@Exilibur
There is a lot to discuss and debate of the issue of freedom. Note that I'm still learning about this stuff and my opinions change over time.
The key point is that I believe in the rights of the individual above all else.
This does not mean that the individual can do whatever he(she) pleases. The main thing is that we as free people should be able to do whatever we please so long as it is not at the undue expense of others. There's a lot of subjectivity in there, and common law has evolved over hundreds of years to determine what is acceptable over what is not.
The main issue I have, is that common law has been tossed aside in favor of civil law, where we've all been turned into miniature corporations without us even knowing it.
For example, it should not be against the law to take recreational drugs. To disallow someone the right to abuse his or her body (which is a matter of opinion depending on the drug and so on) is a clear violation of a fundamental freedom.
Now having said all that, governments trick us into accepting a huge loss of personal feedom through contract law. For example, if you have a "social insurance number" then you have agreed to pay taxes, accept government handouts, and as a result have agree to a lot of other things without even knowing it, such as wearing a seat belt when driving.
That is fine so long as we're being informed of the consequences in agreeing to the various contracts that are handed out to us.
More often then than not we have no idea we are agreeing to, or have been forced into agreeing through coercion and other methods (signing the traffic ticket for example).
Now in the cae of the woman who was stopped by the police, the questions I have under common law is:
Who is making a complaint against the woman?
Who is the injured party?
What harm has the woman done to anyone?
Under comman law, if there's no injured party and no compaint, then there is no crime.
The woman was stopped under a "preemtive law" for commiting a potential crime - a crime she may of commited but did not actually commit through her actions of driving faster than the posted speed limit.
You may recall the scifi movie
Minority Report (2002) where arrest of murderes are made before they actually kill anyone, well that's what is happening already.
The thing is, when we start accepting preemtive laws, there's no end in sight to what limits will be placed on our ability to act and think for ourselves.
Another point, is that punishing people through fines means that the rich get punished far less than the poor, and taking money as punishment is open to plenty of abuse, such as speed traps on safe areas with lots of speeders, while speed traps in unsafe school zones with few speeders is ignored.
As I said we can discuss this for a long time, so I'd better stop here.