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Everyone who drives is a criminal

Don Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek observes that it's customary for everyone to drive a few miles per hour faster than the posted speed limit, and this custom is accepted by police officers who don't seem to ticket people unless they exceed the limit by at least 10 mph. (What Part of "Speed Limit 65" Do I Not Understand?)

Don writes:

The real law on U.S. highways is something like the following: if weather conditions are decent and if traffic is not too heavy, then you can drive between five and ten miles per hour over the posted speed limit. No one legislated this rule; it's not written down in any official statute book; it's certainly not posted along highways. It evolved spontaneously from everyday practice and is now part of the expectations of all drivers -- and, importantly, it is also part of the expectations of highway patrol officers.

But the problem here is that the police officers can pull you over and ticket you for driving 66 where 65 is posted, or 56 where 55 is posted. This means that the police officer can arbitrarily decide who to ticket and who not to, because everyone is violating the law. We live in a police state because legislators have created laws that everybody disobeys.

I have studied speeding law quite extensively. Arguments like "everyone was going faster than 55" hold absolutely no weight in court. The posted speed is the real law in Virginia, and if you drive faster than that (which everyone does), then you're a criminal. Driving even a single mile per hour faster than the speed limit is considered a "criminal" violation in Virginia.

posted Sunday, June 13, 2004

3 Comments:

By David:

I'm not sure if I should be gritting my teeth just a little.

Michael: do you want the (sometimes bad) laws on the books to be enforced? It's not clear to me from this post whether you want the speed limit enforced as is, or abandoned and changed? I'm pretty sure that you think that discretion is part of the problem.

But, when I posted Polygamy Avoids Prosecution Again Michael sent me an e-mail saying this was prosecutorial discretion.

It seems to me that there here are two crimes that are not being prosecuted evenly. Should we change the laws, or tighten enforcement?

posted at 6/15/2004 3:45 PM

By Calico Cat:

The laws should reflect the way people actually behave. As I understand it, there isn't really an issue with massive numbers of people practicing polygamy. But just about everyone violates the speeding laws. If the People allow the laws, in a Democratic society, to criminalize their everyday behavior, then something is messed up.

posted at 6/15/2004 4:52 PM

By David:

Thanks for the clarification. I think I can agree with this.

As to polygamy, the number practicing it is not that small (a few hundred thousand is the best guess). And, I think that there is a libertarian argument to be made that their isolation may lead individuals to commit crimes that they would not otherwise. But, I'm becoming convinced that these groups practice such systemic violation of certain crimes (i.e., mortgage and welfare fraud) that they should be viewed as a form of organized crime.

posted at 6/16/2004 5:32 PM