I used to see people pulled over all the time, everywhere I went. In my county and many others I frequent, you rarely see anyone pulled over, I see people blow by cops, speed up thru stale yellows in front of cops, and almost never see anyone pulled over. It is common top see people going 45-50mph thru town where the speed limit is 30mph. Back When I had my camaro if I did that I would have been pulled over. There is one road where its 30mph, if you are going 40mph you will get tailgated, people frequently drive 50+mph on that road.
In my area the only way to get a ticket is if you have a crash, its rare to see anyone get pulled over for speeding. Is it just here or is it that way everywhere now?
Around here there can be a lot of leeway. Often a trooper on the highway will just make a motion through the windshield about holding it down if the offense is not too serious.
I visited my youngest son in Stillwater, OK yesterday and the 17 mile stretch between that town and I-35 is pretty heavily patrolled with a lot less tolerance due to the college students and reputation as the beer-drinkingest campus there is.
About halfway down that stretch on the way home I saw 4 state troopers with 4 cars pulled over; all of them nose to tail. Going at them en masse I guess.
There’s a crop duster who lands his plane on the highway and tanks up with chemicals rather than fly 5 miles back to the airstrip. The state patrol has apparently always looked the other way with that and I’ve actually seen a trooper make a turn just to avoid being held up by an aircraft blocking the entire roadway.
They say “it’s an FAA matter”…
It certainly seems to vary by locale. Around here, the city police are pulling over a lot more people than they used to- seems like really bad drivers break other laws too, but the county sheriff- who patrols the freeway- is busy and doesn’t stop speeders much. I see enough State Patrol and county sheriff’s in rural areas to think that speeders are still a pretty good source of income.
I wish it was that way more here. I’d much rather let people doing 10-20 over but not doing anything else wrong go in lieu of pulling over the jackass who’s texting or drunk or driving like a moron, weaving in and out of traffic, and nearly causing a wreck every 50 feet.
Instead, those idiots tend to stagger past the cop who is pulled off to the side fining someone for going 6 over.
Here in SE Wisconsin, do what you like but just don’t crash. It seems that the cops have gotten lazier than ever. A local TV station often features citizen complaints about speeders in their neighborhood. The TV reporter comes out with his radar gun and makes a TV article of it.
There is a small town called Rosendale, WI west of Fond Du Lac, WI where the local cop will give you a ticket for only 1 mph over the limit. Most people know about it and you can be sure that you will drive through Rosendale under the speed limit. Obeying the speed limit in Rosendale does not seem to ruin anyone’s day.
I drive from the bottom of the Twin Cities area to Baldwin Wi for work every day, and I’m here to tell you that the Wi troopers along I94 ARE NOT adverse to pulling over speeders. I see it ALL the time.
I agree with Caddyman about cops being a bit more lenient today unless you’re really screwing up.
Some of the older people may remember back when training procedures and uniform traffic codes were not as prevalent the Justice of The Peace systems that used to exist.
That was often nothing but legalized extortion.
The local cop would stop anyone from out of town, or especially out of state, on a claim of speeding and cash bonds would have to be put up.
The alleged miscreant would be escorted to the JPs house (even at midnight) and the fine would have to be paid then and there; or else.
Move to the Seattle area. In the last four years I’ve been pulled over/ticketed for not wearing a seat belt (was not speeding), failure to make a complete stop (stop sign at 3-way intersection with no other cars around), speeding, running a red light (made a right on a very yellow light), not wearing a seat belt (in the airport drop-off lane), and brake light out (driving a customer’s car). Police and state troopers here must need to make quotas.
The police here have always stated that a quota system is not used but last year a higher ranking state patrol official let it slip in a roundabout way that they do have a quota.
A trooper was expected to write X number of speeding tickets and make X number of DUI/DWI arrests each month and these numbers would go into their performance file a they called it with that file being used in determining future promotions and so on.
This got quietened down pretty quickly and no word on whether or not the official was reamed behind closed doors.
Many years ago the tale also came out about any trooper not being a team player would get reassigned to Boise City, OK and that was also denied.
Boise City is the last stop in the far western Panhandle and is considered No Man’s Land.
There is absolutely nothing there in a 50 mile radius and Boise City’s claim to fame is that it was the only U.S. city to get bombed during WWII; courtesy of the U.S. Army Air Corps as it was called then.
I do believe its an inverse relation to the budget. As budgets go down, tickets go up to help supplement the budget. Got nothing to do with safety. I got stopped for doing 59 in a 55 on a highway. Got a ticket on my 50th birthday, and so on.
State highways in MA…I rarely see someone getting pulled over for speeding. Only time I see them getting pulled over is when they are driving very reckless.
But the small towns who have in the budget the amount of revenue they expect from tickets…that’s a different story.
Gee, we talk like all the cops everywhere get their marching orders from the same local. Each district, town, city, state etc. has it’s own priorities ( and budget), all of which influence job priorities. That is not to say they are trained differently, but a town with tight budget constraints and few accidents and complaints in a certain area will prioritize. You could very well see less traffic control in these areas. Drive the same way in a like town where complaints are high, and few constraints, you could get pulled over for the same infraction. It has less to do with police training as much as local priorities.
@bing, I don’t know what universe you drive in but, the biggest expense that traffic summons are used to pay for, are court costs in our state. It isn’t like the towns get rich at your expense. It’s more because the location you get picked up in has had a bevy of complains for speeding. It’s the local tax payers that have the final say where law inforcement will take place for your speeding tickets often. It has little to do with generating income in most locals. When local budgets go down, along with federal and state aid to law enforcement ( a big contribution to training) law enforcement goes down, not up.
This is played out all the time in cities with lower tax bases as law enforcement expenses with increased crime does little to justify the police working man hours in these areas for all types of police work . That’s why crime is higher with much less enforcement when budgets are less, not greater.
There are towns in MA and NH who have a set amount of budget they expect their police to collect every year. Most are small towns with 2-3 police. I live in a small town in NH and at times have been on the budget committee. We’ve brought up the issue a few times. Two towns next to us all have budgets where they count a portion of their budget from tickets.
There is a migitating factor regarding the failure of the police; apparently in many areas, to rigorously enforce speed limits and stopsign activity. Cars and other vehicles are safer now, have better brakes and handling than when speed limits were established for populated areas. For example, 25 mph through a neighborhood infested with kids and dogs playing outside may have been pushing the envelope back in the 20s or 30s. Now, as well as cars being more controllable, the kids are inside and the dogs are tied up or on leashes.
It became a rare sight to see someone pulled over here in Ky until a few years ago. The CVE officers (Commercial Vehicle Enforcement) finally got the legal nod to start pulling over passenger vehicles as well a 18 wheelers. It’s no longer a rare sight to see someone pulled over and they usually have a dull brown CVE vehicle behind them. The change came about when the CVE became a part of the Kentucky State Police.
“When local budgets go down, along with federal and state aid to law enforcement ( a big contribution to training) law enforcement goes down, not up.”
I’ll second that. In the city where I live, the hard core crime rate doesn’t go down with budget issues. With the unions around here, you’d have better luck adjusting the amount of sunlight in a given day than to let any union officers go but when the budget crunch happens, they have less people to address real crime and not some surplus to re-direct toward speed enforcement to generate revenue.
Funny story- we have constant issues with speeders on my street going 60 in a 30 for example. One day my neighbor caught a cop in his cruiser parked down the street. He asked him if they could set up on our street for a while to catch at least a few of the offenders and send a message. He was indignant- they had no time to mess with traffic enforcement and by the way, who’s going to pay his salary for this, you?? My neighbor had to bite his tongue and not say- I ALREADY pay your salary. Shows the mentality of the cops…
…untill they get wind of this discussion !
( some subaru or prius drivin’ do-gooder is gonna’ rat on us )
One or two days a week, un-announced, un-marked, all black, no visible exterior lights ( the grille and inside upper widshield lights are just blazing ) , NM state police Dodge will be cruising east route 66 ( between the I-40 exits 22 and 26 ) and this dude comes out of absolutely nowhere like a mosquito in your ear !
And he’s slamming every fish he can catch , sometimes two at a time.
( passes one and motions him over and stops the one in front too ! )
---- then weeks pass by with no sign of him as we drive on tip toes and egg shells looking for him.
and THAT’s his game…the uncertainty of his presence !
So, don’t get too used to the abscence of traffic stops…they’ll slam you out of the blue with a saturation patrol !
My experience–which may or may not differ from other people’s experiences in other parts of the county–is that you are much more likely to be pulled over for driving at…let’s say…42 mph in a 35 mph zone, than you are to be pulled over for driving…72 mph in a 65 mph zone.
Is this a good use of resources?
Is one situation inherently more “dangerous” than the other?
I don’t claim to know the answers to those questions, but it is certainly easier to cite a lone driver on a rural road with a 35 mph limit than it is to pull somebody over on a crowded expressway with a 65 mph limit.
Essentially, I think that the cops are hooking the easiest fish that they can catch.
35 implies a main residential road to me, with lots of intersections without lights. I met a policewoman that works near my home. She said she spends a lot of time tracking speeds on a main residential road with a 35 MPH limit. If the locals complain enough, the police will probably respond.
And around me, expressways are usually patrolled by state troopers. County police are on the lower speed roads.