- A while back, our creative director,
the brilliant and handsome Jesse Wood
was filming a rally that ran down the east coast of the U.S.
Jesse said that when it came time to drive south
from New York to Miami,
everyone opted to drive around Virginia.
He said very cryptically.
- No one drives through Virginia.
- And everyone in the office was like, "What, why?"
But when we turned around, he was gone.
A single white rose was left in his place.
As clueless West Coasters we wanted to know
why Virginia isn't a great state to driver in.
And let me tell you what we found out
was way more interesting than what we expected.
(bright upbeat music)
I'm super stoked to announce
that we have a collabo with Lean Customs
to make our own enamel pins.
You've probably seen these pins all over Instagram
or my backpack saying, super high quality,
it's on our store right now, so check it out.
For just $10, you can wrap a jacket,
a hat, backpack, whatever, just like stick this thing
on whatever you got, stick him into my skin.
Now available on our store, hit the link,
get one for yourself, they're great.
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In this video, we're gonna talk about what makes
certain States worse to drive in than others
and how the government exploits driving laws
to increase state revenue.
But before we get to that, we're gonna get into the state
that's the most unfair, most despicable,
the most infuriating state to drive in, Virginia.
Driving in the state of Virginia can be frustrating.
You'll encounter annoyances that you would find
in a lot of other states.
But then we found a driving statistic that blew us away.
Ready, one out of every six drivers in Virginia
has a suspended license.
With one in six million registered drivers in the state,
that means nearly one million people are driving illegally.
That is an insane statistic.
Think about it.
If the same percentage applied to California,
4.3 million drivers would be driving around
with suspended licenses.
Frankly, that would explain a lot,
people kind of suck at driving.
Totally forgot dude, I got pizza,
I love pineapple a lot.
But that's a story for another video.
Yeah, people probably shouldn't drive
with suspended licenses but the reason they were suspended
was what really shocked us.
Virginia has a law that says
if you're going 20 over the speed limit and get pinched,
you don't get a speeding ticket
you get a reckless driving ticket.
Reckless driving is a misdemeanor
which means it's on par with a DUI which means
that you have to either spend a lot of time and money
in court fighting to get it reduced
to a simple speeding ticket or pay anywhere from $350
to $2,500 or the reckless driving ticket.
When compared to the average $250 penalty
on a normal speeding ticket, that's quite a jump.
And you might say that's easy Nolan,
just don't speed.
And that's a good point.
But it's not that simple, plus, let's be honest here,
everyone likes to speed even if you don't wanna admit.
Speed limits in Virginia are notoriously low,
streets that a driver could safely drive
at 35 miles per hour are limited to 25.
Many highways are limited to an anemic
infuriating 55 miles an hour which compared
to the rest of the U.S. is very slow.
This makes it easy to speed without even realizing it
and creates opportunities for speed traps.
Virginia loves their speed traps.
(violin music)
If you're not familiar with the term,
a speed trap is basically when a cop posts up
on a stretch of road or highway that has a sudden drop
in speed limit.
It's very easy to fall into these traps
if you're an out-of-state driver
than maybe didn't catch a road sign.
And let me be clear, the main objective of a speed trap
is to make money.
They call it policing for profit and it sucks,
no bones about it.
- It's a trap.
- One of the most egregious speed traps in the U.S.
is a stretch of the I295 that runs through Hopewell Virginia
that earned the nickname the "million dollar mile."
It got that nickname because it makes the precinct
almost $2 million a year on speeding tickets.
What are you guys spending that on?
There are 11 sheriff's deputies
that work 14-hour shifts handing out tickets
on the two-mile stretch of highway.
It's only two miles long,
then it is literally $1,000,000 a mile.
And all that money goes straight back
into the town of Hopewell so they can hire more deputies,
buy more radar guns and by faster cruisers.
It's easy to try and justify the laws by saying
that it cuts down on accidents and increases safety,
but at what point does it go from being a safety issue
to an ethical issue?
Policing for profit is a pretty slimy thing to do
to taxpaying citizens.
And when you look at the demographic,
it affects the most, it's even more infuriating.
By and large, the people most affected
are low income drivers, you know, the people
who definitely need a license to get to work.
What will happen is a driver misses a sign
and gets pulled over for doing 20 over,
they're given a reckless driving ticket.
When they are inevitably unable to pay for the cost
of hiring a lawyer and taking time out of their workweek
to go to court, their licenses are suspended.
They're in a pickle, okay, they don't have enough money
to pay the court fees but they need their car to get to work
so that they can make money to pay the court fees.
So they end up driving despite their suspended license.
And that's how you get nearly one million people
driving with a suspended license in Virginia alone.
What's even dumber is that it cost the state
a ton more money to enforce in court and through the DMV.
It's not really beneficial to anyone
but the precinct making that speed-trap money.
Sorry, that's a little misleading,
it does benefit politicians as well.
But in a different way.
One of the reasons these speed traps continue to exist
is because it lets politicians campaign on the fact
they not only crack down on these malicious speeders
and made the road safer, they can say that they raised
significant revenue for the state.
It's a win-win for politicians.
And it's been going on for a long time.
Years ago, then governor of Virginia, Tim Kaine,
pushed legislation through that tact
an additional abuser fee of $1,000 onto tickets
for things like speeding and failing to signal.
That's right, it was met with so much hostility
from motorists who were paying over $1,000
for not putting on their turn signals
that the courts deemed it unconstitutional
and it was appealed.
You might say, thankfully, I don't live in Virginia Nolan,
you Star-Lord action figure that someone put in a microwave.
Well, I've got some bad news for you, okay.
There are speed traps all over the country,
no one is safe.
(siren wailing)
According to a study done
by the National Motorists Association,
anywhere between $5 to $7 billion are made every year
from known speed traps around the country
which they define as arbitrarily low speed limits
with heavy traffic enforcement
designed to generate ticket revenue.
The worst offending states up there with Virginia,
Texas, my home state of California, Ohio, and Florida.
It's no wonder why Florida, (laughs),
it's no wonder why Florida is full of speed traps,
the popular vacation destination sees a constant flow
of out-of-state drivers just right for the pic.
The Sunshine State is home to two
of the worst speed traps in America or at least it was.
The Highway Patrol in Waldo, a town with a population
of 1,000 people wrote 12,000 speeding tickets in 2013
resulting in $400,000 in fines for drivers.
But you can rest easy, Waldo's seven person force
was disbanded in 2014, yikes!
The other recognized speed trap
is in a town called Lottie, Lottie, Lottie,
I'm gonna say Lottie, where there is a sudden drop in speed
for school zone but there is no vertical signage
to let drivers know that.
That's very shady.
Sometimes we don't even have the luxury
of a human pulling us over to issue a ticket,
the city of Baltimore speed ticket camera program
was under fire earlier this year for issuing tickets to cars
that were stopped at red lights and even a car
that was parked, parked!
Lucky for us, there are organizations
trying to shut down speed traps, not only in Virginia,
but all over the country.
One of them is AAA, the roadside assistance/
insurance / everything you would ever want
from a company, company.
I said that they've had some good success
in stopping speed traps.
Recently, they sent 200,000 emails to members with links
to email Virginia lawmakers to,
"Let them know policing for profit shouldn't be happening
and to shut it down."
The bills they're pushing would limit the amount of money
a jurisdiction can keep from speed traps
like the one in Hopewell, Virginia,
that's hopeful, that's good, I like that.
So is Virginia the worst state to drive in?
The speed trap suck
but it's probably not the end of the world.
I'm not gonna form an opinion
based off one comment Jesse made,
even if he is very handsome,
and yes ladies, he's single.
Yeah, it sucks to get pulled over in Virginia
but you can't argue with the statistics.
And the stats say that Virginia
is actually one of the safest states to drive in.
A study was done using five factors.
Fatalities from drunk driving,
failure to obey traffic laws, speeding, careless driving
and fatalities per 100 million miles traveled.
Virginia scored fourth best out of all 50 states.
So as much as we don't like these laws,
maybe they're working.
I mean you can't argue with the results.
The state that scored the lowest on this list
you might ask, that would be Montana,
which has the reputation for being a great state to drive in
because they don't really have speed limits,
so I'm not really sure what to think.
If you live in Virginia,
I would really like to hear from you guys in the comments,
I would like to hear some of your stories.
Maybe you got some tickets
or maybe you're driving on a suspended license.
Don't rat on yourself.
Hey, we have a podcast too,
it's called Past Gas, check that out,
and now we have a notification.
Finished setting up iPad?
Why would I wanna do that
during the wheelhouse?
What, now, no
Side eggs for breakfast, scrambled.
A little bit of crushed pepper on top.
This thing called breakfast.
Thanks for watching, be kind,
see you next time.