Radar Detector

[ra]

Speed laws in the US have little to do with safety. It's all about revenue.

Ayup.

[Vulcan]

Originally posted by baders
Here's a novel thought..............ever considered sticking to the speed limit ?? It even has the added bonus of saving lives !! Go figure

I've been a part of Emergency Services for 20 years & i've seen the results of speeding.............again & again & again.

Keep deluding yourselves guys, & Spook, Gixers girlfriend & myself will keep picking up the pieces.

Heres another novel thought!

Before I got my laser jammer I got ticketed for doing 118km/h in a 100km/h zone. Problem was the cop did me at 475m, the bare limit on the handheld range range for a LIDAR gun. I wasn't doing 118km/h, but the Holden Commodore coming up behind me was. He was also attempting to laser me between trucks and other traffic crossing his line of sight.

Cops story? ... "you were the only vehicle on the road at the time". Figure that one out... given it was 8:20am on the Wellington motoryway.

At the same time a friend of mine in Auckland told me how he got laser'd by a cop up there doing 120km/h, he changed lanes getting ready to pull over, pulling in front of a large truck. Well the cop sped passed, missed him completely, he comes around the corner and sees the cop with a car indentical to his (burgandy honda accord) pulled over).

I put my $$$ out for the laser jammer not to speed but to drive without being harassed by the road-nazi's. Its revenue gathering, nothing more nothing less.

If the NZ Police and NZ Government were really interested in road safety they'd fix the crap roads we have.

[Raptor]

Originally posted by baders
Here's a novel thought..............ever considered sticking to the speed limit ?? It even has the added bonus of saving lives !! Go figure

I've been a part of Emergency Services for 20 years & i've seen the results of speeding.............again & again & again.

Keep deluding yourselves guys, & Spook, Gixers girlfriend & myself will keep picking up the pieces.

Its hard to do the speed limit when every other car on that road are going 15mph over the speed limit. Then a cop turns onto the road and finds the one in the back the easiest to pull.
Radar detectors cant replace common sense but are good when coming around a curve where a cop is waiting in a hidden entrance (or some drive hard to see). Im sure a radar detector might give more insentitive to drive slow (depending on the driver) if it goes off a few false times.

[Chairboy]

Conversation topic: The presence of law enforcement is a road condition.  The radar detector is just a tool for determining it in some cases.

[baders]

Originally posted by FUNKED1
What is with the Australians thinking they have the foggiest clue about what happens on the highways in the States?  Speed limits here are set artificially low to enhance local revenues.  The limits have nothing to do with safety.

Road Trauma is the same wherever you go, its got nothing to do with our knowledge of US Police practices. More to do with observing the end result of drivers with "bullet proof" qualities such as many here.

Lets just hope that Spooks equivalent in the US does not come knocking on your door one day with a tragic message for your wife or girlfriend ehh ??

[Vulcan]

Originally posted by baders
Road Trauma is the same wherever you go, its got nothing to do with our knowledge of US Police practices. More to do with observing the end result of drivers with "bullet proof" qualities such as many here.

Lets just hope that Spooks equivalent in the US does not come knocking on your door one day with a tragic message for your wife or girlfriend ehh ??

For every road death caused solely by excessive speed in NZ in the last 12 months I can point to 4 others caused by bad roads, bad driving habits, or lack of attention to the road - none of which neither the NZ government or NZ police are doing anything about.

[Gixer]

Originally posted by Vulcan
For every road death caused solely by excessive speed in NZ in the last 12 months I can point to 4 others caused by bad roads, bad driving habits, or lack of attention to the road - none of which neither the NZ government or NZ police are doing anything about.

Excessive speed on public roads is bad driving, where's the difference?

Speeding on public roads is a cheap thrill. If you really want to speed and have fun take it to the track. 100 times better,far more challanging and more rewarding. Any monkey can drive a car/bike in a straight line and say wow look I'm doing 140kph.

Vulcan spend a couple evenings with the traffic police and you'd change your opinion completely. 20kph over a speed limit dosn't sound much but it is when you go to pick up the pieces.


...-Gixer

[Gixer]

Originally posted by Vulcan
Wow you can get blow-up-cop dolls now?

Yes, maybe you could trade in your blow-up sheep for one, I think they sell them in Wellington too.


...-Gixer

[FUNKED1]

Baders do you really think I am risking my life driving 60 mph in a 45 mph zone on a deserted (no houses, no businesses, nothing), flat, straight, road, where I can see for a 1/4 mile in any direction?  

The road I described is where the local gendarmes seem to spend most of their radar enforcement efforts.  By sheer coincidence it happens to be the road that Silicon Valley commuters use to bypass the city.  

This road would be safe with a 75 mph limit.  Instead they put a 45 mph limit on it.  The ridiculous limit and the radar officers are there not for safety, but purely to collect revenue from out-of-towners who are using "their" road.

Multiply this situation times a million and you will have some idea of how speed enforcement works in the USA, and why most of us show utter disdain for speed laws.

[Vulcan]

Originally posted by Gixer
Excessive speed on public roads is bad driving, where's the difference?

Speeding on public roads is a cheap thrill. If you really want to speed and have fun take it to the track. 100 times better,far more challanging and more rewarding. Any monkey can drive a car/bike in a straight line and say wow look I'm doing 140kph.

Vulcan spend a couple evenings with the traffic police and you'd change your opinion completely. 20kph over a speed limit dosn't sound much but it is when you go to pick up the pieces.


...-Gixer

bad driving doesn't have to mean fast driving. Get over yourself.

[baders]

Originally posted by FUNKED1
Baders do you really think I am risking my life driving 60 mph in a 45 mph zone on a deserted (no houses, no businesses, nothing), flat, straight, road, where I can see for a 1/4 mile in any direction?  
 

Yes I do think that. Many is the time when we would say to ourselves "how the hell could this crash happen ??" Yet they do.

I'm out of that side of things now, gone into marine rescue & glad of it. I'd seen enough.

How about you go down to your local Emergency Service people & ask THEM what its really like, maybe go for a ride with them.

Vulcan, you better do the same.

[Vulcan]

Originally posted by baders
Yes I do think that. Many is the time when we would say to ourselves "how the hell could this crash happen ??" Yet they do.

I'm out of that side of things now, gone into marine rescue & glad of it. I'd seen enough.

How about you go down to your local Emergency Service people & ask THEM what its really like, maybe go for a ride with them.

Vulcan, you better do the same.

Why? whats your point?

Why don't you and Gixer get off your little soap boxes and take some literacy lessons you pair of uneducated neanderthals.

Where do I state I speed in this thread?

Where do I advocate speeding in this thread?

I didn't. First I noted I was ticketed whilst travelling within the speed limit. Second I noted that our government is more interested in the revenue gathering than actually get the road toll down.

I live on the most notorious road in our country for accidents for 5 years. Every weekend I heard the ambulances, fire engines, helicopters go buy.  And guess what ... those accidents were NOT the result of speeding, those accidents where the result of poor road designs and people not watching what they're doing.

So what did our glorious road-nazi's do to fix this stretch of road? The dropped the speed limit from 100km/h to 80km/h and put a fixed speed camera in. Well guess what, a 80km/h headon collision (net 160km/h) is gonna have this many more survivors than a 100km/h (net 200km/h) headon: 0, NIL, nada, zip.

What did they achieve from this exercise... revenue.

[Dinger]

and again, check out the links I posted.  More accidents have as a listed cause someone going considerably under the speed limit than someone going over the limit.
Of the top of my head, there are four ways an accident can occur:

A) Mechanical/Operator failure
B) Road Hazard
C) loss of control (Failure to stay on the road)
D) Other automobiles.

A-C) all involve speed, but the speed is different for each vehicle.  There's no way one of your road trains has the same mechanical and maneuverability characteristics as funked's WRX.
D) on the other hand, is reduced by generally homogeonous speeds. The shear between a high-speed vehicle and a low-speed one is extremely dangerous. I can't speak for Australia, but from what I've seen in continental Europe, the shear (120 mph cars braking for 50 mph trucks) is much greater than in the US; coincidentally they have a much higher fatality rate per mile driven.
In the US, you get situations where every car is going between 5 and 20 mph over the limit, and cops sit around and pick off people at random.  Does it contribute to road safety? No. Is it safer to drive at the speed limit? No. Doing so would only increasae the shear and the chances for vehicle-on-vehicle crashes.

[FUNKED1]

Baders, I have law enforcement and emergency room and EMT personnel in the family, so you don't have to scare me with horror stories.  I've heard all the nasty stories, seen tons of accident site photos, and had people close to me in horrible accidents.  I know what happens to meat in a car crash.

But with all due respect, you only view accidents after they already happened, and my understanding is that your training is medical not technical, so I would not put much stock in your assessments of accident causes.

Speed increases the amount of kinetic energy available to damage occupants in an accident, but it doesn't really make an accident more probable.  There are many other factors to consider as others in this thread have noted.

In any case, the whole point of automobile travel is to get from point A to point B in timely fashion.  Risk of death or serious injury may increase as speed of travel increases.  But obviously the risk is acceptable in light of the time saved - or else we would walk everywhere.  It's really of question of how much risk are you willing to take on in return for reduced travel time.  

For my part, I keep my speed low enough so that travel is sufficiently safe for me.  I don't have accidents that have anything to do with speed.  I don't even get close to having accidents that have anything to do with speed. If the safe speed is higher than the speed limit, then I am going to violate that limit when circumstances allow.

[Torque]

One word Autobahn