Comment by Thorrez
9 hours ago
Are you asking (1) why I think what I think?
Or are you asking (2) how we wound up in this situation as a society?
(1) I think what I think for several reasons. Basically everyone speeds. Probabilistically that includes he very lawmakers writing the laws, the police, and the road designers. I've also read some articles talking about road design, and in it it's mentioned that the designers factor in that most people will speed if the road conditions are amenable. I've also seen police cars driving around without their lights on, passing people at higher than the speed limit, and when unable to pass, the appear annoyed to me.
(2) I think this situation arose in sort of a "normalization of deviance" manner. Police didn't want to be too strict, or didn't want to bother fighting tickets for people speeding only a little, so only gave tickets for people speeding a lot. Then over time many people realized that, and started speeding a little. More are and more people started speed just to fit in with the surrounding traffic, until eventually everyone was speeding. Peer pressure. I've heard driving the same speed as the surrounding traffic is generally safer than driving significantly slower (or faster). Once everyone is speeding, that includes lawmakers, road designers, and police. And they factor that in when they write laws, design roads, and enforce laws.
There were also fairly contiguous moral panics in the late 1960s (teenage boomers crashing muscle cars) 1970s (fuel use) and early 1980s (slightly older boomers driving drunk) that lead to the regulations being written far in excess of what there's popular support to enforce which is a huge contributor to why the enforcers and judiciary are essentially responsible for dialing it back to something that doesn't make the system look stupid.