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Rough Monday:

BubbaZanetti said:
This is the most logical thing with regard to citing motorcycle riders i've heard in a long time. Forget cages, they're just dangerous, but a motorcycle, in the middle of nowhere on a two lane backroad (where i bet most of you do your hard riding) is not harming anyone except the rider. i could honestly come aroudn a corner wide, at full tilt and get mashed by some SUV and its not gonna hurt anyone in the truck (as long as they're obeying the law and wearing their seatbelts) i view speeding as a safety issue more than anything and safety is all relative. if i choose to put my life in danger by riding fast, thats one thing. but the chances of someone else getting hurt, by me, where i ride fast, is minimal. basically, what i'm saying in this rambly-rant is.........

abolish speed limits for motorcycles outside populated areas.

i dont think law enforcement has such a libertarian view. we've got some folks on here with experience in this area, and i'd wager that their job is to protect you from yourself as much as protecting you from others, or to protect others from you.

that said, i f-ing hate speeding tickets. this is one reason i like living in central texas. my ratio of times i've gotten a speeding ticket to times that i shouldve gotten one is near zero.

in austin they put the locations of speed traps in the newspaper and on the local news. our cops TELL you when and where theyre writing tickets. the other day i headed south out of town, and there was one of those highway signs, for construction that would say, "right lane closed." it said, "speed enforcement ahead." sure enough, about a mile down the road, there were cops, running radar. we all slowed down. that shows me that at least on the roads i ride around here, the cops are interested in me slowing down, not in me giving them money. :thumb

if i ran the world, every ticket a motorcyclist gets for speeding, the cop must then go into town and cite a vehicle for turning left in front of one of us.
 
username said:
i dont think law enforcement has such a libertarian view. we've got some folks on here with experience in this area, and i'd wager that their job is to protect you from yourself as much as protecting you from others, or to protect others from you.

agreed, i guess what really gets to me is the double or even tripple tiers of punishment that exist for what, in reality, is an incredibly minor offence. first, you pay the ticket. this is the one that bothers me the least. secondly, your insurance goes up. this one really irks me, due to the fact that no real proof has ever been substantiated connecting speed with accident ratios (i'm talking setting a higher speed limits here, not speeding itself) roads around the world with significantly higher speed limits have often proved safer than US roads. thirdly, penalties for multiple offences. my first ticket was 65 in a 55, hardly reckless, just a cop having a bad day, my second ticket was while doing an ironbutt, yeah, not an excuse, but still, i was on a mission. this last one was the only one of the three that was a result of just not giving a s?*& and having had a bad day myself. but combine these three seperate incidents and they're gunning to remove me from the road for 30 days. (oh, and you only get the chance to defend yourself on the last ticket of the 3, not paint a picture of the 3 individual charges).

oh, and don't you love it when the cop says "hey, i ride too" and still tickets you. thanks for the reverse empathy buddy, i really needed to know that you rode and you aren't cutting me a break" FULL GEAR TOO, aghghghghghhg..........
 
BubbaZanetti said:
oh, and don't you love it when the cop says "hey, i ride too" and still tickets you. thanks for the reverse empathy buddy, i really needed to know that you rode and you aren't cutting me a break" FULL GEAR TOO, aghghghghghhg..........

How about the a...holes that I try to stop for say 80 in a 45 who might get a warning but instead crank it up and weave thru heavy traffic on both sides of the road cuz they know I can't (and won't) chase them? The only motorcyclist I ever ticketed killed his passenger.
 
lorazepam said:
My latest foray into revenue generation (94/65) was *only* 150.00. Caught me with an airplane. Thank god they were looking for speeders and not looking for pot fields

34877929-M.jpg


Aaron Copland's The Promise of Living, from "The Tender Land"

For many a years we've grown these fields
And done all the work to make them yield
Are you ready to work?
Are you ready to lend a hand?
We'll bring in the harvest
The blessing of harvest
 
MarkF said:
How about the a...holes that I try to stop for say 80 in a 45 who might get a warning but instead crank it up and weave thru heavy traffic on both sides of the road cuz they know I can't (and won't) chase them? The only motorcyclist I ever ticketed killed his passenger.


i'm not trying to be a jerk with that statement, its just that, i was:

1 between a car and another bike, not passing, not alone, "in the flow of traffic" , as it were

2 i pulled over immediately, hands on the handlebars, hazards on, very professional and direct with the officer, respectful at all times

3 all proper gear and a record that, aside from those two prior offences this past year, that is copletely spotless.

its not that i'm asking for a break, the guy's just doing his job, but i just think there's better people to be giving the tickets to, clearly :laugh
 
BubbaZanetti said:
i'm not trying to be a jerk with that statement

Not you buddy. Lately, I am facing more and more kids who are giving the sport a bad name while not even giving me the chance to give them a warning. I just hope they don't kill themselves or somebody else.
 
BubbaZanetti said:
i'm not trying to be a jerk with that statement, its just that, i was:

1 between a car and another bike, not passing, not alone, "in the flow of traffic" , as it were

2 i pulled over immediately, hands on the handlebars, hazards on, very professional and direct with the officer, respectful at all times

3 all proper gear and a record that, aside from those two prior offences this past year, that is copletely spotless.

its not that i'm asking for a break, the guy's just doing his job, but i just think there's better people to be giving the tickets to, clearly :laugh

i agree that you should not get any tickets. ;)

but your defense of, "other people broke the law more than me," is more an admission of guilt than anything. the cops ticket what they see. (the good ones.) while youre getting your ticket, people are getting shot, robbed, and raped. politicians are taking bribes. all sorts of awful stuff is going on. but the cop saw you speed, so he's handling that.

using the "broke the law worse than me" thing would be interesting though. imagine a system where the cops monitor speeds, and they write tickets to the top ten speeders only. so if you get pulled over in the morning, you can hope that someone goes by faster, later that day. minimizes revenue generation, but has the effect of slowing down traffic as people observe the enforcement. even better, if you get a ticket, you can know that you were one of the top ten speeders, and thus deserved it.

but they don't do that, so you're hosed. what are you going to do?
 
username said:
what are you going to do?


thats the question weighing most heavily on my mind, anyone out there pass the bar yet and wanna take this for a few hundred bucks and a 6 pack of your favorite brew/soda???
 
lorazepam said:
My latest foray into revenue generation (94/65) was *only* 150.00. Caught me with an airplane. Thank god they were looking for speeders and not looking for pot fields

34877929-M.jpg

Nice! Thanks for keeping the tradition of "got pulled over and here's the cop" photos alive.
 
He was probably as cool as the one that got you. Not the usual OSP prick that gets to play god/genius/judge. We had a nice conversation with him and the guy on the Sprint ST that got pulled over at the same time. If they were running radar, I would have gotten away with it, since I had about a 300 yard cushion behind the ST when we were really going at it. The cop said he wrote me for 29 over so I didnt have to go to court.
 
username said:
i agree that you should not get any tickets. ;)

using the "broke the law worse than me" thing would be interesting though. imagine a system where the cops monitor speeds, and they write tickets to the top ten speeders only. so if you get pulled over in the morning, you can hope that someone goes by faster, later that day. minimizes revenue generation, but has the effect of slowing down traffic as people observe the enforcement. even better, if you get a ticket, you can know that you were one of the top ten speeders, and thus deserved it.

but they don't do that, so you're hosed. what are you going to do?

When I was little boy and just learning to drive/ride whatever, the two biggest influences in my young yet developing world of motor sports had this to say:

"Always let 10% of the traffic on the road at any given time of day go faster than you".

Translation: one out of ten per mile covered or 10 out of 100, etc.

It has worked very well throughout my life.

It's easier to speed with 100's of cars and in the middle of the day, than it is all by yourself and at night.

Those two people were my Dad, and High school Driver Ed teacher (he drove a Porsche 911 Carrera in the late 70ÔÇÖs).
 
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