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Comment by Miner49er | Hacker News Reader

Why would you ever engage cruise control in school zones?

I personally have a tendency to match the speed of the cars around me. IMNHO, most cars speed through school zones. I use cruise control as a tool to prevent me from accidentally matching the speed of the cars around me and breaking the school zone speed limit.

To avoid speeding. It can be hard to avoid accidentally speeding by 1-2 mph and enforcement is sometimes zero tolerance.

That's crazy, I've never seen anybody get a ticket for 1-2mph over the limit. Problems with that: cops would be wasting resources because 1-2mph over the limit isn't significantly dangerous. Also, the radar guns can't be easily calibrated to that level of accuracy.

If our local cops did this, I'd just make an online post about it so everybody knew the cops were doing it and then it would stop.

My experience (based on a few tickets and observing many cops) is that they don't really care unless you're about 10+ MPH over the limit and also doing unsafe things. That's not to say they don't snag people just driving 5MPH over the limit, but it's not a core activity unless the department is using tickets as a revenue source or trying to make some sort of weird point.

> it's not a core activity unless the department is using tickets as a revenue source or trying to make some sort of weird point.

Or the officer is racist. I know we’re veering into very off topic discussion here but your experience and resulting list does miss a key component for an experience often described as “driving while black”. 1mph over the speed limit would absolutely see you get pulled over.

I was in a drivers education class (I’d rear ended someone, and was trying to keep points off my license), and we went around the room explaining what law we broke to wind up in the class. One attendee was there for 1 MPH over in a school zone. Was it probably racial profiling? Probably. But I now stick to exactly 0 MPH over in school zones, and have routinely seen police monitoring speed while dropping my kids off at school. There appears to be zero tolerance even for the most politically connected soccer mom.

Acknowledged. If I received such a ticket I would sign the form the officer gave me and then immediately protest (appeal) the ticket and go to court. In particular, giving a ticket for 1mph over the limit doesn't make sense because the marginal danger (IE, how much more dangerous it is) to drive 1 mph over the limit is tiny, it's 10-15 mph that is dangerous. The police actually have to make a case justifying the value of spending the time of stopping you.

I just looked into the details. In my state, CA, 1-15mph over the limit is specially treated, with one point that eventually gets cleared.

I'm amused because (as I mentioned) I live in a school zone and I just drove home at about 5mph, because the streets were so croweded that anything faster would have been impossible. A cop could not have parked in any location near my house because every spot was taken, and all sightlines were blocked by SUVs or buses.

> If our local cops did this, I'd just make an online post about it so everybody knew the cops were doing it and then it would stop.

Either you have a very unusual constabulary, or this is wildly optimistic.

The local police were running a traffic light camera scam. Once it was made public, it was immediately stopped. https://padailypost.com/2019/07/12/city-ends-red-light-camer...

That’s a situation where the cameras were wrong and a court would have likely forced a change.

The scenario under discussion is a case where the police are within their rights. A simple blog post would never force any change in most municipalities, much less immediately.

I forgot to mention that cars don't really have high accuracy speedometers; they could be 10% off which could easily cause a conscientious driver to speed. What's the point of giving somebody a ticket for driving 26mph when their speedometer says 24? That's, like, just silly.

I’m not disagreeing with the premise that the police are being overzealous. I just find it hard to imagine a world where someone complaining about it online is guaranteed to result in changes.

In some locations the speed enforcement is autonomous.

>My experience...

Will of course be much different from someone who lives in a different locale or is a different ethnicity and/or social class than you.

>If our local cops did this, I'd just make an online post about it so everybody knew the cops were doing it and then it would stop.

Yeah, ok.

I've met a lot of people with inflated egos but believing you can dictate local law enforcement policy with your internet posts is on a whole nother level.

Autonomous? You mean, like a system that takes photos and sends you a bill? Yes, most such things were removed in our town after it turned out they were set wrong (sending tickets to people who didn't break the law).

Our city manager reads patch, reddit and other things for our town and occasionally engages with the community around policy. This is absolutely something where if you wrote a careful post on reddit saying "Hey, are our cops doing the right thing stopping people going 1mph near a school instead of stopping <whatever>"? There would be an argument, a few people would say 1mph is 1mph over the law, but really, the outcome would be that the ticket appeal would be approved and the cops in my town would be told not to do that.

Pointing out to somebody who says "in my experience" that others would have a different experience is pointless. I know that. If cops are giving people tickets for ethnicity (or even deadheads driving through georgia, which used to happen) that's an entirely different problem from pointless enforcement.

That is a non issue. If your speed variance is 2mph then drive 4mph under the speed limit.

With a 25mph limit and no significant traffic, that would be actively miserable.

I live on a road with two schools zones about a mile apart. I have had people pass me in the morning in the school zone! People do.not.care.

EDIT: Fixed "ppl" to "people".

This is a pet peeve of mine, but why use 'ppl' when you spell out every other word, and then spell out people in the end?

Edit: Yes, ppl bugs me and there is no rational reason why. Emphasis on 'pet peeve'.

Fixed it for you.

Because typing on phones can be annoying and ppl is quicker than people. :)

Or maybe they were texting and using FSD ;)

That's not really valid in the age of Swype-style keyboards. Less effort to do one swipe than multiple taps to hit individual letters for txt type.

Also, if you text and drive I sincerely hope you hit a tree or something else solid that doesn't hurt the road traffic and pedestrians around you - alleged FSD or no, we don't have level 5 fully-autonomous cars yet and so not paying attention to the road is just as bad as drunk or drug driving.

Sure is valid. Not everyone likes the Swype style keyboards.

The FSD part was a joke. :)

To make sure you aren't speeding?

I've never had trouble maintaining 1-2 mph under the limit. I just use less gas and look at the speedometer at times.

I agree with you. With a little bit of driving experience, you have a natural sense for what the safe speed is on a road, and that speed is almost always the speed limit, in my experience.

On a busy road with lots of pedestrians crossing, I naturally want to go much slower than I would on the same road if there were no other pedestrians or traffic. "School zones" just codify that into law - when you expect lots of kids to be crossing a road, the speed limit of the road should be lower.

The issue, for me at least, is the ambiguity. When is the school zone in effect? This creates a cognitive load. The road was clearly meant for 45 mph travel, because that is the normal speed limit. So if I let my "autopilot" brain take over, I will probably go over the 25 mph school zone limit.

It's a special case. So when I see a school zone, I unconditionally set the cruise control to be the school zone speed limit. This frees my brain from any congitive load about whether school is in session. It also guarantees that I am not influenced by the guy tailgating me.

The ability to set the speed of your car exactly, without monitoring, is really useful.

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