Police in Louisiana slammed a 67-year-old man into the ground, arresting him over a questionable traffic violation. The state court of appeals ruled May 11 that Calvin D. Miller’s injuries were only worth $25,000 in compensation. Miller had been driving his big rig logging truck home to Florien on US Highway 171 at 5:30pm on July 13, 2007. As he passed through the Village of Hornbeck, Officers Kenneth Hatchett, Jr., and Andy Mitchell, 19, pulled him over because he began speeding up “about 100 feet” before the limit changed from 45 to 55 MPH. Having driven the road for the past forty-seven years, Miller was quite familiar with the speed limit. He insisted he was not speeding.

“I can see right now you’re going to need an attitude adjustment,” Officer Hatchett said to the five foot, six inch tall elderly man.

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California drivers do not need to use their turn signals if no other car is nearby according to a ruling handed down Friday by the state’s second-highest court. A three-judge panel of the court of appeal found that La Habra Police Officer Nick Wilson was in the wrong when he stopped Paul David Carmona, Jr. for making a right-hand turn in his Chevy SUV without signaling. Wilson was about 55 feet away traveling in the opposite direction at the time Carmona made his turn. The road was otherwise empty.

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A November study by the University of Adelaide recommended that a commission be established to review the placement and use of speed cameras in South Australia. Last month, the state parliament rejected any suggestion that policies relating to automated ticketing could be questioned.

As part of a parliamentary internship program, a research report reviewed existing research and applied the findings to the road safety situation in South Australia. The results were provided to Ivan Venning, a Liberal Party member of House of Assembly, who attempted on May 19 to win approval for a select committee to examine the use and effectiveness of photo enforcement. During debate, Venning pointed out several other states were currently conducting reviews of their own.

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AOL’s Translogic [via PopSci] takes a look at the LAPD’s brand-spankety new Chevy Caprice PPV, the born-again Pontiac G8 that you can’t buy at a dealership. But rather than looking at the Caprice’s cop car-creaming performance (as did the Michigan State Police), this report focuses on the LAPD’s high-tech toys… which could just make the Caprice’s V8, rear-drive abilities less necessary than ever. Still, between the Holden-powered, rear-drive performance, the footprint-spying night vision camera and the automatic license plate recognition system, the Caprice PPV will probably make you think twice about speeding the next time you’re visiting the City of Angels.

Editor’s Note: Tomorrow is the first day of June, which the National Motorists Association has deemed “Lane Courtesy Month.” What follows is a piece entitled “Lane Courtesy: A Driving Ethic,” which was originally posted at the NMA’s website. There, the NMA has dedicated a whole page to issues of lane courtesy, including studies, fact sheets and other resources for the promotion of lane courtesy. TTAC thanks the NMA for drawing attention to the perennial aggravation of “Left Lane Bandits” and encourages you, our readers, to learn more at the NMA’s website and spread the good word. With just a little more awareness of lane courtesy, a better world is indeed possible…

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Police officers in New Mexico can take guns away from drivers who pose no threat. The state supreme court ruled on May 20 that “officer safety” is more important than any constitutional rights a gun-owning motorist might have. The ruling was handed down in deciding the fate of Gregory Ketelson who was a passenger in a vehicle pulled over on November 13, 2008.

During the stop, Hobbs Police Officer Miroslava Bleau saw a 9mm handgun on the back seat floorboard. Ketelson and the driver of the car were ordered out and away from the car while Officer Shane Blevins grabbed the gun. The officers later learned that Ketelson, as a convicted felon, could not legally possess a firearm. The court, however, only considered whether the officers acted properly in taking the gun before they had any reason to suspect Ketelson, who was entirely cooperative during the encounter, of committing a crime.

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A lawsuit will be filed tomorrow in Longview, Washington seeking to force city officials to abide by the statutory filing requirement for an initiative that would give residents a say in whether or not red light cameras and speed cameras can be used in the community. On May 23, initiative co-sponsors Josh Sutinen and Mike Wallin handed 3628 signatures on a petition for a ballot measure to the city clerk — exceeding the legally required amount. The city council chose to make up its own procedure.

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A government labor relations board in Australia yesterday upheld the firing of an employee busted for driving a speed camera van at more than double the speed limit. Stuart Rollo appealed to Fair Work Australia after he was terminated by Serco Traffic Camera Services in Victoria on December 10 for driving 102km/h (63 MPH) 50km/h (31 MPH) zone. On Thursday Commissioner G.R. Smith determined the firing was warranted by the circumstances.

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Editor’s Note: This piece, by John Carr, originally appeared at the National Motorists Association blog.

Wayne Crews recently posted an editorial on cost-benefit analysis and regulations. It’s worth a read.

In the 1970s the Carter administration prohibited speedometers from indicating speeds over 85 miles per hour. The idea was around before Carter, but his people implemented it.

Regulations require some justification. The justification was, people might not drive fast if they didn’t know how fast they were going. After some hand-waving and pulling numbers out of orifices it’s possible to fabricate a number of accidents and deaths per year prevented and call that the benefit of the regulation.

As part of Reagan’s regulatory reform the speedometer rule was scrapped. Rescinding a regulation requires some justification. The justification was that there was no real evidence that limiting indicated speed would reduce or had reduced driving speed.

An ineffective regulation is harmful because it imposes costs with no benefits.

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A circuit court judge in St. Louis, Missouri on Friday ruled the city’s use of automated ticketing machines violated state law. Since 2007, St. Louis gave the private company American Traffic Solutions (ATS) the right to issue tickets worth more than $30 million to the registered owners of vehicles that are photographed at local intersections. A class action suit by several motorists challenged the program on various legal and constitutional grounds.

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A judge with a history of overturning the will of Washington voters decided Friday to block the public from a say in the use of red light cameras. Chelan County Superior Court Judge John E. Bridges sided with traffic camera vendor American Traffic Solutions (ATS) which filed the suit to prevent a repeat of what happened in Mukilteo. In November, residents were allowed to vote on an anti-camera initiative, and 71 percent voted to ban the devices.

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Cincinnati motorist Thomas H. Starks spent nearly a year fighting a $150 speeding ticket he received from the Ohio State Highway Patrol. On Monday the arguments he made on his own behalf were vindicated by the state’s second-highest court. A three-judge panel threw out evidence provided by a Laser Technology Inc (LTI) UltraLyte laser speed gun on the grounds that state officials never bothered to certify its accuracy. Instead, they just assumed the certification of an older model, the LTI 20-20, would suffice.

Starks would not let that difference slide past the judge. On June 24, 2010, Trooper Eric Witmeyer had accused Starks of speeding on Interstate 75 in Franklin Township where the speed limit had been reduced to 55 MPH. Starks was put on trial on July 23, 2010. Starks insisted that the state had to prove the device was properly certified.

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Another Massachusetts jurisdiction that uses the broadly representative “town meeting” form of government has said “no” to the use of red light cameras. Residents gathered at the annual meeting in Raynham on Monday voted 104 to 95 against the idea of petitioning the legislature for permission to install automated ticketing machines. The town has a population of about 11,000, and all qualified inhabitants are allowed to vote.

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Most Americans depend heavily on their license to drive – for their jobs, their family obligations and their recreational travel.

Naturally, some of our driving needs take us out of state. And as is well-known, traffic enforcement tends to focus on out-of-state drivers – maybe because it is that much harder for drivers to successfully contest out-of-state tickets…?

Compounding this problem is the fact that out-of-state violations almost inevitably impact the home-state driver’s license, sometimes even resulting in suspensions. And if out-of-state tickets are hard to contest, then clearing up interstate licensing actions can be nearly impossible.

In the nanny state’s never-ending battle to completely eliminate all driving risk, and its corresponding effort to make sure that every bit of your traffic record is available to every enforcement agency in the land, several compacts have been set up between the states for the sharing of motorists’ driving offense information.

This might be a good thing, if all transportation departments had fair, clear, and consistent rules and procedures for how out-of-state violations should impact home-state license privileges – and those agencies took responsibility for treating motorists fairly when problems arise.

The reality, though, is that such situations lead to vicious circles where neither the bureaucracy of the ticketing state nor the home state is willing to step up and unilaterally correct problems. (Read More…)

Today’s sign of the times comes courtesy of the world of social media, and calls into question some of our most basic assumptions about the world of cars. France, it seems, experienced a 12.8% increase in on-road fatalities in the first quarter of this year, and the New York Times reports that the French government is responding by banning devices that scan the road ahead for speed camera radar waves.

A decade ago, the death rate on French roads was among the worst in Europe, and the government reacted in 2002 with what some drivers called repressive tactics. Radar cameras were erected at intersections throughout the country, which captured a motorist’s license plate if the car surpassed the speed limit by more than 5 kilometers an hour (3 m.p.h.), deducted points off a motorist’s license and sent a fine through the mail.

The measures were deemed successful. The International Transport Forum said France achieved a reduction of 47 percent in its road-death toll in the first decade of the century, relative to the 1990s. The ministerial report said the average speed in France also dropped 10 kilometers an hour since 2002, or 11.7 percent.

The radar cameras, however, spawned a thriving market in radar-warning devices. According to AFFTAC, 5.1 million drivers in France use them. Under the new law, users would face fines of up to 1,500 euros, or about $2,100.

The French government’s decision to not only ban radar detectors, but also to remove signs warning motorists of fixed radar cameras has generated some serious backlash. Apparently over 80,000 people “liked” the Facebook page of AFFTAC, a group opposing the measures and calling for nationwide protests, over the course of two days. By comparison, the most optimistic count of hand-raisers for a possible future Chevy El Camino is “possibly as high as 18,000 people.” Call us crazy, but we thought America’s oft-cited “love affair with the automobile” would have created some slightly different results.