Guest Post by Eric Peters
The inevitable has happened.
Volvo just announced that it will limit the top speed of all its new cars to 112 MPH, beginning with the 2021 model year – to “highlight the dangers of speeding.”
But it’s not just top speed Volvo intends to limit.
Continue reading “No Speeding for You!”
Guest Post by Eric Peters
The other day, I “got away” from an armed government worker.
I was “speeding” – that is to say, driving faster than the government decrees to be “safe.” Rounding a curve, I encountered an AGW. In the rearview, I saw him brake and knew he was going to U-turn after me, in order to punish me for harms I hadn’t caused but for rules (and authority) I had affronted.
Rather than stop, I “fled” – and successfully “eluded” the AGW.
Guest Post by Eric Peters
Why should it be a punishable offense to “speed”?
After all, it’s not velocity which causes harm. It’s loss of control, regardless of velocity. Loss of control can happen at any speed – and it’s by no means directly correlated with high speed. If it were, travel by air would amount to assisted suicide. Yet travel by air – at very high speed – is extremely safe.
Interestingly – if you care about saaaaaaaaaaaaafety – most accidents happen at low speeds, at below the posted speed limit. They are the result of not paying attention, following too closely.
Things which aren’t “speeding.”
Loss of control is the the thing that hurts you – or someone else – whether at 35 MPH or 350 MPH.
Loss of control is also objective fact. You either did – or you did not.
Guest Post by Eric Peters
It is increasingly tempting to just go for it.
Scratch that. It is increasingly reasonable to just go for it.
Traffic stops are not what they once were. The fines have become disproportionate, abusive – hundreds of dollars for crimes-agains-no-one such as “speeding” and not having various government stickers, all of them up to date.
Guest Post by Eric Peters
Speeding, like exercise, is good for you. It is lack of motion in both cases that ends up causing problems.
This is no joke.
First of all, “speeding” does not mean driving excessively fast. That is the shibboleth, the cliche, the tired and formulaic claptrap used to justify the roadside ritual of mulcting drivers almost at will – because nearly every driver “speeds” at least a little bit every time he goes for a drive. That is to say, he drives in excess of the posted speed limit – which is always set to ensure exactly that.
Fish in a barrel. 
It’s odd that this fact – obvious to all – largely goes by without any raising of hands, if not pitchforks.
Guest Post by Eric Peters
Did you know that the penalty for speeding is death?
It is something to think about as we head into the Farce of July and the sickly celebration of the freedoms we lost a long time ago. Among these, the right to not be shot to death in the streets over traffic offenses.
Yes, really.
Guest Post by Martin Armstrong
A word to the wise. Any American traveling to Europe, you are better off hiring a limo driver or call Uber than drive yourself. In Europe, they have speed cameras everywhere. If you are 1 KM over the speed limit in Switzerland, the camera goes off and you have a fine. It’s not like America where even on an interstate highway with a 65 mph limit, traffic typically moves at 80 mph and police will start to look at you over 80. Local municipalities are different. Some of them are so broke they make up stuff.
Continue reading “Raising Highway Speeding Tickets to 175% of Your Weekly Income”
Guest Post by Eric Peters
Given how expensive traffic tickets are, it’s amazing so many people won’t buy a good radar detector. Unlike the car you’re driving, it actually is an investment – and not just in terms of the money it will save you.
A good radar detector will also make driving enjoyable again. Instead of hewing to the letter of every ridiculous speed limit – or living in perpetual fear (and inevitable actuality) of being ticketed for exceeding them – you’ll be able to drive again. Which, incidentally, is also a safety advantage. You spend more time watching the road than the speedometer (there is a reason why race cars do not have speedometers).
But let’s run the numbers first.
You’ll pay about $400 or so for a good radar detector. You do not want a bad one – defined as one that either isn’t sensitive enough to pick up police radar until it’s too late or one that picks up too much radar that isn’t police radar – like the radar emanating from automatic doors and other cars equipped with radar-using safety systems such as Blind Spot/Lane Departure Warning systems. Too many boys-who-cried-wolf and you’ll probably be off your guard when the real wolf appears.
This is as bad as it gets.
A North Carolina state trooper shot and killed 29-year-old Daniel Harris — who was not only unarmed, but deaf and mute — just feet from his home, over a speeding violation. According to early reports from neighbors who witnessed the shooting this past Thursday night, Harris was shot and killed “almost immediately” after exiting his vehicle.
He appeared to be trying to communicate with the officer via sign language.
“They should’ve de-escalated and been trained to realize that this is an entirely different situation,” neighbor Mark Barringer said. “You’re pulling someone over who is deaf, they are handicapped. To me, what happened is totally unacceptable.”
Continue reading “North Carolina police kill unarmed deaf, mute man using sign language”
Guest Post by Eric Peters
With real crimes – that is, actions that result in real harm to real people – it is easy enough to objectively define the crime.
You either did – or didn’t take something that belongs to someone else.
You either did – or did not – hurt someone else.
If you did, then it’s right and reasonable that you – the causer of the harm – be held accountable.
“Speeding,” on the other hand, is an odd sort of crime.
In most cases, no harm has been caused to anyone. A statute has been offended, nothing more.
To whom must the “guilty” party make amends?
Tax and spend liberals immediately seized upon this tragedy to push their bullshit storyline about the need for billions in new infrastructure spending. It was surely poor equipment or defective tracks that caused an Amtrak train to derail in Philadelphia, killing at least 7 people. They don’t even wait until the bodies are cold before spinning the disaster for their benefit.
Articles on Marketwatch and other liberal outlets screamed for billions of new spending, as if every road we travel isn’t already under construction. As if local, state and Federal governments don’t already budget billions per year for infrastructure. Liberal control freaks want taxpayers to give them more money so they can pay off contributors, benefactors, and unions with overpriced unnecessary infrastructure projects. It won’t be allocated to replacing ancient sewer pipes because that isn’t sexy and nameable.
The true story is the engineer was driving the train at 106 mph coming around a turn in the tracks where the speed limit was 50 mph. A government union drone killed these people due to his incompetence and recklessness. It had absolutely nothing to do with infrastructure. Multiple trains travel this exact same route every day without derailing. Not one train has ever derailed at this bend in the tracks before yesterday. This man has to be thrown in prison for manslaughter. This is the level of government drone employed across the hundreds of agencies and departments destroying this country. The guy was probably busy ordering an iWatch on his iPhone.
Amtrak sucks $1.4 billion of taxpayer dollars into their vortex of incompetence every year. Approximately $900 million is supposed to be for capital improvements. But the Keynesian loving liberal control freaks want you to give them more of your tax dollars so they can hire more incompetent drones to upgrade our infrastructure at a cost two times what the private market would charge. Watch out for that treeeeee!!!!