But some towns don’t have plenty of signs. Or they hide them behind trees or shrubs. Or they change the speed limits five times in a year, fooling even the locals.
If reducing traffic speed truly were the reason for these speed traps, you’d think that consistency and having plenty of signs should be the logical first step.
When a town appears to care more about giving tickets to speeders than about slowing them down, i think it’s reasonable to infer that they’re more concerned about revenue than safety.
It’s possible to put signage where people don’t expect it to create a speed trap. Case in point: Gretna, LA, coming south down Manhattan from 4th Street (up by the river) towards the Westbank Expressway. There’s a two-block stretch where the standard 30 mph speed limit drops to 20. Except the location of the only two signs indicating it are (1) 15 feet up on a pole behind a tree, and (2) barely 3 feet above ground level on the wrong side of the street. Total revenue-producing spot. And the Gretna cops have quite the revenue-production line set up there on a regular basis.
Another speedtrap I remember well is a small town in Texas I used to drive through – Rockdale? Can’t remember now, it’s been 15 years – where the speed limit dropped from 55 to 25. Except it didn’t do it in one increment; it went down in 5 to 10 mph increments, with minimal and easily-overlooked signage, all within about a six-block stretch. I started dropping my speed to 25 the second I hit the outskirts of town just to prevent problems. But there was just no reason for the constant speed changes other than a speed trap.
We also lived near a notorious speed trap in Terrytown, LA – where Hector crosses Terry Parkway. The cops would be parked out there around the corner on Hector zapping folks coming around the curve on Terry and pulling them over as fast as they could write tickets. The speed limit was 30 and the cops were there almost every single day of the week, often more than once during the day – when a motorcycle cop got bored, he’d set up shop there for a half an hour – and yet it was amazing to me how often folks still would speed along that section of Terry anyway. I’d just toddle along in the right lane at 28, and point and laugh as the speeders got pulled over.
It’s always a pleasure to see a speed trap put out of business.
