I went for a motorcycle ride on a Tuesday in October. It was a beautiful fall day- bright sunshine,
crisp clean air, leaves still on the trees and not the road; in short, a
perfect riding day. The two of us used
the back roads as much as possible as we circumnavigated Mount Rainier in the
widershins direction, counter-clockwise.
The only downers we encountered were police vehicles, lots of them, all
doing the same thing: raising revenue in the name of traffic safety.
To understand how pervasive this practice has become, we
must consider the implications of the speed traps, where they are set up and why
and how they operate. In order to
protect the officers who take on the risk of traffic stops, it is necessary to
factor in the weather, the location, and the likelihood that enough speeders
will drive by that location to make economic sense to the police departments.
So, on that Tuesday, the weather was perfect for a speed
trap. The first location we stumbled on
was just past Orting on the Orville road cutoff to Kapowsin and Electron, where
a county Sheriff SUV was parked on a wide spot in the road headed back the way
we came, just far enough around the bend that the oncoming speeders would not
see the cop until it was too late, and the radar had them in its sights. That’s rule number one for a successful speed
trap: hide in plain sight.
Just past the cop the road widened out for quite a ways,
leaving plenty of room on the side for them to pull over their victims safely,
which illuminates rule number two: have
a convenient wide spot to pull them over.
That is why, even though we blew past the cop at approximately 10 over
the posted 45mph zone, he ignored us, as did his backup who was waiting a
little further along in a yard off the road to our right. We were headed into a winding narrow stretch
of the road with no shoulders to speak of, leaving the police rigs exposed to
traffic if they pulled someone over.
Whew, missed the hook that time!
The old unwritten rule used to be: Six you’re fine, seven
you’re mine, referring to the number of miles above the speed limit that they
caught you doing. I’ve recently read a
post from a police officer online that said that the new rule is: twelve you’re
fine, thirteen you’re mine, which explains most of California and large stretches
of I-5 through Seattle. I know from
unfortunate experience that seven over on a photo-op ticketing camera is worth
$125, where 15 over is more like $265 in this state, so that also helps explain
the rules. Follow the money…
There is also an interesting phenomenon apparent these days,
in that entrepreneurial Law firms have adopted a new business model in reaction
to the increasing prevalence of speeding tickets. It goes like this, at least at Heidi Hunt’s
law offices, which I have used: If you
get a radar speeding ticket, just send us your paperwork and $250 for the first
instance, $200 for any subsequent tickets, and we will guarantee dismissal of
your ticket. If we do not win the case,
we will pay your fine out of the money you sent us. Furthermore, in most local courts, if you are
represented by an attorney you are not required to show up in court for your
own contested hearing, we’ll be there for you.
The way it works out, the lawyers send in discovery requests
for the officer, the maintenance records on the radar gun, the car, anything
that might help the case, which also lets the jurisdiction know that there is a
lawyer involved. Typically, and I have
not heard one single instance where it worked out otherwise, the prosecutors
fail to respond to the discovery and the officer fails to show up at the
hearing, so the attorney moves to suppress the evidence and the judge tosses
the ticket. The fact that this happens
every time is further evidence that the police are being used to extract revenue
on the false pretense of highway safety, that the fact that it would cost more
to prosecute the offender than it would return in revenue is the deciding
factor in the case. That is what passes
for justice these days.
So if you get a ticket, and send the money to the lawyers,
you are almost guaranteed to get a call from a young attorney informing you
that your case has been won. You’re
still out the same amount of money, more or less, but your driving record stays
clean, and the City, County or State is denied the revenue. The downside of this is that, in order to
meet their budget assumptions for “other” revenue, they have to send the police
out to issue even more tickets! I
mentioned this to the Renton police Captain in charge of traffic, and he made it
clear that they were well aware of those law firms and how they work.
The second speed trap we encountered on the road around the
Mountain was in beautiful downtown Greenwater.
We had pulled in to the Greenwater store for a water and candy bar break. As I stood outside the store on the covered
porch, I saw a new SUV pull up on the side of the road across from the parking
lot. The rig was completely unmarked,
and even the lights were hidden. The
only clue that it was a WSP rig was the heavy duty push bar attached to the
front bumper.
That particular stretch of road, if you haven’t been on it,
is perfect for a speed trap. Not only
does it have plenty of parking space on both sides, but it is on Highway 410,
where the speed limit is 55 mph all the way from Enumclaw through the
Federation Forest, then drops to 35 as you come around the corner and into
Greenwater itself. Most people have
drifted down to the low 50s by then, meaning they are doing at least 15 over,
good money for little effort on the cops’ parts. Then the road curves again on the way out and
the speed limit goes back up to 55, meaning the pigeons are coming in fast from
both directions.
Within seconds, the officer nailed his first victim, pulling
a dangerous U-turn in the middle of the street to chase them down into the gas
station parking lot. While we watched,
he wrote them up quickly, then immediately nabbed another one going the other
direction, with another unsafe U-turn across two lanes of speeding
vehicles. We chose that moment to
depart, while he was tied up, and got the hell out of town, with one eye out
for confederates and the other on the speedometer.
Why, you might ask, would you not just ride the speed limit
all the time, and not have to worry about speeding tickets? We followed a line of cars doing just that
out of Greenwater, about a dozen of them bunched up behind a single motorcycle
who was scrupulously keeping at the limit, until they got so close behind him
that he pulled over at a wide spot on the road and let everybody get by. The speed naturally went right up to the
usual real limit, which is about 10 over the posted one. If you can’t keep up with traffic on a
motorcycle you are risking your life, and forcing others to risk theirs as they
desperately get around you any way they can.
And so to anyone who defends speeding tickets as a way to
control traffic and reduce average speeds, I say, “Who do you think you’re
fooling? If that old saying - the
definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again when you
already know how it is going to work out - applies to speeding tickets, how can
you stand there with your bare face hanging out and try to pretend it’s not all
about the money?” If all you wanted was
to slow people down, why not put up a big sign that says, “Speed Trap ahead,
slow down!” and station an empty marked patrol car in the parking lot? No money in that, eh?
Another fact that supports my contention that speeding
tickets are about revenue generation is the number of private companies that
have figured out a way to milk this public cow for all it’s worth. Every school zone or intersection photo-op
ticket machine that you see out there gets something like $3500 a month rent
off the top, plus 20% of any excess revenue generated at each location. For a school zone at $125 a pop, that means
they have to write 28 tickets a month before the City sees a nickel, yet the
City of Renton website claims that 11,990 tickets were written from 2008, when
they started the program, until the end of the study, at one location alone! Do the math.
That’s a cool $1.5 million. Most
of it went to American Traffic Solutions, Inc., out of Phoenix, AZ.
They also hasten to assure us, the general public from whom
this revenue has been generated, that any ticket you get in a speeding zone or
for running a red light at an intersection will not go on your driving
record. Gee, thanks, that’s nice to
hear. Now tell me the answer to this, if
you can:
How many kids have been run over by cars in those school
zones you are so zealously protecting?
Are you sure you’re not a solution in search of a problem? How many of the people to whom you issued
those tickets would have been the one to run over the occasional child?
It seems to me that society begins to break down when we
find it necessary to punish people, not for what they did, but for what might
have happened, but did not. That decay
accelerates when we outsource the revenue extraction to private companies, and
pay them on a piecework basis, thus giving them incentive to steal money from
as many people as possible.
And when we take our force of police officers, who are sworn
to protect and defend the public from criminals, and assign them to do much of
the direct revenue extraction personally, how do you think those officers will
be regarded by that same public? Just
how dumb do you think we are?
I could go on and on about this issue, and there is much
more to be said, like why the City of Renton abruptly removed the hugely
money-making photo-enforcement camera from in front of Renton High School, but
started the summer school cameras in front of some, but not all of the
elementary schools a full hour before school started all last summer. Think about why an obscure little
Christian school along Carr Road between Valley Medical Center and Benson has a
20 mph flashing light that slows traffic on a major 4 lane road twice a day at
a location that you never, ever see a kid on the street.
I think any rational person looking at this situation would
conclude that there is a problem or problems that need to be addressed. The question is, “Who is going to step up and
take this on for the benefit of all the neighbors who have paid those tickets,
and will pay those tickets in the future?”
Is that you? We’d sure be grateful
if you did. :-{)}
