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Originally Posted by tm1100s

JJ, rough calcs. In fact, the vast majority were not actually court cases, but judgements by the traffic court judge taking pleas and issuing average fines of $325-350. There were taken 10 at a time and each had his/her say before the fine (bail) amounts were issued. Yup, I saw 10 at a time take less than 15 minutes, sometimes faster. So 30 per hour x 8 hrs x $300 avg fine x roughly 300 court days (probably less due to holidays) comes to about $21 million. Less than half actually go to fight the ticket and just pay up, the other $20 million. Sure I've made some assumptions just sitting there a listening, but regardless, this is big business not petty cash. And now, the state, county and locals are fighting about who gets what. The numbers are not a justification for anything, just trivia.

But just as an aside, IF there was a referendum to limit traffic violation fines to, say, $50, would more or less tickets be written? And if the tickets were kept local, no points or records, how much would the insurance companies forfeit?

Just askin'.

You are seriously over-estimating both the number of hours that a courtroom is in session each day, and the number of court days there are in a year. There aren't even 300 BUSINESS days in a year (260 including holidays), and the government certainly doesn't go out of their way to find excuses to come in to work on the weekend or on federal/local/state holidays.