Seriously, fight every ticket...

[rohan]

I don't understand him either.

Either...

A.) Speeding is a serious safety issue that kills thousands of people a year and should NOT be taken lightly

Or...

B.) Speeding tickets are bullshit and serve no pupose other than revenue generation

Which is it?

Well if you're one of the people who are complaining in our county about speeders in their neighborhoods it's both because usually the worst ones are the ones who live on the streets and usually their doing the loudest complaining!

[James Young]

To me, the issue has become a moral one.  If the law is supposed to outline and support behavior that is beneficial to society as a whole, is not any use of that law to excuse actions that are harmful to society itself immoral?  Stated in the negative, is not the purpose of law to support the beneficial by prohibiting the harmful?  A corollary to that is that any action of law must be shown to provide measureable benefit before it is undertaken; any action without benefit or with actual harm must not be undertaken.  Yet, we have hundreds of little villages and many larger cities with extremely aggressive enforcement tactics designed to generate only revenue for the jurisdiction.  Those same players have been excusing such actions by any number of alleged benefits, generally public safety, yet they cannot show any measureable benefit. 

Traffic citations abound to the tune of tens of billions a year but key safety statistics operate in concert with technological improvements, not with enforcement effort.  More harshly stated, enforcement does not work, especially as it is undertaken currently, but it does carry a very high cost of disdain and distrust for those who ask for, who write and who enforce those laws. 

[rohan]

And yet you still cannot show any proof of these (what used to be thousands according to you) hundreds of municipalities using this tactic.  Sure youcan cite a couple but let's see something linking hundreds or thousands.

[James Young]

But then why spend the glucose to cogitate the apparent paradox? If they exist their degree of  reasonableness and necessariness seems kinda like a mystical exercise in the ether.

Hmmm.  So all those courts are just a mystical exercise?

[rohan]

No you keep claiming there are hundreds or thousands- depending on how substantial you're trying to make your case sound- of police departments that only exist to serve as speed traps and ticket revenue generators yet you never ever ever provide any proof that this is even remotely the case. 

[Lebowski]

And yet you still cannot show any proof of these (what used to be thousands according to you) hundreds of municipalities using this tactic.  Sure youcan cite a couple but let's see something linking hundreds or thousands.

Drive through Waldo, FL sometime.

[James Young]

Video response here- the video is of cars being crashed at 60 and 100 km/h into a cement wall.  Sure speeding might be a minor infraction as a stand alone- but it's results can be horrific.

Typical sensationalistic response that conflates "speeding" with "too fast for conditions."  We have spent billions on improving the technology of vehicles and roads with the focus on making them safer at higher speeds because higher speeds have a societal benefit.  We then have the Luddites try to keep us from utilizing those improvements. 

[rohan]

Typical sensationalistic response that conflates "speeding" with "too fast for conditions."  We have spent billions on improving the technology of vehicles and roads with the focus on making them safer at higher speeds because higher speeds have a societal benefit.  We then have the Luddites try to keep us from utilizing those improvements. 

Lovely- I'm still waiting for some kind of proof of these thousands of revenue only police departments.

[James Young]

One question- why does everyone that sees a car pulled over on the side of the road with smokey bear behind him assume he got nailed for speeding? 

Because the odds of that are about 4:1.  I'll take those odds to Las Vegas and become very rich.

[rohan]

Drive through Waldo, FL sometime.

Like I said- sure he can point to a couple of examples but that doesn't mean that thousands are doing it.  I can find examples of prostitutes but that doesn't mean that all or most women are prostitutes it just means that those examples I found are.  He keeps saying it like it's the truth it's time he put up or shut up.

[GoCougs]

A moral issue? When the streets are patrolled with automated ticketing equipment citing drivers for 5mph over, you'll have your moral issue.

The very high cost of disdain and distrust is levied by very, very few; the majority of this group of which I'd wager are those who are chronic problem drivers, and find themselves in constant contact with LEOs regarding their driving behaviors.

[GoCougs]

EDIT - DP (this is getting old...)

[rohan]

Because the odds of that are about 4:1.  I'll take those odds to Las Vegas and become very rich.

Link?  Proof?

[James Young]

While your tactic is purely diversionary, I?ll point you to www.speedtrap.org.
 
Because these places go to great lengths to keep their statistics secret ? Texas DPS calls them proprietary, despite being created by the actions of public employees and gathered at public expense ? we can only see part of the picture.   Synthesizing this with other known information allows us to make educated estimates of actual behavior.
One of the consequences of this secrecy is that we must rely on samples about which we know at least something.  The AG of Oklahoma used subpoena power to reveal what others had long suspected:  several jurisdictions were found to be violating the rule allowing only xx% (that value has changed a couple of times) from citation revenue AND were not reporting all citations to the state as required by law.  Is this behavior ? revealed only under severe coercion ? indicative of the larger population of similar villages? 
 
Of course, you have chosen not to believe any of this for whatever reasons you deem appropriate.  I now ask you to join us in asking for complete transparency of traffic stops and citations by requiring tabulated data to be published on every jurisdiction?s website.  They should also be required to publish a pdf of every citation, absent any identifying information.    If they don?t have a website, they?re too small to warrant a police department and shouldn?t be issuing citations. 
 

[rohan]

We will pretend for a minute that the city entries on speedtrap weren't made by people who's only proof there is a speed trap is the ticket they recieved or an officer they don't like and that for a moment we'll pretend it's true that every city there is a speedtrap.  How do you propose to pay for all this tranparency?  As it sstands now most departments can barely pay bills including payroll.  Most departments have to run cars which are unsafe because their cities or townships or villages can't afford to fix them - forget about replacing them.  Where is all the money going to come from to hire and staff computer people to do all this posting of stuff?  And who are you to tell the people of a small community they don't need police protection?  They pay their taxes and get to decide that- not you. 

[James Young]

{Because the odds of that are about 4:1.  I'll take those odds to Las Vegas and become very rich.} JY

{Link?  Proof} rohan

This came from a federal investigation of the Texas DPS about racial profiling wherein they were forced to reveal that in 2001 [IIRC], they issued just over 1 million citations and that speeding citations accounted for more than twice as many as all others combined (including  ?commercial? citations, i.e., heavy truck-related inspections).  That gives us a ratio of roughly 7:3.  Now, let?s turn to your question, which is ?what initiated the stop in the first place??  Since there are several kinds of citations that are added onto the original speeding cite or sometimes replace it ? no license, no insurance, seatbelt ? we can estimate that as these ancillary citations increase, the ratio decreases.  It would be very easy to go from 8:2 [speeding:others] to 7:3.

Now you see why it is so difficult to get valid data from so many jurisdictions.

[rohan]

That doesn't exactly translate to other police departments because they're from what I understand highway patrol for the most part so that's not exactly a good sample is it?

[James Young]

rohan writes: {We will pretend for a minute that the city entries on speedtrap weren't made by people who's only proof there is a speed trap is the ticket they recieved or an officer they don't like and that for a moment we'll pretend it's true that every city there is a speedtrap.} 
   
I don?t pretend for a minute that those postings are anything other than anger by a poster who got caught.  Since a ?speedtrap? is define by the intent of the enforcement for money and that theory explains far more and far better than any alternative, I?ll leave that as a given.  That site is a warning flag, not evidence in a legal case.

{How do you propose to pay for all this transparency?   . . .Where is all the money going to come from to hire and staff computer people to do all this posting of stuff?  And who are you to tell the people of a small community they don't need police protection?  They pay their taxes and get to decide that- not you.} 
   
If any jurisdiction is big enough to issue citations, they?re big enough to comply with the rules of good governance, a critical element of which is transparency.  Good governance is expensive but not nearly as expensive as secretive governance.  Any government financing must be made with the consent of the governed and the taxed, including whether there should even be any government at the village level.  Currently, residents of those villages do not pay any taxes to the village but to the county; therefore, the county should decide, not the village.
   
Several of the villages in Oklahoma that are particularly egregious violators ? Kiowa, Stringtown, Caney,  Hulbert, Moffett ? provide no ?police protection;? that is, they provide no criminal or civil services, leaving that to the county sheriffs.  They write speeding citations.  Period.

[dazzleman]

I don't understand him either.

Either...

A.) Speeding is a serious safety issue that kills thousands of people a year and should NOT be taken lightly

Or...

B.) Speeding tickets are bullshit and serve no pupose other than revenue generation

Which is it?

In some cases, it's A and in some cases, it's B.  I'm not sure why that's hard to understand...

[James Young]

That doesn't exactly translate to other police departments because they're from what I understand highway patrol for the most part so that's not exactly a good sample is it?

It's as good as we have available because of the reluctance of public agencies to provide good data.  It is a very large agency in a very large state and the reports were not samples but tabulations of the entire population of stops.  What is particularly enlightening about this is that, once again, previously hidden information so often supports what I have been saying for 50 years now.

[rohan]

Since when does the county decide how a municipality with a duly elected board will spend it's money?  It can't - It shouldn't - and it won't.  And they do pay them to the village and then the village pays the county and then the county pays it back to the village.  It's an old and pretty stupid arraingement really.  But that's another topic for another argurment on antoher day.  As for mandated policy like electronic reporting and that stuff here the State has to provide funding for anything it mandates- and our state doesn't have the money to do that.  So I'm guessing it's never going to happen.

[rohan]

It's as good as we have available because of the reluctance of public agencies to provide good data.  It is a very large agency in a very large state and the reports were not samples but tabulations of the entire population of stops.  What is particularly enlightening about this is that, once again, previously hidden information so often supports what I have been saying for 50 years now.

it only says it about that one single police department and doesn't translate to Olivet, MI for example.

Enough for today I've got a bathroom to grout and since the area is about 10x10 it'll take me awhile.  I appreciate you at least being civil today.

[Soup DeVille]

But then why spend the glucose to cogitate the apparent paradox? If they exist their degree of  reasonableness and necessariness seems kinda like a mystical exercise in the ether.

What?

[hotrodalex]

What?

Haha, leave it to Cougs to use big words that no one has ever heard of.

[bing_oh]

My point isn't so much that speeding isn't dangerous at all, but rather that law enforcement agencies seem to spend a totally disproportionate amount of effort enforcing speed limits, largely because of revenue generation.  I have a feeling that running a red light is more likely to cause an accident than speeding is, yet it's very rare for me to see an LEO camped out at an intersection nailing red light runners.  I have a feeling the primary reason for this is that it would generate far less ticket revenue than setting up a speed trap.  I see all kinds of stupid, dangerous behavior on the road, yet very little effort is spent either ticketing these people or educating the public on how to drive.

And Rohan - I'm not ragging on the cops.  Like Bing-Oh said, I realize you guys have bosses you have to answer to, and pressure to put disproportionate emphasis on speeding.  It's not the street cop's fault.

I didn't mean to imply that my department or administration puts pressure on me to write speeding tickets. Actually, they don't. The only real traffic enforcement effort we currently have is connected to directed enforcement on intersections with high crash rates...and that's more of a visibility/publicity thing in an attempt to lower crashes than anything else.

Personally, only a very small percentage of my traffic stops are speed-related. As I've said in the past, I really don't like working straight traffic. I'll make precursor stops for DUI enforcement, I'll look for things like Driving Under Suspension, and I'll make stops for criminal enforcement. If I see a violation on patrol, I'll take it, but I don't usually do traffic for the sake of traffic. However, speed laws are, in the end, still laws, and my job is law enforcement. I was just saying that I can't just arbitrarily decide not to enforce one specific law or set of laws. It just doesn't work like that.

As for the idea that we put more effort into speed enforcement than, say, stop signs, I disagree. When I'm just patrolling (ie, I'm not looking for a specific violation like sitting running laser or parked watching a stop sign), I'm looking for any violation. I'll watch the vehicles at intersetions to see if they're stopping as much as I'm running radar checking speeds on the cars around me. I have no preference when it comes to busting a speeder as opposed to busting a guy who runs a stop sign (and, despite what James Young implies, I don't ever consider how much a particular violation costs fine-wise when I'm deciding to make a stop or write a citation).

[Rupert]

I think the LEOs here all work for larger departments in larger cities or towns, where traffic enforcement is not so high on the list of things to do. I think that smaller towns probably have more traffic enforcement.

There is a town near to where I grew up, Coburg, OR, that is pretty infamous for being a speed trap. They were ticketing outside their jurisdiction, on I-5, until some court told them to stop. They found a loophole, and continue to be a pain in the ass there. Coburg is a small place, but they make a lot of money on mostly speeding tickets. I can't recall details, but they have a number of officers whose job is revenue generation on the freeway. There are news stories from in the Eugene Register-Guard, and I think some national news sources, to back me up. At any rate, this is the kind of thing that I think James is talking about, not police in larger towns and cities who have better things to do.

[bing_oh]

I think the LEOs here all work for larger departments in larger cities or towns, where traffic enforcement is not so high on the list of things to do. I think that smaller towns probably have more traffic enforcement.

Well, I currently work for a department with just 16 sworn officer (including the admin, detective, and special assignments) in a city of about 12,000 people. I've worked for towns of less than 1,000 people, villages of just under 5,000, and cities of 25,000, as well as working for a university PD. Needless to say, I've got a pretty wide range of experience in the small to mid-size city aspect of law enforcement (no personal experience in big city and metropolitan PD's, and I'll keep it that way if I have any say about it...not my thing).

Different departments and communities have different priorities when it comes to law enforcement.

Very small towns probably do the most traffic for two pretty simple reasons...first, they usually have the time to do directed traffic enforcement because of light call loads and, two, the officers are bored out of their minds and are just looking for something to do (been there, done that). That's really the reality of small town traffic enforcement, not some sinister money-making plot. I can imagine that there are exceptions to the rule, but they're few and far between.

Once you get into the large village/small city range, departments tend to have different priorities. Calls for service are always #1 and directed traffic enforcement becomes the flavor of the month. The community wants to see things like school zone enforcement, directed enforcement at high crash intersections, speed enforcement in residential neighborhoods and business districts with high pedestrian traffic, etc.

Once you get into the city range, then the call loads tend to cut way back on traffic enforcement (unless it's a city with a large enough department for a dedicated traffic enforcement unit). For the most part, larger city officers do traffic enforcement on the fly (ie, between calls and rarely stationary). Moving traffic enforcement does tend to be alot of speed enforcement because it's very easy to do normal patrol and utilize the radar. For example, an officer probably won't get as many red light violations on the fly (as opposed to sitting on a intersection) because people tend to become much more careful drivers when they see a cruiser.

If you look at the whole thing logically and from a realistic, nuts and bolts perspective, you can start to understand the pattern of why different PD's run different traffic enforcement in different ways.

[Lebowski]

I didn't mean to imply that my department or administration puts pressure on me to write speeding tickets. Actually, they don't. The only real traffic enforcement effort we currently have is connected to directed enforcement on intersections with high crash rates...and that's more of a visibility/publicity thing in an attempt to lower crashes than anything else.

Ok, the whole point of bringing up where this pressure may or may not come from was in response to your post that people fighting traffic tickets are somehow adding unnecessary burden to the court system, leading to backlogs.

If speeding tickets are in fact contributing to backlogs in the courts, the solution to that problem is obvious - reduce the number of traffic citations.  Don't blame people who recieve tickets for exercising our right to take it to court.  When I get a ticket, I hire a lawyer because I'd rather pay the extra $75 and not get the points on my record.  I plan to continue to do this in the future.  If my local government has a problem with this they are more than welcome to solve that problem by not giving me any more tickets.  Until then, I'm going to hire a lawyer for each one of them.

The whole "pressure" sidebar only came along because I recognize the fact that this is a decision that needs to be made at a higher level up than the individual officer.

[omicron]

A moral issue? When the streets are patrolled with automated ticketing equipment citing drivers for 5mph over, you'll have your moral issue.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22027252-5006787,00.html

6km/h = 3.7mph.

Drive more than a few kilometres along Melbourne's CityLink tolled freeways at a speed exceeding the maximum tolerance, and you'll pass by a speed camera that will automatically generate a speeding fine and have it sent to your home.

It works in a similar fashion to the electronic tolling system itself:
'CityLink uses a DSRC toll system called e-TAG, where an electronic transponder is mounted on the inside of the vehicles' windscreen. Gantries constructed over each carriageway record registration plates and detect the e-TAGs, and deduct toll amounts automatically from the account linked electronically to each tag. Where a tag is not detected, the vehicle's registration is recorded using an automatic number plate recognition system and checked against a database. For infrequent use of the system one can buy a Daypass ? by phone, online or at participating service stations. A Daypass can be bought in advance or afterwards (until midnight three days later). The vehicle's registered owner will be sent a fine in the mail if payment is not made.'

[NomisR]

I think the main difference in opinion here is because most LEOs here do not work in a Highway Patrol and State Police or whatever your state calls it that simply patrols the freeway for speeders.  That's where most of the "beef" is coming from for drivers, and of course the resident LEO's departments won't be doing that since they're just doing regular neighborhoods.