Seriously fuck you piggie
Has anyone noticed how unnoticeable they're making police cars now? All black vehicles, the lights on top are so skinny and flat they look like bike racks at night or far, the words on the car are painted dark gray to blend into black so it isn't easily spotted... Edit: spelling
Around my city they now have completely unmarked cars that - while moving among the traffic - dynamically read plates and measure the speed of the other cars around them, allowing them to issue tickets automatically all along. The cars are all different models, too. Here is one for example.
In America, they steal people's cars and retrofit them with sirens and lights so they can blend in better.
In my city, they changed the "normal" police cars to this dull, monotone paint job that's really hard to spot from far away. We've always had the black cars with dark gray lettering, but now even the standard cruisers are hard as shit to spot.
The only purpose of it is to make it harder for drivers to see cruisers when they're committing traffic infractions. It also makes it harder for people who could (theoretically) have a genuine need for help to spot a cruiser.
I also seriously question the legality of it. All of the black cruisers here do have "POLICE" on the side but you pretty much have to be within a few feet of the car and have light reflecting off of it from the exact right angle to even see the lettering. I'm assuming they need to identify themselves as police and that's why they bothered to put the lettering there, but what's the point if no human can actually read the lettering?
They did that where I live. I'm in the rural south and we mostly have to deal with city cops outside their jurisdiction (as if that makes a difference at all), and state troopers.
The city cops are in black Dodge Chargers and with the lights around the dashboard, making it impossible to really tell they are squad cars. They completely blend in with normal traffic and at night, you absolutely can't tell them apart from normal black cars. The only way to really make them out is by being close and realizing the Charger is fancy with better lighting and when the dashboard lights are all lit up. I can relate to where they say 'POLICE' on the sides, but it's hard to see that from a distance.
The state troopers are a whole other story. They have gold cars that look like some of kind of luxury car like a Mercedes Benz or BMW, and they have lights on the roof but they are flat and very hard to see on a bad day or dark at night. They are starting to transition though into black cars with a gold stripe and are hard to make out.
I have to note from living in the rural south; city cops usually live in small towns outside their jurisdiction. These small towns are usually scared shitless of police due to how they're harassed all the time for the hot spots the OP has mentioned, and cause the fucking state troopers will roam there and do whatever they want. Almost every bad experience I have with cops in my adulthood has come from state troopers.
This is pretty much how police departments make money in rural America. Anyone who has lived in the rural country of the south knows from experience what I'm about to detail;
They will set up hot spots around corner stores and outside neighborhoods around 5 AM and later around 4 PM. These are the times most people are going to work in the morning and later heading home in the evening. They will flag people for speeding tickets, and then do the usual checks for insurance for more tickets.
I will never forget this incident about 5 years ago when I was coming home from work around 5 PM and the neighborhood I lived in was completely staked out with cop cars and pulling people over, all of which who were coming home from work and trying to get home. There was a squad car at 3 different gas stations; another sitting hidden in the parking lot of a dollar store, two more cars sitting at the post office (one of which that was parked illegally in the grass to hide behind a tree), one more patrolling the street from the interstate and finally, the last car was completely up the road in a neighborhood. I counted EIGHT cop cars in this small area.
I went in the gas station and people in there were spooked and freaked out. 4 people in that gas station were complaining they got pulled over and checked for insurance, license and their tags and they were not speeding at all. The clerk explained to everyone that they had been there for an hour and people had been coming into the store constantly complaining about how the cops were treating them. Right across the street from this gas station is the dollar store I mentioned, and the cop that had been staked out there was checking people for insurance. When I went back outside, he had an old woman who was screaming at him as he checked her car, and then right outside this on the road is one of those cop cars staked out waiting to check people from leaving.
TLDR; eight total cop cars staking out a small town off the interstate and pulling over everyone they possibly could to check for insurance, license and tags. You would've thought that there was an escaped killer on the loose or something, but no. Just cops pulling people over to write tickets and fines.
The ticket revenue system of police department funding is classist and institutional racism
i got pulled over late on christmas eve when i was heading home from seeing family. i was probably speeding by like 5 mph and they were pulling people over en masse. they literally were just pointing at you and telling you pull over, there was a long line of cars. i so badly wanted them to say "merry christmas" to me so i could laugh in their face but of course they never mentioned it, all business. that ticket really fucked me up too. merry fucking christmas you pigs.
I saw a whole shitload of cops pulling people over today; like 5 different cops all clearly just doing speed enforcement. totally fucked.
how much of a piece of shit do you have to be to think speeding is your godgiven right when poor people of color are disproprotionate victims of traffic violence because many of them have to walk or bike to work in a society that doesnt get a wet fart about people who dont drive
yeah going over the limit on a divided limited access interstate is a little different than driving at an unsafe speed in a city. Weird how they do enforcement on highways but never seem to be interested in charges for "accidents" with bikes or pedestrians.
since when is "i do what i want regardless of how it negatively impacts others" a leftist approach to life and not that of an anti-mask jetski dealer chud?
okay bro, just pointing out that's literally the same argument you hear from antimaskers
Well, to be fair right-wingers will use your argument of "not harming others" to oppose abortion (i.e. they'll say you're "harming a baby", etc.).
They'll also say similar things about enforcing drug laws ("they harm society even if only individuals use them", etc.).
And if you counter by saying "they don't harm others, actually (because I'm careful with my drugs or I consulted my doctor about the abortion, etc.)" then you're essentially making SenoraRaton's argument.
I feel kind of conflicted about this. I live in a city with piss poor bicycling infrastructure and drivers who are openly hostile to pedestrians/cyclists. It's also not uncommon for people to go 10-30 mph above the speed limit where, frankly, the speed limit was already probably a touch too high. Our bike lines also tend to just become places for motorists to put on their hazards and text (this forces cyclists to merge into car traffic and hope to god the driver doesn't door them). Drivers in general are constantly making very dangerous maneuvers to try to cut time out of their commute. I also don't believe that everyone who drives like this is doing so because they are late for work. My city has a big "war on cars" crowd, especially in the surrounding suburbs. It's almost like people are making a statement when they zoom by you at 50mph, honking their horn and giving you an inch between their side mirror and your handlebars.
I really, really want this to change because I feel like I am putting my life on the line every time I leave my home but I also don't just want a bunch of pigs handing out tickets discriminately. I think massive changes to road infrastructure, stamping out silly "war on cars" type of rhetoric and alleviating people of the capitalist hellhole they live in that makes them feel like they need to shave 3 minutes off of every commute would probably be a good start, but in the current world we live in, I don't know what a good solution is to people blatantly disobeying traffic laws to the extent that they're putting people's lives in danger. All that happens in my city is the local politicians pander to the "war on cars" crowd and make infrastructural changes that, ironically, make traffic worse because people have a hard time understanding that public transit and alternate modes of transportation actually reduce traffic.
Speeding is a fucking health hazard. Zero sympathy for dipshits who operate heavy machinery unsafely
I mean so is jaywalking but I don't want cops to start harassing people for it just so that they can collect ticket revenue.
Jaywalking does not involve operating any extremely dangerous, high speed 2 ton machines.
Yeah, it involves disobeying traffic laws and potentially putting yourself in the path of extremely dangerous, high speed 2 ton machines. However I wouldn't have "zero sympathy for dipshits" who get hit while jaywalking unsafely.
Are you really too much of a moron to understand the huge risk driving an automobile puts upon everyone around you?
Just wanna note that ambulances routinely speed. Would they be "morons"?
Also good to know that if I'm driving a sick relative to the hospital for an emergency that I should only drive under the speed limit... At least grandma won't be a riding with a criminal!!
Speeding is a fucking health hazard. Zero sympathy for dipshits who operate heavy machinery unsafely
Just wanna add, ambulances and other emergency medical/fire vehicles routinely speed.
Speeding tickets are a tax on stupidity.
The only issue is that this is the same reasoning used by Bloomberg when he did that soda tax. The safety of society argument is a better one to make here, tbh. Regardless of all of that, it's not hard to see that speeding tickets are disproportionately extracting hard earned money from the working class.
If you don't know when it's safe to speed, you don't need to be driving. You are a danger to yourself and others if you are that incompetent.
Imagine him driving someone who's having a heart attack to the hospital:
"Sorry grandpa but if you die before we get the hospital, at least know that we weren't breaking the law by speeding! No tax on stupidity for us!"
