J. Clarke said:

On Sat, 25 Nov 2006 17:53:01 +0000, Richard Heathfield wrote:

Bruce L. Bergman said:

snip

Speed Limits are set by morons - always have been, always will.

Nevertheless, laws are broken by criminals - always have been, always
will.

And by lumping people who disregard an arbitrary number painted on a
piece of metal with the thieves and murderers you discredit the whole
legal process.

The legal process doesn't have any credibility whatsoever, which is why it
requires police officers to enforce it. Everybody knows the law is stupid,
but breaking it is rarely a good strategy.

[Speed limits]

In other words they have nothing whatsoever to do with the appropriate
speed for the road in question and everything to do with the convenience
of politicians.

That's right, but it still makes sense to observe them by driving at or
below them.

snip

By setting limits the government is substituting its own judgment for that
of the man on the spot.

No, the law requires the man on the spot to show good judgement, *and* the
law requires the man on the spot to observe the speed limit.

8 lane highway, well lighted, 2 AM, not a car in
sight, why should one limit oneself to 60 MPH just to satisfy some
bureaucrat?

It's to do with the thickness of your wallet. Trust me on this. :-(


Too low in many places, too high in others - you have to know to
look out for blind intersections, people pulling out (or worse, backing
out) of blind driveways without looking, people pulling out from curb
parking without looking - on both sides, which covers the U-Turn from a
standing start at the curb.

Yes. This is called "driving with due care and attention", and driving
/without/ due care and attention is an offence, in the UK at least.

That should be the offense, not "offending some bureaucrat by second
guessing his judgment as to the maximum safe speed on a particular stretch
of road".

The one is (at least in part) a polite way of saying the other.

If the bureaucrats want a 10 MPH speed limit they should establish one,
not circumvent the democratic process by putting in obstructions.

So tell your political representative that you require him to get
legislation passed removing the speed bumps. If enough people do the same,
the law will change through the democratic process. But they won't. You
know they won't. Even though you're likely to have a majority of people
agreeing with you. This is just Yet Another Sign that "the democratic
process" doesn't work.

It's
far easier to get up a lobby _for_ some piece of legislation than it is to
get one up _against_ some piece of legislation.

Fine, so get up a lobby *for* passing a law that requires the replacement of
all speed bumps with, say, pedestrian crossings or something.

--
Richard Heathfield
"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29/7/1999
http://www.cpax.org.uk
email: rjh at the above domain, - www.