The only LEO around here that have Laser are State cops, who tend to only use it on major highways. Because these roads tend to be relatively congested, the chances of picking-up a laser “fragment” bouncing from a car in front are excellent. I have no problem getting advance laser warnings on major highways as busy as Rt. 91 or Rt. 95.

Alternatively, some highways, like in 89 in VT., or 88 in NY are so sparsely traveled that there is no warning at all, so I just set my cruise control to 9mph over and relax.
Having a radar detector certainly doesn’t mean that you are free to ride with impunity over the speed limit whenever you want to, and It can take years to learn how to use a radar detector

Are laser jammers actually effective, and has anyone tried one?

Yep, they do... they are very accurate.

You'd think a LEO would be writing citations all day long huh? Well, in the 8 hours I spent with him he only managed to cite three people. Everything else was dealing with calls and when an officer is on a call, citing takes a back seat. Somewhere in the LA area there's a guy wondering why he got paced doing 65mph in a 40mph and didn't get a ticket. Well, we were on the way to a call. That driver probably **** his pants when the lights and sirens came on and we were right next to him. Honestly, the vast majority of people who get tickets for doing stupid stuff on the street deserve it.

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.

Fun fact... in California cities only get 10% of the fine amount for State laws, the rest goes to, you guessed it, the State/County. Local city laws, yes, they get the full 100%. (which is why some cities pour so much into parking enforcement... cha ching!)

...city parking fines..burn my arse! I found a couple little invites on my wife's windshield the other day.
She parked in a disabled space in Walfart (she's legally disabled btw). A-hole parking lot cop ticketed her for having tires touching the blue stripes on the passenger side...$441!
She couldn't get put of the car because A-hole #2 has parked right up to the white line on her side.
I'm already convinced these lots are barely to code. Disabled and vets should have consideration on either side.
To show how officious these losers are, A-hole #1 wrote a second ticket for no front plate...
To top it off you don't deal with City of Lancaster, no, you send your payment toi City of Tustin...
Go figure.
A-holians.

'parking lot cop '

WTF!!! is a 'parking lot cop '...you must be kidding

not really, eh..

dude, I need to sell you an intertsting kit that uses parts from a microwave oven.

kalifornya doth suck, methinks. Time for that revolution:)

...yeah...and picking on the disabled at that, self-important pissants.

Hey, like I said, just rough calcs. The number seemed unusally high at the time and I did make a few calls to find out what the exact amount were, and guess what, even though this info should be public information I couldn't get anywhere near the facts. I think even though it does seem high, I also think it's a well kept secret that it's not.

The other thing that made the news a few weeks ago are a few towns that decided they weren't getting enough of that revenue. They implemented a local ticket policy and offered the offenders a choice of a local ticket with a smaller fine and no points, OR the normal ticket with larger fine and point(s). Not sure who dropped the hammer on that, but I haven't heard or been able to find any more info on this either.

Happens like that in NY state all the time, Speeding, inspections etc much of the $$ go to the state, so they "reduce" the offense but charge as much $$$. That way the cash stays local.

Interstate 90 splits my county down the middle, and 2 of the towns make more on traffic fines than they do on property taxes!!