Traffic-Ticket Quotas

[bookslover]

Just read an interesting post at The Corner at National Review's website (www.nationalreview.com) called "Traffic-Ticket Quotas and the Rule of Law," by Dominic Pino. He says that the Virginia State Police have "benchmarks" they have to reach, which they deny are quotas for how many traffic tickets their cops have to write per week. The entire post is worth a read.

Which leads me to my question: where you live, are you convinced that the local constabulary has traffic-ticket quotas they have to meet (even if they officially deny it)?

 

[Logan]

Link to article here:

Traffic-Ticket Quotas and the Rule of Law | National Review

Traffic law illustrates the problems with having laws that don’t really mean what they say.

www.nationalreview.com

 

[jwithnell]

At the outset: we likely all agree we expect a level of fairness in law enforcement. Few would also approve of mandated tickets as revenue stream. But let's flip that story around. What if the police leadership saw a vast number of traffic violations and concluded traffic cops weren't do enough to enforce the law?

Traffic fatalities are up across the nation and I've seen a sharp increase in dangerous driving here in Virginia. We live in northern Virginia where aggressive driving is the norm, but driving outside the law has become markedly worse over the last 10 years. Brian estimated someone passed him at 100+ miles an hour last evening.

The situation is so bad that we've discouraged our last two teen sons from getting licenses. How do you teach them the law says to stop at traffic lights, but you'll see at least one car go through a stale red light during every outing? How do you teach them to change lanes when people regularly pass on the right while ripping along? As we're out, I try to point out the defensive driving techniques I use, but am concerned that dangerous drivers and the level of instantaneous decision making needed here is far more than a new driver can handle now.

I'd actually like to see far more traffic stops because it's clear people aren't exercising self constraint under the sixth commandment, nor are they expecting any legal consequences for their behavior.

 

[Edward]

Dallas used to time its lights on the east-west collectors so that if you drove the speed limit, you'd hit almost all of them red once they got you stopped at one. Drive 12 mph over and once you hit a green, you'd have clear sailing across town (of course, traffic could impact this). I wasn't sure what lesson they were trying to convey.

Field sobriety tests are a joke. Cops can fail anyone they want, and lock you up overnigtht. Of course, the blood alchol test will come back clean, but they've successfully degraded you and sullied your reputation.

Speeding tickets can have as much to do with the car you drive as it does with the speed.

But to get around to the question actually asked, yes, some of the local departments here have quotas.

 

[Ryan&Amber2013]

Where I live, probably 99 out of 100 are regular traffic law violators. Speeding, running red lights, rolling through stops, not using turn signals, etc. People are crazy hazardous on the roads. There are accidents all the time. If we should be penalized for breaking the law, then most people are regularly getting away with it, and any quota is set far too low.