Posted on 03/02/2006 7:29:00 PM PST by Turbopilot
They knew it was dangerous.
"We could have really been hurt," said one of the Atlanta college students after their experiment.
It won't win an Oscar, but 'A Meditation on the Speed Limit,' a short film that was the brainchild of college student Andy Medlin, is quite a hit.
Some strange scenes, including a car passing in the emergency lane, were the product of Georgia State students simply following the speed limit.
"I was pretty sure that I was doing something stupid," said another.
That may be true. But, young and brash, they had a plan.
They wanted to go the speed limit on I-285.
In four cars, on all four lanes, the students from Georgia State University and other local colleges paced the entire midmorning flow of Perimeter traffic behind them at 55 mph for half an hour. They call it "an act of civil obedience."
"I get a lot of tickets," said Andy Medlin, 20, the Georgia State student who came up with the idea. "The best way to expose the flaws in the system is by following it."
Thankfully, they survived unharmed, though much maligned. The eight students captured it all on video for a student film competition, and the five-minute piece has fired up the country this week on blogs, talk radio, and national news broadcasts.
"NPR was the first biter," said Jordan Streiff, 21, the group's experienced filmmaker and an Asian Studies major at Georgia State. "Initially, we were going to be on ABC's cable network and Web site, but overnight the traffic to the video spiked so they put it on World News Tonight."
The film, "A Meditation on the Speed Limit," was intended as a drama, but won best comedy for Georgia last month at the Campus MovieFest, a traveling movie competition. It will compete against other states' winners for a national title later this spring, said David Roemer, one of the film festival's founders.
In the meantime, driven by blog attention to the video that Streiff posted on Google, a national discussion has bloomed about what is legal and what is right. One of the filmmakers, Georgia State student Amanda Hunter, was interviewed about it on Neal Boortz's radio show on WSB.
"It's just so overwhelming," Hunter said Thursday, after leaving a midterm exam on Sufism and Islamic mysticism. "Jordan's calling me today like, 'Do you have time for CBS?' I called him back and he said, 'Don't worry about that now, just take your test.'"
David Spear, a spokesman for the state Department of Transportation, said if the students weren't blocking emergency vehicles and were going the speed limit, "they didn't do a thing wrong." Spear added that the speed limit was lowered to 55 because it saves lives. "In Atlanta, the actual effect of it is we expect the people going 75 to move over so the people going 95 can have the right of way," he said.
There was little doubt what the students' companions on the road thought that sunny Friday in January. The video shows drivers' steadily mounting hostility to the blockade. Cars honk. They drive onto the shoulder to speed around the students. Obscene gestures are made. The money shot, however, was captured beautifully by Hunter, who stood with her camera on the Church Street bridge over I-285 to watch the approaching traffic.
What she saw was ... nothing. An empty highway, with one or two stray cars. And then, like the hordes on the horizon, over the rise come the students backed by a phalanx of cars, cars, cars. The film plays it for all it's worth, bouncing the image back and forth to the funky beat of the Guru Fish song "Plush."
"It was so fantastic," said Hunter. "I just started jumping up and down and going crazy. There's beeping horns and craziness."
Then it passed, Hunter said, and a woman driving on the bridge stopped and asked, "What was the point of all that?"
Hunter explained the project. It was to make people think, she said.
The woman amicably rolled her eyes, Hunter recalled. "It was kind of like, 'Oh, you kids and your statements.'"
Well there is a little loophole in the Georgia traffic code which states you cannot get a ticket for speeding if you are going at the same speed as everyone else.
In other words, it everyone around you is driving at around 80 mph, so can you without getting a ticket.
And in Atlanta, they do drive that fast on the interstate.
Awesome. I'm glad they did it and didn't get killed. The 55 laws are designed for revenue enhancement and insurance company enrichment.
Can you cite that law? I can't find it, and I've certainly tried - could have saved on my "tax" bill in years past.
I am talking about the traffic code, not tax law.
It's a euphemism - one is "taxed" for driving at a reasonable and prudent speed, if that speed is greater than the number on a sign.
Like I said, I can't find anything in O.C.G.A. saying what you said. Can you point me to the right place? Thanks.
If the state forces someone to drive 55mph on an 75-mile stretch of road where 75 would have been a prudent and safe speed, the state in so doing will deprive that person of 22 minutes of his life that he could have used to do something else.
The loss of 22 minutes isn't a fine, and it's not just a consequence imposed by physical necessity (if the prudent and safe speed was 75mph, the extra ten minutes required to go 75 instead of 90 would be imposed by physical constraints; the extra 22 minutes required to go 55, by contrast, are state-imposed).
So what would you call the state's actions to deliberately deprive the driver of 22 minutes of his life, if not a "time tax"?
Well, oftentimes with traffic lights, the most important "law" is that entering an spot on an intersection that another vehicle has just entered or is about to enter will result in some problems as two vehicles can't inhabit the same point at the same time. Since traffic lights serve as something of an indicator as to what other vehicles are likely to do, they help to avoid such unpleasantness.
The annoying "red left turn arrows" that illuminate even when there's no other traffic around I obey purely for fear of being observed by a cop. I've often seen cops proceed through them without bothering with lights, but that doesn't mean I want to do so and risk getting caught.
In the 2005 Driver's manual .pdf file, page 53: In any case, you must not dirve slower than the minimum speed limit or so slow as to interfere with the normal flow of traffic.
Note, it does not say maximum speed limit, but instead states the "normal flow of traffic".
These kids are 100% right.
No one wants anyone to drive the legal limit. It is a fiction put out there to appease the Envirowhackos.
OK, I am sure that is arithmetically accurate and I see pi there, but the meaning?...
ps: thanks for posting the link
Me too! And all I want to know is where the proverbial 'road rager' was when the traffic behind these little pricks of academia needed him!
True. I know a lot of people who would have been tempted.
Carolyn
In many cases, traffic engineers have designed the roads to be safely navigable at 75mph during good weather. But the state can get much more revenue if it can fine/tax people who want to actually go that fast.
What cracks me up are the arguments among the autobahn-advocates trying to argue that their system is safer. The fatality rate among crash victims in Germany is actually much higher than the U.S. and just ask them about the kinds of traffic tie ups their high speed accidents cause. You'd be losing a hell of a lot more than 22 minutes of your life there.
Autobahn speeds are often over 100mph, are they not? Indeed, from what I understand, on the autobahn many drivers routinely go faster than some vehicles are capable of safely going, creating significant speed differentials.
One principle that can be formulated various ways, but should generally apply to traffic rulemaking is this: Most people are reasonable and prudent. If most people on a stretch of road are doing something, that's a pretty good prima facie indicator that such an activity is reasonably safe. Obviously there are exceptions, but it's generally true.
Note that people's actions in the absense of a particular law may be a barometer for what's considered safe, but the presence of a law or perceived ruthless enforcement thereof may alter people's behavior in a manner not required for safety.
1 Cubit = 18 inches.
One handsbreadth = 4 inches.
Pro 25:2 It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter.
Not sure exactly. It suggests that 172 degrees is very nearly 3 radians, or that pi is very neary 135/43. Nice small fraction, but not sure what obscuring it with bigger numbers is good for.
Personally, I like an observation by Tom Duff (creator of Duff's Device): "Pi seconds is a nanocentury." Actually, it's 0.995531902 nanocenturies, but still pretty close.
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