🚀 go-pugleaf

I was cruising late in the evening, still before sunset though. I was
on an interstate. In the opposite direction I saw one "victim" of
a speed trap, then about a mile down the road another "victim". I also
observed the density of the traffic. It was extremely light, about 3-4
vehicles per mile.

Now we set speed limits on the basis if safety. But a fixed speed
limit varies in the measure of "safety" despite it being fixed. For
example, if these two vehicles were say both doing 70 mph in this 65
mph zone (which is what we all do and which is not likely to be
ticketed, and there were 30 vehicles per mile in this 6-lane
interstate (3 per side), they would be considered "safe" and yet if
they were suddenly doing 80, they would be "unsafe". But what if there
were only 3-4 vehicles per mile. Well all the statistics will back me
up when I say that doing perhaps 90 mph would be no more "unsafe" than
doing 70 when there were 30 vehicles per mile, and perhaps if there
were 100 vehicle per mile, to achieve the same low death rate they
would all have to drive only 55 in this 65.

My point in all of this is that since safety is relative not just to
speed but to traffic density, and for that matter, road conditions,
weather, time of day, etc., it is a miscarriage of justice to ticket
those over the limit in light conditions, but not ticket those that
fail to stay well under the limit when conditions warrant it.
Conversely, if we let people drive the limit when they really should
not, then it too is a miscarriage of justice to ticket people when
they are over the speed limit, but yet the conditions, statistically
speaking, will not produce a higher relative death rate.

In short, vote out of office the jerks that won't put an end to this
crap. And the crap I am referring to is the totally arbitrary thing
known as the fixed speed limit.