Also East Europe is a big place, and it is all different. What works in Russia or Ukraine might work only in a limited way in Hungary and the Baltics, and don't work at all in Slovakia. In Europe, it strongly depends on the fraction of Orthodox population. There is nothing like that in Czech Republic, for example. Interestingly wealth doesn't change that. Cyprus is rich, and Greece used to be rich until recently, and they are ridden with corruption from top to bottom.
Wait, what? Mind unpacking that idea a bit?
The problem with corrupt isn't that the rules benefit one party or another, rather that they are unpredictable.
So the enforcement randomness is the same, it's just the penalties are stiffer and longer-lasting.
My wife is from a country with ingrained corruption and her sister's husband is a police officer. Her cousin works at a notary's office, an institution who's only purpose is systematic corruption, and her husband narrowly escaped prison in a finance scandal at a company he ran through means that shall we say were less than ethical. Until you experience life in a place like that, you just can't really imagine what it's actually like.
There's a world of difference between a country ruled by laws in which there is some corruption, and a country that is ruled by corruption in which there are some laws.
And no, it really isn't unsafe to go at the speed limit. Driving at 20mph on a highway can cause problems, but going 10-15mph slower than traffic in the rightmost lane is not going to cause any accidents.
Power is just as capricious, wherever you are in the world. People that select to be in positions of power are rarely the kind of people who can be trusted to always execute that power honestly.
I see where the comment parent is coming from.
> People that select to be in positions of power are rarely the kind of people who can be trusted to always execute that power honestly.
I think this is an exaggeration. People that select to be in positions of power are not always the kind of people who can be trusted to always execute that power honestly.
The difference in degree of corruption in a country is roughly the same thing as the trustability of people in positions of power.
The highway will be lined with cars being pulled over.
I think you bring up good points about the relative scariness of Western selective enforcement as compared to developing world systemic corruption. Seems like if you keep your head up, you can escape getting targeted by the corrupt status quo. But in the West, people seem to get caught up in political whirlwinds with frightening randomness. Some dude's carrying cash to complete a seemingly routine business transaction the same way everybody in his town's always done it, and gets targeted for asset forfeiture.
The scale of Western corruption can't rise to the level of the whole society, and that on the whole seems to make it worse rather than better when it actually surfaces.
No, they're not. Perhaps in some states but not on average. I'm in Pennsylvania so can only use those numbers.[0] There is the base fine (which can be doubled if you're in a work zone or an area with posted signs to that effect) and surcharges.
Fine (25-55mph/40-90km/hr zone): $45-95
Fine (65 mph/105km/hr zone): $44.50-102.50
EMS Surcharge: $10
JCP Surcharge: $10
Court costs: Varies, last ticket I got was in 2010 and I think it was $7.50
MCARE: $50 for speeding, additional surcharges for additional offenses (e.g. passing a stopped school bus)
I don't mean any of this to minimize your comment regarding selective enforcement. I've passed police who were doing speed enforcement at 15+ over the limit and seen others pulled over; I've been pulled over when there were others readily available going faster than me.
[0] http://www.justdrivepa.org/Resources/TIPP%20Fine%20Card%20JA...
Edit: s/street racing/stunt driving/
Like most enforcement in the US, there seems to be a great deal of discretion in what the police officer can actually do to you, everything from a warning to a large ticket ($475 for my example w/ a reckless driving citation, which will also probably cause you to lose your car insurance).
But why people complain, I wonder? Isn't endemic bribery a realization of the libertarian dream? People setting up to collect as much toll as they can from you while you voluntarily try to access a resource - that's literally the free market solution! /s
One time I set off the fire alarm and they sent emergency services over. They came, investigated the situation, saw that I was just a terrible cook, gave me some advice and left.
If India had the same notifying fire alarms, everyone would have them disabled because the probability of having to pay a bribe would be exactly 1.
The only point the GP has is that corruption is the oil of bureaucracy. In Guatemala, for instance, they started this whole anti-corruption drive a bit ago. Didn't really help; the president and vice president are now in jail for their part in a massive theft of taxes.
But for the regular people? Importing a container? Good luck. Before, you could pay the clerks to work overtime and move you to the top of the pile after 5pm. Now they've got all these annoying receipt systems so you have no way of doing this unless you're a serious player and turn a ton of people. Who wins here?
Well are moving back to Vietnam and Romania to live? Most people living in Canada or US would have that freedom. Most people form Vietnam or Romania can't just pick up and move to Canada if they want to.
Instead I kindly ask you to elaborate on just one situation, where exceeding the speed limit avoids danger.
Edited to add : To be clear: Speeding up upon overtaking doesn't count. If you need to do that you should not have overtaken in the first place, since it was obviously dangerous.
[Of course, you'd never get a ticket in this situation, and I think there are even legal provisions regarding respecting the "flow of traffic" in some US states.]
This is exactly how I got my first ticket. I was moving with the flow of traffic, which was going about 15mph over the 55mph speed limit on a busy four lane divided highway. Highway Patrol flew up out of nowhere, angrily berated me for five minutes, and gave me a speeding ticket.
Now I just go the speed limit. People cuss me out and flip me off, but that's preferable to paying several hundred dollars. (And for me, it turns out not to really be worth it anyway. Most places I go speeding saves me < 5 minutes, and I get much better gas mileage, up to 48mpg, accelerating slowly and not driving faster than 65mph.)
Can you, by the way, cite any state laws explicitly saying it is OK to exceed the posted speed limit if doing so is required to move with the flow of traffic? I have heard this claim a lot but I have never been able to find real proof of it. There are sometimes "flow of traffic" laws applicable if you're driving too far below the posted speed limit, which is assumed (wrongly) to be the maximum "normal and reasonable" speed of normal traffic, and there are laws against driving slowly in the left lanes, and sometimes laws that allow you to speed while passing on a two-lane road, but I have never seen one that was applicable to someone driving at or above the speed limit and would have allowed them to legally speed.
No matter how fast a truck is driving, I don't want to be anywhere near it while driving my motorcycle. Those tires randomly explode (I've seen it happen multiple times) and when a piece hits you, you're dead. I pass them ASAP, no matter how fast I have to go to do it.
With this in mind, think about scenarios where the average speed is above the legal limit: highways, rural roads with no known speed cams, etc. Now imagine heavy traffic and only one participant slowing down to the legal limit.
Here's one US citizen's experience driving on highways in Italy, where I live, describing what safe driving looks like here: https://www.quora.com/Why-do-people-drive-above-the-speed-li...
I have only ever seen Americans and Canadians talking about the necessity to speed to keep up with the flow of traffic (and they have a higher rate of fatal RTAs per 100,000 than most Western European countries – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r... – Canada is close to Italy, a country that is well known in Western Europe for terrifying traffic, while America is closer to South American countries)
While driving too slow is as dangerous as driving too fast, it's not as dangerous as the Solomon curve suggests, according to the article you linked:
> Reporting on these results in 1971, academics West and Dunn confirmed the findings of Solomon and Cirillo,[11] but found that crashes involving turning vehicles accounted for 44 percent of all crashes observed in the study and that excluding these crashes from the analysis greatly attenuated the factors that created the U-shape of the Solomon curve.
The topic of this conversation also seems to oddly mirror the course of the story from the original article. Minor acts of breaking a just law, justified on an individual basis, lead to a society in which regularly breaking that law is accepted – and indeed enforced – by the state.
That is probably why people are downvoting your parent comment.
For the record I don't have the ability or the desire to have the ability to downvote.
Is it? The death toll is average to low compared to the rest of Europe: http://ec.europa.eu/transport/road_safety/pdf/gis/mapcare_fa...
And it's low compared to the rest of the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...
The main reason for how people in the West of Europe seem to perceive Italian driving has traditionally been Rome: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/31986...
My personal experience travelling in both Sicily and Rome was that people don't pay attention to lanes and don't care about traffic lights at all, and they're not afraid to drive quickly around tight corners and down narrow streets – this is not unique and is similar to how some areas of the UK drive, for example rural Essex and rural Wales have a lot of this.
Italy may have an unfair reputation as being a dangerous place to drive, but it does have that reputation in Western European countries.
I personally find it a lot less stressful than living in Canada where every time I see a cop I get a little adrenaline rush of fear.
Anyways, most of the other things on your list exist in Canada too, we just don't call it bribery, we call it "private clinics", "private school", "private motorcycle training academy where your instructor, who's the same person you're paying and reviewing, is the one who gives you your license".