Few people with working brains respect the obviously stupid. Which explains why almost everyone disrespects posted speed limits … by ignoring them.
Any law or edict  that is almost universally ignored can be safely presumed stupid. Or – as here – cynically dismissed as a tool for separating people’s money from their persons. Most speed limits (and thus, speeding tickets) fall into this latter category.
None of this is news.
But because speed limits exist as an artificial barometer of reasonable maximum velocities, there is the problem of a generally distorted perception of what constitutes reasonable average velocities.
The Clover who mopes along at say 44 in a 45 contents himself with the thought that he is “doing the speed limit” and feels righteous or at least, justified, about not yielding to the faster-moving traffic stacking up behind him. Even though almost everyone is doing more than the limit – or at least, trying to – he does not question the reasonableness of the statute. Typically, he defends it. Takes the position that whatever the posted maximum is, the fact that it is posted constitutes definitive proof that it is the balls-to-the-wall highest safe speed; that anyone (which is almost everyone) who drives faster deserves a ticket.
And – in his defense – if the lawful maximum is 45, going any faster does expose him to being ticketed.
We all live in constant dread of this.
Which fact explains both the characteristically bunched-up traffic that defines American roadways and the resigned passivity of most American drivers – who have been conditioned to be positively terrified of acceleration.
Never in the history of the car has the average, nothing-special A to B transportation appliance been as potent as today – yet traffic probably flows no faster than it did in 1970 and probably slower, because the consequences for daring to use even 80 percent of the capability of, say, a new Toyota Corolla entail more grief than using 100 percent of the capability of a new Z28 did back in 1970.
If, on the other hand, the speed limit comported with a velocity considerably higher than the just-moping-along average speed of traffic, it would be obvious – even to a Clover – that his low-average velocity is clogging up the works. Social – and legal – pressure would bear down on him.
He’d feel obliged to at least yield.
And – at a stroke – probably two-thirds of what today constitutes illegal (and highly profitable to the state) “speeding” offenses would vanish and the rest of it would be much harder to characterize as a horrific offense against reasonable conduct behind the wheel, as now.
Revenue would of course decrease – but traffic congestion would ease because people would no longer feel so targeted when driving at reasonable speeds.
All of this strikes me as a capital idea. And it’s not just my idea, either.
Speed limits are supposed to be more than just speed averages. They are supposed to be set according to a standard higher than the average. It’s what a limit (or maximum) implies.
How to do this?
Traffic is monitored and the speed limit set such that only about 15 percent of the cars are traveling faster while the remaining 85 percent are traveling at approximately that rate. This “85th percentile” method (see here for technical details) is supposed to be the method for setting speed limits, if we must have them at all. But it’s rarely used anymore, because if it were used, the number of “speeders” would be much reduced – and with it, both “revenue” and the excuse necessary to justify its snatching.
The object of the exercise is not the facilitation of safe, efficient travel but rather the issuance of as many tickets as possible.
This is admitted, often openly.
For example, a memo issued to the highwaymen of Fairfax County, Virginia:
“Two traffic stops is the minimum acceptable daily average, calculated on a monthly basis. Either two summons and one warning must be issued and entered per day on average. (Two warnings are not acceptable). All days, all officers are required to be well-rounded in their production, regardless of minimum standards.”
The bolding, underlining and italics are not mine. They are in the original.
“Well-rounded in their production.”
Indeed.
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How to make a good self driving car? Program it to break the law!
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-18/humans-are-slamming-into-driverless-cars-and-exposing-a-key-flaw
The problem is the mismatch between the law and what is sensible. The law is more broken than the automated cars.
The flow of traffic speed here in Northern California (Marin County-just North of San Francisco) is usually 68-75 MPH but the posted “limit” is 55 (a little further north it’s 65). Clover’s hit 58-60 in the passing lane and a conga line of 10-12 cars starts to develop–frustrated drivers then pull crazy and risky maneuvers to pass on the RIGHT which is very unsafe. Driving the posted limit is usually dangerous.
Wilson you are pretty much right. Driving the speed limit is dangerous. When you have a group of people that would smash in your rear bumper if you are not doing 10 mph over the limit or pass in blind no passing zones then what do you do? The speed limit defined by 90 percent of people is the speed at which they are likely to be pulled over or a jerk from behind them starts road rage. That is not the speed on the sign but 5 to 15 mph over the speed shown on the sign. If you move the number on the sign up another 10 mph then people would just increase their speed another 10 mph unless the police do not allow it. I have seen where they have raised the speed by 10 mph and enforced it strictly. I have never seen such smooth flow of traffic. I have also seen where they raised the limit and police do not enforce it and someone tries to pass a truck and you and others start your road rage because you get mad at the guy passing because he is not going your 90 mph or whatever. A strictly enforced road you do not see that.
Clover,
Your problem is one that can’t be helped. Your are not a snow leopard. You are a Clover. A low creature that feels safe among a herd of others like itself. Those not like itself are viewed with anxiety and hatred, for they are snow leopards – and despise the herd.
” If you move the number on the sign up another 10 mph then people would just increase their speed another 10 mph unless the police do not allow it.”
Ridiculous.
In NH, on our main N/S highway, the speed limit was always 65. Traffic typically flowed at 70-75. Short of major holidays where Massholes are easy prey, there is very little police presence on this road all the way to Canada.
A year or two ago, north of our capitol, they increased the speed limit to 70. Traffic still flows at 70-75. There is still little police presence.
People tend to drive at the speed at which they are comfortable for the conditions… Unless you’re a Clover.
Wilson, passing on the right is dangerous if you’re in the right lane and pass on the shoulder at highway speed. Passing a slowpoke who is obstructing the left or middle lane by going to his right is fine if you have an opening, at least on the highways here in Virginia where I drive.
I haven’t driven in northern CA, so I’m sure you know better than I do about traffic there.
So what’s it like being overtaken on the Autobahn? Watch this short video, and you will see first hand
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Akvm28cKTz8
Or, this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDbLfyB1ug8
The light above the speedo is like the motorcycle talking…. Michael, this speed is beyond my design parameters, I must warn you that sustaining it may damage my components.
https://www.motorists.org/press/montana-no-speed-limit-safety-paradox/
Most safe with NO speed laws.
the mandate that the gendarmerie perform in a manner that renders them “well rounded” immediately made me think of all the donuts they should consume to attain this goal.
Maybe the donut represents a phero’s head and the hole, the place where his brain should be.
There’s another and different perspective about “speed averages” that I hope you would all consider.
These days, our current situation finds ourselves living the American Dream of “just getting by” and we’re driving a nineteen year old vehicle that we nurse along with delicate touch because we can’t afford another car or the cost of major repairs. The car and the car’s drivers have seen better days, it’s true, but we need transportation.
On city roads around town we will typically drive about five miles an hour slower than the posted speed limit, but we do travel in the right-hand “slow lane” and if at all possible we try and do our driving during “off hours” when there’s the least traffic on the byways.
I wanted to share the opinion that not everybody is purposely driving the speed limit or going slow(er) out of malice or to annoy or antagonize those that want to drive faster. Some of us just don’t have the suitable mechanical wherewithal and have to drive with a light foot in order to keep the wheels turning.
Our old vehicle receives regular maintenance and runs fine, but just like an elderly person that can still walk without trouble, it’s likewise obvious that their fast sprinting days are over. That’s the way it is with our car, and that’s why we drive slow(er).
Best to all…
I’m also living the dream of “just getting by” and can relate. In fact my main driver is considerably older than yours, anything under 20 years old is still pretty new by my standards! Despite this I’ve never found it necessary to travel under the speed limit unless on a really bad road that might damage suspension components, or bad weather conditions such as fog or snow. (I don’t think driving the car at say 45 mph instead of 50 or 55 is going to materially affect its performance or reliability in most cases.)
S.O.P. for me on most roads is 5-10 mph above the posted limit, depending on weather and porker/enforcement conditions. Have not had any mechanical problems as a result.
Obsta principiis. Latin for Nip it in the bud. Nip this white ape monkeyshines nonsense about founding government gorillas already. Or of their being of anymore substance than sports and broadway theater thesbians already.
John Adams was no friend of individual liberty. He only wanted the boots he helped keep shined and well licked by mundanes, to be boots of local established Euros here on American shores.
He even took a case against his supposed allies, because that’s what shitbag cousin-fucker powder-wigs like him always do. Tell a bunch of quotable elegant sounding lies, and then skull fuck our families and great grandchildren all into war debt-sodden death in some dark 18th century alleyway, so he can buy his pretty-mouthed congregationist minister an extra mink coat or a new baby penis circumsizer for Christmas or something.
John Adams was the unmitigated cunt who gave America the Sedition Act of 1798, which made it a crime to criticize the federal government or its officers. A faux revolutionary and puritan douchebag with no real ideals or morality whatsoever, when you take a good clean sober look at the sumbitch.
Also the asshole who orally shat In 1796 about Paine that “the Christian religion is, above all the religions that ever prevailed or existed in ancient or modern times, the religion of wisdom, virtue, equity and humanity, let the Blackguard Paine say what he will.”
What a righteously psychotic murdering freemasonic devil he must have been. I’d rather listen to rap music at 200 dB than hear his poisoned prose while he prances in his frilly short pants orating in full dress costumed for long.
John Adams – let me nip you all in your buds and ensure you forthwith gibs me your dollas and not any more to Britain.
http://files.libertyfund.org/pll/quotes/213.html
I’ll throw out this observation: Years ago, I travelled a highway that cut thru the city, and it had stretches were the PSL was 55mph. Traffic would go along at 65+ fairly decently, with the occasional accident causing blockages. The city put up the photo radar ticketing machines. For the first few weeks, the flashbulb was constantly going off as the traffic continued to whizz by. After that, the freeway would jam to about a mile at the spot where the photo-radar was, then after the traffic had passed the camera (the city had it parked there everyday) it would blast up to 75+. After a month or so, the commuters wised up, and we all kept a strict 55mph pace along the freeway. At this time then, the *whole of the traffic* flowed thru at a brisk 55mph with hardly any accidents at all.
I say all this because I thought that speed cameras were wholly, and entirely about revenue. Now, the do generate a lot of $$ for the state, I wont dispute that. However, I cannot ignore that example. With it, the idea of the correct pace on the road is certainly valid. The speed cameras can do that. (Although I would submit that the speed cameras primarily are for $$, any highway benefit is certainly, and in practicality, a secondary consideration)
Hi Tom,
You mention the “correct” pace of the road. How is this defined? According to the least common denominator? Why should there be a pace at all?
I submit the example of the Autobahn in Germany, where very high speed traffic and low-speed traffic coexists without mayhem. It does so because the drivers over there know how to drive. They use their mirrors, are constantly scanning the environment around them and take proactive steps such as yielding before a faster-moving vehicle overtakes them.
I much prefer this approach to being forced to drive at the “pace” of the least-able Clover on the road.
tom, the lesson to be learned from this is not that lower speed limits are safer but that differences in speed are the main cause of accidents.
Every state is continually having analysis of the causes of wrecks and the one thing they all show is disparity in speed. Of course higher speeds result in more accidents since some people choose to drive so slowly they are a hazard. I drive hundred of miles every day in a 40 ton vehicle so i get to see the cause often of varying speeds. When the interstate was 55mph PSL, there were plenty of accidents since few were going that speed. And to add fuel to the fire, it was an attitude of “in for a penny, in for a pound” so many people drove 80, 90, 100 or above. I used a lot of brakes in those days in my car because of those moving roadblocks or the stupid simply pulling out in front of much faster traffic. There were a great many close calls and it was hell on truckers who couldn’t travel fast. I’ve even had people in cars block me to keep me from doing more than 55mph. Now that’s insanity but they were those self-righteous coward clovers who didn’t have the guts to drive the speed they wanted. There were plenty killings via gunfire over this sort of crap too.
Well, we moved to 65 so EVERYBODY drove at least 70, then 70 so EVERYBODY drove 75. Now we’re at 75 and 80 in some counties so everybody drives close to 80 or 85 and many drive much faster. The most dangerous driver out there now are the ones doing 55, mainly because of old, dangerous vehicles, often overloaded with wickedly dangerous looking trailers that are too big for the vehicles that pull them. But this is a new phenomena, one brought about by dwindling wages and jobs alike. If you speak with these people you might catch at a convenience store, they’re always headed to family or close friends, often just for communal economic safety but sometimes for that mythical job that may not exist. And this is caused by those politicians and bureaucrats that always have plenty. When the public buys into the crap they do, such as slow speed limits, it simply exacerbates the problem.
So it’s OK with you to be accused of a “crime” by a piece of automated machinery that you cannot confront and cross-examine in a court of law, notwithstanding the 6th Amendment? (Not that this works out that well in practice when dealing with the costumed thugs, but there’s at least a theoretical possibility of prevailing.)
That’s a very slippery slope indeed. Would you also be in favor of, for example, cameras on the streets using facial recognition to identify jaywalkers and mailing them tickets? There are all manner of “crimes” that are crying out for increased surveillance and automated law enforcement.
Possibly as the technology becomes more sophisticated we’ll be able to automatically analyze people as they walk along for thought-crime, and punish them before they even do anything. Just thinking the wrong thoughts will be automatically tracked and punished. Won’t that be swell?
(As others have pointed out, the Constitution is a flawed document that can in a sense be viewed as a coup d’etat by the Federalists. However even given that, if it was actually followed we’d be in a better situation than we find ourselves in.)
It’s happening – Pre-Crime monitoring is in place in California for a test run. San Francisco, IIRC.
they won’t stop until you LOVE Big Brother, and hate yourself for loving him…
You’re describing the uniformity through punishment concept of traffic engineering. It rarely works. Why? Because there are so very few places where people moderate their speed for smother traffic, merge properly while there being so few people that the slower speed does not cause traffic to tip into congestion.
When the speed limit is slower than the speed of traffic, the initial condition you describe, this creates a safety issue. 65mph traffic with randomly dispersed people obeying the speed limit. Add some merge impairment, people merging in at 45mph or less and the recipe is complete.
Jamming on the brakes for a speed camera is another issue. AZ eventually dumped their interstate speed cameras or at least some of them because of that. People never adapted to an average speed to avoid tickets, jamming on the brakes became the accepted practice and people were just supposed to know where.
Now where I live every so often the weather forces people to obey the 55mph PSL. What happens in commute times is that the interstates quickly tip over into a nightmarish crawl and stop bumper to bumper arrangement. The tip over is initiated at merge points where people try to jam themselves in without coming up to speed. The storage term of the system isn’t big enough to handle the incoming flow with the low outgoing flow 55mph offers. Only very rarely is there a tip over caused by someone who crashes because they exceeded a safe speed for their vehicle in the prevailing conditions.
So yeah, control through punishment can work, but only if the system in question has the excess capacity for it and the vast majority of drivers learn how moderate their speeds and merge without causing brake waves.
Consider what would have happened had the PSL been changed to, say, 65 mph. and left there. No One Eyed Bandit roadside. I’ll lay long odds at high stakes the traffic ould easily roll through that entire stretch at 65 spot on, no accidents either, and no revenue for the money grubbers.
There is a stretch, about 12 miles, on Highway 18 in Washington State that had been under construction for years, and for the duration (as prior, with two lane surface street access) of the project was posted at 50. Completed, it was then a wonderful four lane controlled access freeway, gentle curves and hills, easily safe for 100+ mph for those witih appropriate capability. The same old limit persisted for years… and the state-registered reapsers were busily collecting their rewards. Traffic consistently moved at 60 to 65. About two years ago, someone at DOT awakened from his deep slumber and changed the PSL to 60 mph.. still too low, but better. Traffic now flows at 65 to 70, except when the Reapers are out. VERY few accidents (almost all in bad weather, when Washingtonians tend to go tharn) Fewer payments are rendered the tills of the establishment rulers, and traffic moves well now. Same road, different limit, traffic moves faster and more safely.
I live off of a curvy, narrow road which is posted 35mph. There is not a day that goes by that my life is not endangered while either pulling out of my driveway or getting my mail because ~ 3% of people on this road adhere to the speed limit. Most people are doing 45-50. 3/4 of a mile up the road begins a series of traffic signals which are never all green. That means that no matter how fast someone drives by here, they’re stopping minutes later. The majority of people who use this road, treat it as a bypass to cut into the middle of town because they don’t want to stay on the highway to the next exit, despite that doing so would actually allow them to arrive in town faster, with next to no lights. The local police have told me on numerous occasions that they don’t enforce the speed limit here, specifically because it isn’t safe for them to do so. Everyone knows it. So there is no threat of a ticket. These are the same morons who have 300hp but cant figure out how to accelerate on an entrance ramp to merge. These are the same morons who buy a particular vehicle based on a commercial showing a driver blasting through cities, and sliding around turns and because…wait for it…its compatible with their friggin phones. If you live in a place where there are wide open roads and few people…sure…knock yourself out…drive as fast as you want. The real problem comes from the fact that most people are in gigantic hurry to get absolutely nowhere. Please consider that your opinion on this matter has some valid points, but the actual % of people who are truly capable of driving fast, safely, is likely to be much smaller than what you believe.
Hi Jason,
I hear you; but be careful about generalizing. And collective guilting.
Sure, there are morons who do as you describe. But does that justify punishing the competent?
This is the trap – allowing frustration (justified) over the idiotic (or criminal) actions of A to justify treating B and C as if they, too, are idiots (and criminals) before they, as individuals, have actually done anythign to warrant it.
Agree with you 100% that not everyone should be punished for the actions of a few. What gets me, though, is that we pretend to be a nation of laws…as long as those laws don’t cramp our individual style. I’m no angel, certainly there are many on the books that I find ridiculous. I’m just suggesting that you’re being incredibly generous with the % of people who are truly competent. When it comes right down to it, the desire to propel ourselves into the future as fast as possible is what has landed us in the mess we’re in today. Simply slowing down is probably just what we need. Thanks for the reply, though. I enjoy your articles.
Hi Jason,
I don’t pretend for a moment that we are a nation of laws – nor desire that. Morality is what matters to me. Not “the law.”
And my morality can be boiled down to: No harm, no foul.
That is, no actionable foul.
Other people do all kinds of things I would not choose to do myself; that I do not approve of. Such things may be vices. But until (and unless) they have actually caused me a tangible harm, they are not crimes – I am bound to leave them be.
On “simply slowing down.”
Well, how much? What speed is slow enough?
To a great extent, this is a matter of opinion (and feeling) based on what you or I am comfortable with. But why should I be bound by what you feel comfortable with? And vice versa? What is the objective criteria for determining “too fast”?
I submit that it is loss of control.
If I lose control of my vehicle – regardless of speed – then my driving can be objectively faulted. It is hard to argue innocence when I have crashed into you – whether was driving 35 MPH or 55 MPH. And if I was driving 35 MPH, then that was “too fast” (for me) even if the speed limit was 55.
But if I do not lose control, do not crash, you may feel my driving is “unsafe” (or “too fast”) but this is opinion and conjecture.
Not fact.
I do not like punishing people based on feelings, absent evidence of harm caused.
If I am comfortable driving at “x” speed and am not impeding you or harming you, then what is the harm?
Likewise, I have no issue with people who drive at speeds lower than mine, provided they do not try to force me to drive at those speeds. And when someone comes along who drives faster than I am comfortable driving, I yield to them.
eric, BTW, a great many people saw what we now have coming even before the Constitution was ratified or even finished drafting. The big shitty came between those who wanted a central govt. such as G. Washington and many who did not. The one’s who didn’t were well aware of what a bit of power written into a document could do to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”……or just plain old unencumbered freedom.
Robert Yates knew well the constitutional convention wasn’t tweaking the Article of Confederation but building a powerful, centralized govt. He finally stormed out of the GW presided affair and did everything he could to see this didn’t happen. He ran for New York governor in 1789 and failed but got elected to the New York Supreme Court in 1790 where he one of the nations foremost critics of the federal govt. and a great defender of states’ rights.
20 years after he died, in 1821, his note from the Constitutional Convention were published under the title Secret Proceedings and Debates of the Convention Assembled for the purpose of forming the Constitution of the United States.
By then the Louisiana Purchase had doubled the amount of states and the notion of questioning the legality of the Constitution became somewhat an embarrassment to the family….to the point they began using the spelling, Yeats among most of them but not all.
Yates was by far not the only one to see where the militarists were heading but Washington’s name had such power and probably threatening physical power to those who disagreed that the constitution we now have was ratified. No doubt much money was spread around to garner this support by the banksters in England who sought to keep control over the “new” nation, which they did.
But anyone with half a brain should know the US is still a much freer country even with our land taxes since all land in England is owned by the govt. or the Queen(strange that, why not the King? Because there were fewer Queens outright killed?) Hail to the Queen as it were or my view, hell to the Queen and the entire socialist UK.
Jason, here’s a guy who had it figured out long before automobiles and speed limits existed.
“Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people. When the people give way, their deceivers, betrayers, and destroyers press upon them so fast, that there is no resisting afterwards. The nature of the encroachment upon the American constitution is such, as to grow every day more and more encroaching. Like a cancer, it eats faster and faster every hour. The revenue creates pensioners, and the pensioners urge for more revenue. The people grow less steady, spirited, and virtuous, the seekers more numerous and more corrupt, and every day increases the circles of their dependents and expectants, until virtue, integrity, public spirit, simplicity, and frugality, become the objects of ridicule and scorn, and vanity, luxury, foppery, selfishness, meanness, and downright venality swallow up the whole society.”
— John Adams
(1735-1826) Founding Father, 2nd US President
laws define crime. For a crime to be one, it requires a victim, and harm perpetrated upon that victim.
What causes or allows two behicles to crach into each other? It is ALWAYS lack of sufficient space for the one to avoid the other. If two cars are moving at 200 mph on the same roadway, with suitable pace between them, there cannot be a crash until one of them does something to hit the other. If the following one is paying attention when the lead decelarates, follow will decelarate as well, and the distance being maintained will always alow him to do so. I’ve seen cars smack into the one STOPPED in front of them whilst waiting in the turn pocket for a light to change…
One of the stupider things which you East Coasters might not be aware of is the insane artificially low maximum for ALL trucks/trailers on the interstates. All three West Coast states post 55 or 60 for all such, when non-truck limits are at 70 and 75. This creates a manufactured speed differential which, on two lane freeways, guarantees constant choke points. Most rig drivers in these states won’t risk much over five over…. which STILL puts them slower than mainstream traffice. SO they take three or four miles to pass the one doing 59, bunching up fifty or more irate and impatient car drivers behind then who want to, and legally can, travel at 70. I learned it was the Teamster’s Unions in California foisted that on that state, then spread it to the northern neighbours. Think about it… if trucks run at 55, they take longer to travel 700 miles. Longer means more wages for the drivers. Now it is so embedded no one questions then. I’ve driven in Idaho,Montana, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, NONE of which legislate that speed differential…. and rarely have the huge truck involved crashes so common in the West Coast Three states. I’ve observed some pretty nasty conduct toward rigs in the three West states…. high level of animosity toward them. But not in those other states, as the trucks tend to move right along WITH the flow of traffic, and at the same speed. I’ve been moving at a posted 85 mph in Texas and been passed by a rig………
The problem is that we are now about 7 to 8 decades into the ‘speed kills’ religion of cascading consequences. Before moral crusaders of the anti-destination league got power speed limit signs had a defined usage as a warning for things like hidden driveways and the like. They had meaning. That meaning came to an end with the 55mph NMSL in 1974. Since then speed limits have been so arbitrarily set that they don’t have any meaning. Is the speed limit 35mph because of hidden driveways or is 35mph because that’s what some politician or busy body decided it should be? Who knows? People got used to always going 10,15,20,25mph over whatever the sign said provided their comfort level didn’t intervene.
As to the ordinary driver being no better than a dead cat behind the wheel there has been a good four decades minimum of building a better idiot. Where traffic engineering in practice, law, and driver education (training really since nobody is educated unless they do it themselves) has had its impact as well. Things are really in a bad state now but the solution is always more of the same, dumbing down and lower speed limits plus enforcement. The solution is the problem and the problem is the solution.
I would imagine they pull people over based on license plate reads, driver appearance profiling, auto appearance profiling.
Attractive poor single female. Odd looking last name vehicle owner. Cop is a Bears fan, driver going “over” the limit is a Colts fan. Buy American zealot seeing a smug suit in his Bimmer.
I can’t stand going hardly anywhere. I see the inhuman formaldehyde faces everywhere, and there’s little anyone’s found that can be done about it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWFu6IYGXSI
– – –
These aliens have a vaguely similar body structure to humans, enough that they can convincingly disguise themselves. However, they have blue skin, bulging eyes, and no lips.
At some point in the late 20th century, these aliens successfully took over most of the planet. Rather than outright invade, they opted for a more subtle approach. Quietly teleporting into a series of underground tunnels and taking advantage of a television broadcasting stations, designing satellite dishes and cell towers that broadcast false signals that affect human senses on a subliminal level, specifically covering subliminal messages such as “MARRY AND REPRODUCE” and “OBEY” hidden in seemingly ordinary places such as billboards, posters, and magazines, all of this keeping humanity subdued for their benefit.
A small group of humans have figured out things were not what they seemed to be. We’ve began to form together, hoping someday to create small resistance groups who will help the world see them for what they really are.
The Man in the High Castle wrote a script and produced a movie showing some Los Angelinos who managed to develop a pair of sunglasses which were immune to the affects of the broadcasts, and allowed people to see the true faces of the aliens and the hidden subliminal messages.
In this film, a drifter stumbled across the aftermath of a resistance group after a meeting was split up by the aliens. He managed to find a box of the sunglasses and began trying to fight the aliens himself.
Using the stolen technology he managed to infiltrate a local alien’s HQ and work his to the roof of the broadcasting station. He was killed by aliens disguised as police, but not before shooting and destroying the device that was broadcasting the messages, causing both the subliminal messages and the true faces of the alien to become visible to the local general public. What happens after this event, is unknown.
I saw the Illinois state police do their thing again tonight. I was putting along at the PSL, now a glorious 60mph* for the last few miles of my interstate trip. ISP cruiser passes, crown vic. marked. Doing 68ish. After passing me the cop accelerates…. 75, 80, 90, perhaps even a 100 or more the trooper just kept putting ground between us at faster and faster rates… then the disco lights come on. As I reached my exit the cop and the victim were on the side of the road and the spot light was glaring into the victim’s car.
The way it was done makes me wonder if there is some sort of new radar that they have. Her victim wasn’t even visually discernible before she started accelerating. Although she could have seen the clump of cars and accelerated towards it per my previous observations of go very fast and pull over someone going slower.
*Still basically a zero percentile speed just like 55mph since it means passing just about nobody.
For many years radar could clock traffic in the same direction. These badged thugs often drive well over 100mph to close fast on people who might be speeding. Once they get a reading they like they then look for the victim, often pickup the wrong one. Hey, what do they care? Their motto is always “it wasn’t me, I’m innocent” as applied to their victim. Everybody just lies to them. They can justify any action in their own pea brains.
NYPD staged a virtual work stoppage about one year ago and instantly put Wilhelm-DeBlasio in a financial stranglehold rather than creating a criminal paradise. The boys in blue are primarily responsible for random revenue collections on a massive scale, not law enforcement.
re: richb’s comment That minimum quota is only easy to achieve if a cop uses technical violations of the law, rather than only pulling over people who are doing things that most reasonable people would agree is posing a high risk to other drivers.
In particular, if a cop parked somewhere on a high traffic road where they were easily visible from quite a distance, they would get almost everyone to drive safely for some distance afterward without necessarily having to even turn on their flashers in an entire day.
But that would assume that the function of a police officer is to make us safer, rather than their actual job of being an enforcer and financier for the functional equivalent of a mafia gang.
Hi Jim,
Check your e-mail!
(I don’t text; no sail fawn.)
At least that department is honest about ticket production, at least to its employees. Most departments in my area deny they have minimum ticket quotas (the worst offender of the bunch a notorious speed trap). But what do you think happens to that one officer in a department, that issues far fewer tickets then the average? You think that cop that only writes a ticket once a day compared with lets say an average of four is going to be left alone?
That minimum quota seems pretty easy to do. Even if an officer writes one ticket an hour, that is still eight per shift. He will write enough at that rate by lunchtime to cover his pay and then some. With the laws the way they are, finding someone violating them is simple. I am guessing the average cop in a suburb probably writes 15-20 a DAY. If the laws were more fair to the taxpayer, that quota would be harder to do, because almost no one would be violating.