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.

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.

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 😢

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

A ticket for 53 in a 50? Either you were using a GPS speedo instead of the mechanical one in the car or you were actually going faster than you thought.

Here in the UK speedometers are required to read fast and all speed cameras have 5mph dead zone to account for errors in the reading so doing 53mph on the speedo wouldn’t even set off a camera. Obviously idk about the US but it seems a bit stupid not to have a system similar to the UK one.

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

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 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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Also be aware that police tend to be a bit more stringent with enforcing traffic rules if you're traveling through a small town. I read an article long ago (so take this with a grain of salt) that the police department of a small town gets a large portion of its funding through speeding tickets, so there's a huge incentive for police in those areas to enforce traffic laws as tightly as possible.

In any case, the highest that I'll do is speed limit + 5 mph when there's not that many other cars around, and if the other cars want to pass by me, no big deal

Getting a speeding ticket while going 3 miles over the speed limit sucks so I can see why you’re upset.

I’ve never had a problem just going with the flow of traffic. Sometimes almost everyone is going over the speed limit. I go with that. I’ve lived in Minnesota most of my life. I’m more comfortable than most driving in snow and ice. Sometimes in snowy conditions the flow of traffic seems slower than necessary. Yet, again, I just go with the traffic flow and end up driving a bit slower than I would otherwise. If there’s little to no traffic I just go the speed limit. If someone wants in my lane I let them in whenever possible.

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

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

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.

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.