Atlanta, Georgia.

Home of the Braves.

*chuckle*

That’s funny actually.

Also, home of the most ridiculous speed limit in the history of the United States. Anybody who’s been to Atlanta and driven on I-285 is very familiar with the 55 MPH speed limit and with the total disregard for it by the drivers of the city that Sherman burned.

It’s been affectionately referred to as the Atlanta Motor Speedway.

Many Atlantans have fallen victim to the total randomness of being ticketed for doing 80 MPH on I-285 while everybody else is already doing 75 MPH. I myself have received at least 2 tickets that I can remember on I-285 in both the City of Atlanta and Cobb County.

And a ticket in Atlanta is no joke. One of my tickets was a whopping $285. Much like other ticketed drivers who are confused by their tickets when it is a well documented fact that there is NO enforced speed limit on in Atlanta, I’ve often wished I could do something about it…if only to prove a point. I’m all for civil disobedience.

Which is why I proudly stand up, salute, and add to my list of heroes, the group of students from Georgia State University who had enough and decided to do something about it. They were tired of tickets so they took the Georgia Depart of Transportation on.

Check the Atlanta Journal-Constitution article here.

They are my heroes.

These students released a short film they created called “A Meditation On The Speed Limit” and are receiving all the national attention they deserve. What did they do?

(Check out the video here.)

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.”

God bless us everyone.

And also piss off EVERYBODY in the process. Traffic in Atlanta is the absofuckinlutely worst. There is no rush hour. Every hour is rush hour. You are just as likely to sit in traffic at 2am as you are 2pm. Believe you me, nothing pisses you off like sitting in traffic in Atlanta at 2am on a Saturday night…on a highway.

Except…

…being fucking ticketed on a highway when everybody is doing at least 75 and you get busted for doing 80. What kind of gotdamned sense does that make? Of course, I was doing 84 when I got my inaugural ticket but that’s neither here nor there.

It’s especially frustrating when considering statements like these from the spokesman for the state Department of Transportation:

(David) 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.

Ironically, you can be killed doing 55 MPH in Atlanta more easily than you can doing 75 since NOBODY drives 55 MPH.

These students took a flawed system’s ridiculousness into their own hands. And it is for this, I salute them.

They…are my heroes.

They are a shining example of how you can buck the system by following its very intent.

Their parents should be proud.

I don’t even know them and I’m proud.

Fuck the system!

(And Starbucks!)