More states are cracking down on small towns using speed traps to raise money for their town or police budgets. These laws typically impose caps on how much municipalities can keep from traffic fines, with any fine revenues over a specified percentage of the town’s total budget going to the state, to remove the profit motive from writing traffic tickets.
Photo: Hopewell, Virginia, operates one of the nation’s most notorious speed traps.
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We’re not talking about legitimate traffic enforcement here. Speed traps are specifically designed to trick unwitting motorists into committing violations. Their purpose is to extract money from travelers, not promote highway safety.
For example, Waldo, Florida, shakes down travelers on a state highway passing through the town by changing the speed limit six times, so its police can write “thousands of tickets a year,” according to CBS News. Here’s what drivers encounter in Waldo: 65 mph drops to 55, then to 45, then back up to 55, then to 45 again, then 55, then 35. There’s no traffic rationale for this; it’s designed to entrap motorists.
The neighboring town of Hampton, Florida, was nearly disincorporated by fed-up state legislators responding to citizen complaints over speed traps operated by that town on the same highway. Hampton, which has fewer than 500 residents, hired dozens of “cops” to write speeding tickets, raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, much of which simply disappeared into the personal pockets of corrupt town officials.
Read the CBS story here.
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Here’s a question: Some communities make warning drivers they’re approaching a speed trap a ticketable offense. These citations often are issued under laws proscribing “interfering with a police investigation.” But does that violate First Amendment free speech rights? At least one federal judge said yes; read that story here.
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Meanwhile, this website ranks the worst states for speed traps. The worst state: New Jersey. Washington ranks 9th worst. Fairest states: Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, Nebraska, Kentucky.