http://www.azcentral.com/offbeat/articles/0309SpeedTrap09-ON.html
The Truth Hurts, don’t it Mr. Mayor? 
And payback is a bitch.
True word, the community is a fucking speed trap. OG knows, they’ve got nothing else. Few, if any, of the ticketed are actually speeding. The “tickets” are nothing more than robbery, under the cloak of legality.
Nothing I get more pleasure out of than seeing one of our local Stuffed Shirts get the glee let out of him.
I freely admit that this “knowledge” comes from TV lawyer shows, but isn’t it the case that if the check is in all respects a legally valid instrument and it’s refused by the recipient, the debt is satisfied? I’m reminded of all the stories one hears of people writing checks to the IRS on shirts (the shirts off their backs) and the like.
The Law has very little to do with the way small Tennessee towns are run. They’ll bust him, if higher authority doesn’t intercede.
I would also suppose he could sue the town for harassment, or some such thing. If you pay, they can’t just refuse to accept the money then punish you for non-payment. If they state that they accept checks as payment, then they have to accept it when you provide them a legally valid check.
I also didn’t know that when I put “for sexual favors” in the note section of a check (what a funny joke THAT is) that the person cashing was admitting to being a prostitute.
It appears that the mayor has decided to accept the check, although it is yet to be determined whether he faces any action for refusing it in the first place.
And am i the only one who thinks “Boss Hogg” when i look at the mayor’s picture? Way to reinforce the stereotype of southern local politicians. 
According to the town’s Citizen’s Forum a local citizen has issued a Recall petition, seeking to remove the mayor from office for “financial mismanagement, conflict of interest, abuse of power, use of police department to intimidate citizens.”
The Ridley brothers of Smyrna were much, much worse.
Mayors for more than 35 years, between em. Foul rascals, to the core. One died in self-imposed exile in South America, to avoid answering questions, I believe involving his taxes. The other died in office.
Identical twin brothers, both of whom looked like Boss Hogg, & were like him, to boot.
Smyrna was a speed trap, too.
On the positive side, the infamous speed trap of New Rome, Ohio recently was abolished after a long and contentious history of exploiting drivers.
By sheer coincidence, I was driving through town during the Third March On New Rome. It was fun.
How do you establish this, other than that it’s widely known by locals?
Well, if you read some of the linked articles you might find out:
By locals, by State Troopers, by truckers, by your Aunt Tillie’s lacey underthings; you name it, they know about the Coopertown area.
And how does that establish that the tickets are baseless?? The fact that it is a “strict enforcement area” doesn’t prove that people got tickets when not speeding, which is what Bosda said. Around here, I refer to a “speed trap” as an area cops frequent to nab speeders, not an area where they pull people over fraudulently and give bogus tickets.
A “speed trap” has a very definite meaning, IIRC. It means a stretch of road where the posted speed limit drops abruptly, then a police officer pulls you over immediately past the new sign. The idea is that people either don’t have time to slow down or don’t notice the new, *significantly lower *posted limit.
A “speed trap” is NOT a heavily patrolled stretch of road where a lot of people get caught speeding!
“Speed trap” has different regional meanings. Around here, a “speed trap” is just a spot where limits are enforced, either by police or a radar camera.
I don’t think there’s any argument that the tickets aren’t technically legal – they’re baseless in a more philosophical way.
It’s clear that the tickets are predatory, and the laws have been jiggered to catch people who are unaware that they’re speeding. They set a limit of 45mph on a stretch of highway. There’s no reason to do that except to increase revenue for the town. Who expects that?
[quote]
Speed limits on United States roads are usually as follows:[ul][li]25–30 mph (40–50 km/h) on residential streets in cities and towns[]35–45 mph (60–70 km/h) on major arterial roads in urban and suburban areas[]50–65 mph (80–100 km/h) on major divided highways inside cities[]45–65 mph (70–100 km/h) on rural two-lane roads[]55–70 mph (90–110 km/h) on non-Interstate highways and rural expressways.[*]65–75 mph (100–120 km/h) on rural Interstate highways[/ul][/li][/quote]
You can bet your ass that they haven’t got huge signs with flashing lights saying SLOW DOWN: THIS STRETCH OF HIGHWAY HAS A SPEED LIMIT OF 45MPH BECAUSE WE’RE REAL CAUTIOUS AROUND HERE. The mayor is totally disengenous about it:
No argument with that, but things are set up so that many more people are going to get a ticket for running through at 55mph, because they missed the sign.
Boss Hogg also has a identical twin brother!!!
Weird.
You can’t just have a thread about a speed trap without a mention of Ludowici, GA. Now that place defines “speed trap”!
And Golden Meadow, LA.
Also watch out for that booming metropolis of Waldo, Florida.
I have a pic of me standing next to the Ludowici highway sign Thankfully the speed trap is no longer, or so I’ve heard.
Back to the question about the check’s notation… I have been advised by my attorney and by my manager to never ever cash any check from a publisher which contains the words “work for hire” anywhere on the document.
As I understood their legalese, were I to do so, I may not be entitled to royalties on my published work. Also, my work may become the property of the publisher, and I would not be entitled to market it elsewhere after the original publication (per the First North American Rights clause).
It would suck to discover that their debt to me was legally considered satisfied if I rejected such a check.
Do realize that for many small towns, main street is also a state highway.
No stop signs or traffic lights. Just a little burgh built along the highway.
And they must get people to slow down or people are gonna get killed.
Yep they enforce it. And I bet it makes a bit of money for them.
I don’t blame them. Otherwise you would have people zipping through town not 25 feet from houses and businesses at 60 mph.
In a related note, tourists can be idiots. That’s sort of the default mode. I know. I’ve been a tourist plenty of times.
The two towns closest to me do have signs. Plenty of them. The speed drops either from 65 to 25 or 55 to 30.
I would agree that there may be ‘speed traps’. But they are mostly places where people need to start slowing down, but have not yet done it. Sign regulations on highways are pretty strict.
My last ticket was my fault.
I had been in a 65 mph zone (for about 2 hours), dropped to 25 mph, then to 65 mph, then to 30 mph then to 55 mph. I went back up to 65 instead of 55. My fault really. I know the area. It’s my home. I was stopped by a state cop there. Not a local.