Traffic Tickets as Source of Revenue

Based on all this, I'm really confident the police in Arizona (everyone's new favorite state) will faithfully follow the new policy on illegal immigrants and not pull anyone over without good cause.

[strupgolf]

If it says 70, I go 65. If it says 35, I go 30. Lots and lots of cops all over the place, money grabbers that they are, but hey, don't speed and don't pay.

[Jeff Higgins]

Originally Posted by trekkor

In fact, I don't know anyone that has been falsely accused of speeding.
I think it's rare, given that speeding is so common.
KT

I have been. It's an incredibly helpless, infuriating feeling.

I really don't give a rat's ass if it's rare. One is too many. There simply must be checks and balances; today, there are none. That flies in the very face of the citizen/authority relationship upon which our justice system is founded.

I'm sick and flippin' tired of this "wink, wink; it's about public safety" bullshyte. There are places where it absolutely makes sense, where it really is a public safety issue, to be very strict about speed. I will never begrudge strict enforcement (nor will I ever speed) in such areas. But to set up speed traps in areas where there is no safety concern, and people speed because there is no reason not to exceed an arbitrarily set, artificially low limit? That has to stop. We need to raise hell until it does. It's gone too far, and the motivations are no longer valid or sincere.

I rode the very same route today on the Harley. On the very same road on which I was stopped yesterday, I got "stuck" behind a school bus. It was doing 50 mph. In a 35. I saw no reason why it shouldn't be. "Public safety" my ass...

[trekkor]

I'm sorry you have been cited without cause.
I'd be mad, too.

Sometimes I drive faster than the posted speed limit.
If I get a ticket, I'm the one to blame, right?

I do my best not to speed, but sometimes my mind wanders and I find my self driving a safe speed for the conditions, that happens to be over the limit.

Happy motoring!
I save my speed for the track.


KT

[dentist90]

Originally Posted by strupgolf

If it says 70, I go 65. If it says 35, I go 30...

..with your left turn signal on too?

I agree with some of the above generalizations. MOST people who are nabbed are indeed speeding. The court (judge) will be more than happy to explain that the speed limit sign has that litle word: LIMIT (in Canada we have the word MAXIMUM on our speed signs). So you are free to travel up to this limit, and in many circumstances a little beyond it. So yes, you may be travelling not much faster than the guy in the lane beside you, but if he is already 10 over you are 11 over now.

What does bug me are the setups where speed limit reduces, eg school zones or construction, entering city limits. I have been nabbed while I was decelerating for a school zone. They had the gun set up aiming right at the sign that said school zone. Speed changes from 50km/h to 30km/h and I didn't get down to 30km/h till about 50' past the sign. I even saw the cop before I entered the zone. Warning for 40 in a 30 zone, but his point was that I should have slowed down before the new speed zone. I think a little discretion on the part of the individual officers is required.

[billybek]

Here you will see a sudden change in speed limits. I know of several spots where the limit had been reduced from 70 KPH (which it had been for longer than I have been driving) to 50 KPH. They will set up a temporary sign for a few weeks advertising the speed limit, but people who only use the route occasionally get nailed and ticketed with demerit points. Then they set up the photo radar and pull in the cash after that.
Sad but effective way of raising funds.

[Racerbvd]

Originally Posted by trekkor
In fact, I don't know anyone that has been falsely accused of speeding.
I think it's rare, given that speeding is so common.
KT

Well, I have, back in 88 or 89, we were coming back from a friends place who hosted a Memorial day, and this home is located on the Inter Coastal water way, at the time there wasn't much around them, so we spent part of the day shooting skeet and target shooting. Well, having a full arsenal of Spoons & ammo in the back hatch of the 928S was good reason to obey the speed limit, at to it that being a holiday weekend knowing the Police would be out in force. So here we are, heading down the highway, obeying the speed limit, when a white 300Z comes up to me, tries to get me to play (I didn't), them speeds off, a few minutes later a cop pulls up behind me with flashing lights. The officers comes up to the car, ask me to get out, my girlfriend at the time is also wondering why, as it was one of the few times I was doing the posted speed. The cop goes off about that I have been doing 80 & 90s MPH, cutting in & out of traffic & that he had been trying to catch me since the beach (about 20 miles)
I try to tell him that he had the wrong car, but didn't really want to push it since I had a military issue AR15, a Street Sweeper, Mini 14, shot gun, assorted hand guns, & lots & lots of ammo just under the tinted windows, all were legal, but just seems that it would have been a major hassle if he saw my arsenal... I took the ticket and was pissed...

On the tickets being a cash cow, read this..

Cash, not safety, the issue in red-light camera debate

Submitted by Ron Littlepage on May 12, 2010 - 11:41pm

Ron Littlepage's Blog

Even if you haven't been following the red-light camera debate, this probably isn't going to come as a real big, whopping surprise.

Legislators who passed the bill during the just completed session allowing installation of the cameras may sugar coat it as being about public safety - more on that later - but in reality it's nothing but another money grab by the state.

Just look at how the deal is structured.

Get photographed running a red light at an intersection on a state road and the owner of the vehicle, even if not driving at the time, gets slapped with a $158 fine.

The key is in the details.

The money will be distributed this way: $100 goes to the state, $45 to the local government, $10 to help fund trauma centers and $3 for brain and spinal injury research.
If the red-light violation occurs on a locally maintained road, the fine is still $158, but the breakdown is like this: $75 to the local government and $70 to the state. The rest is distributed the same way.

Here's the kicker: The state doesn't have any skin in this game.

All of the costs of installing, operating and maintaining the systems fall on the local governments employing them.

While local governments could still make money on the cameras, the costs would cut into that significantly.

For instance, one Central Florida city is paying $40 to the company operating the cameras for each ticket paid.
Under that scenario, the local government would realize just $5 for a ticket on a state-owned road while the state would rake in $100 for doing nothing.

According to a House analysis of the bill, the state could make more than $29 million from the tickets in the next year and about $95 million a year by 2014.
That's why AAA Auto Club of the South is asking Gov. Charlie Crist to veto the bill.

"It's more about the money than it is traffic safety," a AAA representative told the Orlando Sentinel.

It would be more palatable if more of the money were used to help fund emergency rooms and medical research, but why should the state reap a windfall?

Of course, when the State figured out that there would be less money, one of the 1st things they did was raise the traffic fines..

[strupgolf]

Of course I keep my left turn signal on ALL the time. When the guy passes me going 75, I say fine. Then when I again pass him talking to the cop, I smile and use that money to buy more stuff for my cars. It works great.