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Judge Says You Can Warn Others About Speed Traps
cartechboy writes "Speeding is against the law, and yes, even going 5 mph over the speed limit is breaking the law. But everyone does it, right? What about when you see a cop? Some cops are ticketing people for notifying fellow motorists about speed traps. In Florida, Ryan Kintner simply flashed his high-beams to warning oncoming cars that there was a cop ahead. He was given a ticket for doing so. He went to court to fight the ticket, and a judge ruled that flashing lights are the equivalent of free speech, thus he had every right to flash his lights to warn oncoming cars."
I bet some police officers are mighty pissed off about this ruling, but as someone who frequently drives with the lights on to warn fellow motorists of speed traps, I am pleased.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Nice one judge
I bet Waze is relieved that their business model is safe.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
It seems like the police periodically 'forget' or ignore things they have been told are illegal, but which they'd prefer to keep doing.
Because they seem to periodically act as if they're legally allowed to delete the contents of your cell phone when you record them doing something illegal.
And, really, if they can overtly ticket you for warning of their speed trap, they'll just find something else to charge you with.
And people wonder why trust for the police is dwindling.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
This ruling won't stop cops from ticketing you, forcing you to leave work to appear in court, and paying the court costs after the ticket is dismissed. Cops can and do write invalid tickets simply to be dicks, and there's nothing you can do about it.
Our justice system needs to ensure that the victim of a false accusation of a crime is made whole again.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
A sane ruling on the matter...
and in Florida...
[Update;} I'm back from the window, but I didn't see neither a lake of fire *nor* four horsemen. :\
I didn't read this specific article, but the Judge made the comment along the lines of: Flashing your lights is a genuine part of driving safely, therefore it shouldn't be restricted or ticketed. Otherwise people might be inclined to not flash their lights when they should.
This judge actually sounds intelligent.
I use Waze all the time (though looking for a replacement since it's been bought by Google). But the idea of community driven police/road hazard warnings is really the next step in making life better for motorists. Then I'm not warning a handful of people, I'm warning everyone for the next fifteen minutes that cares to know...
Police always say they put up speed traps to slow people down so they should be fine with others being warned.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Speedtraps can pose a substantial danger, especially at high speeds (folks slam breaks, cops pull into the left lane from a standstill, or like they like to do it in Mass, back up on the emergency lane to get back into the trap). That's why they are made illegal in some states. And if there's a hazard down the road, you bet I should have a right to warn and be warned about it!
To all those not in this jurisdiction, you simply don't exist and are only a figment of your imagination.
It happened too right here and the judge said something different but it was accepted. The guy receives a ticket for speeding. So he accepts it and goes away. While going away he flashes his headlights to say theres a cop and that same cop see's him flashing his headlights. He receives a ticket. In front of the judge the person tells him that a police officer is there for the security of the people (which is part of their main job by the way )and not give tickets for cash. So for helping a fellow officer, he was helping an officer doing so. The judge accepted in favor of the citizen because of what the person said made a lot of sense. Helping an officer is not illegal and by doing so his ticket was invalid.
PC Gaming enthousiast that gives comments, opinions and reviews on Games. I'm just having fun with games while doing let
dear god what's happening to the slashdot UI???
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I am surprised that Police accused him of warning the others with high beams. This just doesn't fly, as judge has shown.
What happens elsewhere is that you are sometimes (lawfully) ticketed for using high beams against allowed exceptions such as:
- only at night (dusk till dawn),
- only if it doesn't blind other drivers or pedestrians,
- only if there is no car coming from other direction, and no car in front (could be blinded through mirror reflection),
- in other conditions only to warn other drivers about DANGER. Police speedtrap is not considered danger by the law.
I suppose USA road law has similar rules for use of high beams. "Flashing lights" means something different as far as I could find, and the rest of road law is too complicated to find applicable section quickly.
Just don't get caught.
The 1st link is to the Florida case that was resolved last year. The 2nd and 3rd links are about a Missouri case that was decided this week and only the 2nd even mentions the Florida case. The summary makes it sound like this is all about the Florida case.
The point stands, i.e., this has been ok'd in court in 2 jurisdictions, but what in the actual fuck, Soulskill?
If the guy received a ticket then drove off and flashed his lights to warn other motorists of a speed trap, isn't the cop behind him? How did the cop see him flash his lights? Was it nighttime?
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Mouth off to a cop and see how precious your fucking rights are in Amerikkka. Fags.
Previous top-level comment, by "For a Free Internet":
We need COMMUNISM to stop amerikkka's fascistic police state!!!
Hmm. I wonder if these two might be the same poster!??! Gotta remember to always be consistent in checking that "Post Anonymously" box.
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(drops of blood on paper)
in other conditions only to warn other drivers about DANGER
Going to fast is dangerous, hence the speed limits right? So you are flashing your lights simply to warn someone they are engaging in dangerous behavior.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
These cases have been tried in various municipalities and at state levels. From what I can remember, they have always been ruled in favor of the light flasher, and almost always as under free speech reasons.
That said, this might be the first time I've seen it adjudicated at a federal level.
Communism has always resulted in expansion of freedom and in no cases resembled a police state.
This case puts the lie to arguments about safety. If driving the speed limit made everyone safe then why would the cops object to an action that makes people drive the speed limit? On the other hand, if the warning threatens revenue, the case makes perfect sense.
Glad to see the judge valued speech over dollars. Hope that sort of radical thinking catches on.
What about every other state, territory, and possession?
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
A summer or two ago I saw a kid holding a sign that said "Speed trap ahead!". Over the next hill was a cop, mostly hidden by some bushes. The next stop light had another kid with a sign: "Speed Trap tips" and had a jar full of cash. Good show kids, good show...
if (it != oneThing) it = another;
Mouth off to a cop and see how precious your fucking rights are in Amerikkka. Fags.
Mouthing off to a cop is pretty STUPID because there is *never* an upside to it. At best it is neutral if the cop decides to ignore you, but all other outcomes go down hill from there. It's best to just be respectful, stay calm and do what they tell you. You don't have to answer any questions or consent to any searches (and I suggest you not do either), but there is absolutely no sense in mouthing off.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I don't see how this is different from warning people not to break other laws.
The difference is in this case you are warning people that they will get caught for breaking a law, and they will get caught in about a minute if they don't stop--as opposed to a more general "you shouldn't deal drugs because EVENTUALLY someone will catch you." Philosophically, it's like telling a drug dealer "hide your stash because a cop is coming."
The only difference is that this is a more widespread behavior, so people are generally more okay with it. It's still basically conspiracy (in this case, conspiracy to break the speed limit), and it carries jailtime if they want to pursue it. (The judge here may have bought the free speech argument--more likely, he didn't want to risk getting overturned on appeal. Either way, it doesn't mean every judge will.)
That is above the 7MPH allowance for speedometer error correct?
If the authorities really want to reduce speeding, they should be happy about this. When drivers are warned of a speed trap, they slow down. Mission accomplished.
"If it's real, then it gets more interesting the closer you examine it. If it's not real, just the opposite is true." -
Seems as though the police should actually want people to know about the speed traps. I mean, the ultimate goal for the police is to have everyone follow the law. If people know about an upcoming speed trap, then they'll slow down to the speed limit. If they don't know about the speed trap, then they'll continue to endanger those around them by driving too fast. </delightfully naive>
Of course, we all know that what the police really want is ticket revenue. The more law breakers there are, the more revenue they get, and hence they will try to stop people from warning others to obey the law. This system is rather broken.
You assume that the justice system is calibrated incorrectly. Ideally, the penalty for speeding is designed to disincentivize the behavior and is multiplied to make up for the discount from the low probability of getting caught. A 10% chance of a $200 ticket, for example, or a 5% chance of a $400 ticket. If you warn people where speed traps are, you change the chance of getting caught, which means the fine is no longer as effective a deterrent.
This was actually a big problem with red light cameras--they made more people get caught, which made the expected penalty MUCH higher than it should have been.
This is the problem with the continual militarization of police forces. They start to turn into jack-booted thugs, and flashing your lights becomes a matter of national security. Thirty years ago there probably wasn't a cop anywhere who would have given a hairy rodent's rear whether a motorist warned others about his presence, let alone actually go to the trouble of writing a ticket.
Proverbs 21:19
People flashing headlights make other drivers slow down. In fact, flashing lights make more people slow down than a cop giving out a few tickets.
Any cop living up to the motto "To serve and protect" should be happy about this.
Personally, I would rather see less ticketing for speeding and more ticketing for left-lane cloggers who refuse to move over and let faster traffic by.
If my wife is driving and we are, unbeknownst to me, approaching a speed trap and I warn her to slow down, am I committing a crime?
If they pull me over for this, what do they charge me with?
Failure to Pay Toll
The doctrine of porcine infallibility has been given a kick squarely in the bollocks.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
...The difference is in this case you are warning people that they will get caught for breaking a law, and they will get caught in about a minute if they don't stop--as opposed to a more general "you shouldn't deal drugs because EVENTUALLY someone will catch you."
So ... if I see someone starting a fight in a bar, and I try and cool it down by shouting to him "Don't be an idiot! There's a cop outside in the street!" .... I should be done for... what, exactly?
This was addressed in NY state in '94. The results was that flashing headlights was not a crime.
The funny thing is people don't flash if they think your brights are on anymore. They keep their brights on for a few seconds. That is a crime.
Star Trek, there maybe hope.
Full disclosure: I would rather the police not be allowed to ticket you for flashing your lights to warn others. That said, depending on the time of day, could flashing lights still get you a ticket? If it's during the evening, the law requires that you have your lights in working order, and on at all times. So technically, you'd be breaking the law by flashing your lights, no? Of course this is a very strict reading of the law...
Mouth off to a cop and see how precious your fucking rights are in Amerikkka. Fags.
Mouthing off to a cop is pretty STUPID because there is *never* an upside to it. At best it is neutral if the cop decides to ignore you, but all other outcomes go down hill from there. It's best to just be respectful, stay calm and do what they tell you. You don't have to answer any questions or consent to any searches (and I suggest you not do either), but there is absolutely no sense in mouthing off.
If you're white and middle-aged enough, and you can bait the cop into doing something stupid enough, and you can get the ACLU involved, then you can actually get yourself a nice cash settlement and get the local "law enforcement" to go to anger management and remedial US Constitution classes. I wouldn't try it if you didn't meet enough of the above qualifications.
I am not a crackpot.
Post to undue accidental mod; ignore
About 10 years ago, or it could have been longer, we had a similar case in Australia. The driver in question argued that he was just informing other drivers to drive safely. The magistrate agreed with the argument and the charges were dropped. Suffice it to say, the police were mightily annoyed, but there is nothing they can do about it now.
In my many years of owning cars, nearly every one of their speedometers has been +-(3-5mph) off. Older cars worse than newer ones. Some of them were accurate at lower speeds around 25, but then even up to 10mph off at the high end. It seemed common enough that I assumed there has to be some room for error.
In this day of "policing for profit", I'm totally in favor drivers warning other drivers of the nefarious means by which some jurisdictions will stoop in order to relieve people of their hard-earned cash
The implication being that speed limits are set to maximize profit, not safety, because warning other drivers denies cops and the state their quotas and revenues. If it was about safety, the practice would be encouraged as it would cause more people to slow down.
(carefully checks constitution) Here's the relevant restiction on the government:
That's it. All of it. No exceptions. So, no, free speech doesn't have any exemptions. What you are advocating is that we tolerate government acting outside the bounds of its constitutional limits, in violation of the oaths of legislators and judges.
There's the nation's highest law, and then there's a bunch of sophist trash imposed on us by very bad people. Best to remain cognizant of which is which.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
They'll keep right on doing it, without a pause.
Reason being you have to get in front of the judge before you can get the innocent verdict. And most people aren't going to do that. The thing that makes this article noteworthy is because someone finally challenged the police on this point after decades of them doing it.
Same reason why they write traffic tickets in the first place. If absolutely everyone fought them, the court would be choked and cops full time job would be to be in court. They're counting on the average citizen's apathy to keep that from happening. And it happens to work.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
When drivers are warned of a speed trap, they slow down. Mission accomplished.
Not if they only slow down when they're warned. The point of a penalty is to permanently hammer home, to one driver at a time, the point that driving like a dick is not acceptable or legal behaviour.
Before we get into a debate about what's acceptable and what isn't, well, that's why we have things like laws and speed limits, to avoid having to trawl through 7 billion different opinions on what's okay and what isn't. It's the least-worst method anyone's come up with so far.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Lemme just fix that for you:
I mean, the ultimate goals for the police are enjoy an exercise of arbitrary power, to earn ticket income, and to provide an excuse for illegal search and seizure, which in turn serves as a mechanism to provide yet more income, and property.
There you go. Cheers. :)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
If you are lucky, you will get a cop who is reasonable in return. In some cases, you may get the opposite - a copy who is belligerent, abusive, hot-tempered, who might scream at you, push you down, and arrest you just for giving a homeless person your spare change.
Seriously, how will many of these speed-trap cities fund their police force?
This sort of thing is utter crap. If the goal of policing is to make sure people are driving the speed limit, and i warn someone and they do the limit isn't the goal met?
The main road where i live (Ontario) is posted 60 KM/H zone but it turns into a 50 for some unknown reason (same road, same area of mixed commercial) and often there is a cop hiding not far from the 50 sign. I guess for "safety"?
So is driving the speed limit. Time has great value, and the arbitrary declarations of legislators do nothing to erase this signature characteristic.
It's not cynicism. We know why the police issue the vast majority of speeding tickets: To provide income, and to provide an excuse for search and seizure, leading to even more income and property gains. They're generally not saving, protecting, or serving anyone but themselves; And further, in states where unlimited speeds were tried, such as Montana, accident rates went down. In any undertaking, people do better when they aren't bored, are paying the most attention, and are fully engaged in said undertaking.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
We enforce laws to catch the people who feel they don't have to abide by them.
We don't enforce laws purely to make people follow them.
Please help metamoderate.
Speed limits are set significantly lower than the average driver feels safe to drive at. My assumption is that this is so that cops can really pull over anyone they want at any time for whatever reason they want, and they can always say that the person is speeding. It gives the cops the 'right' to break the law as they see fit. If they want to racially profile, they can do so - just pull over the car that contains people with dark skin.
Speed limits are actually completely ineffective - I 'speed' constantly on the highways. But since the limits are ludicrously low (in MA, while the highway speed limit is set to 65, I would estimate that the average speed is 75) - the odds of actually getting caught are very low, since the chances are that they are already busy with another customer. ie, if EVERYONE is speeding, and it takes 5 minutes to write a speeding ticket, let's imagine that about 200 people drive by while the cop is busy writing a ticket - the odds are 1 in 200 that you're actually going to be the one to get the ticket. Realistically, they're higher than that - since I speed on the highway every day and I haven't had a speeding ticket on the highway in 20 years.
If you're white and middle-aged enough, and you can bait the cop into doing something stupid enough, and you can get the ACLU involved, and you can prove it,
FTFY.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
On one hand i agree with you 100% as there are a lot of people driving who behave really badly.
On the other i've been places where the "state limit" is 55 but suddenly becomes a 45 for the next 5 miles with "fines doubled". Sure enough, you often find cops right behind the sign but this is clearly not a revenue tool?
Perhaps instead of a monetary find they could find some suitable punishment. There is a lot of litter on the sides of roads so perhaps they can spend a few hours picking it up?
Sure. If that was the mission. But it isn't.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Hmm I wonder if you've ever fucked anything with 2 X chromosomes. Fag.
How can it not be legal to point out a speed trap when many are announced in advance by the police department and published by local media? For example, near Des Moines, Iowa: http://www.kcci.com/news/traff... Amusingly, one police department near Des Moines publishes the plans on their Facebook page.
So is it then illegal if you're flashing to warn people about a speed trap that happens to be using unmarked/low profile interceptors, because you can see a few of them with their lights on with people pulled over?
Personally, I think the line should be that speed traps should be illegal if there is not a higher-than average accident/fatality rate in a particular location. I'd rather they focused on tailgaters and other people obstructing traffic flow e.g. by driving exactly the same speed in the fast lane as the car in the slow lane so that nobody can pass.
Goddammit just when I get my first +5 the Beta rolls out and kills everything
As someone who feels that traffic cops add nothing of value to society, and exist solely as a source of revenue for the city/state/county, this is a big win.
The next step is that we need to place tracking devices in all cop vehicles, including unmarked ones, with the location data publically available. Have programs like Waze tap in and we can know where all the speed traps are at all times. As long as the cops are public servants operating using our tax dollars, there is no reason not to do this. It's all a matter of public safety- when we DO need help, we know where the cops are and how to get there (or how long it will take to arrive).
Of course, ideally we would just abolish the nanny-state pointless traffic laws like speed limits in the first place.
Tell that to West Germany.
You are absolutely correct. In what world does warning people to stop breaking the law or they are going to face legal consequences a criminal act!?
Why in the world would turning off your head lights cut off your break lights? Your break lights must ALWAYS work.
SECOND THIS!
I'm one of the ones already auto-forwarded to beta. Thank god there was a classic option down near the bottom. Without that I would have had to give up reading slashdot altogether. It's just awful!
Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.
Speech issues aside...
I think it's not a terribly uncommon opinion (I might even be in the majority on this, but maybe not) to feel that speed limits are generally bullshit. Especially on the wide-open highway, which is the most common place to see speedtrap-warning light-flashing, anyway. Bullshit laws should be violated, and it is in everyone's interest for everyone else to ignore them, disrespect them, resist them, mock them, undermine them, and shit upon those who enact them and enforce them. "Fuck you pigs" and so on. I want people to be able to drive 90 MPH in arbitrarily-marked 75 MPH zones, and I want them to get away with breaking the law, just as I hope to get away with breaking the law, too.
Usually. There's a catch, and this is where it gets really fun.
I've been caught speeding several times over the last few decades, and yet despite what I wrote above, about it being good for people to get away with it, I also think that every time I got caught, I deserved it and it was also probably in society's interest that I didn't get away with it. WTF?! Contradiction?
No. I deserved it, not because I was speeding, but because I was inattentive enough to get caught. I really was driving unsafely, but speed wasn't the main safety problem.
Speedtraps are an "are you paying attention?" TEST! And while I want people to generally get away with speeding and for speeding laws to not be successfully enforced, and for the cops who try to enforce them to have horrible days of frustration and failure with nothing to show for it, I don't want people to get away with failing "are you paying attention?" pop quizzes. I'd like everyone to pass those pop quizzes, but of course, we all know not everyone will. And if people fail their pop quizzes too often, I want 'em to flunk out of driving on public roads. So maybe not-so-fast on the "fuck you pigs" that I said above. I usually mean it, but this time, there's a lot less conviction behind the angry words. Sorry, pigs! I suppose I owe one of you a beer for all the "fuck you"s.
Flashers: you're helping daydreamers, space cases, vision-impaired, mirror-makeup queens, drunks, dumbfucks, etc cheat on their pop quizzes. Do you sincerely think that is a good idea? I am totally with you in disrespecting the law and thinking the government is, on average (with some admitted exceptions) is generally evil and that usually good for everyone, that it be opposed, restricted, resisted, mocked, shat-upon, disregarded, etc. But "are you paying attention?" tests really are a good idea and in the interests of public safety, no?
You're not worried about people speeding, but I don't think I have ever sat next to any other driver for very long, who didn't eventually rant about one of those people out there, who is driving like a dumbfuck. The cellphone jabberer is almost cliche, where just driving behind them watching how their car moves, you can tell what they're doing without even needing to see them holding the phone. Testing is how you're going to weed those fuckers out.
All we need, is just for it to be a fair test. It can be sudden and demand some quick reactions, but if it's further away than what a car should reasonably be expected to ever have to deal with, then whoa there. The cop shouldn't have concealment or look like something other than a cop (an "innocent" van, for example). But if you want to implement the test as an "innocent" van that suddenly looks like a cop and then starts measuring your speed so people have one second after that to get under the limit, ok. That sounds like a good test.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
You are further incorrect in making comparisons to criminal behaviour and criminal law. Speeding tickets do not result in arrests. Recipients are not read their rights. Jail time is not the result.
Therefore comparisons to drug traffickers, undercover narcotics operations and all the rest, are overreaching at best, and irrelevant at worst. A speeding motorist is not a Capo in the Mafia.
Ha! No, the joke's on you-- I'm a virgin!
You sir, are an idiot.
Police do not get to keep the money they collect. None of that money is allowed to go back to the police department.
There is a common fallacy when it comes to how the government spends its money. I mean our money.
Money is fungible. A dollar is a dollar is a dollar. It's not like one dollar has higher tensile strength, and another one tastes better. They're all the same. If fines go into the general fund, then where do police funds come from? The general fund? What about when fines go to another fund? Does less money get channeled there, because fines are supporting the difference? Does that not free up that amount of money to be spent where-ever the politicians deem necessary, including the police department?
Whenever the government says "We're not spending those funds there, but other funds." you should be skeptical. They often play a shell game to re-allocate funds in legal, but unsavory ways.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
Following the logic above, it would be something like a conspiracy to commit the crime. Any kind of warning about a cop is apparently conspiring to commit the crime. Personally, I don't get it.
Some days it's just not worth chewing through the restraints.
Enough people use traffic assist programs that you sort of get a hint when everyone is driving fast or everyone suddenly slows down to the speed limit at the same time.
In fact, sometimes, you couldn't speed if you want to because everyone has slowed to the speed limit and there is no place to pass until they sort over to the right lane.
I used to use Trapster but it simply stopped working on the Galaxy S2 (crashes 100% of the time). These days I use Waze.
What other programs do you guys like?
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
that you can see everything from anywhere?
I think any cop who steps across the line of protecting his citizens and doing shit like this should be fired and ejected from the country. Fuckin' cock-suckers are sad excuses for human-beings.
There are some places where the police are individually corrupt and find ways to take forfeited assets for personal gain (I remember a case in New Jersey where the police chief's girlfriend kept winning auctions for forfeited property at amazingly low prices because nobody else knew it was up for bid), but there are a lot more places where the police departments are organizationally corrupt. So cops driving the cool sports cars they seized, or using seized money to justify more overtime for cops, or cops getting the cool guns from drug or gun dealers, yeah, happens all the time.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
If it's night time, I'll flash my headlights at people to tell them they forgot to turn on their headlights, or to tell them to turn off their brights.
If it's daytime, I usually have my headlights on for increased visibility, and because my car has an "automatic" headlight setting that's smart enough to turn off the lights a minute after I get out of the car so I don't have to worry about whether I left the lights on.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Works extremely well
when I see a pimped out low rider? not become dazzled?
This is somewhat tangential to your point, but conspiracy requires "an overt act in furtherance of the agreement". To use your murder example, discussing a price with a someone is not sufficient. The subject normally also makes a down payment. It's the agreement PLUS the down payment that makes it conspiracy.
When the supposed hit man is actually a cop, they'll get at least two of each component - wait until the person says twice, in two different conversations, that they actually want the person murdered, and they do two overt acts, such as paying the down payment and also buying a gun for the hitman to use, or buying plane tickets to be out of state at the time (alibi).
The main concern I have is about Google getting the record of my location. I just don't care to hand them that data.
Obviously I don't care enough to stop using Waze, it just would be nice to take my data to a more neutral party who could then sell it to Google for a hefty fee.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
To design a windshield with an LED billboard in it.
Then, when I go through a sped trap, my windshield lights and begins scrolling "Speed Trap Alert! Tap your brakes. Hog farm ahead!"
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
You can opt out of beta if you turn off redirection in your browser. I've had redirects disabled for months, and I didn't even realise there was a new site in the works until I had half the articles in my feed showing as complaints about beta.
Thanks for the pointless stock photo of a MP holding a radar gun.
WTF does this story have to do with MP's? Why are you wasting my bandwidth and screen space?
Just because you can attach an image to an article, doesn't mean you should. The slashdot beta is even worse than I first thought: it's encouraging editors to do even more stupid shit.
Difference is in the intention.
Its like helping a thief by telling him to steal after 10 minutes because owner will leave after 10 minutes.
Fuck beta.
Kid-proof tablet..
That would have been a good argument.. However the lower Judge would know it was BS, even the Judge is aware of what flashing high beams signals with a cop sitting/setting a speed trap.
Because of that alone the offender still more then likely would have gone to a higher court. And in the higher court he could have argued he was a acting as civilian officer trying to warn people they're speeding and he was considered for his and there safety.
There are many differences.
drugs != driving too fast
driving too fast != crime
and philosophically, there is nothing wrong with telling a drug dealer "watch out, there are police" --especially when you aren't profiting. PLUS you are saving taxpayers $$ from prison & court costs.
"Free speech" is upheld as the ultimate right... not to be infringed upon accept in very dire situations.."
Explain, then, "free speech zones" and permits to hold gatherings.
There should NEVER be a downside to it, either.
Piles of cash are the only motivation here. Maybe we're better off this way because there would be some officers who would care about justice and the law in very deranged ways that could have more power if money wasn't also a contributing factor. Oh, wait, I forgot we've evolved to equate money directly to justice, righteousness, and prestige. Congratulations, we haven't solved any problems.
We call them 'safety' cameras. Pity they're more likely to be 'slam-on-the-brakes-at-the-last-minute-and-cause-a-shunt' cameras.
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
Sidelights are secondary lights that are on whether your main lights are dipped (low beam) or raised (high beam) and are generally much lower power. More cars are using strips of LED lights in their place since they're always on and don't need to be bright, so the lower power requirements of LED match well. But you'll see those LED lights on but not the main lights.
Those main lights are not the side lights. The LED lights are.
If you have an older car, look at the main lights. There are TWO SETS of lights there.
It's never about the speeding per se, it's about the fines and their monthly quotas.
Maybe Slashdot and/or Dice got bought by Yahoo and we missed the memo?
I really hate to fall on "what if?" arguments, but I on the local radio here they have a lawyer ( shoutout to russmanlaw.com ) on to answer listener's legal questions, and one time one posed a question very much like the situation here. His response was, "what if the person you warn is actually doing something bad? "
What if they are driving drunk and the flash snaps a tiny bit of sense into them, long enough to slow down a bit and drive straight, but as soon as they pass the cop, are off and weaving again.
What if there's an Amber Alert in the area, and the guy you flash those beams to has a kid in the trunk? What if you prevented him from getting pulled over for speeding, when the cops would've seen or heard...
I know it's logically fallacious and one-in-a-million, but I couldn't live with myself if I found out something bad happened because of it. The only downside of not warning oncoming drivers is that maybe they get ticketed.
That I can live with.
"Hey you, you might want to slow down your murdering."
I flash my lights, but its to warn the oncoming traffic that a vehicle is up ahead off the side of the road. I wouldn't want them to run into a parked car. Its purely for the safety of the policeman and the other driver. Why would someone get ticketed for that?
Wait. There are sections of the current constitution that are perfectly clear; the restriction on the government is explicit, and there are absolutely no outs offered. In spite of this, we have ex post facto laws, restrictions on speech, government establishment of Christianity, restrictions on keeping and carrying arms, across the board violations of search and seizure constraints, inversion of the commerce clause, torture, incarceration without recourse to or contact with anything other than the jailers... All this with a constitution that provides a simple mechanism for change when the people can be convinced such change is needed.
Clearly the problem isn't the constitution, or at least, it's not the fundamental problem. The real problem is our corrupt government.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The purpose of speed traps is to reduce speeding and improve road safety. By warning of them you are enhancing their effect. So the judge is correct.