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Speeding Project

Submitted by danbarkin on April 23, 2007 - 2:52pm. general discussion | N&O

We've been investigating the state’s prosecution of speeding tickets for months. We’re planning to publish our findings soon, but as we complete our reporting, we want your help. Here’s what we’d like you to tell us:
* If you’ve been cited for speeding and went to court, what happened? Did you see a judge? How long did it take? What happened to the charge?
* Did you have to go to driving school, and what was that like? How much did it cost you?
* If you didn’t go to court, but paid your fine, what happened to your insurance rates?
* How many miles over the speed limit do you think you can drive without getting a ticket?

Conduct your own experiment and tell us what happens. Along a stretch of road, like I-40 or I-85, drive the speed limit and count how many cars pass you over a specific interval.

If you'd like to communicate with us another way, we've set up a phone line, 919-829-4830, and we also have an email address: speeding@newsobserver.com.

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speeders kill...

Submitted by patriot4liberty on April 25, 2007 - 9:52am.

I find it horrific the number of careless speeders on the road. People who weave in and out of traffic, people who tailgate behind those of us going five-10 miles above posted speed limits - people who drag race on the highways and Capital Boulevard late at night.

This morning an SUV overturned on an off-ramp going to Gorman Street from I-440 W. The driver DIED from his "need for speed." Was it worth it?

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Aggressive driving

Submitted by babaisgod on April 25, 2007 - 10:09am.

The real issue is aggressive driving. There was a law created in 2004 to address this problem, but no or little enforcement is being done!! We need the media, such as in this forum, to re-address this problem!!!

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crazy drivers

Submitted by jghowar on April 25, 2007 - 11:33am.

When people get in their cars they become anonymous, and when they become anonymous, their true colors show. Aggressive, inconsiderate and dangerous drivers who think that they are the only people on the road make the morning commute to RTP by far the most stressful part of my day. In my opinion three things need to change.

1) Enforce the speeding laws. They are not currently enforced. Everyone knows you can go 7 mph over the limit with no consequences, but on I 40 drivers consistently go 15 to 20 mph over and nothing happens. No one gets stopped.

2) Cell phone usage in the car on I 40, 540 and 440 should be banned and a 500 dollar fine imposed for abuse. Studies show that talking on a cell phone while driving is the equivalent of driving while impaired. Why is this still OK? A significant portion of the erratic driving I see is "coincidentally" coupled with a driver with a cell phone on their ear. They are oblivious to what is going on around them and are very dangerous.

3) Recidivist speeders, reckless drivers, cell phone talkers and other chronic traffic violaters should have their license revoked, pay fines and possibly do jail time. Motor vehicles are dangerous weapons as well as modes of transportation. Those who choose to endanger others for their own benefit should pay the price. Cars kill when not treated with respect. Our roads are fast becoming a free for all of aggressive and dangerous rogue drivers who suffer no consequences for their actions.

Grant Howard

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My stats as asked for and my opinion on traffic in triangle.

Submitted by mikethebike72 on April 25, 2007 - 2:41pm.

I have been stopped for speeding many times including once in NC when I lived in GA. I have not been stopped for speeding since I moved to the triangle. I had a record of being stopped 32 times in and around Vidalia, GA and only recieved and had to pay 4 tickets. In the past when I have went to court on tickets in GA, the judge simply made me pay the regular fine plus court cost but kept it from going onto my record. When I lived in Washington state, I got stopped twice and went to court for both. The first time, they gave me a deferrment and if I could have went a year without getting stopped, I wouldn't had to pay a fine or worry about it going on my record. I didn't make it. I then had to pay both fines plus an additional fee for the deferment. It really sounds like I am habitual speeder right?

Well here is the kicker, I have rode motorcycles exclusively since 1991. I have over 300,000 miles on them and I have yet to have a severe accident at anything other than low/stopping speed(knock on wood). The key to this is always paying attention to what is around you. On a motorcycle you don't have the distractions like you do in a car. My goal is to get to where I need/want to go in the safest way possible. I do speed, but I don't tailgate. I sometimes go faster than the flow of traffic, but I won't ride in a persons blind spot. I will change lanes and pass on the right side of a person going slow in the left lane, but I always check my blindspot and signal telling what my intentions are. I do have to sometimes follow closer to a car than I would like, but only around exits, all other times, I have 2 seconds between me and the cage ahead. At 60 mph, 2 seconds is 176 feet between us and at 80mph it is around 240ft. It is hard to keep that space but due to the people to think they have to ride bumper to bumper, I have to maintain that distance so that if anything causes the car in front of me to stop, I will have time to stop and make sure that the car behind me doesn't make me a sandwich. So if you are behind a red motorcycle and it keeps dropping back from the car ahead of it, try backing off of me and see if I close the distance any. I will, either you give me space behind me or I will put the space you should give me in front of me. I always find it interesting to see how much people have to put on brakes in "rush" hour traffic. If everyone would give each other more space, there would be less brakes being used, the traffic could flow better, people could plan ahead to make exits, and fenderbenders would be reduced. Here is another thing I do to keep myself safe, I look as far ahead of me as I can. That way I can avoid risk factors before they become hazards. Safe riding, and safe driving is a skill of the eyes and mind, not the hands and feet. As a motorcyclist, I have to play a game called "What If?" Space is what gives me the time to process the "What Ifs" before they become "oh no." In closing, speed doesn't kill, stupidity kills and Darwin is right about survival once again.

As for how much you can speed and get away with, I think that 15 over on controlled access roads is ok most of the time. Rain, traffic, construction, and patrol presence reduces that. I believe that most speed limits are set lower than the safe speed if people drive properly. Residental and school zones are always at the posted speed limit for me, as they should be for everyone.

Now lets see how hard I get flamed for this.

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i agree with you!

Submitted by plusaf on May 14, 2007 - 2:28am.

i've been driving since.... well, i got my license in 1962, when i turned 17 in NJ. i've gotten one ticket in my life, and that was in a six-cylider pontiac. drove my '69 390-hp corvette 42,000 miles without one ticket, and so on...

i completely agree that it's the aggressive and unconscious drivers that are the dangerous ones out there. in OH, according to a wonderful article in Car & Driver, they patrol from the air and consider tailgaters MUCH more serious violators than speeders.

sure, it's the sudden stop at the end that kills, not the speed itself, but driving under the influence or too fast for conditions are/is? killing too many people in this wonderful state! virtually every issue of the N&O or 11pm newscast announces another death or accident.

nobody wants to make the hard decisions. we're not an agricultural society any more, just an overly permissive one... "back in my youth" a few hundred years ago, we couldn't even get a learner's permit until we were over 16 and a half, or something like that. and those were the days when virtually nobody drove a car with more than about 150 hp.

want to stop high school kids from dying? raise the licensing age to 18. how many kids would be alive today if their parents had been driving them to the proms and home?

want to create more visibility, N&O? publish and maintain statistics on auto deaths and accidents. what percentage of drivers were DUI? what percentage were repeat offenders? what percentage of dead drivers were not wearing seat belts? same for passenger deaths.

as i've written in replies to tons of blogs, speed doesn't kill. it doesn't even hurt... anything other than your gas mileage...

tailgating is extremely dangerous and it seems that nobody under 30 believes it. count the tailgaters you see and you'll find that virtually all are young and driving a compact car. too many are girls, too.

driving much faster or slower than "the rest of traffic" is next on my list. accidents are caused by surprises: the driver who suddenly comes out of nowhere and is trying to mate their grill with your exhaust pipe. the ones that are going much faster than anyone else and are cutting in and out of lanes. start a debate on what that funny stalk on your steering column is there for... [the directional signal]. it's there to warn other drivers of your intention to change lanes so they can safely let you do it. i put my directional on last week down on 440 near 1. a guy in a gray compact came up on my right, didn't let me merge, and leaned on his horn for about ten seconds to let me know that he was so much more important than i was that he had to go first. using the horn for that reason? he should have his license revoked and head examined. he could have kept off the horn and just slowed down and nothing would have happened. if i were younger or older and got startled by his sudden blast on the horn, i might have swerved into him, causing at least a two-car accident.

is this what parents and driver's ed teachers teach today??

ok, enough flame for right now.

plusaf
Northwest Raleigh
27613

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not all speeding the same

Submitted by dwshelf on April 25, 2007 - 8:42pm.

(copied from blog, which seems more isolated)

Where these kind of things go off track, and lose engagement with readers, is when all speeding is seen as similar.

The reason we care about speeding at all is because primarily, we don't want to be killed by a speeder, and secondarily, we'd like to keep the speeder's family alive. So a meaningful discussion about speeding cannot proceed with the presumption that all speeding is equally a threat to our safety.

In daily life, we have what we might call "ordinary speeding", which is driving 75 or 80 when the speed limit is 65. In an ideal world, we would have reasonable speed limits which would be enforced exactly, but the de facto method we've come to live with is to have the actual speed limit be no less than 11 MPH, but seldom more than 21 MPH above the posted speed limit. To criticize those who follow this custom is to criticize all of us simply for understanding how things work, which is to lose us.

One type of not quite ordinary speeding involves isolated highways. Most men, certainly me, have exceeded 100MPH on occasion, but it was when no one else shared the highway with us. Not really a danger to society here. Criticize if you like, but it's not going to hit home, because it's not a danger to you.

Somehow we need to focus on dangerous speeding. Here's some examples:

1. Racing in traffic. A killer. People die. Even the two-block downtown stoplight race is extraordinarily likely to be fatal.

2. 100+ MPH while drunk. Should be obvious. These people belong in prison first strike. They kill.

3. Lane changing utilizing safety space. You're following at a safe distance, and the speeder utliizes that safe distance to change lanes to effect a pass. These people cause wrecks.

4. Passing on the right with an aggressive move to the left later. One of the biggest generalized causes of interstate highway accidents.

5. Residential neighborhood speeding. Even at night, hitting 70 in a 25 zone is highly dangerous, and during the day hitting 45 is something which needs to be prosecuted with vigor.

Then there are is speeding as we commonly think of it. Behavior which is mildly dangerous, such as driving down the fast lane on the interstate at 95 while the other cars are doing 80. That's what most people think of when they think "speeding". They put their own behavior into "normal", they put the dangerous people into "reckless", and they reserve the middle category for this kind of speders. Ovserve that this is the same legal offense as driving down a totally empty interstate at 95, while being categorically much different on the safety scale.

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right on!

Submitted by plusaf on May 14, 2007 - 2:37am.

i think you are exactly on target with your post. what i have trouble understanding is why more people don't "see the light" and agree with our views. i've had flaming blog wars with people who could not let go of the concept that it's not SPEED that's so dangerous: it's DIFFERENCE in speed between your vehicle and the other ones! they would disagree with me when i would try to say that if EVERYONE on the road is going THE SAME speed, whether it's 50, 60, 70 or 80, you can't have a collision unless you're hit from the side!

aha! i just got it: it's like my theory of taxes: there's no logic: things are taxed if they're easy to measure. period. no other logic. now extend that to driving:

speeding doesn't cause accidents, but it's terribly EASY to measure, so the path of least resistance [and least thought] is to measure and punish speeders. tailgaters? hard to spot and catch, unless you implement airborne patrols, like they do in Ohio. easy to see tailgaters there and no way to beat the rap. folks swerving in and out of lanes? ditto: hard to see or catch them from the ground. easy from the air.

gotta find a link for that article in Car & Driver! :)

plusaf
Northwest Raleigh
27613

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