How? I've never been arrested in my life because I follow laws, so I'm unfamiliar how you can just accidentally break a law. Is this an American thing?
Where are you from? In the US, there are well over a thousand laws on the books. Might be more like 10000 with respect to criminal law alone. And that's at the federal level. Factor in all the various states and criminal codes for those states and the surface area becomes enormous.
In my state alone, it is illegal to do things like:
* Hold stud poker games by charitable groups more than twice a year
* Keep an elk in a sandbox in your back yard
* Serve both beer and pretzels at a bar or restaurant simultaneously
* Swim naked in the Red River from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m
* Wear a hat while dancing or at any event where a dance is happening
* Lie down and fall asleep with your shoes on
Yes, these are actual crimes in the state I'm in. If you think those are absurd, you should see some other states criminal codes; for example, in Alaska, it is illegal to appear drunk in a bar. No, really, I'm serious. So you literally can't live your life without breaking the law somehow. I'm pretty sure Legal Eagle has an entire video (or more than one) dedicated to downright stupid laws like these.
In a just world, these laws wouldn't exist, but, well...
Edit: just wanted to add that I can't seem to find actual legal citations for some of these but they may be county or city ordinances. Regardless, they are still stupid and still crimes from what I know.
Those wacky law lists never have any proper sources, and I can only assume were scavenged from early internet chain letters or "1001 Weird Facts" type books.
If you live in a jurisdiction where there is a speed limit enforced by law, you likely have driven above it at some point. By definition, this is a violation of the law. Yet you have observed that you have never been arrested (perhaps never even ticketed?) as a result of this. Is this a logical contradiction? Obviously not. The law isn't always enforced, and not every violation of the law is punished.
I can't speak for where you live, but in America, there are many, many traffic laws. They differ greatly by jurisdiction. Most of them are not enforced. Sometimes explicitly -- for example, in my city, they recently announced they would no longer detain people for specific minor traffic violations -- but usually, it's implicit which go unpunished. It's also selective. By creating an unseen web of violations, the detaining officer is given all the necessary tools to make each stop as painful or as peaceful as they'd like.
In my area I can get pulled over for exceeding the speed limit, or the more nebulous "impeding the flow of traffic" aka driving too slow. On average, most drivers speed on the highways here, so it ends up being illegal to go with the flow and illegal to not go with the flow.
Which is fine, EXCEPT that it wasn't the *posted* speed limit, it was the *gazetted* speed limit (that is, the signs were incorrect and driving to them was illegal
