The Traveling Public Can Go Elsewhere

July 3rd, 2008 Posted in Speed Traps

By James Baxter, NMA President

According to public opinion, there are 57,000 speed traps in the United States. That’s how many speed traps have been listed by individuals on SpeedTrap.org, a website sponsored by the NMA. That averages out to 1140 speed traps per state.

Of course some states lead the charge, like California with 5399 speed traps. On the other end of the spectrum is Alaska with “only” 51 speed traps. These are not numbers you’re likely to find published in state tourism brochures. However, they are numbers you might want to consider when planning your next vacation.

Speed traps are an economic phenomenon; they are a source of revenue for state and local governments, local court systems and police departments. Adding extra juice to the financial pie are federal funds targeted on speed enforcement. This is a double dipping extravaganza where police departments not only bag the fines but also get federal funds for manpower, equipment, and related expenses.

We the people get to pay for this on both ends, through our taxes and then the ticket fines and insurance surcharges.

The chart at the bottom of this post lists the number of speed traps in each state. You might want to write a letter to the governor and/or tourism agency in one or more of these states, perhaps a state you were planning on visiting, and let them know that while you’re happy to spend money on goods and services you are not keen on being milked by the state patrol or a small town ticket mill. Consequently, you are reconsidering your travel plans.

You will probably receive a condescending bureaucratic reply saying something like “if you abide by our traffic laws you should have no occasion to be stopped and cited by one of our fine police officers.” This, of course, is nonsense and they know it.

But, bottom line, they’ll get the message “if you’re going to screw the traveling public, the traveling public can go elsewhere.”

Speed Traps By State

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  1. 8 Responses to “The Traveling Public Can Go Elsewhere”

  2. By Jeff S on Sep 10, 2008

    Driving 25 mph over the limit is being an idiot? I used to do that all the time during the 55 speed limit days. Now, 80 mph is legal in Texas. Just shows the roads we drive on all have underposted speed limits.

  3. By NMA on Jul 11, 2008

    Here’s the raw data to play around with:

    http://www.motorists.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/TrapsByState.csv

    The numbers have changed a bit, but it’s largely the same.

  4. By Hubcap on Jul 11, 2008

    Yeah, these raw numbers by state don’t tell us much except that a state with more roads and more people is more likely to have more speed traps.

  5. By Henry on Jul 11, 2008

    Maybe we should normalize it by the number of paved miles of road.

  6. By JOE on Jul 6, 2008

    Well, I have long advocated requiring all jurisdiction’s who perform traffic control activities be required to send periodic detailed reports to their prospective Departments of Public Safety for publishing on the Internet. This would give us accurate data that could be used for a variety of purposes. The NMA survey is currently the only source we have and it’s pretty rudimentary.

    Currently enforcement data is treated more or less like a state secret. Ever wonder why. I can only imagine how reveling this information would be.

    First, such data would quickly show the real speed trap towns in glaring colors. Just compare towns of similar populations against the No. of citations issued.There might be other factors to consider later on.

    Second, when we see about 90 percent of all citations are written for speeding while looking on the accident causation side we see maybe 5 percent of all accidents are caused by speeding what does that tell you. Ever wonder why we find data of every dimension stemming from traffic accidents…but what about the enforcement side? How can we determine what type and amount of enforcement affects accident prevention the most if we don’t know both sides of the equation?

    Third, knowing the whole truth would undoubtedly generate a call for reforms. Municipalities know this. For instance a speed trap law could almost be triggered automatically on violators using this data. Jurisdictions using traffic citation quota’s could be possibly be spotted.

    You have to be able to point to reliable information when requesting new laws to deal with abusive traffic control. There’s a reason why all these municipalities out there don’t want you prying into their little tale of corruption.

  7. By Jeff on Jul 5, 2008

    While there are plenty of speed traps listed, I commonly disagree with the severity of what’s listed. There’s one listed that comments the speed limit reduced from 50 to 35, but the town is clearly incorrect. In another listing, I go thru there often, and have never seen a cop there. One poster also sighted the wrong speed limit, which never appears on that roadway.

    While I don’t agree with speed traps, I think that many of the traps listed are due to some idiot going way over the speed limit, getting caught, then claiming that they were in a speed trap. If you were going 5 mph over the limit, that’s a speed trap. If you’re doing 25 mph over, that’s not a speed trap, that’s being an idiot.

  8. By Dan on Jul 5, 2008

    I agree with Jim. It would be interesting to see it normalized by population and the area of the state.

  9. By jim on Jul 4, 2008

    Might be good to normalize the graph by state population.

    normalized= numberOfTraps/numberOfPeopleInState

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