Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/03/29/speeder-in-australia-ticketed.html
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In the US, if a stopped person of color leaned into the police car or touched the officer on his shoulder the way this kid did, his corpse would be riddled with bullets very quickly.
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28 kilomiles per candlehuh?
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I’ve never seen a cop in the US let a person get out of their vehicle unless ordered to do so during a traffic stop. The second the driver stepped out, the cops would be screaming at him to get back in the car.
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37 mph on that road is bull shit. Should be at least 50 by the looks of it. Plus they are coming down a hill where people would often unconsciously speed up. I call double bull shit.
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I’m sure I’ve read anecdotal reports (I don’t live in the US so don’t find that I’d need to memorize this kind of crap) that when being stopped in the US you should not get out, but you should only open your window more than enough to pass through your papers etc, as doing so makes the car searchable as it is now “accessible to the public” or something or other?
I’m going mainly on some story about a kid and his mate being pulled over, illegally searched and ordered by the police officer and his buddy to destroy the bong/weed they were carrying (to which commenters pointed out that they probably told the kids to destroy their gear because the search was illegal in the first place).
I dunno, like I said, don’t live there, don’t really intend to go there in the current political climate, and so I don’t know the rules (as they may vay state by state etc etc etc)…
Australia: Tickets worth a few hundred AUSD, suspended license and a warning
Same Situation - Fine in the US: Death
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Apparently it allows an officer to stick their head inside and “smell something”, giving them grounds to go fishing. It’s an article of faith on “First Amendment check” type videos, but I don’t know how true it is. Catch-22: If you only open it a couple inches, the cop will peg you as an a-hole to hassle. I’d suggest wide but not all the way.
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That guy has a better ‘cool, calm, fuck-you’ stare than I do!
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You definitely don’t want to get out unless the cop tells you to.
It used to be common, I think, but I got my first ticket in like 25 years last year and like an idiot opened my door as the cop was approaching and started to get out. He absolutely did not like. Claimed he had his hand on the gun when he saw the door go open. If I wasn’t so white I glow I imagine he might have done more than put his hand on it.
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If you do anything “unconsciously” while driving, you shouldn’t be allowed to drive. I understand there is a dial that tells you what speed you are currently making, does it somehow vanish coming down a hill?
When in nominal control of a machine that kills more people than guns do, the word "unconscious has zero place.
Deciding for yourself a speed limit is “bullshit” to use your crass word is no different than some yokel with a trifle deciding that “No shooting” sign is “bullshit” since there’s no one around to get hurt and firing away.
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Speaking as someone who habitually drives twice the posted speed limit I completely agree! (If I did drive the speed limit I’d be so fucking bored I’d probably fall asleep.) 
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That’s only for the darker members of society.
The right jurisdiction, the right connections, the right skin color - you’ll probably go on about your way.
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They lowered the speed limit at the bottom of a hill to a ridiculously slow speed, not to enforce safety, but to gain revenue.
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Makes for good TV though. And revenue enhancement.
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Yeah, definitely don’t do that. The police do not want you to do that.
A friend of mine got pulled over for driving too slow (not confident driver) driving my car on the way back from a wedding reception that I attended as her date. I thought it prudent to get out and explain to the officer that my friend was acting as DD, and it was all good. (Seemed like a good idea at the time, after strong brown ale…)
It all worked out OK, but let me tell you, that officer was NOT happy at my getting out of the car. I think it must be some standard protocol.
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Disagree.
When I was first learning to drive, everything was conscious. How do I know that I’m centered in the lane without checking my mirrors? I have to put my head back against the headrest and if the far left of the left windshield wiper is touching the left lane marker, then I’m centered. In order to change lanes, put on the blinker, take my eyes off the road for a full second to check the mirror and fully, consciously recognize that there’s not one there, look forward, take my eyes off the road for another full second to do a shoulder check and consciously recognize that there’s no one there, and then turn the wheel just so, align myself within the new lane by pressing my head back against the rest and checking the wiper-corner, and then cancel the signal.
My brain has since written auto-scripts for most of that. I know I’m centered in the lane because I know what being centered in the lane looks like; I don’t have to consciously check it. I hit my signal and can tell with two brief, quarter-second glances that the lane I’m going into is empty, even though there’s no time to fully consciously process that what I am seeing there is “a stretch road with no cars.” My subconscious knows what “stretch of road with no cars” looks like for the purpose of doing a lane change and processes that for me. If it didn’t, driving would be hell, and I’d never be able to react consciously to stimulus enough in order to be anything other than a menace on the road.
The brain gets really good at automating repetitive tasks. The cost being, sometimes you know how fast you’re going by the sound of the air and engine and tires, the pressure of the gas pedal underfoot, and the speed at which the lines on the pavement go by. So, in the ten seconds since you’ve last checked the speedometer, if you’ve just gone over the crest of the hill, you might gain 10 km/h without noticing it.
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Cops in the rest of the world aren’t as terrified of the people they work for as they are in the US.
Partially that’s based on a large proportion of the well-armed maniacs in the world living here, but it’s also their training which is more akin to “army of occupation” than “serve and protect”.
Ironically, actual US armies of occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan have much stricter rules of engagement than your normal small town US cop
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I would like to agree. However, drivers are human. This is not a standard it is possible even in principle for humans to meet, consistently, for a task like driving. Everything we know about human psychology screams that such a goal is unattainable.
I will acknowledge that this is a separate question than asking whether our legal system should try to account for this flaw in human psychology.
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Yeah, being a metric country it should be SI units of kilometres per candela. 
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