My first ride pales in comparison, maybe a honda 150, I managed to spin out and go down in a gravel parking lot. Lucky Steve was not upset about the scraped turn signal light. But then there was Frank, and the nun, too many stories.
This still occurs. Massachusetts cops on the Cape will set up speed traps and only pull over out of state cars. There have been many reports over the years of the cops pulling over cars that just pulled into the highway doing less then 50 and giving them tickets for 80+. Itâs a scam to get revenue.
New England is the only place I know of where the towns budget each year has line items on how much they expect their police to write tickets for. Shouldnât a towns goal to be to write LESS tickets (meaning they are controlling traffic better). Instead it seems the towns want more traffic problems so the police can write more tickets and thus more revenue for the towns.
I donât believe any town around here needs to invent ways to cite people for traffic violations. There are plenty of speeders, red light runners and other violations on a consistent basis to keep the money flowing. I certainly donât have an issue if my town has a line item for ticket revenue because itâs a run rate calculation based on historical data. I would have an issue if they mandated a yearly increase without a corresponding data set that showed that slope already existed. Every year there are more people visiting or transiting the town. Just by that fact alone, the number of violations is probably increasing YoY. The cost of everything continues to go up and the town is faced with reconciling every source of revenue to offset that increase. Would you rather they raised your taxes to make up the shortfall?
And if a jurisdiction carefully times their traffic lights to promote frustration and properly locates reduced speed limit signs they can convert traffic cops from being an enforcement and deterrent force to being a highly profitable business.
After many years and over a million miles of driving without a ticket I was cited locally for running a stop sign and went to court to contest it. At court I found that the city had put into place a frustrating gauntlet of repeated court appearances for those either wishing to contest their ticket or unable to the fine at that time, each appearance dealing with a separate aspect of the adjudication. And those who were unable to pay their fine in full on that first appearance were left with appearing at future dates when called to sit for hours until called tot he front to pay some portion of the fine with added fees for financing the fine. The process was, of course, designed to gouge the âoffenderâ as deeply as possible and get their money as quickly as possible. The vast majority of my fellow criminals in court that day were in fear of losing their minimum wage jobs due to missing work for court and if they missed court they would have felony warrants issued for them. Obviously the city has developed a highly efficient method of taxing those who can least afford it but thatâs the trend these days. We do have a trendy city council. In a city of 35,000 we have a new $14million police department and plans for a $42million jail that city hall hopes will be partially funded from money flowing in from traffic court.
Everybody there is innocent, just ask 'em!
I have no doubt that there are places where the police are corrupt and fleecing the public. Itâs been in the news where innocent people were stripped of any cash they were carrying, cars confiscated etc. But itâs a real stretch to say itâs pervasive. Like I said, around here, you donât need to set up anything special. People are breaking the traffic laws all the time, just try keeping up with the existing law breakers.
But my complaint is with the overzealous effort to find an excuse to pull over cars for petty issues and clean out the driverâs wallet and bank accounts while allowing crotch rockets to drive at outrageous speeds, often on the rear wheel, on major city streets. And landscaping businesses operating overloaded trucks without nets over the loads being ignored. Then there are the jacked up 4x4s with open pipes that are annoying when driven slowly but require a great deal of road to bring to a stop with bumpers that put their tires on the decks of the car they couldnât stop for getting no ticket until they do major damage. The real problems are ignored to go for the easy pickings it seems.