New spin on speeding tickets...

Agree with you numerically speaking. Let's do a hypothetical, though, Lee just for fun.

Tomorrow at 2pm, you start driving north on Belmont Ridge. I will have a car heading south on BR with a driver of your choice--would you rather that driver be a guy on his cell phone or a guy who is drunk?!

 

SO if your driving North bound on Belmont going 45mph, and Lee is Driving southbound at 40 mph, each leaving at 2:00 pm, with Lee using his cell phone, and Dog 3 sheets to the wind, what would you use, a quadraic equasion to determine the point they're paths intersect?

 

Nah, they would smack into each other right in the middle of the road.

 

Where in the world do you all come up with this stuff ha ha ha ha ha

First you would only catch me on Belmont ridge in a rare instance as I consider it a potential death trap even without drunks and cell phone users. Cars and trucks driving way too fast on a two lane non separated road. Evergreen Mills rd is another up and coming deadly road for the same reasons.

Anyway myth busters are my heroes and what they say you can take it as truth. I love that show.

Lee j

 

How does Tibby play into this?

 

Okay, so take your pick. Who would you rather have driving toward you on a two-lane road: someone on their cell phone, a drunk guy or a wild teenager?!

 

It depends who is using the cell phone, a girl that just got a horrible call which is long and torturous, or a guy who is calling wife -e that he has just left the office and his call is short and sweet.

Is the drunk guy a big guy and can hold his liqueur real well and is just .08 and paranoid about getting caught so he is driving very carefully. Or is he .3 and a sloppy drunk??

Wild teen no way I want to be on any road with one of them.

Lee j

 

If you want to look at how to implement a ban on cellphone use in cars there are plenty of examples of it having been done successfully around the world. Surprisingly enough there are even lots of nice statistics to quantify the reduction in traffic accidents and fatalities you get for doing it.

I'm sure the VA political response here will be more like "well that was somewhere else, we need a study here first" if the lobbyists get their way. It's a sad fact of life that if you want to push many policies through, you need to find the people who will make money out of it to help you get it done otherwise you'll simply end up a deer in the headlights for the paid lobbyists.

I worked in the UK for a while some years ago for a Telco and when the statistics came out on the number of accidents this behavior was causing they made it a dismissal offense to be on the phone in your car while it was moving, and conference calls started with the statement "anyone in their car confirm that you are not driving". It took around 125,000 distracted drivers off the road instantly LONG before any law was passed.

It would be nice if AT&T or Verizon would do something similar here to start the ball rolling, the evidence is as incontrovertible as it is for seatbelts, yet still people try to argue against it.

 

Comparison is invalid since it is a pure numbers game. For every drunk driver on the road, how many inattentive drivers on cell phones are there???

And as for accidents, I would imagine that the numbers are significantly higher for inattentive (i.e cell phone) than drunks.

You certainly hear as much on the news today about fatal accidents where a cell phone is involved as drunk drivers.

And lastly, how wonder many accidents occur where someone is on a cell phone but it is not known or reported???

 

Reckless driving is defined as 20 mph over the posted speed limit OR in excess of 80 mph.

So 75 on the Greenway is a simple speeding ticket.

 

I was told this morning by my boss that they changed Reckless from 20 to 15 over... can anyone confirm that? It would mean that driving 70 on the beltway can get you a 1 year jail sentence

good thing I try to stay at or under 70, although at times I feel I'm about to get readended doing so since the average speed on the beltway seems to be 75-80.

 

I don't think you can beat this law on 8th Amendment grounds.

I do think it is unconstitutional on other grounds. Hope you don't mind if I just give a link instead of copy and paste.

http://fromzcorner.blogspot.com/2007/07/virginias-unconstitutional-traffic.html

 

I am lucky because I don't have a morning or afternoon commute, and rarely drive these roads. But I was just on the tollroad, which is 55 mph. So 75=20 mph over=reckless=ridiculous. I saw A LOT of cops out today, and saw two people get pulled over who were speeding, but weren't weaving in and out or doing anything dangerous. So I just set my cruise control and relaxed!

Watch out, the cops are out!

 

I had a friend who, about 10 years ago, got ticketed for reckless on Ashburn Road, doing 40mph early on Easter morning.

 

I would much rather see reckless driving given out for going 45 or 50 on DeMott than going 80 on the beltway when traffic is moving along at 70-75+.

 

Ignorance is bliss until one sees those pretty flashing lights in the rear-view mirror.

 

I thought the speed limit on the Greenway was 65

 

Where do you drive where the average speed is 75-80MPH?