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Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones

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Re: Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones

#151
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they are not regulating radio receiver usage, but the just the possession of it, which would be a separate kind of regulatory space.

All radio receivers have local oscillators built into their receiving circuitry that actually transmits energy that can be detected by specialized receivers.

> All radio receivers have local oscillators built into their receiving circuitry that actually transmits energy that can be detected by specialized receivers.

All efficient radio receivers....

It is possible to build radio receivers without such. I built a crystal set as a child that could power an air piece without a battery using only the AM signal.

Re: Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones

#152
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're out of date as of 2020. Reckless driving is 20 mph over the speed limit or over 85 mph now. It's a class 1 misdemeanor. Most of Virginia has 65 mph as the stated speed limit which usually drops to 55 mph around cities. There are stretches of I-95 and I-81 were the speed limit is 70 mph. But anyone who drives here knows that the speed limit is generally considered the slowest you should go on the road. Speeding…

I regularly drive at speeds in excess of 100mph when highways are empty and waze shows no police. What would be the fate of a person caught at those speeds in Virginia?

In Virginia?

Death.

But it will be enforced by the velocity squared proportionality of kinetic energy and chronically underfunded highway maintenance coupled with old highways, not the police.

Re: Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones

#153
post #148
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Virginia as a whole has some pretty absurdly pro police laws, at least re: driving. The lesser of either 20 over the speed limit or any speed over ~80~ 85 miles an hour (thanks jmisavage) in Virginia is a misdemeanor, and at least one auto journalist has been jailed in Virginia. https://jalopnik.com/never-speed-in-virginia-lessons-from-my... It's also the only state to prohibit radar detectors.

Golly.I read that article. What a hideous person. Who drives so fast on country roads? Very selfish people who do not care about their own lives let alone the lives of others. What a good punishment! Much better than a fine. We should use short prison sentences much more for the sorts of crimes rich privileged reprobates like this do. Then the winging! It seems gaol is not pleasant. Does the writer want sympathy? Non…

The 101 through Sonoma/Humboldt/Mendocino counties is, at some places, a 2-lane highway weaving its way through a twisty curvy Redwood forest at 55-65mph, and up to 75mph when it's a six-lane highway. And here in Southern California I regularly get away with 80-85mph in front of CA highway patrol. Most places I've been to in the US seem to consider 5-10 over the limit to be acceptable. I have even heard of freeways in Texas permitting 80 MPH! So these speeds are not unheard of (maybe on a country road but you'd expect the kind of treatment that guy got for 100MPH+)

Judging by your writing you sound British, IMO speed limits in a lot of Europe are ridiculously low; our highway speeds shown in MPH are often a larger number than your highway speeds shown in KPH.

Re: Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones

#154
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've been dinged exactly twice for speeding Not to be a know-all but why not stick to the speed limit?

Because it is very dangerous to drive at the speed limit on a 55-65mph interstate. You'll get 18-wheelers harassing you, even if you stick to the slow lane and don't mind paying extra attention to the on-ramps every mile. And those semi trucks almost never get pulled over; their job is hard enough.

> You'll get 18-wheelers harassing you, even if you stick to the slow lane and don't mind paying extra attention to the on-ramps every mile. And those semi trucks almost never get pulled over; their job is hard enough.

Where I live (Aotearoa) trucks do not act like that. They are heavily policed and drive to the speed limit.

It is very common to see a truck stopped on the side of the road with a police officer checking it.

Good

Re: Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones

#155
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're out of date as of 2020. Reckless driving is 20 mph over the speed limit or over 85 mph now. It's a class 1 misdemeanor. Most of Virginia has 65 mph as the stated speed limit which usually drops to 55 mph around cities. There are stretches of I-95 and I-81 were the speed limit is 70 mph. But anyone who drives here knows that the speed limit is generally considered the slowest you should go on the road. Speeding…

I regularly drive at speeds in excess of 100mph when highways are empty and waze shows no police. What would be the fate of a person caught at those speeds in Virginia?

That's reckless driving, which is a class 1 misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $2,500 and up to a year in jail.

At over 100, you would have a pretty high chance of spending a weekend in jail.

Re: Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones

#156
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've been dinged exactly twice for speeding Not to be a know-all but why not stick to the speed limit?

Because it is very dangerous to drive at the speed limit on a 55-65mph interstate. You'll get 18-wheelers harassing you, even if you stick to the slow lane and don't mind paying extra attention to the on-ramps every mile. And those semi trucks almost never get pulled over; their job is hard enough.

The person you replied to is being sarcastic. Their response to the quote is a also a near quote of the parent post.

Re: Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> judicial elections are needed These aren’t a panacea. I’ve helped get judges elected in Manhattan. The primaries swung by tens of votes in some cases, usually no more than a few hundred. A few clubs, or one large tenant association, could decide the vote. (Counterfactual: judicial elections attract disproportionately-informed voters if they happen off cycle and without party affiliations, which in the context of pr…

Judicial elections also directly introduce lobbying into the judicial branch. Successful judges now have to pay for their campaigns and more money tends to equal more success in elections.

How judges get picked is a huge issue that most of the population have no education in. Having them selected by the populace leads simply to judges that enormously punitive. The population as a whole believes that criminals should be destroyed/deleted from society, and the judges that can deliver that are the ones that get elected.

This generally means very-police-friendly judges that will issue warrants without any cause, and will deny any attempts to later fight the illegality. These judges then move up to the appeals courts and support the same policies by the friends they left behind in the lower courts.

Re: Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones

#158
post #148
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Virginia as a whole has some pretty absurdly pro police laws, at least re: driving. The lesser of either 20 over the speed limit or any speed over ~80~ 85 miles an hour (thanks jmisavage) in Virginia is a misdemeanor, and at least one auto journalist has been jailed in Virginia. https://jalopnik.com/never-speed-in-virginia-lessons-from-my... It's also the only state to prohibit radar detectors.

Golly.I read that article. What a hideous person. Who drives so fast on country roads? Very selfish people who do not care about their own lives let alone the lives of others. What a good punishment! Much better than a fine. We should use short prison sentences much more for the sorts of crimes rich privileged reprobates like this do. Then the winging! It seems gaol is not pleasant. Does the writer want sympathy? Non…

Nitpick: I think you meant to write “whinging” rather than “winging”

Re: Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, I don't think speed limits really should exist in any context. If you want people to go slow, design the roads for slower driving, don't just impose arbitrary limits.

Speed limits are a blunt instrument, because "slow" isn't the real goal: the goal is to get people to drive safely , and one way they currently don't do that is by driving at reckless speeds (regardless of what the limit happens to be.)

You don’t know which speeds are actually reckless. Using speed limits to inform your opinion is circular. It depends on the design and condition of the road, the quality and features of the car, and traffic, weather and environmental conditions.

Re: Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones

#160
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're ignoring the fact that many people's perception of what is "a safe speed" is not at all reliable. (Compare: what percentage of people would claim to be better-than-average drivers? https://www.smithlawco.com/blog/2017/december/do-most-driver... ) We have speed limits because trusting people to "go a safe speed" doesn't work, in general.

Objectively, the group settles into a particular speed. It's based on both safety and perceived safety, and it's not perfect, but it works out pretty well. If the road is designed properly it's the top few percentile that you need to restrain, not the masses. If you make a super wide straight shot of asphalt down a residential neighborhood, and people go too fast, that's the road designer's fault.

> it's the top few percentile that you need to restrain, not the masses

And how do you propose to "restrain" them, if not by enforcing a speed limit?

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