Comment by roenxi
1 month ago
The attitude of all boundaries being fuzzy is probably more harmful than anything else. You end up with a bunch of laws that aren't laws but just overdone public guidelines. A speed limit should be the limit. If we're agreeing on a Speed Recommended then it should be called that instead. Those are states with a speed limit and then they've encoded the limit in the law as (limit - 5). It doesn't change much except to annoy the pedants and make it harder to figure out what is actually legal.
The attitude that ignores the reality that there is no such thing as a perfect measuring instrument...
If you make the law that simplistic, then any good lawyer can void any ticket because no one can actually prove the charge. That will surely be better.
But if the limit is N and the claim is that you did N+10, then it doesn't matter how accurate the measurement is, you definitely did something over N. They don't have to prove something unprovable, they only have to prove that their measurments have always been consistently within a range of error that is nowhere near 10.
Removing some utility for abuse (which could also be targeted/prejudicial/discrimination abuse) is a net positive.
The real world is not as neat as ideals. The real world IS fuzzy, and can not be wished or ignored away.
> But if the limit is N and the claim is that you did N+10, then it doesn't matter how accurate the measurement is, you definitely did something over N.
That isn't correct on a couple of levels. Firstly, the accuracy could be +-11 so the accuracy still matters for working out if something happened. Secondly if the accuracy is +-0.01 then if it clocks you at N+1 then we still know you've broken the law, no argument needed.
Fundamentally you're just arguing that the law is offset by 10. That doesn't really addressed the major issue, which is why offsetting the law by 10 has helped. We may as well offset the law by 0 - then the law could be interpreted by looking up the value in the rulebook instead of having to calculate a different value.
> The real world is not as neat as ideals. The real world IS fuzzy, and can not be wished or ignored away.
Sure, but we may observe that routinely offsetting the value in the law by a constant doesn't change that. In fact it only adds ambiguity because the constant probably isn't written down or consistently determined.
Not having the fuzzy zone on speed limits will make people go too slow and build traffic. You're meant to drive right up to the limit and anyone with an analog speedometer has to deal with some visual inaccuracy. It is ridiculous to punish people because the speed limit was 45 and someone is going 46 when 45 isn't even clearly marked on the speedometer for these cars.
Funny you should mention speed recommended, we have just the placard: https://imgur.com/a/R3ZeM5A
Usually spotted near very sharp turns on highway exits. They don't force you to slow down, but unless you want to suddenly switch lanes to ones 20 meters below you probably want to.
Shouldn't there be some fuzzy laws and some not?
Speed limits are something that people could break through a moment of inattention, so maybe there should be some resilience, even though there is a numerical limit.
On the other hand "high crimes and misdemeanors" might be purposefully vague.
Yes and no. The speeder will always drive on the limit plus tolerance. Trucks in Germany are limited to 80 km/h, there are still 'races' between two trucks overtaking each other at their 80.