Locally, a police occifer provided drink to his teen kid and 10-12 other underaged drinkers. If Joe Average had done that and caught, I’d guess that he’d get at least a couple of years in the slammer.

The cop was given 1 week in jail. The judge (ironically) essentially said, “we don’t just wink at crime if it is done by police”. Right. So then why was this guy’s jail sentence one week, then, is the obvious next question.

Then there are all the tazings, including the killing of a 40 year old guy in Vancouver BC at the airport (just goes to show Canada is not immune), with Mounties kneeling on his neck after tazing him because he didn’t speak English and they didn’t understand his frustration with being locked away for 10 hours. And all the other tazings that seem to pop up daily.

Yeah, but an awful lot of so-called speeding is not dangerous driving. Let the cops ticket people who are REALLY driving dangerously, the out of control kids, etc., but leave the rest of us alone. This NHTSA thing is terrible as far as I’m concerned–it will encourage cops to ticket people who are actually driving safely.

Important point: we have speed limits and then we have de facto speed limits, the speeds at which the cops generally start ticketing which are generally 5-10 mph above the posted limits, which are unrealistic. This will encourage cops to start ticketing at lower speeds which are safe.

People should complain to their congresspeople about this. Call them! Tell them NHTSA should not be in the business of setting up contests like this when everyone knows the posted speed limits are a sham. The main # on Capitol Hill is 202-224-3121. And join the national Motorists Association which lobbies against this sort of nonsense (NMA.org, I think.) Thanks Megan for bringing this to our attention.

So let me get this straight… We are taking money from the sheep and using it to fund contests on who can rob (at gunpoint by the way) the most from the sheep… and then reward the best little gestapo agents with snazy new rides… God, isn’t it great that we live in the freest country in the world…..

Lets face it — people driving too fast for the conditions cause accidents, injuries, and death. Sometimes there own, sometimes other people’s. Maybe ticketing decreases bad driving; maybe it doesn’t. But dangerous driving is dangerous driving, and there ain’t nothing wrong with punishing it. I know I was more aware of my speed after I got a ticket.

I’m sure there are plenty of folk out there that will say that speed limits are a rough idea, and as an experienced motorist they can judge the safety of the conditions. I’m sure they can. But I prefer knowing that there is a brightline of what is safe and what isn’t, not the 16 year old behind the wheel.

The fines generated stay with the states. Figure that you can write hundreds of tickets per trap per shift, and the money adds up fast.

Since most of the special details will be on interstate roads, we will see the most enforcement levelled on the safest roads which are mostly built for the speeds observed, legal or not.

NY State proved a while back, under “operation saturation speed enforcement”, that there is no real change in travel speeds absent a marked cruiser with lights on.

Argue about the inelasticity of demand all you want, but the fact is, it has gone down — people are driving less, and driving more efficient cars, and local/state governments are feeling the pinch. There’s also talk of replacing flat gas taxes with mileage based taxes to better fleece the sheeple. Oil consumption is inelastic, not gasoline consumption.

For the folks on this site who have advocated for increased gas taxes (and I am sympathetic to that view, to a point), the whole purpose would not be to increase revenue, but to spur a decrease in consumption. Pushing consumption down is seen as a public good because of environmental and national security concerns. In fact, many proposals aired here are explicitly designed to be revenue-neutral; any increase in revenues would be offset by tax cuts or credits elsewhere.

Regarding your “higher prices lead to decreased consumption leads to lower overall tax revenues” point, that dynamic only holds true when the increase in pump price is due to the increase in the actual cost — as is the case now.

If, hypothetically, the underlying cost of gas remains constant while the pump price goes up due to increased taxes, consumption — as measured by number of gallons — will drop, but tax revenues will remain constant or increase. This is because gasoline demand is somewhat inelastic, meaning an increase in price will prompt a decrease in consumption, but always in smaller proportion.

On the main point of this article, I have to say that this program seems just plan bad. Tickets represent revenue to local police departments — and they also represent a political balancing act. Don’t enforce the laws enough, and local residents complain that the roads are unsafe. Enforce too much, and local residents complain about the jack-booted police state we live in. Activity levels are set at a balance that reflects all these concerns, and having a clueless remote actor come in and try to dictate what’s best will probably just irritate people and make everyone more unhappy. NHSTA would do well to study the safety effects of different sort of enforcement styles and make the data available to state and local governments, but pushing police forces to adopt behaviors which they wouldn’t choose otherwise is silly.

They couldn’t afford anything other than used cruisers in the past.

Stupid government.