Quote :

"There are END SCHOOL ZONE signs, but no school zone signs, either, except for "SCHOOL" painted across the road"

10/24/2011 12:51:39 PM

Quote :

"Whatever--base tickets don't affect your insurance and don't have a fine associated with them. They just notify your command, and my command doesn't seem to care too much. If you get too many tickets, they'll suspend your base driving privileges, but it's pretty tough for things to get to that point"

Towards the end of my enlistment I got two tickets in the same night, from the same douche MP. I was getting off nightcrew at like 3pm headed out of base to get some grub...got pulled over for something like 4 over because MP thought I must be drunk to be driving around that late. Got a 4 over ticket. On the way back in, at a totally different part of the base, the same asshole pulls me over again for 3 over or something stupid like that (granted I should of been paying more attention). Gave me another BS ticket. The points of both of those would put me into base drivin privileged suspension zone, but luckily I was friends with an E-8 high up in the MP chain and was able to get one ticket dismissed on technicality.

Quote :

"Shit like that is why I want out of the military, even though I enjoy stuff like, say, combat deployments."

Agreed 100%. After I made E-5 and as a result got my own barracks room (as well as running my own crew of aircraft maintainers at work), I left the door cracked (like no light showing through, just not 100% closed) while I was taking a shower. While in the shower I hear screaming from inside my room. I grab a towel, hustle the hell into the room, and find what looks like a fresh-from-the-field (aka not an airwing guy) E-8 screaming at the top of his lungs about securing my room. He's all like STAND AT ATTENTION WHEN I TALK TO YOU. So he gets to yell at me for a couple minutes about how he coulda stole my wallet (literally his only point) and I just have to stand there and take it. It felt like boot camp all over again...even though I was pretty damn far from boot camp, as my rank and responsibilities at work attested. Granted I had never planned on being a lifer, but that experience was one of the main reasons [among 10 others] I got out.

I'm imagine the situations wouldn't be that bad as an officer, but as you mention they're still there.





^ what was he supposed to bust out his ESP to figure out the enforcement times and speed limit?

10/24/2011 12:54:10 PM

Anyone not daydreaming would go the same speed limit has the cars around him. Especially if he's passing them at speeds of 25+ mph.

On a 4 lane highway, I know they built that road for heavy traffic. And if indeed, he were speeding when school let in or out, I guarantee you other people were on the road.

A lot of them.


Also, the first thing you do when you see "SCHOOL" painted on the ground is to look around you for a school.

I don't buy that a flashing sign wasn't there notifying him that the school zone speed limit was in effect. We need pictures.

[Edited on October 24, 2011 at 1:22 PM. Reason : .]

10/24/2011 1:21:32 PM

To be fair, I fnally did find a sign...it was susPended overhead, with a flashing light saying 20 mph when flashing. It took 6 trips through the school zone while actively looking for it before I found the sign. There is no sign in the normal location beside the road, and the 20-mph zone is no-kidding only 450 FEET long.

^there ya go, beat me to it.

There was other traffic, I was going maybe 5 mph faster and irritated that they were doing what I though was slightly under the speed limit in both lanes.

[Edited on October 24, 2011 at 1:34 PM. Reason : ]

10/24/2011 1:25:57 PM

I have a couple speed bumps for you Duke

10/24/2011 1:30:33 PM

i'm too lazy to push my gas pedal down far enough to go this fast.

10/24/2011 1:35:31 PM

I have mixed feeling about school zones and speeding tickets,personally.

They are an inconvenience and I feel like it should be the responsibility of the person crossing the street to watch out for cars. In a fight between a speeding car and human, the car will win every time.
The natural order of life dictates you respect the forces more powerful than you. The other way around is unnatural.

For whatever reason, people think drivers have more responsibility than the kids crossing the road

I say if their guardians ain't watchin them and they're too young to know better, and they cross the road and get hit, it's the guardian's fault.

10/24/2011 1:40:16 PM

Quote :

"40 in a 35"

thats all i need to read. you stupid fuck

Quote :

"hassling me and causing problems"

if you do the speed limit you dont have to worry about people bothering you at all.

STOP DRIVING LIKE A NIGGER AND COMPLAINING ABOUT IT!!

[Edited on October 24, 2011 at 1:46 PM. Reason : fb]

10/24/2011 1:44:26 PM

Quote :

"For whatever reason, people think drivers have more responsibility than the kids crossing the road "

And rightfully so. I mean, I hear you on it being the guardian's fault, but I'm all for reduced speed in school zones...but fuck, a 150-yard zone where it drops from 40 to 20 then back up to 40 is stupid...if they're going to do it, it should be much longer, and it should be marked on the side of the road like every other speed limit sign, especially when there are three overhead yellow flashing lights in about a 2 block stretch for other stuff.

Of course, in this case, it's a 4 lane divided hwy and no kids cross it, anyway...and the school is somewhat set back and on the opposite side of the hwy. I don't know that there's much utility in this particular 20-mph zone.

[Edited on October 24, 2011 at 2:15 PM. Reason : ^obvious troll is obvious. Fuck off.]

10/24/2011 2:09:11 PM

seriously Will...

10/24/2011 2:12:18 PM

then you should bring this up at your local town meeting if its a concern.

its that long and that limit for a reason. the world doesnt revolve around theDuke, or Ragged, so we have to follow the laws like everyone else

10/24/2011 2:13:55 PM

Ever consider that maybe it's "only 450 feet" because that's a really, really long distance for an 8 year old to walk? The school zones aren't sized for where they think vehicles will be travelling; they're sized for where they think the kids will be.

By the way, it takes 15-ish seconds to go 20mph through your 450ft school zone. It takes almost 8 seconds to go through it at 40mph. Was your traffic stop and the time it took you to deal with the ticket longer than 7 seconds?

10/24/2011 3:05:25 PM

First of all, I generally don't speed because I'm in a hurry. I speed because I don't like driving ridiculously slow. That was certainly the case on that day, and again today (I mean, today I didn't even know what the guy was getting pissy for until he told me...I mean, 5-over? Really? In a place where the speed limit should--even conservatively to be in line with normal roads--be 10 mph higher anyway? Get fucked.) I didn't give a damn about 10 minutes, let alone 10 seconds. I didn't care about the 10 minutes the traffic stop cost me. Hell, I wouldn't even care all that much about the $450 fine if it wasn't a bullshit situation.

Second of all, let's get off the safety high-horse. The great majority of the way we deal with speed limits isn't about safety--it's about revenue. Now, in the case of the school zone, I think the fact that a school zone exists there is due to safety concerns, but I think that it was established in a thoughtless, formulaic way, and if people were really concerned about safety, they should make it a quarter or half-mile long instead of 450'. A zone that short yields one of three undesirable outcomes: (a) people blow it off, (b) people let off the gas upon reaching it, but prob never actually reduce their speed by 20 mph before it's time to speed up again, or (c) they drive along at 50 mph, then hit the brakes in traffic and reduce their speed to 25 mph for 10-15 seconds, then speed back up, which isn't all that useful in my mind, and furthermore constitutes somewhat of a safety concern of its own. On top of that, in any of the cases, if you actually want to enforce it, you by definition have a cop writing tickets either right as people pass the sign to change the speed limit, or as they're speeding up to exit the zone, or pretty close to both. Anywhere else, people would cry foul, and it generally isn't done. I think some places even have laws against it (or at least dept policies).

Finally, and I guess you'll have to take my word for it on this one, but sizing the zone for where they think kids will be is a stretch. There aren't any kids here. There aren't kids crossing the road there, there aren't kids outside in front of the school near there, and if there were, the way that they have the whole thing set up wouldn't do a goddamn bit of good to begin with for the aforementioned reasons. What they have is a school zone in a place where they arguably don't need one, designed in a completely ineffective manner, poorly marked so that even if it needed to be there and was hypothetically a useful setup, there's a good chance that people wouldn't even be aware of it; and unenforceable without bullshit tactics, with that enforcement then done in a way that's designed more for stuffing coffers than protecting children.

[Edited on October 24, 2011 at 10:34 PM. Reason : ]

10/24/2011 10:32:25 PM

why won't you just go the speed limit bruh

10/24/2011 10:36:06 PM

Goddamn, I would have in this case if they would have put the sign where normal people look for speed limit signs, and if there had been time for my car to slow down between where the speed limit changed and where the cop was hiding behind a dumpster to issue tickets. Even if you happen to be looking skyward for speed limit signs, you'd have to either just know ahead of time that this zone was there and start slowing down early, or else stand on the brakes when you reached the speed limit change, risk getting rear-ended, then drive along at a crawl for 10 seconds before speeding back up again.

I have been making an effort not to use this word lately, but there is no other way to describe this than motherfucking retarded.


...but in general, speed limits are set to be very conservative limits for a little old lady who has no idea what she's doing, in a Buick with worn out shocks, cheap brakes and tires, at night, in the rain.

Forgive me if, after many years of experience with high performance cars and numerous times receiving formal instruction on a racetrack, while driving an impeccably maintained vehicle with supercar-level acceleration, cornering, and braking ability, along with modern safety features like ABS/traction/stability control, on dry pavement, as a 32-year old with 20/15 vision, and after seeing how traffic flows in nearly all of the many other countries I've been to, I feel that our speed limits are generally absurdly slow.

10/24/2011 10:51:22 PM

also, read this thread and see how many instances were stupid BS that a soccer mom in a minivan (particularly if not on a military base or in one particular small town on an island in WA) would never, ever get hassled for.

I mean without reviewing the details and just remembering a few off the top of my head, we're talking shit like 5 mph over, or accelerating quickly, or matching the description of a [different] car that had been observed playing the stereo at high volume, riding a motorcycle too closely to the outside of the lane, near the white line. The majority of this stuff is just due to MPs (or more often, civilian cops contracted on base) bored out of their skulls, small town cops both bored out of their skulls and needing to stuff the coffers in a small municipality, and profiling because I'm driving high performance cars and motorcycles.

[Edited on October 24, 2011 at 11:15 PM. Reason : good thing I'm not black, or I'd REALLY be screwed.]

10/24/2011 11:15:18 PM

Sorry erica

10/25/2011 12:22:59 AM

Going only 5mph over, being constantly aware of the fact, and having been disciplined multiple times for it, you just look foolish for not simply slowing down 5mph. And you say you don't like "going ridiculously slow", but it's 5mph slower. I mean really man, that's just asking for it.


That being said, I speed everywhere.

10/25/2011 12:42:31 AM

theDuke866, what rank/type of people typically have the blue decals? It's been a long time since I've lived on/near bases and don't remember much stuff like that. My girlfriend's parents I thought both had blue decals, and I know for a fact her mother has one. Her mother is the Marine Corp GIO with the DOD. I think her rank is CMC LFF-2 (I know CMC is Commandant of the Marine Corps right? No idea about the later bit--and she said she's a higher rank than she was three years ago when I remember seeing that rank). She works in the Pentagon and I believe her boss is a Secretary or something like that. I doubt her Dad has a blue decal unless he has one because the family is under some kind of "protected" classification--he's a Head Aeronautical Engineer and supposed to be an international expert on a type of helicopter.

10/25/2011 1:18:14 AM

once or twice getting pulled over for some bullshit I could understand but how many times is it now?

This thread is lame

10/25/2011 8:22:51 AM

Officer ranks have blue tags, I believe 2nd loltenant up

generally contractors have green tags i believe. Her mom probably just put blue tags on all of the vehicles if she has reason to drive them

10/25/2011 8:41:23 AM

Got a couple to add to the list here:

1. Got pulled on a base a few months ago. 4-lane road with a center turning lane, with a 25-mph speed limit. It then goes to 35-mph, and I started speeding up where the limit changes.

Well, apparently the speed limit changes in a different spot (by prob 200 yards) depending on what side of the road you're on. A cop (civ contract cop, not MP...always the ones on base who are a pain in the ass) pulled me over because he saw me speeding up too soon. No speed measurement or anything, and no ticket...just saw me speeding up 200 yards to early for the side of the road that I was on.


2. Was up in Raleigh last month on leave, and was in the 'Vette accelerating on to the Beltline from Hillsborough St. Just as the onramp joined the Beltline, I got tagged with instant-on and immediately stood on the brakes. I don't really know how fast I was going; certainly some amount over the 55-mph speed limit, but I was accelerating [rapidly] and merging with traffic, not watching the speedometer.

...so yes, it is possible to get ticketed on an onramp (just like it's possible to have been ticketed by two different Pullen Park Police, etc, etc).

At any rate, he told me twice that he never got a reading on his RADAR gun due to my braking. I think what he meant was that I braked so hard that by the time his gun registered a speed, it wasn't over the speed limit. He even said that I should take it to court, which of course, I did (not in person; hired a traffic lawyer). The charge was immediately dismissed.


___________________

Oh, and on the last one, I wrote a letter to the court, and they found me guilty of the charge and liable for the fine, but declined to adjudicate it. Essentially that means that they get their money and they're happy, and then it doesn't go on my record.

[Edited on August 24, 2012 at 9:41 PM. Reason : ]

8/24/2012 9:25:11 PM

Quote :

"...so yes, it is possible to get ticketed on an onramp (just like it's possible to have been ticketed by two different Pullen Park Police, etc, etc)."

Is this really surprising?

8/24/2012 9:43:04 PM

Quote :

"Oh, and on the last one, I wrote a letter to the court, and they found me guilty of the charge and liable for the fine, but declined to adjudicate it. Essentially that means that they get their money and they're happy, and then it doesn't go on my record."

WTF? Teach me your ways.

8/24/2012 10:18:12 PM

lead feet itt

8/25/2012 12:37:43 PM

I just go to court and get a dismissal every time.

8/25/2012 12:41:52 PM

8/25/2012 2:23:47 PM

Only Boss Hogg can get away with stealing bandwidth from HazzardNet.com

8/25/2012 2:36:52 PM

Someday the mountain might get me but the law never will.

8/25/2012 4:05:42 PM

Man, I hadn't been pulled in a while. Got a written warning the other day for 49/30. It was in a section of town where there are 2-3 lanes in each direction, and the speed limit drops from 45-30 for maybe a 1/4 to 1/2 mile. I had just exited the congested downtown area and was speeding back up; apparently I did it before the actual posted limit changed. Whatever, I'm more concerned with what speed the conditions rate than what the signs say. The cop was really cool, aside from just giving a warning instead of a ticket.

10/31/2013 12:27:00 PM

So what will you do one day when your license gets taken away?

10/31/2013 1:14:17 PM

Don't know; I have zero points on my license, so I haven't given that much thought.

10/31/2013 1:47:57 PM

Quote :

"Forgive me if, after many years of experience with high performance cars and numerous times receiving formal instruction on a racetrack, while driving an impeccably maintained vehicle with supercar-level acceleration, cornering, and braking ability, along with modern safety features like ABS/traction/stability control, on dry pavement, as a 32-year old with 20/15 vision, and after seeing how traffic flows in nearly all of the many other countries I've been to, I feel that our speed limits are generally absurdly slow. "

would you really want everyone to drive at a pace that you are comfortable with in you supercar, when the rest of the world drives a beater that can't break 100 without becoming a smear on the asphalt?

10/31/2013 2:08:37 PM

What about the day when your driving kills someone?

10/31/2013 4:04:41 PM

I've never seen someone speeding wreck because of speeding, they wreck because some idiot thinks 45mph is reasonable.

10/31/2013 5:32:09 PM