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Do you support doubling traffic infraction fines on Kansas Highway 10 between Lawrence and Johnson County?
| Response | Percent | Votes | |
|---|---|---|---|
| No | 59% | 469 | |
| Yes | 36% | 282 | |
| Not sure | 4% | 32 | |
| Total | 783 | ||
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Comments
oneeye_wilbur 1 year, 2 months ago
What's the point? When an officer has someone stopped , the next driver speeds right on by.
I would divide the lanes and have bumper to bumper traffic. That will slow down the drivers.
purplesage 1 year, 2 months ago
It won't solve the problem. They will just treat it as a lucrative revenue producing speed trap. People need to obey the law. It is a race track out there. How well did that double fine thing work in the construction zones on Kasold and out on 6th by St. Margaret's?. Didn't slow it down but produced hundreds of tickets - even on non-work days.
kernal 1 year, 2 months ago
Unfortunately, the only thing that will probably do any good is lowering the speed limit.
Curtis Lange 1 year, 2 months ago
That won't fix anything either. K10, at near interstate standards, is set correctly at 70 mph. Lowering it will not stop cross over accidents. Until people stop reading the paper, talking on their phone, etc, the cable barriers are everyone's best bet at safety.
cheeseburger 1 year, 2 months ago
+1
rockchalker52 1 year, 2 months ago
Yah, write 'em up. If they work it half as hard as they do 59 hyway south of town, things will slow down a little. Not much, but a little. At least folks will be more aware simply because they're lookin' for cops. It'll help some.
bad_dog 1 year, 2 months ago
$5-$6/gallon gas will slow a lot of people down, especially the SUVs.
wissmo 1 year, 2 months ago
My SUV gets 33 mpg HW
GEARHEAD 1 year, 2 months ago
The problem with K10 is it was not built right. The median needs to be deeper to direct crossing traffic more in line with the roadway. I had a flat tire with a semi on that hiway and the way it is built it pulls you into the other lane. Just look at I 70 west of topeka.
hitme 1 year, 2 months ago
Speeding has nothing to do with the real problem. It won't affect the sleepy, drunk/under the influence, or distracted drivers that are the problem. It is those driver's vehicles which cross the median and cause fatalities.
I love those signs that threaten a $10,000 fine for hitting a worker. You kill or maim someone with your car and a $10,000 fine is the least of your legal/financial worries. Geniuses.
Solve the real problem.
hitme 1 year, 2 months ago
median barrier
Pywacket 1 year, 2 months ago
You're ignoring physics. I don't think anyone will argue with you that sleepy, drunk/under-the-influence, and distracted drivers are the underlying cause of the many wrecks. But those same half-there drivers are everywhere and there are not so many fatal wrecks in many roadways, which means that K-10 provides secondary causes that exacerbate the wrongdoing of the primary cause--the bad drivers.
It's a matter of physics that the damages from a head-on collision between (let's say) two vehicles each travelling at roughly 90 mph (net impact = 180 mph) is going to be catastrophic. There is a much higher survival rate as the speed factor goes down. There is also more time to react--i.e., the person about to be hit can brake down somewhat if he sees the crossover vehicle coming. If he himself is doing 80 or 90, he won't have time to slow appreciably. But if he's going 65 or 70--or even 75--that gives a bit more of a chance to lower the impact speed--or even to change lanes in time to avoid being hit.
A lower speed limit and greater fines for violations would help with the secondary factors in these fatality accidents. Addressing the primary factor (the at-fault driving errors/infractions you list) is a tougher nut to crack.
We should not give up on increased driver education/awareness, but until people pull their heads out (which I don't see happening soon), we shouldn't just throw up our hands as if we have no tools at our disposal. We can certainly try to lower impact speeds and give innocent people (as well as the at-fault drivers) a fighting chance at survival.
notorious_agenda 1 year, 2 months ago
from 2001 to 2010 there were 20 fatal accidents on K-10 thats 2 a year. thats a statistic from the state of kansas. please define "So many"
hitme 1 year, 2 months ago
Py, Try this the next time you're driving K-10, I've done it myself.
Pick out an oncoming car and at about a thousand feet away, count the seconds before you pass. Then try it at 500 feet and 250 feet. What you'll notice is that you wouldn't be able to avoid the car crossing the median whether the actual speed are 65 or 80. Try it and you understand.
A barrier is the solution. Fines and speed limit changes aren't.
labmonkey 1 year, 2 months ago
How about making texting while driving a DUI offense, and double the DUI fine along this stretch. All this current law will do is create speed traps.
grammaddy 1 year, 2 months ago
Without enforcement,the laws and fines don't mean diddly.
Curtis Lange 1 year, 2 months ago
No, because it doesn't fix anything. Even though the majority of common folks oppose this, the idiots in Topeka will pass it anyways...
JustNoticed 1 year, 2 months ago
Ticket the yahoos who drive the whole way in the left lane.
cheeseburger 1 year, 2 months ago
+100
Pywacket 1 year, 2 months ago
YESYESYES!!!
merrill 1 year, 2 months ago
Speed traps cannot be created if drivers are not speeding....
Most common cause of accidents;
merrill 1 year, 2 months ago
Speed Kills - The faster the speed of a vehicle, the greater the risk of an accident. The forces experienced by the human body in a collision increase exponentially as the speed increases. Smart Motorist recommends that drivers observe our 3 second rule in everyday traffic, no matter what your speed.
Traffic engineers and local governments have determined the maximum speeds allowable for safe travel on the nation's roadways. Speeding is a deliberate and calculated behavior where the driver knows the risk but ignores the danger. Fully 90% of all licensed drivers speed at some point in their driving career; 75% admit to committing this offense regularly.
Consider this example: a pedestrian walks out in front of a car. If the car is traveling at just 30 mph, and the driver brakes when the pedestrian is 45 feet away, there will be enough space in which to stop without hitting the pedestrian. Increase the vehicle speed by just 5 mph and the situation changes dramatically. At 35 mph, with the pedestrian 45 feet away and the driver braking at the same point, the car will be traveling at 18 mph when it hits the pedestrian. An impact at 18 mph can seriously injure or even kill the pedestrian.
Who are the bad drivers? They are young, middle-aged, and old; men and women; they drive luxury cars, sports cars, SUVs and family cars. Almost every qualified driver I know admits to some type of risky driving behavior, most commonly speeding.
Aggressive Drivers - As we've described, modern cars are manufactured to very safe standards, and the environment they're driven in is engineered to minimize the injuries suffered during an accident. The most difficult area to change is aggressive driver behavior and selfish attitudes.
snap_pop_no_crackle 1 year, 2 months ago
You are forgetting that attribution thing again, merrill. Plagiarism is killing the planet.
jackbinkelman 1 year, 2 months ago
and driving yer badzam no doubt.
Liberty275 1 year, 2 months ago
You need a smart phone so you can ditch the magazines.
somedude20 1 year, 2 months ago
rather than paying to fix the problem they will get paid to say they are saving lives. good deal they have going, kind of like the person who gets paid to test ice cream or the dude who pulls a check sampling beer.
OonlyBonly 1 year, 2 months ago
Sure double the fines but triple the enforcement! You see an officer with someone stopped that automatically means it's safe to bump your speed even higher.
kimk 1 year, 2 months ago
I'm sure you could talk your way out of the ticket by offering the officer KU tickets.
rockchalker52 1 year, 2 months ago
"...and go really fast if someone pisses me off..."
In other news, babboy drives 90 mph 24/7 & currently 57% of poll respondants speed on Highway 10.
downriverdan 1 year, 2 months ago
Enforce the speed limit excessively, rigidly, consistently. After the third infraction and loss of license there will be fewer violators to pull over. Don't worry about the amount of the fines as it seems some folks have very deep pockets. Take their license and then incarcerate them when driving without one.
notorious_agenda 1 year, 2 months ago
You can ammend tickets in douglas county for doubling the price of the fine every 1-2 years. You can do traffic diversion once every 6 months in johnson county. Only an idiot would lose their license over speeding tickets considering that fines are not thousands of dollars.
notorious_agenda 1 year, 2 months ago
If you see that someone is driving intoxicated or otherwise dangerously it's one of your smartest decisions to take caution first and maybe one of your most important responsibilities to notify the police second.
vicblthndr 1 year, 2 months ago
PUT UP THE CABLES. FINES WON'T SAVE LIVES, JUST PAD THE COFFERS.
vicblthndr 1 year, 2 months ago
PUT UP THE CABLES. FINES WON'T SAVE LIVES, JUST PAD THE COFFERS.
Liberty275 1 year, 2 months ago
No.
whatupdown 1 year, 2 months ago
I asked God for a bike, but I know God doesn’t work that way. So I stole a bike and asked for forgiveness
mikekt 1 year, 2 months ago
First off, speed limits are supposedly set based on the 85th percentile of free flowing cars over a non posted / speed unregulated section of highway, which assumes that 85% of all drivers can figure out in the beginning how fast to safely drive on that section of roadway (while not eating a sandwich, spilling hot coffee on self, arguing with an out of control child or passenger or with a cell phone stuck in their ear discussing whatever amuses them, ha,ha,ha???! ) I guess that if one has to set a speed limit, one must invent something of a system to justify it. Honestly, most drivers on K-10 set there auto pilots at 5MPH over the limit & call it good; because ....they know...... that they probably won't get a ticket at that speed, which is where the 85th percentile logic begins to fall apart... in plain sight! None of the 85th percentile stuff accounts for the fact that tires blow out unexpectedly, that some choose excessive speed moving in & out of other cars beyond reason, that deer just appear or that it takes time to react when the unthinkable starts to happen despite ones' best plans for how the day is supposed to work... VS....the public / states' need for speed in getting from here to there....CHEAPLY.., without things going wrong out of the true blue...whatever?! Cables are a MUST HAVE on K10 because & innocent driver who doesn't loose control of their car shouldn't be randomly sentenced to death, paralysis for life / medical disaster, go medically bankrupt or have a major loss of family because, for whatever reason, somebody else does a cross over and hits them. Earthquakes don't kill most people that die in them. It's poorly considered & constructed buildings that do the murders! K10 crossover accidents are just like gravity woking on buildings that were built in a quake zone without the obvious notice of their locations. Just as old buildings are retrofitted in quake zones, so K10 needs a retrofit with barriers.
mikekt 1 year, 2 months ago
Some people say that concrete barriers are better than cable barriers because concrete ones are less likely to snag a car and tear at it, injuring the people inside. (?) Truly, i don't know the answer to that one but The Insurance Institute For Highway Safety probably does know it! On the question of which kind of barrier is the best, i would trust the opinion of The Insurance Institute For Highway Safety long before i would trust KDOT or The Federal Highway Administrations' opinion, because insurance companies have to pay $ for the fallout from accidents & so they keep track of all of that stuff for $ reasons; where as States & the Federal Government have to invent budgets that the public ( the lowest common denominator here being that of an objecting sociopath, playing the system inside or outside of government ) wants to pay for highway safety. We get what we've pay for on K10. That is usually real (?) ...Whatever. My sympathies to the K10 accident death victims, their loved ones & others injured out there. Go Safely.
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