Is it actually legal to go 5 mph over the speed limit?

[hotdogPi]

It's explicitly legal in a few northwestern states as long as you're passing.

Nobody seemed to notice that I posted this.

Does anyone know exactly which states this applies to?

Also, why is this in off-topic?

[abefroman329]

Seriously the most pulled over out of state vehicles I see have Illinois license plates.

It's probably not just speed.  They're called FIBs, FIP, and FISH for a reason.

You forgot FISHTABs

[hbelkins]

While speeding was not why I was stopped in either case, after my last two times being pulled over it's hard for me to believe my MN plates were *not* the primary reason for the police interest in me, and both stops were pretty clearly pretext stops to harass me for illegal contraband movements. One was on I-70 in Kansas in 2019 where that officer apparently realized there was nothing going on quickly and with a friendly warning to be careful he let me go. Unfortunately the ones who stopped me in Nebraska back in April were much more hostile and aggressive, bringing a K-9 to get into my car because I refused consent to search. I'm still bitter about it.

This has always concerned me. What's the probable cause for them bringing in the dog? Is lack of consent to search considered probable cause? If it is, then there is really no right of refusal in practical terms.

"Can we search your car?"

"No."

"Well, we're going to anyway. We'll going to bring the canine unit to search your car."

Now, my understanding is that if the dog hits on something, that generates probable cause. But it seems to me that deployment of the dog in and of itself is a search that would require consent.

[abefroman329]

What's the probable cause for them bringing in the dog?

"I smelled marijuana, but I couldn't determine the source based on an visual search."  Did the cop actually smell marijuana?  Who knows, but the cop and their buddies will happily perjure themselves if they didn't.

Seriously, there's a whole universe of cops acting like they're above the law that has nothing to do with radar detectors or Virginia; you should learn about it sometime.

[kphoger]

It's explicitly legal in a few northwestern states as long as you're passing.

Nobody seemed to notice that I posted this.

Does anyone know exactly which states this applies to?

Also, why is this in off-topic?

I noticed.  But I only searched the UVC and a couple of other states, so I don't have the answer to your question.

[Amaury]

It's explicitly legal in a few northwestern states as long as you're passing.

I could be wrong, but I think this only applies to two-lane highways, where in order to pass, you have to go in the oncoming lane–legally, when there are broken lines in the middle. On a highway/freeway where all lanes are going the same way in their respective directions–south/north and west/east–there's nothing for you to hurry for while passing.

[kphoger]

It's explicitly legal in a few northwestern states as long as you're passing.

I could be wrong, but I think this only applies to two-lane highways, where in order to pass, you have to go in the oncoming lane–legally, when there are broken lines in the middle. On a highway/freeway where all lanes are going the same way in their respective directions–south/north and west/east–there's nothing for you to hurry for while passing.

That would obviously depend on the exact wording of the law.  I still haven't found a state with a carve-out in the vehicle code for overtaking, but that doesn't mean there isn't one or more.

[hotdogPi]

Did you check Washington? I seem to remember that being one of them, plus Amaury is from Washington.

[kphoger]

Did you check Washington? I seem to remember that being one of them, plus Amaury is from Washington.

You are correct.

Title 46 – Motor Vehicles

Chapter 46.61 – Rules of the Road

RCW 46.61.400 – Basic rule and maximum limits

(1) No person shall drive a vehicle on a highway at a speed greater than is reasonable and prudent under the conditions and having regard to the actual and potential hazards then existing. In every event speed shall be so controlled as may be necessary to avoid colliding with any person, vehicle or other conveyance on or entering the highway in compliance with legal requirements and the duty of all persons to use due care.

[...]

Title 46 – Motor Vehicles

Chapter 46.61 – Rules of the Road

RCW 46.61.465 – Exceeding speed limit evidence of reckless driving

The unlawful operation of a vehicle in excess of the maximum lawful speeds provided in this chapter at the point of operation and under the circumstances described shall be prima facie evidence of the operation of a motor vehicle in a reckless manner by the operator thereof.

Title 46 – Motor Vehicles

Chapter 46.61 – Rules of the Road

RCW 46.61.425 – Minimum speed regulation – Passing slow moving vehicle

(1) No person shall drive a motor vehicle at such a slow speed as to impede the normal and reasonable movement of traffic except when reduced speed is necessary for safe operation or in compliance with law: PROVIDED, That a person following a vehicle driving at less than the legal maximum speed and desiring to pass such vehicle may exceed the speed limit, subject to the provisions of RCW 46.61.120 [Limitations on overtaking on the left] on highways having only one lane of traffic in each direction, at only such a speed and for only such a distance as is necessary to complete the pass with a reasonable margin of safety.

[GCrites]

In Ohio the highway engineers went to the highway patrol and asked them to raise the grace limit from 9 mph because the engineers' data showed that pulling too many people over was more dangerous than speeding since pulling someone over on a busy road makes hundreds if not thousands of drivers change their position. Pulling someone over is extremely dangerous for everyone involved unless the speed limit is low or traffic is light.

[michravera]

I go 5 over pretty much everywhere, because otherwise you'll be pushed off the road by everyone else. Only places I stick to the limit or go under is if there are a lot of pedestrians around

There is a distinction between "what is legal" and "what you can almost always get away with". There is also a distinction between posted statutory maximum speed limits and posted prima facie speed limits.

Just about anywhere in the world, no authority is going to issue a ticket for actually going less than 10% over the maximum legal speed. That's 5% for your equipment and 5% for their equipment. Now that's only 83MPH in a 75 zone. That doesn't make it legal to drive 82MPH. It doesn't even make it legal to drive 78MPH. It's just that they can't be sure that you are actually violating the law (and have reasonable notice that you are and that you intend to do so).

In California, most "Speed Limit" signs that aren't on freeways are actually prima facie limits. They aren't the maximum legal speed. The are just the posting authority's best scientific estimate of what a legal speed would be. Not all of them post for ideal conditions. Not all of them update the signs when a traffic survey determines that a higher speed is appropriate. Sometimes signed prima facie limits are reduced because of pressure from people in the neighborhood. In those conditions, police often operate RADAR and do ticket, but not usually without giving enough tolerance so as to make it pretty certain that the speed will hold up as illegal, if challenged in court.

[dlsterner]

How do you know the exact speed you were actually going?

Many years ago, on family car vacations, my father was interested in how accurate our car's speedometer was.  So when things weren't busy and we were on a flat and lightly traveled section of interstate highway, he would set the cruise control and see what speed it settled at on the display.  He would then challenge us kids to watch for the mile marker posts and, using a stopwatch, time the distance between mile markers, and from that figure out the actual miles per hour.  We would do this several times and average the results.

My dad, brother, and I were all - to varying degrees - both road geeks and math geeks.  Mom put up with us as best she could.

Since then I've learned that the spacing between mile markers may not be terribly exact, so I don't know how reliable our calculations ended up being.

[elsmere241]

When we moved from Nashville, TN to Newark, DE in 1982, my father was driving the U-Haul and my mother was following in the station wagon.  We spent the first night in Bristol, TN and my mother complained to my father that they were going too fast, typically breaking 60.  So the next morning I rode shotgun in the U-Haul and measured the time between mile markers with a stopwatch.  I forget how fast we turned out to be going.

[SP Cook]

The posted speed limit is normally 5 or 10 mph below the design speed. 
[/quote]

No, the posted speed is whatever the courthouse gang, abetted by the insurance industry and know-nothing do-gooders, thinks will yield the maximum revenue.  It has nothing to do with science or safety at all. 

Note good posts above about how pulling people over to random tax them is extremely dangerous and how cops, knowing the roads can be driven far faster than the SL, and having immunity, do so regularly.

It is A L L about money.

[hbelkins]

In Ohio the highway engineers went to the highway patrol and asked them to raise the grace limit from 9 mph because the engineers' data showed that pulling too many people over was more dangerous than speeding since pulling someone over on a busy road makes hundreds if not thousands of drivers change their position. Pulling someone over is extremely dangerous for everyone involved unless the speed limit is low or traffic is light.

Wonder what they raised their grace limit to?

In 2008, I was coming south on OH 104, which I had been told was a good option to on US 23 between Columbus and Portsmouth. I was between Chillicothe and Portsmouth and I met an Ohio state trooper. I was doing somewhere between 65 and 70 in a 55 mph zone on a relatively flat, level road. He turned around and wrote me a ticket. He told me that he didn't feel I was driving at an excessive, dangerous rate of speed, but I was over the limit and he did have to issue the ticket. He wrote me for 64 in a 55 zone.

I ordered my Valentine One radar detector the next week. 

[TheHighwayMan3561]

While speeding was not why I was stopped in either case, after my last two times being pulled over it's hard for me to believe my MN plates were *not* the primary reason for the police interest in me, and both stops were pretty clearly pretext stops to harass me for illegal contraband movements. One was on I-70 in Kansas in 2019 where that officer apparently realized there was nothing going on quickly and with a friendly warning to be careful he let me go. Unfortunately the ones who stopped me in Nebraska back in April were much more hostile and aggressive, bringing a K-9 to get into my car because I refused consent to search. I'm still bitter about it.

This has always concerned me. What's the probable cause for them bringing in the dog? Is lack of consent to search considered probable cause? If it is, then there is really no right of refusal in practical terms.

In exploring my options in the aftermath, the short answer is there are no rules. My travel history was likely his entire premise for claiming there was reasonable suspicion criminal activity was taking place.

When a cop stops you, he is supposed to strictly keep the focus on why he stopped you, so in order to investigate the unrelated drug/gun trafficking stuff that he's actually interested in, he needs to find a way to stall for time to build his case. In my case, he pretended my license plate information wasn't coming through on his computer so he could try to dig into my travel history. As soon as his computer "came back online" his tone completely changed to much more accusatory, stating his work is to intercept guns and drugs. He asked to search, and when I refused he more or less said my travel pattern is too suspicious to be allowed to continue without further scrutiny. That was when the K9 got involved.

I admit part of probably how I ended up there was ignorance of police tactics, but I don't know what I would have done differently if I could do it again. I'm not a good liar and obviously getting caught in a lie would have resulted in the same ending. In reading about an ongoing lawsuit against the Kansas Highway Patrol, profiling the condition of the car's interior is another tactic, and my car was a mess because I'd been on the move for 8 days straight.

[GCrites]

In Ohio the highway engineers went to the highway patrol and asked them to raise the grace limit from 9 mph because the engineers' data showed that pulling too many people over was more dangerous than speeding since pulling someone over on a busy road makes hundreds if not thousands of drivers change their position. Pulling someone over is extremely dangerous for everyone involved unless the speed limit is low or traffic is light.

Wonder what they raised their grace limit to?

11. It happened about 4 years ago.

[abefroman329]

I admit part of probably how I ended up there was ignorance of police tactics, but I don't know what I would have done differently if I could do it again.

There are websites that go into far more detail than I ever could, but the basic thing to remember is that they're trying to urge you to do what is going to take the least amount of time (consenting to everything) rather than what is going to afford you the most due process (making them get a warrant to search your car).

[TheHighwayMan3561]

I admit part of probably how I ended up there was ignorance of police tactics, but I don't know what I would have done differently if I could do it again.

There are websites that go into far more detail than I ever could, but the basic thing to remember is that they're trying to urge you to do what is going to take the least amount of time (consenting to everything) rather than what is going to afford you the most due process (making them get a warrant to search your car).

Unfortunately what I learned is that courts have found that between you being on a public road, which erodes your rights to privacy, and the "immediate urgency" of stopping potential harmful contraband from being moved, cops have a much lower bar to gain rights to search vehicles over, say, a private home. The bar to create reasonable suspicion, which once reached pretty much means they now have the power to do whatever they have to do to satisfy the question of whether you're engaged in illegal activity, is nebulous and vague. While they do need your initial consent to search, as HB noted above a dog getting a hit gives them immediate and automatic power to search with no more questions asked.

Dogs aren't accurate instruments of detecting illegal substances, which I did not know before these cops harassed me. So I concluded the point of them is simply to override refusals of consent and take the decision out of the hands of the subject they want to search.

[JoePCool14]

Seriously the most pulled over out of state vehicles I see have Illinois license plates.

Because if you're driving in Illinois and you're not doing at least 10 over, you'll probably have someone tailgating you hard.

[GCrites]

I admit part of probably how I ended up there was ignorance of police tactics, but I don't know what I would have done differently if I could do it again.

There are websites that go into far more detail than I ever could, but the basic thing to remember is that they're trying to urge you to do what is going to take the least amount of time (consenting to everything) rather than what is going to afford you the most due process (making them get a warrant to search your car).

Unfortunately what I learned is that courts have found that between you being on a public road, which erodes your rights to privacy, and the "immediate urgency" of stopping potential harmful contraband from being moved, cops have a much lower bar to gain rights to search vehicles over, say, a private home. The bar to create reasonable suspicion, which once reached pretty much means they now have the power to do whatever they have to do to satisfy the question of whether you're engaged in illegal activity, is nebulous and vague. While they do need your initial consent to search, as HB noted above a dog getting a hit gives them immediate and automatic power to search with no more questions asked.

Dogs aren't accurate instruments of detecting illegal substances, which I did not know before these cops harassed me. So I concluded the point of them is simply to override refusals of consent and take the decision out of the hands of the subject they want to search.

They can pretty much do anything to you when you are driving a car since "you could hurt someone".

[epzik8]

I mean, I'll be going about 75 on my 65 MPH home stretch of I-95 and somebody will still be right on my tail.

[algorerhythms]

Seriously the most pulled over out of state vehicles I see have Illinois license plates.

Because if you're driving in Illinois and you're not doing at least 10 over, you'll probably have someone tailgating you hard.

What I've learned from driving in Illinois and Ontario is that I will have someone tailgating me no matter what I do, so I stopped giving a damn and just drive the speed limit.

[Rothman]

Seriously the most pulled over out of state vehicles I see have Illinois license plates.

Because if you're driving in Illinois and you're not doing at least 10 over, you'll probably have someone tailgating you hard.

What I've learned from driving in Illinois and Ontario is that I will have someone tailgating me no matter what I do, so I stopped giving a damn and just drive the speed limit.

Ah, a Nestor.

I've always found it relatively easy to not block the left lane and be courteous when I'm driving slower than traffic.

[algorerhythms]

Seriously the most pulled over out of state vehicles I see have Illinois license plates.

Because if you're driving in Illinois and you're not doing at least 10 over, you'll probably have someone tailgating you hard.

What I've learned from driving in Illinois and Ontario is that I will have someone tailgating me no matter what I do, so I stopped giving a damn and just drive the speed limit.

Ah, a Nestor.

I've always found it relatively easy to not block the left lane and be courteous when I'm driving slower than traffic.

You automatically assume I block the left lane?