in England most of these areas are far from sudden, there are plenty of prominent speed limit signs. Also cops aren’t allowed to directly keep the revenue from speed camera fines, they go to a “road safety partnership” which is a mix of public sector organisations; and are reinvested in road safety measures. in a well designed 20mph (or 30mph) zone there are usually other physical traffic calming measures such as road narrowing, bollards etc
so the classical form of speed trap in the US is a small town along a state or US route - not many people live there, there’s not much of an economy at all (the one nearest me doesn’t have any grocery store, even, you have to go a few miles to the next town over), but they have a well-staffed police department, and they may or may not have decent public services for the few people and businesses that are there. this is because the police department’s job is to bring money into the town, from traffic offenses. they don’t keep all of it, but because they, not the tax department, are the primary revenue source for the town, they get what they want. to maximize revenue, they have to induce offenses.
usually this means a couple strategies: speed limit reductions that are more severe than expected or in places that they’re not expected, and trying to hide the speed limit signs (behind overgrown tree branches is a common strategy). in my state, the typical way you enter a municipality is, you reduce from the 55 MPH speed limit that most 2-lane rural roads use, to 35 MPH at the municipal limits which typically coincide with where things get built up, and 25 MPH in downtown or on residential side streets. a common speed trap pattern is to have the village limits far away from where things get built up, and drop the speed limit to 25 MPH at the limits (or, more insidiously, post 55 MPH at the village limit sign which overrides the 35 MPH default within municipal limits, then drop it to 25 a bit later. bonus points if the 25 MPH sign is hidden. and you know there’s a cop hiding right after that.)
there was actually an extreme case of that in my state where a speed trap town’s entire government was one family that also ran the police department and the village traffic court, and the police department was doing classic bastard shit like pulling people over, smashing their tail light with a baton, and then ticketing them for the tail light being broken. they were also doing shit like calling in false police chases to the highway patrol, and it actually got to the point where the highway patrol publicly said they wouldn’t continue any chases that this village’s police started, as long as you were down to the speed limit by the time you got out of village limits. IIRC the state ended up passing laws to make that village illegal, and then dissolved it.
problem is that most of them are privately-run, the private company collects the fine and kicks back a portion to the municipality, and the private company expects a return on their investment, and the municipality is asked to ensure that there’s enough offenses to justify the camera. this means that dangerous road designs that encourage excessive speed become desirable, and things like yellow light timing are reduced to legal minimums (or in some cases, below legal minimums) to encourage red light running. (IIRC what ends up happening in US municipalities that deploy privatized cameras, is that T-bone crashes and fatalities do actually go down, but rear-end crashes go up significantly because of people going for sudden full brake applications on yellow lights to try to avoid a fine, due to how short the yellows are.)
(the solution here isn’t to get rid of cameras necessarily, it’s to prohibit private ownership and fine collection from the cameras, and to direct revenue properly to avoid perverse incentives.)
@bhtooefr@TDCN@stahlbrandt@Showroom7561@vfrmedia Agreed on that, private law enforcement is not good because they have the incentive to create violators. Private prisons are also bad. So are so-called pirate tow trucks that are allowed to go out and hunt for people with expired registrations or delinquent loans and tow their cars.
@bhtooefr@TDCN@stahlbrandt@Showroom7561@vfrmedia You had small town abuses like that where they were planting weed and seizing cars too. Small towns can get absurdly corrupt because only a few people control everything and they all know each other. This was the original purpose of the FBI before it too got corrupted by DC politics.
@vfrmedia @stahlbrandt @TDCN @Showroom7561 In the USA we call those sudden low limit areas “speed traps” and the purpose is revenue collection.
@mike805 @stahlbrandt @TDCN @Showroom7561
in England most of these areas are far from sudden, there are plenty of prominent speed limit signs. Also cops aren’t allowed to directly keep the revenue from speed camera fines, they go to a “road safety partnership” which is a mix of public sector organisations; and are reinvested in road safety measures. in a well designed 20mph (or 30mph) zone there are usually other physical traffic calming measures such as road narrowing, bollards etc
@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] yeah, speed traps are something very different from an area that should have a low speed limit.
so the classical form of speed trap in the US is a small town along a state or US route - not many people live there, there’s not much of an economy at all (the one nearest me doesn’t have any grocery store, even, you have to go a few miles to the next town over), but they have a well-staffed police department, and they may or may not have decent public services for the few people and businesses that are there. this is because the police department’s job is to bring money into the town, from traffic offenses. they don’t keep all of it, but because they, not the tax department, are the primary revenue source for the town, they get what they want. to maximize revenue, they have to induce offenses.
usually this means a couple strategies: speed limit reductions that are more severe than expected or in places that they’re not expected, and trying to hide the speed limit signs (behind overgrown tree branches is a common strategy). in my state, the typical way you enter a municipality is, you reduce from the 55 MPH speed limit that most 2-lane rural roads use, to 35 MPH at the municipal limits which typically coincide with where things get built up, and 25 MPH in downtown or on residential side streets. a common speed trap pattern is to have the village limits far away from where things get built up, and drop the speed limit to 25 MPH at the limits (or, more insidiously, post 55 MPH at the village limit sign which overrides the 35 MPH default within municipal limits, then drop it to 25 a bit later. bonus points if the 25 MPH sign is hidden. and you know there’s a cop hiding right after that.)
there was actually an extreme case of that in my state where a speed trap town’s entire government was one family that also ran the police department and the village traffic court, and the police department was doing classic bastard shit like pulling people over, smashing their tail light with a baton, and then ticketing them for the tail light being broken. they were also doing shit like calling in false police chases to the highway patrol, and it actually got to the point where the highway patrol publicly said they wouldn’t continue any chases that this village’s police started, as long as you were down to the speed limit by the time you got out of village limits. IIRC the state ended up passing laws to make that village illegal, and then dissolved it.
@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] also there’s the whole thing with cameras in the US, which could be a great tool to improve safety (as a band-aid until infrastructure can be fixed)
problem is that most of them are privately-run, the private company collects the fine and kicks back a portion to the municipality, and the private company expects a return on their investment, and the municipality is asked to ensure that there’s enough offenses to justify the camera. this means that dangerous road designs that encourage excessive speed become desirable, and things like yellow light timing are reduced to legal minimums (or in some cases, below legal minimums) to encourage red light running. (IIRC what ends up happening in US municipalities that deploy privatized cameras, is that T-bone crashes and fatalities do actually go down, but rear-end crashes go up significantly because of people going for sudden full brake applications on yellow lights to try to avoid a fine, due to how short the yellows are.)
(the solution here isn’t to get rid of cameras necessarily, it’s to prohibit private ownership and fine collection from the cameras, and to direct revenue properly to avoid perverse incentives.)
@bhtooefr @TDCN @stahlbrandt @Showroom7561 @vfrmedia Agreed on that, private law enforcement is not good because they have the incentive to create violators. Private prisons are also bad. So are so-called pirate tow trucks that are allowed to go out and hunt for people with expired registrations or delinquent loans and tow their cars.
@bhtooefr @TDCN @stahlbrandt @Showroom7561 @vfrmedia You had small town abuses like that where they were planting weed and seizing cars too. Small towns can get absurdly corrupt because only a few people control everything and they all know each other. This was the original purpose of the FBI before it too got corrupted by DC politics.