how to use the speed limiter, but she always forgets to enable that. And the cameras are not static around here. There are a couple static ones, but the vast majority are mobile. They look like small black boxes on wheels, like a power distribution point. Until you see the flash light :)
All laws exist because someone is expected to break them. They’re created when someone does something unexpected. They’re (sometimes) removed when nobody is expected to break them anymore.
Like how racism doesn’t exist anymore, so we can get rid of DEI!
If only that were the claim.
