As for posted speed limits, there is a famous amateur film made a few years back by a group of college students called “A Meditation On Speed Limits”, showing what happens when drivers on Atlanta’s I-285 perimeter loop (8-10 lanes) actually followed the absurd 55mph posted limit. Let’s just say that 99.9% of drivers are normally going 75+mph on this major metro highway, and you can figure it out pretty quick.

Selective enforcement is both arbitrary and capricious, the very definition of injustice, and the Supreme Court has ruled it unconstitutional. Yet that is exactly what passes for traffic enforcement almost nationwide.

You have to remember that tailgating at 100+ MPH is a pretty insanely stupid thing to do. While accident rates tend to be less in Germany, they also tend to be, uh, more catastrophic (I’ve actually seen a VW Golf completely disengaged from the floorpan…not pretty). Germany also frowns upon the once-accepted art of “flash to pass.” For the most part, rules, regs and fines are geared towards safety versus revenue. It’s sad that we haven’t progressed away from the “Smokey and the Bandit” (or name whatever other stereotypical TV show/movie out there involving police) mentality. Traffic police here are in the majority business of generating revenue.

It’s been 10+ years since I’ve visited, but aren’t German fines for tailgating (a behavior ignored in the states) sadistically (and appropriately) brutal?

The people who receive speeding tickets do so not necessarily because they were speeding. Everybody speeds but plenty of folks who routinely do 5-10 over never get a ticket. I’ve been driving for 37 years and believe that I’ve gotten a total of three speed related tickets and maybe three or four warnings.

Sure there are plenty of gotcha traps, speed and otherwise, but driving in a manner that grabs the LEOs’ attention is what catches plenty of speeders.

People who have a lot of points usually deserve them. They’re not just doing 80 on the interstate. They’re doing 85 in traffic, changing lanes constantly.

They also like hanging out under the overpasses in the I-94/M-14/I-275 interchange.

As far as I’m concerned, the worst speed trap is in Allen Park on the Southfield freeway. They work in pairs with one cop (usually parked in a traffic lane in the wrong direction) sitting up on an overpass with a radar gun and his buddy that he radios to down in the ditch.

Once, when I noticed them, when I got home I called up the APPD and reported an illegal parked car that was blocking traffic. When I told them it was an APPD cruiser, they transferred me to the deputy chief who tried to give me a lecture about how hard their job is and how they put their lives on the line. I told him to spare the propaganda and that they should realize that when the police casually break the law it ends up causing disrespect for both the law and police and makes their job harder.

To many cops think that “I’m a police officer in the performance of my duty” is carte blanche for just about anything they chose to do, from parking in a fire zone to putting on the lights to run a light on their way to the donut shop.

Forget about GM, the hardest culture to change is your local police department.

There’s almost nothing true or accurate in this statement.

The Michigan state sales tax was raised by a vote of the citizens of the state who voted overwhelmingly for it, 69%, not by the governor’s fiat. The hike in the sales tax rate was done to provide property tax relief, shifting support of education from property tax to sales tax. At 4%, Michigan had one the lowest sales tax rates in the country, while rising property values were killing homeowners on their property taxes.

As for the arrant nonsense about Engler and a flat income tax, as far as I know Michigan has always had a flat income tax rate. It certainly was a flat rate long before John Engler came into office.

What if they were honest and said ” We pose tax increase as one more $ per thousand or we put in traffic revenuers” Answer “no, we wont pay for your increased pension costs, ticket those out of towners.”

Do we think this will cease if and when we return to prosperity? Give up revenue stream?

I have cop as tenant. Good guy. Boston area. He says if the paid details (any construction zone needs a sleeping or newspaper reading off duty cop idling roadside at OT pay rates paid by whoever is doing the construction) are removed, all cops will write 3x tickets to get the OT in court. AND the costs of utilities etc wont reflect reduction of cop detail pay.

There’s also the fact that you can typically get a ticket busted down to something that doesn’t show up for insurance purposes if you have a clean record, so if it gets on your record there’s a pretty good chance you’ve burned your mulligans with the DMV and so are probably a higher risk.

Depends on what you plead to. If it’s a fine with no points it might no show up on your insurance record.

Though who knows? I got dinged insurance rates wise because of a collision claim I never really made. When I was turning in a leased vehicle, the back bumper had some minor damage from a parking lot incident, so I contacted AAA but never actually went through with a claim because the dealer offered me a better deal than paying my deductible (high residual value gave them some work to work with and they had an in house collision shop). I called AAA and canceled the claim without ever having their adjusters look at it.

Later, when getting quotes on insurance that seemed kind of high I found out that the system insurance companies use had flagged me as making a claim. When I questioned that, I was told that it didn’t matter if I actually went through with the claim as long as I’d reported some damage.

Remember, insurance companies have had a big role in the current financial crisis.

On southbound Woodward Ave. just north of Ten Mile Rd. adjacent to the Detroit Zoo, there’s two lanes that veer off to the right so you can turn on to 10 Mile. Right after you veer, there’s a stoplight. There’s a sign at the light that says Right Lane Must Turn Right, but the road at that point doesn’t curve, you just proceed through the light. It seems to me, based on the Must Turn Right sign that there’s the topographic and legal equivalent to a right turn at the light, even though it isn’t really a turn. I don’t, however, intend on testing my theory with the legal geniuses who staff the Royal Oak PD.

Where I-696 and Ten Mile cross Coolidge Hwy, westbound traffic on the service drive (Ten Mile) has a no turn on red sign. The problem is, that the Huntington Woods (east of Coolidge) and Oak Park (west of Coolidge) PDs have no place where they can play gotcha. Any legal location they can park their cruisers would be visible from the drivers’ position at the light. So what do they do? About a block north of the intersection they park their cruisers in the left turn lane in the middle of Coolidge. Makes me want to scream because there’s a safety reason, not to mention traffic obstruction reason, why it’s illegal to park in the middle of the street. I once got hit by a car on my bicycle within line of sight of one of those cops and he was too busy trying to play gotcha to notice the accident. Finally, after hearing me yell and call him a lazy ass he came over. Pissed him off enough that he wrote it up as my fault even though the geezer cut me off when he turned into my path.

While waiting for the magistrate to call my case I got an education. About 80% of people fighting parking tickets had gotten cited for parking in a handicapped space. The fine is $100. Judging by the number of people fighting the tickets and assuming most don’t fight and just pay up, my guesstimate is that the city takes in $5000-$10,000 a day from handicapped parking fines. Now normally I’d say throw the book at them, but a large number were indeed elderly and had disability placards in their possession. The law says the placard must be displayed in a prominent place. They’re designed to be hung from the rear view mirror but it’s against the law to drive with it hanging from there, so many people just leave them in plain sight on top of the dashboard. The parking enforcement team has digital cameras and they take pictures of the nude rear view mirrors, being careful to frame the shot to avoid showing that the placard was indeed in plain sight.

I believe the correct term for this revenue enhancement is scam.

Meanwhile, there’s a cop in Warren, Michigan, David Kanapsky (I figure jerks with badges shouldn’t be anonymous) who’s pulling in over $86K a year, including more than $21K in overtime, for issuing over 2300 tickets a year for running stop signs. He has enough seniority that he works the night shift. All but about 50 of the 2400 citations he issued last year were stop sign violations, so it’s not like he’s out there looking for DUIs and such after 2AM, what he’s doing is obvious. He plays gotcha on folks doing ‘California stops’. Because he’s on the night shift, every ticket he rights is worth 4 hours of overtime pay to him for court appearances. When one of the local tv news crews did a story on him, he was smirking at the camera.

http://www.wxyz.com/news/story.aspx?content_id=6247586b-8dea-43ab-8e1b-a74082ffe280

While I am not going to try to argue that the auto insurance pricing structure is entirely fair and not subject to random occurrences of bad luck, it can be shown statistically that those that receive speeding tickets are much more likely to be involved in an accident than those who don’t. That doesn’t mean that speeding causes accidents (although despite what you here on these boards, to some extent it must), but it definitely means that there is a correlation between those who speed and those who cause accidents. Also, not everybody receives speeding tickets: I drive 25,000 miles a year and have never received a speeding tickets. I am sure I got lucky to some extent, but I am also sure that my responsible driving habits have also played a part.

Now I know where they sit (everywhere on every major road) so I know not to speed. I just set the cruise control for the speed limit and chuckle as people fly past doing 15-20 over since they are subsidizing my communities services. Keep up the good work speeders!

My town just added 2 red light cameras to their arsenal as well.

…here in the States, at the mere sight of a Crown Vic, everybody slams on their brakes! Sad that it’s come down to revenue generation rather than safety enforcement.

Yes, the last thing they want are a bunch of law abiding citizens. Where is the fun in that?

In my city, they keep the interstate at 55 mph when no one, not even the Crown Vic’s drive that speed and it’s not because of safety… but instead they can just point at any car and write a ticket at anytime. One night after working late, I drove through four speed traps within 10 miles! Anyone going over by 5 mph was a target. &#$%@&#!

They are also writing tickets for going thru a “late yellow”. They even tell you you (as in me) you didn’t go thru a red light, you started your (rush hour) left turn too late in the yellow cycle — you’re supposed to stop for a yellow. $115 & two points. Went to court: “obstructing traffic (i.e. double parking. $125/ no points).

Moral: Be very wary of going thru yellow lights. On the freeway, stay in the middle lanes in a pack of cars as much as possible.

VK

Out next to a subdivision in Joliet, just off I-55 at exit 263 where a friend moved, there is a long, large (not sharp at all) winding curve that goes a mile or two and ends at a stop sign. No houses or driveways or businesses on either side. NO parks nearby, just grass on one side & the some bushes w/expressway on the other side.

Speed limit ? 5 mph.

My motorcycle manual says not to ride in 1st under 10mph because it chugs the engine…and you can feel it. So am I supposed to ride with the clutch in ? a mile+ to the stop sign ? Are they forcing hypermiling?

SUV’s take this turn at 20mph+ easily. My STi can’t take it at 40-45 and my bike about the same (and I’m nowhere near knee dragging).

Haven’t seen any cops nearby yet, but I’m always watching….

That curve is “ripe” for revenue.

Bingo. The extra insurance cost is the real problem with tickets, not the ticket price itself.

The Detroit-area fix: if you go before the magistrate, and don’t have multiple offenses, they’ll almost always write the offense down to something that has the same fine but does not go onto your record for insurance purposes…

And cops never seem to hang out and write tickets where they would actualy do some good. For example on my narrow suburban street that happens to be a heavily traveled connection between major state routes on opposite sides of town. Posted at 30mph, average idiots go 45-50 at rush hour. No, instead they hang out on the 4 lane (interstate style) bypass that is massively underposted at 45mph, then goes to 35 mph 1 mile before an intersection.

Tell that to the victims of McCarthy’s Witch Hunt. You’re not living in a democracy here, this is a republic. The ones in power only need to agree on the most important issues with the majority (and by agreeing, I don’t even mean acting on it). All the smaller issues, like tickets, state subsidies, and so on, will always be resolved to the advantage of the politicians.

Besides, an average voter’s gullibility leaves a lot to be desired – a population that is almost entirely under control of organized religion and marketing media can hardly make an intelligent decision regarding speeding laws when all the politicians are singing the “save lives” song.

Therefore, the best thing to do at the moment is to bitch and complain. Barring a social revolution, the only way you can get rid of a “fad” is by ridiculing it hard enough that the majority will become ashamed of it. In that sense, I can only hope that we’re gonna get a lot worse than England, real fast. The best way to get rid of a stupid law is to strictly enforce it, they say.

The WORST speed trap in the area is on Van Dyke, starting at 696 and working all the way up to GM Tech Center. Warren is bleeding cash and needs a way to fill the holes. When i went to court for my ticket, the judge had people come up mone after another like a revolving door. He must have brought the city a good $10,000 in a matter of 20 minutes.

Long time ago I was cruising at 70 (legal speed) on a 4 lane highway. Next thing I know a cop is on my ass, because I passed a poorly marked 45 mph sign.

Keep in mind this is a 4 lane highway. There is no legitimate reason for a 45mph limit here. It was a speed trap to raise revenue. There are some places in Kansas City with 6 lanes of traffic where the speed limit is nominally 45. Everyone ignores it and the cops don’t enforce it because its so blatantly stupid, but now that tax revenue is down I wouldn’t be surprised to see cops hanging out there.

I think its legitimate to worry about the government doing like that. It’s not in the legitimate public safety interest; it’s just there to make them money. Like lowering yellow light times to increase revenue from cameras (which increases accidents!). It encourages people to view the law as something to be disregarded if they won’t get caught, since it is just a scam by the government to extort some money from you instead of rules designed to promote public safety and order. It also disguises the amount of public expenses and makes it harder for the democratic process to work since the public is disconnected from the taxes it knows it pays and the anti-lottery tax imposed unilaterally by the police.

The government viewing petty violations as a revenue source is pretty troubling in principle.

But an increase in speeding tickets to make up for insufficiently high property taxes? Thank’s again, Engler. It was bad enough when he raised the sales tax from 4% to 6% to cover his Republican fantasy: a flat income tax.