Towns in MA and NH have in their budget the amount of money they expect to receive from speeding tickets. In the past few years…that budget item has gone up a lot. If towns were really interested in making their towns “Safer”…they’d try to be DECREASING the number of tickets/revenue.
There was a similar situation in Ohio some years ago. It was so notorious that it got press in Car and Driver and other media. The cops would follow traffic through the village, looking for a reason to stop anyone. Infractions like 1 MPH over or a brake light out would result in a hefty fine with no mercy, or the option of being locked up if you couldn’t pay immediately. And what a surprise that out-of-towners were the usual targets. Eventually it got enough notoriety that the government stepped in and abolished the “mayor’s court” and disbanded this ‘legal’ racketeering. I think legislation was put in place to limit the power of mayor’s courts after this, but I could be mistaken.
For the record, IMHO, reasonable law enforcement is necessary, but literal highway robbery of this sort should not be tolerated. There’s enough fascism in the world.
I have little doubt that there are towns just like this though. There’s a little town about 20 miles from me that I seem to get followed through every time, despite having no criminal record and driving a ‘normal looking’ car. Reactionary townies like these make it easy to hate cops.
@DfromSD Oh contrar. Withing federal guidelines, states set the speeds on interstates and state highways. That’s why South Dakota is 75 on the interstate and 65 on state roads and Minnesota is 70 on interstates and 55 (for heaven’s sake) on state highways. Then look at crazy Indiana or Ohio where trucks are 65 and cars are 70 so you’re in the left lane all the time passing trucks.
In Lakeville, MN the local police like to patrol their little section of I-35 too. It was prime hunting grounds for the patrol when the limit was 55 but now they’ve gone on to greener pastures and the local guys got the territory. In their defense though it is an accident prone area if you are asleep at the wheel.
If towns were really interested in making their towns “Safer”…they’d try to be DECREASING the number of tickets/revenue.
???
The position of defending speeders is untenable. All drivers have to do to address speed traps is not speed. If everyone drove legally, they’d only have police harassment to worry about. Even if the goal is revenue generation, you can’t fault police for doing their jobs, and those who get caught speeding have nobody to blame but themselves.
Craig58, an unrepentant speeder, has an adult attitude about it. He considers speeding tickets just part of the cost of driving. I prefer not getting tickets, and drive accordingly. But there are a variety of attitudes on this subject.
Maybe the ticket rate is higher because there is enforcement. Undermanned state police is obviously allowing speeders .before and after this area. If they were " just doing their job" you would expect more summons. I have a novel idea; slow down and drive the speed limit.
There’s some truth to both sides of the story. On one hand speed limits should be enforced and on the other hand some towns go to extremes in enforcing those limits.
In OK anyway, if a municipality makes more than 50% of their revenue from speeding tickets then the state designates them a speed trap and orders them to stop issuing tickets. At last count 18 towns held that designation and that does not include the ones that are just not on the list.
One small town west of me was known for this due to it being located near a lake and the traffic flow to and from that lake. A customer of ours who owned a Subaru came in one day and wanted to order a brand new, and expensive, speedometer for their car based on a ticket they had received in that town. The cop there cited them for 2 MPH over in a 35. Even after giving the car owner a statement and a copy of the factory service manual stating that a 1.5-2 MPH variance is normal they still had to pay that ticket. Ten over, sure; but writing someone up for 2 over is BS.
Another small town here lies in a low area on a divided 4 lane. The posted limit is 70 and drops suddenly to 35. For those of us who are familiar with the road it’s not as big a problem. The ones who don’t know often find themselves ticketed after going over the crest and not slowing down in time. On a side note, this podunk little wide spot uses a BMW X5 as a cop car… 
Wake County, North Carolina uses a Z06 Corvette.
@OK4450, agree re The quick drop from 70 to 35 is really annoying, dangerous and wastes fuel / causes noise. Invariably it is there to “catch you out”
If 35 is needed, then step down speeds so you don’t need to hit the brakes. Leaving the area, 35 -> 70 just makes people accelerate hard and waste gas…
If this was twenty years ago, I would have said Coconut Creek, FL. Sole revenue for the city back then was speeding tickets.
Parkland, FL is not much better. Their police officers will stop and cite for as little as 5 MPH over the posted (35) limit – UNLESS – and this is the biggie – unless you have a PHO (Parkland HomeOwner) sticker on your rear bumper. Then the police will leave you alone.
About 10 years ago 2 police officers (each from small towns and with no authority here) got into a tiff over a traffic stop.
Apparently both were off duty and one stopped the other for a non-working taillamp in a town where neither lived or worked. The officer who was stopped told the other that his authority was worthless and this escalated to the point where both officers pulled out concealed weapons and drew down on each other.
A few minutes later the city police showed up and calmed the situation down. In truth, both of those guys should have gone to jail and lost their jobs.
I can only imagine the professionalism those 2 officers show while on duty…
@dagosa -
I agree… people should slow down. Sadly, the police actually routinely tolerated 60-65 in the 55 area, so those getting caught were typically doing 65+, yet they think it was unfair.
I’ve been behind the wheel for what, 3 decades now? Not once have I been pulled over by a cop…
@JosephMeehan -
If I can put words in @MikeInNH’s mouth (always dangerous for me to try to do 
) - If people were behaving safely, they wouldn’t be violating laws, and there would be no revenue from tickets. So ironically, if the sole concern was safety, you’d do whatever you could to prevent the need to ever issue tickets.
OTOH (speaking for myself), the entire purpose of tickets is supposed to be to encourage safe behavior - meaning that if they aren’t, you could argue that the penalty isn’t severe enough.
Interestingly, despite all the rhetoric, when I dug up statistics for the police enforcement here, it appears that you’re looking at around slightly over 60% odds of getting off with a warning here. Seems the cops aren’t really being nearly as aggressive as people think, IMO…
Actually, the point of enforcement is to punish unsafe behavior. That’s not the same thing as encouraging safe behavior, and one could argue punishment isn’t really the most effective way to discourage unsafe behavior (as opposed to positive and negative reinforcement). If the police were to actually encourage safe behavior, they’d pull you over for driving safely and give you season tickets to your favorite sports team, or something else you value highly.
Unfortunately, because the odds of getting pulled over for speeding are so low, ticketing drivers has proven to be ineffective at deterring speeding. Rewarding safe drivers, at least according to psychologists, would be more effective.
The one method for which punishment seems to work best in traffic enforcement would be the use of speed cameras and red light cameras. When the chance of being caught is close to 100%, most people actually obey the laws.
This thread makes me think of the now-dissolved New Rome, OH. That place was famous for abusive police practice.
@Doubleclutch: Bingo. New Rome, OH was the town that got such notoriety.
Many years ago when I lived in Litchfield, NH, we had a tiny police force. We hired a new chief, who got some full time positions approved, some new cars, and some new cops. We were a town-meeting controlled budget. To make a long story short, he set his new cops to the task of setting radar traps. Come the next years town budget meeting, he wanted more cars and more cops. People lined up at the microphone, all saying the same thing: “you’re spending out money on radar traps and you want us to approve more money so you can set more radar traps?”. Needless to say, he did not get his new budget approved. But man, did he get an earful! He also stopped giving tickets to us “townies”.
There used to be a state trooper who was stationed in this area and he cited both of my sons and most of their friends for speeding. The shady part was that everyone he stopped was always doing 73 MPH according to his radar; no matter if it was a posted 55 or 65 stretch of roadway.
One would wonder what the odds are of multiple people speeding by the same amount.
He also stopped my wife for 73 and gave her a warning even though she admittedly was doing 60 in a 55.
My youngest son was ticketed for 73 in a 65 and it was pure bunk because I was with him at the time and he simply wasn’t speeding. The cruise was set on 65; pure and simple.
And this from a trooper who claims he did not see a crop duster using the public highway as a chemical loading point (not a rare event) even though I personally witnessed the trooper veer and go another direction so wouldn’t get tied up waiting for the plane to take off. According to the trooper HQs “that would be an FAA matter”. Ha.
The posted speed was 55 and I’m sure the takeoff speed of that loaded plane is considerably faster.
There are ways to force drivers to reduce speed beside speeding tickets. If towns have in their budgets the amount of money they need to collect from speeding tickets…AND this keeps increasing…that’s tells me they are trying to get people to speed more because they want more revenue. What would happen if EVERYONE going through these small towns drove the speed limit??? What would happen then?? Some towns have put up fake police cars…or added stop signs and stop lights to slow traffic through their towns. One town in MA removed one of the lights (or actually just disabled it) so cars wouldn’t slow down…and thus they could hand out more tickets.