What you're saying is all true, but typically road design influence driving speed more than anything. Changing speed limits rarely has an impact on that (at least in the US).

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The same way we can trust an overweight doctor, a depressed therapist, a housecleaner who doesn't make their bed, or me to verify code I push to corporate repos even while I vibecode apps at home for fun without paying attention. I don't understand the basis for applying this standard to cops.

From the article:

> State law classifies camera-based tickets as mere violations, and they don’t add any points to a driver’s record, even though exceeding the speed limit by 11 miles per hour is worth four points on a license — but only if the offender is caught by a cop instead of a camera. Just three of those tickets suspends a driver’s license, but Giovansanti can keep on driving.

It does, but according to the article it doesn’t apply to tickets issued by camera.

typically, tickets issued by cameras dont cause demerit points because they are unreliable at knowing who specifically is driving at the time of the ticket.

they want to avoid giving you points on your license just because your kid/spouse/friend/whatever was speeding.

if these tickets were issued via a cop, rather than a camera, they would be 4 points each.

Traffic cameras identify the owner, the person who registered the vehicle, not the driver meaning there's no license to put points on. There is no points system (At least in NY) for registration to my knowledge.

Worth noting that speeding past a school is also an aggravating factor in the UK for sentencing if you're required to go to court over speeding.

> escalating multiplier for reoffense within the same category of offense with a cool down period of a few years if they don't break the law.

My country - Poland - implemented this part a couple of years ago. Specifically a reoffense in the same category within two years results in a higher tier fine - about twice the usual amount. Fines were also adjusted for inflation after over 20 years of being nominally the same.

The rate of cars passing me doing 180km/h+, so 40km/h+ above the local 140km/h limit, fell drastically.

Particularly speeding cars in poor condition (like dangling linkages etc.) vanished. Nobody wants a ticket that's worth more than the car.

> a recent solution that I've seen posted is to scale the fine to the value of the vehicle.

Sweet. My vanagon has a license to speed... not on highways though, it can barely hit the speedlimit.

Setting aside any concerns about cops being examples, public servants, etc, I'm shocked the NYPD's insurance doesn't have a problem with it.

My wife worked for a County government agency in Ohio. Her job duties included driving. She was required to report all traffic citations or crashes, regardless of when they occurred (during or outside of work hours), to the County and sign an affidavit annually attesting to such reporting.

If she exceeded a threshold of violations in a year the County's insurer would refuse to cover her. Because her job duties included driving this was considered grounds for termination.

Because he shouldn't be allowed to do that? Because police officers should be held to a higher standard than others? Because being immune to consequences isn't a thing anyone should be? Those are just the reasons I could think of in ten seconds, I'm sure others could come up with more.

We are talking about this because part of the job of a journalist is to expose broken policies.

NYPD policy should probably consider repeated reckless disregard for the law to be a discipline issue.

They're leveling some hefty accusations and signing their name on it. It would be monumentally stupid for J.K. Trotter, the author, to say these things without having any proof that holds up in court. If it's false, they would be sued and lose quickly. The data is pretty much all public record combined with standard journalism work.

which part is hyperbolic, and which part is slander?

(remember that a statement has to be false to be slander)

What’a scary about this, specifically? Speed cameras? Logs of tickets issued?

> Among the questions he would not answer was: “While driving the RAM 1500, have you been involved in a collision with a car, pedestrian or cyclist?” (We can’t independently find that out because license plates are not in the city database of crashes for some reason.)

Reminds me of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqYyxvM85zU

Would you apply the same reason to drunk driving? If not, why?

Nobody knows. He was driving too fast to get his plate.

If he hasn't, then why would he refuse to say so?

It's not so much whether someone has hit anyone - speeding laws exist for a good reason to protect other drivers, pedestrians, cyclists, etc. There's a good reason that school zones are 25 mph for survivability in the case of a car hitting a pedestrian (especially for small children).

There's certainly issues with speeding laws and enforcement, but at the end of the day the US is so car-centric that removing someone's license for dangerous driving can severely impact their ability to get to work, etc.

I am of two minds about it. On one hand, speeding alone when done by a mature highly-attentive driver isn't really dangerous no matter the limit, because the driver has enough expertise to know what his personal limit ought to be. The residual risk is more from immature drivers, the mistakes of other cars, cyclists, and pedestrians.

I have been on both sides of it. I have been the speeder who can drive very safely, and much earlier than that I have been the one to get hit by a car on a street. If the car had been going faster, or if it had been an SUV or a truck, I could have been less than lucky.

I settle for a middle position, which is that the speed limit should be no less than 35 mph on most streets, with heavy mandated use of automated collision avoidance systems. Moreover, I think that all pedestrian collisions, no matter how small, must be investigated thoroughly, with a hard action taken to minimize such an incident. School zones and other low-speed zones are a complete moneygrubbing racket because we already use schoolbuses which have protections.

Bicyclists must be mandated to wear light-colored high-visibility clothing, reflective gear, and a helmet, otherwise their bicycle should be confiscated.

When I go faster than usual, I always slow down around other traffic. So if the law accounted for that, that would be nice. It seems silly to be pulled over if you're the only one on the road.

However I can understand that slower speeds can reduce catastrophic results if a tire blows.

I suppose it's akin to wearing seatbelts: As long as you're driving reasonably around other traffic and only speeding when you're by yourself, then the law primarily is there to protect the one person.

Edit: is there something wrong with my comment?

His workplace is a public governmental building, so that seems like standard journalistic practice. It is also normal and appropriate to visit his house to seek a comment when he didn't respond through other channels. It would have been irresponsible and unethical to not put in an effort to speak with him before publishing this article. And taking a photo of a government official in public is again very normal, and it's good that they confirmed the vehicle is actually used by the guy they're naming.

For investigative journalism, if it even qualifies as that, this is pretty shallow. It's good work but it's just some public data and a couple hours of work, not a deep invasive investigation. It also is not freelance, this is a staff reporter for a decades-old publication.

Yeah, if he wasn't a public servant, and he wasn't a police who is supposed to enforce the laws, then I'd agree with you. But he is (hopefully "was" at one point) a public servant, and supposed to enforce the law, so if he flagrantly breaks the law almost every single day, then it's in public interest to know who is he and what he does.

>But how deep is too deep when it comes to freelance investigative journalism of this type?

when the subject is a cop? no such thing.