Don’t @ me Libertarians, but I’m generally a big fan of laws. Yes, yes, there are plenty of dumb ones on the books, but the good laws are pretty great. I think it’s super that breaking into my house and taking all my stuff is 100% illegal, despite the best efforts of the powerful Break Into Houses And Take People’s Stuff lobby. Laws that prevent corporations from lying to us and/or harming consumers with lax safety are all examples of top-notch legislation for me, even if they don’t always work.
I also feel our traffic laws are downright reasonable, even if I do break my fair share of them on the regular. Speed limits come to mind first and foremost, and I’m sure none of us would say we scrupulously obey the speed limit everywhere and at all times. Technically – and I’m not saying you should make this argument to a police officer – breaking the speed limit is a binary thing. You are either going the speed limit (or below) and abiding the law, or you’re exceeding it and have broken it. But it’s definitely not a binary thing. True, whether you’re cruising a 75 mph highway at 80 mph or 180 mph, you have broken the law. But at 180 mph, you’ve broken it a lot more. That 75 mph speed may not keep everyone at 75, but it should hold most people to around 85. We’re just bending the law here.
What laws are you bending? I hold few sacred myself. I’m never down for anything unsafe, of course, and I’ve never done anything illegal solely to express contempt for the tyranny of lines painted on roads, or the authority of traffic cones, those smug orange pricks. And you should absolutely NOT take any of what follows as encouragement to do the same, or an endorsement that doing so is OK. However …
“No Right On Red”? Yeah, that’s “look carefully before you go right on red” to me. Related: if I’m the only car on the road and I’m inexplicably sitting at a red light for way too long, I’m just gonna go. Same goes for those highway turnarounds that are for Law Enforcement Only. It’s two in the morning, I’m lost AF, the next exit is in infinity miles, and I’m low on gas, so yeah, I’m turning around.
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I will say though, I’m a real stickler for keeping my vehicle safe for highway travel. Outside mirrors, full set of functioning gauges, all that. It’s important.
Your turn: Second To The Speed Limit, What Traffic Laws Do You Most Frequently, Uh, Bend?
Topshot: Trains, Planes, And Automobiles/Paramount Pictures
Definitely speeding, mostly on the highway, and proportional to the absurdity of the speed limit. I usually don’t exceed 80 and am fine with 70 if I’m in no hurry, so that means I’m pretty much always legal in states like Utah with a sensible 80mph limit and I speed 100% of the time on my daily commute with the ridiculous 55mph limit on a 6-8 lane highway.
I also speed more than I used to in my city because our dumbass mayor saw reckless speeding crashes and violations going up and decided the solution was to lower the previously legal speeds. I guess the people going 70+ in a 40 will change their behavior if the new limit is 35? Anyway, I still drive the old speed limit on every road that’s been lowered out of spite. (And I’m usually still passed by most other traffic, so not sure what the point of the whole exercise was).
But I’m a stickler for residential speed limits and in fact enjoy when I’m in my neighborhood going a legal 25 and someone’s on my bumper. That’s when I slowly ease up on the accelerator in response and they can go 20 instead.
On the flip side, you know what law I break the least (but do occasionally break)? Keep right except to pass. I always drive with cruise control on the interstate and my rule is if I have to pass the same car twice because they won’t keep a steady speed, then the only way they’re getting in front of me a third time is if some other innocent motorist is behind them. Then I’ll move over. Otherwise, you had your chance.
A popular new one around me is making left turns at intersections where they tried to prevent it (badly). Someone in my city planning department apparently loves to put in intersections where one road has a left turn lane, but the cross road is not supposed to make a left there. They try to enforce this by putting up plastic poles along the side of the turn lane so you can’t get into it from the other direction, but within about a week of those going up the center ones have been ripped out and people are making left turns as they like.
I’m sure these sounded great in someone’s urban engineering class in college, but in the real world they don’t work at all.
Speed limits – depending on the situation. First is “don’t speed where people live” There’s always more enforcement in town and it never pays to tick people off. On four wheels I’m usually no more than 5-over the limit, which is low enough for cops to not bother me. On the motorcycle… that’s different. Out on a twisty back road it’s just an assessment of what’s safe; the rule of thumb for speed advisory signs is “double plus 10”.
Double-yellow lines: Passing zones in my area are unreasonably cautious, they won’t give you a passing zone unless a grandma in a 1968 station wagon towing a camper can pass a double-long semi truck. On the bike I can get around a slow car safely in way less space.
That being said, I stop at stop signs, don’t push the red, follow the speed limits in town, use my turn signal for all turns and lane changes, and am generally a safe driver.
In my province in Canada, our speed limit signs are in black and white and “suggested speed” signs are black on yellow.
These are usually for twisties and gorgeous sweeping corners on on and off ramps.
Although technically, not breaking the law, my FZR 400 scoffs at these speed suggestions and often likes to tuck on the inside of litre bikes and the such while not slowing down much, if at all.
It’s the bike making these decisions, not me, of course.
The same is true in the US, my rule on the Ducati for corner advisories in my area is “double plus 10”. The advisories are stupidly conservative.
Speed limit, no question most frequent law I bend. But even then, nowhere near as flagrantly as others. But my main thing when driving is to be predictable and not surprise people.
I have zero patience for blocks and block and blocks of No U Turn signs. Sometimes I want to be going the other way and dont have a mile to do it.
Check, make sure its clear, and do the thing. its no big deal.
Speed limits are suggestions right?
I also frequently undercut traffic because people love to camp in the left lane on a two lane divided interstate, and they cant maintain speed going up and down hills. I also allegedly will do a “Daily Triple” during my 4am commute to work. In all reality I don’t go faster than I can see, or is safe for the conditions. I have plenty of high performance driving seat time, and keep my vehicles track day ready. When going at a more spirited pace down a twisty road, I wont cross the double yellow unless it is to avoid an object or cyclist. Even then, only when it is safe to pass.
The only law I really bend is speeding, otherwise I do obey traffic signals and whatnot. The speed limits on most of the local highways here is 65, but I have almost never seen anybody doing that, the general flow of traffic is generally around 75mph, so me doing 80-85mph isn’t particularly noticeable, and I have been known to dip into triple digits when conditions permit (low traffic, good visibility, dry pavement). My radar detector + Waze has kept me free of speeding tickets for quite a few years now.
On the way to my office there is a turn lane that is about 4 car lengths long. However right before that turn lane is 250 feet of turn lanes into a shopping center. There is a painted gore area between the turn lane at the intersection and the shopping center turn lanes. Until I got pulled over for crossing the gore, I used to cut over and avoid waiting in traffic for the light to change. Now, I rarely ever cross the gore, but it is now more dangerous for me to get into the turn lane because of the dozen or more vehicles that cross the gore while I am trying to get over. One of these days I will likely get hit…
It’s a good day when you can correctly say “gore.”
Speed limits…. as mentioned speed limits are a binary thing, but an actually safe and appropriate speed is dependent on many factors – weather conditions, road conditions, condition of car, condition of driver, skill of driver, visibility, traffic congestion, pedestrian/non-vehicle congestion, etc.
At least when human police officers are writing the tickets there is some amount of subjective interpretation. Speed cameras… binary only. I’ve gotten so many speed camera tickets!
Heard a fascinating interview on the radio about how the average driver will instinctively drive a safe speed for conditions. In America, though, we require the roads to be super wide and super smooth (for the giant SUVs) and severely restrict the use of the road for anyone but cars… and then say “no, you’re going too fast. You can only go 25 on this wide, straight empty road!” If you want people to drive slower, make the roads narrower and add more stuff – parking, people, bikes, curves, etc.
Exceeding posted speed, but generally within the “5-MPH-nobody-gets-a-ticket-for-that” buffer, but that’s about it. I guess I’m a nerd, but I’ve also never gotten a ticket in 40 years of driving.
Driving with hazards on. I know some states it is legal to do so. But here in TN, it is not legal. But with plenty of recent transplants in the Nashville area, I see it every time it rains…
It should be illegal everywhere. If you feel so unsafe that you need to use the hazards (except when say towing a disabled vehicle), get off of the road.
It’s illegal for a reason. DO NOT turn your hazards on unless you are actually going significantly slower than the rest of the traffic on the road. If it’s raining hard/snowing and you’re going the same rate of speed as everyone else, turning your hazards on will be an unhelpful distraction to other drivers.
Traffic safety engineer here. If this population is at all normal (despite all evidence to the contrary), the list will go something like this in order from most common to still very common:
Hypocrisy check: in 25 years of driving, I’ve been in zero crashes and gotten zero tickets. I’ve been pulled over once in a national park as the ranger thought I wasn’t going to slow down enough for the speed limit sign over the next hill. Also, I do consciously speed on the freeway and make mistakes and have been very lucky.
As a driving instructor,, and a careful observer of traffic, I believe your list is spot on
Passing on the shoulder when there is a car stopped, waiting to turn left.
I drove in Chicago fora while – this is standard practice. we would all be stuck all day if not for this one.
In Maryland, this became legal a few years ago. As long as you don’t go off the pavement, they made it OK to pass on the shoulder around the left turn car
My driving instructor about gave me a heart attack one day because of this. I was the one making the left turn and someone pulled onto the shoulder to go around me. As I’m making the turn the instructor says “That was illegal.” and I panicked because I thought he was talking about me. 😀
I grew up in the country and, aside from speed limits just being suggestions, there was on stop sign near my house on a heavily-wooded, steeply-angled three way intersection. Approaching the stop, you could see the other road coming from your right through someone’s yard. When you got to the sign, though, you had absolutely no view to your right and could not see anything without pulling out onto the road. Therefore, the safest thing to do was to slow and check to the right as you passed this yard, then speed back up and proceed through the intersection during the window that you knew you had.
All the laws. I break all the laws.
I drive alot on curvy mountain roads with not much traffic. When I can see far enough ahead to know no one’s coming in the other direction, the apex radiuses tend to lengthen. My dad used to call it “straightening out the road”. Guess who I learned it from.
There is a road like this on my commute. Low traffic, good visibility and 2 big S curves
I haven’t had a speeding ticket in 32+ years. And that one was a BS speed trap ticket doing 50 in a 35-mph zone. The copper was waiting just beyond a slight rise on the two-lane road three miles out of town. So, the speed limit was ridiculously low. I went to night court to fight it and they had accidentally double-booked the docket. They offered everyone a deal where you could plead guilty to a level down, so I ended up with a failure to obey a traffic sign infraction.
Other than that, let’s see. In grade school, I used to ride my bicycle around my neighborhood at night without a light. And I occasionally ride my scooter on the sidewalk half a block to tip one back at my local, rather than stop on a pretty busy street and back it into a parking spot. And only when no one is walking on the sidewalk. The latter sounds like a recipe for getting clobbered by a distracted driver.
I did get away with relative murder once. Late at night, on my way home from work on a Friday, I got off the interstate (55-mph era) on my Suzuki 550 and opened it up to about 100 on an empty frontage road that paralleled it. Then I realized I was still visible from any LEO on the freeway. I slowed down as I approached town and immediately got lit up by the local police. Earlier in my career, I was a police beat reporter and one of the local LEOs lived behind our office and we would split a 6-pack of Moosehead from time to time on his porch. I immediately pulled over and took my helmet off. It’s my Moosehead buddy. He walks up, immediately recognizes me and says, “Bill. How the hell are you?” I replied,” I dunno, Chris, you tell me.” He laughed radioed back to dispatch and tells them that he had lost me. I brought a case of Moosehead to his porch the next day.
I’m boring and don’t bend or break any driving rules except the speed limit, and even then it’s just keeping up with traffic.
As a result, insurers compliment me, and I’ve had a grand total of 2 moving violations in over 25 years (72 in a 55, and expired tags I just hadn’t gotten around to affixing).
I live in rural Kansas It’s a long ways to anywhere. I speed. Everyone speeds.
I do NOT speed in town. Any town really. That is how you get tickets out here.
Which is really how it should be. Speeding through town with pedestrians and cross traffic is so much more dangerous than doing 10 over on a deserted highway.
One of my pet peeves is people who drive 5 under on the highway and then blast through towns at 10 or 15 over. It’s stupid, and it makes it hard to get around them because you fall behind so far in town and by the time you catch up you’ve reached the next town.
Yes! This is the one driving behavior I have noticed got markedly worse after Covid. It’s like certain people just want to constantly drive 50mph regardless of context.
I bought my 2012 Altima from Carmax, and came stock with aerodynamic space saver spare tire, no license plate, missing bumper, and black ice air fresheners, with black out tint. Dealer said rules don’t apply to me so I send this thing 100% every day. It doesn’t even need oil changes. So I don’t break any rules really.
I avoid an intersection left turn lane that is miles long during peak hours and a lot of accidents there. I turn right into IKEA parking lot, then exit IKEA parking lot using their left turn lane and continue my drive. That saves me 5 min and I feel safer.
That’s kind of sneaky
I have been driving for half a century and have always avoided left turns. Why look for trouble you can avoid it with a bit of pre-planning. If you can’t get there by driving round the block, it’s not worth seeing.
Speeding and passing ssllloooww people on the right.
That’s basically not even you breaking a rule, it’s them. The left lane seems to be a great place to park up and catch up on Instagram and video calls.
I often have Waze and a music app open on my phone in a mount. Skipping a song or “still there”ing a hazard notice are laws (other than speeds just under the current local enforcement level) I might bend.
Besides.. uh… moving at a high rate of speed on a few roads that are basically open racetracks, I don’t have a front plate. A motorbike cop was sitting in a median, facing me and the slow traffic. It was clear to him that I had no front license plate, but he instead pulled over the car behind me with an expired registration. Almost no police force locally cares about front license plates.