Better be watching your speed

[NNN0LHI]

I notice the police are out in force pulling over speeders left and right recently around here. Almost like one shooting radar every other block in some towns. You think you made it past one OK and up pops another one. I suspect word has come down that the municipalities need more income so the increase. Though this does happen to some extent before every election I think this time it is a lot worse.

Drive the speed limit if you can or at least stay on the ball because they are writing a lot of tickets around here.

Don

[MissMillie]

1. there are lots of good reasons not to speed

saving on gasoline, for one

keeping the roads safer, for another

fewer tickets means cheaper insurance

[blm]

22. My niece was killed in a head-on crash in Ohio last July. She just turned 18. The other driver

was 21 and going 85 on a narrow country road... he had just gotten his license back because of his past speeding tickets. She and her boyfriend were killed.

No one should speed. You would think losing his license for 6 months would have stopped that dumb ass from speeding again. Now it will be a jail sentence. And my niece is still dead.

[Billy Burnett]

2. Saves gas too.

[tjwash]

3. Where is here? The information superhighway on ramp?

[NNN0LHI]

9. Its in my profile

[redwitch]

4. Gotta make up the budget shortfalls somehow.

Cops in my village make a small fortune on speeders.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

5. Your local police are likely trying to make their quotas.

Happens everywhere now and then.

[NNN0LHI]

11. Its the same way in about ten towns around here

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

14. You're right. It's probably voter suppression.

In October.

[Coyote_Bandit]

12. Yep

I had a cop give me a ticket once for going one mph over the speed limit. It was the last day of the month and the f*cker had the nerve to tell me he had a quota to meet - as if he felt like he needed to offer an explanation for issuing the ticket.

I was in college at the time and was traveling home to another state. So he wrote the ticket to the car with the out of state tag driven by the young college age girl.

Hard for me to have any sympathy whatsoever for that f*cker.

A family fried who was an attorney made a few phone calls on my behalf and the ticket was dismissed. Still, it should never have been written.

[stopbush]

6. The cops deny they have quotas to meet, but who are they kidding?

I got a speeding ticket last year in Fresno going 44 in a 40 zone. $160! This in the middle of the afternoon on a main drag street where there wasn't another car in view in any direction.

[TreasonousBastard]

13. Technically, they don't but the way it works...

is that everyone in the stationhouse knows who had the most, and the least, tickets. You don't want to be either of them.

[backscatter712]

23. Yeah. No formal quotas...

but the chiefs and the higher ups in the PD know how many tickets each officer writes, and makes it known to them informally that they expect each officer to be doing something useful when they're out on their beats, and that numbers of tickets written is one of the informal metrics they use to see if an officer is performing.

[Hydra]

7. Don't speed anyway

Everyone who does is making it more dangerous for those of us who don't.

[TNOE]

8. Same in my state

(Not Illinois) - and many of us at work were just talking about this very thing - since the many foreclosures, less property tax dollars - they've got to fill up their coffers some way - but i've never seen so many out & they always have someone pulled over.

[Freddie Stubbs]

10. Don't speed and you won't get a ticket

[Toucano]

25. Bravo!

Where is everyone going in such a hurry all the time?

[flvegan]

15. Valentine 1

http://www.valentine1.com/

:evilgrin:

If they're legal where you live.

[TreasonousBastard]

16. Years ago the Star-Ledger ran a story about speed traps...

but it wasn't really about speed traps-- it was about how Joisey towns make money off of traffic tickets.

Had a list of the worst towns and how much of their budget came from traffic court. The winner, some dinky
little place in Middlesex County, got over 80% of its budget from tickets.

Even the state got into the game. For years you could talk to a prosecutor and bargain your ticket down to just a fine with no points but a new wrinkle popped up-- it's official that for about an extra 200-300 bucks statewide, you could knock the charge down to nothing and walk out with no points.

All proving, of course, that the only thing they give a shit about is the money, and that crap about traffic safety is a joke.

[NNN0LHI]

17. I don't know? A couple of those $200-$300 dollar no point deals would likely slow me way down

I would probably be driving 5 MPH under the speed limit after that.

Don

[TreasonousBastard]

20. Could be... That's an EXTRA 200-300...

over a $180+ ticket.

[NNN0LHI]

21. Only take one of them for me and even Mopeds would be passing me like I was sitting still

[bukowskiforever]

18. I would hope that people would NEVER speed

It is dangerous and wastes gas, for example. I don't drive but I have been hit by a car and it is terrifying to see drivers flying by (especially in residential areas), blowing stop signs, not using their turn signal, and not looking both ways. Just general disregard for others and my question always is: "What's the big hurry? You're going nowhere fast."

[girl gone mad]

19. I got a ticket for driving..

behind a building in a parking lot.

I guess there's a "no through traffic" sign posted, but it's not really visible. I've been driving through there for years.

I told my husband they must be having shortfalls.

[backscatter712]

24. Shortfalls is right.

With people getting laid off, businesses not making money, municipalities all of the sudden find they aren't raking in property-tax and sales-tax revenue. What to do, what to do? Oh, call the PD and tell them to raise some more revenue!

Expect tickets for far pettier offenses now. It used to be that you'd only get a ticket if you were speeding by 10+mph over the limit. Now they'll get you for five. If you forgot to update your car's registration and your plates are expired, it used to be that you'd get a friendly warning first, then get a ticket if you blew it off for several months. Now they'll impound your car, and you'll owe the city several hundred dollars in towing and storage fees, on top of paying the fine for driving a vehicle with an expired registration and paying to bring your registration up to date. KA-CHING!

DO NOT tell me that it's all for safety and keeping us from crashing into each other. That's bullshit. It's all about revenue.