[Tex Pro]

^Interesting video. Supposedly, most got away.

Some GTA type shit going on in the vid.

[dicknixon72]

Worthless squids. Hope they all die. No, I'm not joking. Some of us just want to fucking drive home at night.

This calls for driving a shitbox '78 New Yorker up ahead and locking up your weak rear drums right in front of the entire crew.

[Tex Pro]

The pack mentality leads to a lot of shitty behavior. I remember a while back someone posted vid of a ton of bikers stopping traffic on the 405 during rush hour so that some biker could propose to his girlfriend in the middle of the freeway.

[The Beast1]

Something similar hit the Web with an Asian family getting attacked by a swarm of these guys.

Gents, if I ever have a swarm of guys attacking my car you can sure as hell bet i'll be ramming them off the road. Car > motorcycle

[philosophical_recovery]

(11-30-2014 11:13 AM)frenchie Wrote:  

Something similar hit the Web with an Asian family getting attacked by a swarm of these guys.

Gents, if I ever have a swarm of guys attacking my car you can sure as hell bet i'll be ramming them off the road. Car > motorcycle

Likewise. They picked those car models for a reason, they're pretty bulletproof. He was probably waiting for them to do something threatening and prepared to sideswipe them.

I'm not a fan of cops in general, but dipshit behavior has consequences.

[Dr. Howard]

I only watch these 'biker' videos in hopes that one day there are going to be a bunch with clown faces painted on their helmets

[Troll King]

Fuck I hate that Jeanne Moos bitch. She epitomizes what is wrong with journalism and American women at the same time. At least this was more interesting than her usual flare of cat videos and shit.

[Foolsgo1d]

Would this behaviour be curbed if there were more SUVs and trucks? Somehow I don't think pissing off the wrong guy in a 3-4 ton weapon is a good idea.

[Truck'n]

I driving on the I-10 freeway the other night around 2am in Houston and traffic was not light. Five lanes wide and maybe 5 cars/100 feet.

I was going 70 and a dude on a street motorcycle whizzed by me in the far left lane, hugging the yellow stripe going at least 140+. I had never seen anyone outside of a racetrack go that fast before. About two minutes later, another street bike goes by in the left hand emergency lane going about the same. He was not quite going as fast as he had to pick through the debris that always litters the emergency lanes on Houston highways. Apparently it is common for those dudes to do a race circuit on the Houston highways late at night.

Looked fun as hell, but basically a deathwish. So, unless there is a life-threatening reason to do this, it is obviously not worth the risk.

[TravelerKai]

(11-30-2014 05:55 PM)Truckn Wrote:  

I driving on the I-10 freeway the other night around 2am in Houston and traffic was not light. Five lanes wide and maybe 5 cars/100 feet.

I was going 70 and a dude on a street motorcycle whizzed by me in the far left lane, hugging the yellow stripe going at least 140+. I had never seen anyone outside of a racetrack go that fast before. About two minutes later, another street bike goes by in the left hand emergency lane going about the same. He was not quite going as fast as he had to pick through the debris that always litters the emergency lanes on Houston highways. Apparently it is common for those dudes to do a race circuit on the Houston highways late at night.

Looked fun as hell, but basically a deathwish. So, unless there is a life-threatening reason to do this, it is obviously not worth the risk.

I hear this every weekend and some nights. Cops here don't give a fuck about public safety. They only want money from hard working normal folks Monday through Friday, 9 to 5.

[kinjutsu]

LA gang culture.
Nothing new here.

[Suits]

(11-30-2014 06:35 PM)TravelerKai Wrote:  

(11-30-2014 05:55 PM)Truckn Wrote:  

I driving on the I-10 freeway the other night around 2am in Houston and traffic was not light. Five lanes wide and maybe 5 cars/100 feet.

I was going 70 and a dude on a street motorcycle whizzed by me in the far left lane, hugging the yellow stripe going at least 140+. I had never seen anyone outside of a racetrack go that fast before. About two minutes later, another street bike goes by in the left hand emergency lane going about the same. He was not quite going as fast as he had to pick through the debris that always litters the emergency lanes on Houston highways. Apparently it is common for those dudes to do a race circuit on the Houston highways late at night.

Looked fun as hell, but basically a deathwish. So, unless there is a life-threatening reason to do this, it is obviously not worth the risk.

I hear this every weekend and some nights. Cops here don't give a fuck about public safety. They only want money from hard working normal folks Monday through Friday, 9 to 5.

That's a pretty silly statement to make. All I'd have to do to prove you wrong is find one police officer in your area who cares about public safety.

[TravelerKai]

(11-30-2014 08:40 PM)Suits Wrote:  

(11-30-2014 06:35 PM)TravelerKai Wrote:  

(11-30-2014 05:55 PM)Truckn Wrote:  

I driving on the I-10 freeway the other night around 2am in Houston and traffic was not light. Five lanes wide and maybe 5 cars/100 feet.

I was going 70 and a dude on a street motorcycle whizzed by me in the far left lane, hugging the yellow stripe going at least 140+. I had never seen anyone outside of a racetrack go that fast before. About two minutes later, another street bike goes by in the left hand emergency lane going about the same. He was not quite going as fast as he had to pick through the debris that always litters the emergency lanes on Houston highways. Apparently it is common for those dudes to do a race circuit on the Houston highways late at night.

Looked fun as hell, but basically a deathwish. So, unless there is a life-threatening reason to do this, it is obviously not worth the risk.

I hear this every weekend and some nights. Cops here don't give a fuck about public safety. They only want money from hard working normal folks Monday through Friday, 9 to 5.

That's a pretty silly statement to make. All I'd have to do to prove you wrong is find one police officer in your area who cares about public safety.

Be my guest.

[DarkTriad]

I genuinely care about my fellow human beings, don't know if I work near you though. And there are some very poorly written laws out there that suck to enforce

[Hedonistic Traveler]

Have you guys seen the "12 o'clock Boys" documentary?

They're worse than these guys. Sometimes when I'm in Baltimore I'll see a group of 50-60 of them bombing through a red light.

[Truck'n]

(11-30-2014 09:46 PM)TravelerKai Wrote:  

(11-30-2014 08:40 PM)Suits Wrote:  

(11-30-2014 06:35 PM)TravelerKai Wrote:  

(11-30-2014 05:55 PM)Truckn Wrote:  

I driving on the I-10 freeway the other night around 2am in Houston and traffic was not light. Five lanes wide and maybe 5 cars/100 feet.

I was going 70 and a dude on a street motorcycle whizzed by me in the far left lane, hugging the yellow stripe going at least 140+. I had never seen anyone outside of a racetrack go that fast before. About two minutes later, another street bike goes by in the left hand emergency lane going about the same. He was not quite going as fast as he had to pick through the debris that always litters the emergency lanes on Houston highways. Apparently it is common for those dudes to do a race circuit on the Houston highways late at night.

Looked fun as hell, but basically a deathwish. So, unless there is a life-threatening reason to do this, it is obviously not worth the risk.

I hear this every weekend and some nights. Cops here don't give a fuck about public safety. They only want money from hard working normal folks Monday through Friday, 9 to 5.

That's a pretty silly statement to make. All I'd have to do to prove you wrong is find one police officer in your area who cares about public safety.

Be my guest.

My interaction with Houston cops has been pretty damn positive. None of the ones that I have run into are head cases or have a power trip mentality that you find in other places. I was down in Sugarland the other day on a rural road where the speed limit went from 55 to 35. Met a Fort Bend deputy head on and I was still doing 55. He looked down at his radar and then looked up at me and just kind of gave me a nod and a smile like, "it's too nice of a day for me to get out and hassle you when we are the only two cars on the road. Have a good one."

Not like Kansas. My God they have some absolute shitheads who have a stick up their ass.

In some of the little burbs around Kansas City, it is not uncommon for the police departments to send out the dog catcher vehicle with a regular duty partolman doing radar to catch drivers by suprise.

or once the the police captain of one of those burbs was doing radar in an unmarked SUV with a handheld gun inside the car. He gave me a ticket for doing 28 in a 20. I told him there was no way I was going that fast. He said he was absolutely positive of it because he kept the gun on me for an entire half mile (70 solid seconds) and he told me that most of the time I was going between 22 and 25, but right before I came to my intersection, I sped up briefly to 28 before I came to a stop. And he was glowing with the satisfaction of writing me that ticket, like that is what a police officer is supposed to do, harrass the public into submission.

Something is fucking wrong with people in the state of Kansas, the cops do shit like that and the people put up with it. It is almost like Canada or something.

[Suits]

(11-30-2014 11:30 PM)Truckn Wrote:  

or once the the police captain of one of those burbs was doing radar in an unmarked SUV with a handheld gun inside the car. He gave me a ticket for doing 28 in a 20. I told him there was no way I was going that fast. He said he was absolutely positive of it because he kept the gun on me for an entire half mile (70 solid seconds) and he told me that most of the time I was going between 22 and 25, but right before I came to my intersection, I sped up briefly to 28 before I came to a stop. And he was glowing with the satisfaction of writing me that ticket, like that is what a police officer is supposed to do, harrass the public into submission.

Do you understand the purpose of a speeding ticket?

Since it costs more to put an officer on the road that he could possible collect in writing speeding tickets, clearly the purpose isn't to make money off of the public.

Obviously, the purpose is to give you an incentive to keep your speed down below the posting limits.

I'm sorry if this hurts your pride.

[kmhour]

(11-30-2014 08:40 PM)Suits Wrote:  

That's a pretty silly statement to make. All I'd have to do to prove you wrong is find one police officer in your area who cares about public safety.

I'm sure you're familiar with the phrase "exception that proves the rule". If you're a cop are you going to prefer writing some desk jockey driving his Civic to his 9-5 that consists of pivot tables, or a bunch of lunatic biker gang members on street bikes at 3am?

Not hard to figure that one out.

[kmhour]

(11-30-2014 11:53 PM)Suits Wrote:  

Do you understand the purpose of a speeding ticket?

Since it costs more to put an officer on the road that he could possible collect in writing speeding tickets, clearly the purpose isn't to make money off of the public.

Obviously, the purpose is to give you an incentive to keep your speed down below the posting limits.

I'm sorry if this hurts your pride.

You have to be joking, right? Let's assume a highway policeman has 20 working days a month, or 240 days a year. If he writes 3 tickets at $200 apiece in an 8 hour day (let's be generous), that's $144,000 per year flowing into the coffers of the cities, the courts, and the legal system in general. Or more than even an LA, NY, or other wealthy area cop makes after overtime. Even before you account for the 'social benefit' () of a highway patrolman.

Highway patrol are tax collectors with badges and guns. Anytime a law is routinely broken and enforcement is left to the officer's discretion, the purpose is not to 'keep your speed down'.

[Merenguero]

(12-01-2014 12:08 AM)kmhour Wrote:  

(11-30-2014 11:53 PM)Suits Wrote:  

Do you understand the purpose of a speeding ticket?

Since it costs more to put an officer on the road that he could possible collect in writing speeding tickets, clearly the purpose isn't to make money off of the public.

Obviously, the purpose is to give you an incentive to keep your speed down below the posting limits.

I'm sorry if this hurts your pride.

You have to be joking, right? Let's assume a highway policeman has 20 working days a month, or 240 days a year. If he writes 3 tickets at $200 apiece in an 8 hour day (let's be generous), that's $144,000 per year flowing into the coffers of the cities, the courts, and the legal system in general. Or more than even an LA, NY, or other wealthy area cop makes after overtime. Even before you account for the 'social benefit' () of a highway patrolman.

Highway patrol are tax collectors with badges and guns. Anytime a law is routinely broken and enforcement is left to the officer's discretion, the purpose is not to 'keep your speed down'.

You're making a lot of assumptions here. The mere fact that a ticket is written in no way guarantees that the government sees a dime. A fairly high percentage of payable citations never get paid or get dismissed in court. A fairly high percentage of incarcerable citations either get dismissed or the Defendant doesn't appear in court. The government does make some money from the police writing tickets, but it is really only a fraction of the total amount of tickets which are written.

[kmhour]

Absolutely, I'm making assumptions, but the whole discussion is based around a philosophical question on the social value of highway police.

What percentage of citations are dismissed in court? As someone who spent a fair amount of his misbegotten youth in traffic court, I've seen a million and one traffic citations plea bargained to a lesser or non-point offense, naturally at a higher stipend to the city in question, but dismissed in court? Rare to never. Jack McCoy isn't arguing for the defense.

I'm sure some tickets are never collected, but from a mathematical standpoint I've more than illustrated that a police officer could write more than enough tickets to justify his salary.

[Cattle Rustler]

(11-30-2014 11:53 PM)Suits Wrote:  

(11-30-2014 11:30 PM)Truckn Wrote:  

or once the the police captain of one of those burbs was doing radar in an unmarked SUV with a handheld gun inside the car. He gave me a ticket for doing 28 in a 20. I told him there was no way I was going that fast. He said he was absolutely positive of it because he kept the gun on me for an entire half mile (70 solid seconds) and he told me that most of the time I was going between 22 and 25, but right before I came to my intersection, I sped up briefly to 28 before I came to a stop. And he was glowing with the satisfaction of writing me that ticket, like that is what a police officer is supposed to do, harrass the public into submission.

Do you understand the purpose of a speeding ticket?

I'm sorry if this hurts your pride.

Why do you defend the cops so much?

[Zep]

[Snowplow]

[Suits]

(12-01-2014 12:08 AM)kmhour Wrote:  

(11-30-2014 11:53 PM)Suits Wrote:  

Do you understand the purpose of a speeding ticket?

Since it costs more to put an officer on the road that he could possible collect in writing speeding tickets, clearly the purpose isn't to make money off of the public.

Obviously, the purpose is to give you an incentive to keep your speed down below the posting limits.

I'm sorry if this hurts your pride.

You have to be joking, right? Let's assume a highway policeman has 20 working days a month, or 240 days a year. If he writes 3 tickets at $200 apiece in an 8 hour day (let's be generous), that's $144,000 per year flowing into the coffers of the cities, the courts, and the legal system in general. Or more than even an LA, NY, or other wealthy area cop makes after overtime. Even before you account for the 'social benefit' () of a highway patrolman.

Highway patrol are tax collectors with badges and guns. Anytime a law is routinely broken and enforcement is left to the officer's discretion, the purpose is not to 'keep your speed down'.

I don't think that this is the right forum for you.

Highway patrolman annual salary: $50,000
Cost of sending an officer to the police academy/hiring costs/lawsuits for not hiring people who wanted to be hired, divided over 30 year career: $500 annually
Fully equipped police vehicle: $60,000 (good for eight years, retains $5000 of value in vehicle and on-board equipment [computer, radio, other radio network equipment] after eight years), which comes to a cost of $6755 per year for vehicle and equipment.
Vehicle maintenance: $5000 per year
Gas: $9000 per year (roughly $40 per shift)
Other equipment: Annual cost of $500
Annual training upgrades for one officer: $2,000
Dispatcher per 20 units: ($40,000 per year divided by active 20 units) $2,000
Supervisor per 10 units: ($100,000 per year divided by 10 active units) $10,000
Top management structure, accountants and lawyers, support staff, divided by officers employed: management, accountants and lawyers $500,000, support staff $200,000: ($700,000 / 100 =) $7,000 per officer
Facilities (locker room, etc) for one officer: $500 annual cost to own and maintain.
Estimated annual cost of keeping an officer on duty: $153,255
Included in calculations:
3 weeks of paid vacation each year
1 week of paid desk duty per year following BS accusation by member of the public
Assumes 48 weeks of full-duty work.
5 days per week.
8 hours day.
One day out of 20 in court dealing with disputed tickets.
228 full duty work days in a cruiser.
As you suggested, 3 tickets per 8 hour shift for a value of $600 total.

I've crunched the numbers and we get $136,800 per year in ticket revenue with a cost of putting that officer on the road, writing tickets, at $153,255 per year.

That's assuming that 20% of tickets aren't thrown out or reduced.
Feel free to check my math.

(12-01-2014 12:40 AM)kmhour Wrote:  

Absolutely, I'm making assumptions, but the whole discussion is based around a philosophical question on the social value of highway police.

What percentage of citations are dismissed in court? As someone who spent a fair amount of his misbegotten youth in traffic court, I've seen a million and one traffic citations plea bargained to a lesser or non-point offense, naturally at a higher stipend to the city in question, but dismissed in court? Rare to never. Jack McCoy isn't arguing for the defense.

I'm sure some tickets are never collected, but from a mathematical standpoint I've more than illustrated that a police officer could write more than enough tickets to justify his salary.

Incorrect.