Highway Safety: Safety Enforcement

We’ve talked a good bit about safety enforcement in Speed Limits. Now lets look at some of the other things they can do.

Work Zones They’re a pet peeve of mine. I don’t know of anyone with an intelligent argument against lowered speeds where people are working. Can’t find one myself.

I can and will argue work zones have to be controlled intelligently for the safety of both the workers and road users.

I’ll begin by defining a couple of terms. Work Zone: A short area where work is actually taking place. Construction Zone: An area of varying length, where the roadway is in normal condition, where work may take place anytime within the next 15 to 30 days.

Unfortunately, many states have confused a construction zone with a work zone. This leads to many miles of reduced speed marking with no sign of work. That often results in drivers forgetting or ignoring the temporary limit. Then, with no additional warning, they come across workers. Well, sometimes. We’ve all driven through construction zones, sometimes for months, and never seen so much as someone leaning on a shovel, places where modern descendants of the Shoemaker’s Elves must be doing the work. Is it any wonder those speed limits are ignored?

The solution is amazingly simple, only been around for a few decades. Mark the construction zones. Then post reduced speeds and other restrictions with portable signs where workers really are present.

Wonder how many worker lives that simple change could save?

LLBs are another peeve of mine. They’re the Left Lane Bandits squatting in the left lane causing other drivers to change lanes to get around them. Does anyone beside me remember most states have laws clearly saying the left lane is for overtaking? (MISSISSIPPI CODE OF 1972, SEC. 63-3-603: (d) Upon all roadways any vehicle proceeding at less than the normal speed of traffic at the time and place and under the conditions then existing shall be driven in the right-hand lane then available for traffic, or as close as practicable to the right-hand curb or edge of the roadway, except when overtaking and passing another vehicle proceeding in the same direction or when preparing for a left turn at an intersection or into a private road or driveway.)

LLBs are a big segment of a whole group of traffic disruptors. Other members include trucks blowing stuff out of the bed causing drivers to dodge trash, rocks, and whatever else they’re spreading. These are particularly dangerous as trash flying towards your windshield may cause a flinch resulting in sudden hard braking or even a lane change without proper checking.

Neither last nor least, are those drivers jumping lanes, weaving, or otherwise driving erratically – at any speed – they’re about as dangerous to others as you can get.

My bet is redirection of “safety enforcement” from speed to traffic disruptors alone would increase safety by 20 percent. But it won’t happen.

Speeding tickets are too big a revenue source for the government to give up just for safety.


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First post in the series.

Virginia’s Unconstitutional Traffic Fines

Virginia has instituted a new set of confiscatory traffic fines. For a change, they have admitted these fines are taxes, even writing it into the law with "The purpose of the civil remedial fees imposed in this section is to generate revenue." They didn’t have to tell us that when they imposed fines of up to $3000 immediately and annual taxes on the points connected to the fine of up to $700 a year. That’s $700 for every year the points stay in the driver’s record. Some points are stuck to your record for as long as 11 years.

Leave it to lawyers to argue the constitutionality of taxing this way. Hope the Legislature and State Bar seriously question the ethics of a traffic court lawyer introducing this bill.

Be sure your traffic lawyer knows there is a very good chance this law, as it applies to speeding, violates state responsibility to provide for the welfare of its citizens. That is, it is probably unconstitutional.

“What,” you ask. “It reduces speeding and everybody knows speed kills.”

Well, in a sense speed kills. Hitting a tree at 100 mph is more likely to kill you than the same accident at 50 mph.

Realistically, too much speed kills. Too little speed causes accidents. The clearest way to see that is with the International Road Traffic and Accident database (IRTAD). Compare the land of unlimited speed, Germany, with the USA.

2006 Numbers	Total-deaths	Injury-accidents-per-100,000-population	Deaths-per-billion-km
Germany	6.5	408	7.8
USA	14.7	647*	9.4

*2004 figure. 2006 not available.

The federal government, and one would hope people who make their living defending traffic cases, have been aware of this effect since a 1992 report titled Effects of Raising and Lowering Speed Limits, DOT Report No. FHWA-RD-92-084

Virginia may argue this is a tax law, not a speed limit law. How they might do that eludes me since doing so indicates lying. No lawyer or legislature can deny with any credibility knowledge of the words de facto.

There is no intelligent argument that the fines imposed by this law are not a de facto speed law and, therefore, an unconstitutional endangerment to the citizens.