Recent thread got me thinking about what exactly is a speed trap to my fellow SDMB folks. Poll to follow.
A typical speed trap is where the cops lower speed limits with no warning . I was driving down I75 a few years ago and there was a lot of construction on a curvy part of the road. The speed limit changed
several times in a short stretch of highway. One change was on a sharp curve. If you took your foot off the accelerator and coasted down to the new speed limit, you would be exceeding it when you reached the sign. They had several cops lined up giving multiple tickets simultaneously. I felt bad for truckers getting ticketed because it could cost them their jobs. Because it was a construction zone, with no apparent construction happening, they could double the ticket.
All of the above.
There’s a couple of small towns in Oklahoma where we will never buy gas or anything else. We got caught in a speed trap in each of them. When you consider that these towns are at very convenient stopping places to refuel/eat lunch, those towns have lost a LOT more revenue than they pulled in by giving us speeding tickets. These towns had a lot of weird and unnecessary speed limit changes, and sometimes we just didn’t have enough warning about the changes to slow down in time. We got caught doing something like 35 in a 25 MPH zone…and there were no schools or anything, apparently that 25 MPH zone is just to get some revenue from out of towners.
It’s a combo, I think: unnecessary and sudden speed limit change, immediately followed by hidden cops, usually working in teams.
Yep, it’s the combo of the tricky speed limit change and someone waiting to catch you for it.
I think of it either as cops hiding in areas that have the speed limit too low so everyone speeds or the random drops to bust tourists.
“Other” because it’s usually more than one thing.
Between Memphis and Stanton Tennessee there’s a small town where the speed drops 15 miles per hour without warning. No “reduced speed ahead” and the sign isn’t visible for a reason. They wait and prey. Twice I’ve been in FUNERAL processions where people in the line were pulled over for speeding. It’s disgusting but it’s never worth it for people I know to go back to fight the ticket.
I only consider it one if its a change that you can’t obey barring some NASCAR type driving or psyhic powers. Like its 65, you crest a hill and suddenly its a 35 zone. Or the speed limit sign is hidden.
As far as I am concerned, police should be allowed to hide like hell, work in teams, or whatever to catch speeders. If you were ACTUALLY speeding tough titties.
What makes it a trap is when the cops frequent a spot because they know people will naturally speed there, rather than for some public safety reason.
For instance, a street that goes by a shopping mall logically has a low speed limit during the day when cars are pulling into and out of traffic frequently; but if the cops make a habit of busting people after midnight when there are no cars around, that’s a trap.
I know a place where the cops nail dozens of cars every day as they come off the highway. People are going 65+ mph and aren’t able to mentally adjust down to 25 mph through a residential neighborhood. A trap? No, the cops are doing their jobs
There was a notorious speed trap in tiny Splendora, Texas on U.S. Route 59 years ago (back in the 1980s), when 55 mph was still the speed limit. Their allowable margin over the posted highway speed limit was zero. If you were traveling faster than 55 mph, they would ticket you.
This small town (with less than a 1,000 residents at the time) had something like 10 officers, most ticketing people on the highway, and the rest filling out arrest warrants on traffic-court no-shows.
Around 1990, the state finally cracked down on them. The town was basically living on income from speeders, like a bunch of parasites. I was forewarned, so I never got a ticket there, but I remember seeing cars stacked up alongside the road, pulled over by the dozen.
Isn’t speeding a public safety issue?
Are they arresting pedestrians at midnight near the mall?
People where you live, can’t tell the difference between a multilane divided highway and residential neighborhood?
I’ve seen #1 and #3 at various times but have only seen #2 for other traffic laws but I wouldn’t be surprised if some jurisdictions use the tag-team approach for speeders.
If a town deliberately makes the speed limit on a section of road unnecessarily low in order to entice drivers into violating the limit and pad the city coffers… that’s slimeball move, and a speed trap.
I’ve got no problems with any enforcement techniques for legitimate speed limits.
Oh I agree on the first point in general. Though, I do think for many small towns there is a gray/defensesable area.
Near me is a small town. Its basically a posh outlying suburb of my town. You go from 55 to 45 to 35 pretty quickly. Many people don’t like it because its a main route from our town to another major employer on the other side. But, on the towns side, for a mile or two it actually IS a small town that just happens to have a major highway running right through the middle of it. A school, a hospital, shops, resteraunts, sidewalks, and even some houses right along side the highway. And a fair number of traffic lights along the way too.
Having that speed zone be 45 or 55 would be absurd IMO.
The local police WILL ticket your ass going through there. But, in their defense the signs are obvious. They even have EXTRA signs saying they WILL ticket speeders. And if the traffic is heavy, they go after the fastest speeders first. So, if you DO get a ticket you either arent paying attention or you are going faster than the rest of the herd. Either way you are clueless/careless IMO.
No. Driving too fast for the road is a public safety issue. But the speed limit does not necessarily correspond to the fastest safe speed for the road.
There is a road near me that does not have a marked speed limit. It is wide, newly paved, with gentle corners and good visibility. Everyone does around 40 or 50 there because driving any slower is just stupid, and this road is like any other 40 or 50 mph (marked) road in the country.
A few months ago, some police agency (I guess it was the sheriff) parked a bunch of squad cars there for a week and gave everyone tickets for going 50 in a 25. Because, of course, on every road crossing the county line (about 10 miles away from here), there is a sign that says “The speed limit on all county roads is 25 mph if not posted”.
Pure bullshit.
Another example. As you leave Los Alamos National Laboratory, heading to Santa Fe, you spend about 20 minutes driving on a highway through the desert, on an Indian reservation. This is a two-lane divided highway with no hills, no houses, no animals, no nothing. Just pavement, sand, and scenery. The speed limit is 55. The speed limit on a similar stretch of state highway would be 75. Driving 55 is mind-numbing and a waste of time.
The tribal police have designated it a “Safety Corridor”, allowing them to double the amounts of all the tickets they issue. They regularly drive the road and issue exorbitant tickets to everyone going over 60.
There need not be a school or any other particular feature present to justify a 25 MPH limit; that’s a very reasonable limit for driving inside towns, period.
However, roads should be designed and built to imply the desired driving speed. 25 MPH streets within towns should mostly be one travel lane per direction, parallel parking on both sides, sidewalks and street trees, buildings built to the front property line rather than set back, highly visible crosswalks. That physical arrangement slows traffic speed more than any number of signs, and more than any but the most draconian and perpetual enforcement.
Andres Duany, et. al., cover this pretty thoroughly in Suburban Nation.
It the buildings aren’t built close, doesn’t that imply you’d have the ability to stop before any real damage happened? That is the reason why speeding is bad, right? Going off the road?
I don’t understand the idea about “confusing” or “unnecessary” speed limit changes. I have seen some crazy scenarios in my time:
A two way street where one side had a different limit than the other side.
A 6 lane street where the speed limit was 25 mph.
A freeway that suddenly isn’t a freeway anymore and the only marker is a sign that says the new speed limit is 35 instead of 50.
A two lane street with a speed limit of 45 that suddenly dropped to a 25 mph school zone for about 50 feet, then back up again
Imho, there’s no excuse. As a driver, you look at the signs to see how fast you should go, and the start of the new zone is marked by the sign.
The last ticket I got was in one of those 60 to 50 for no good reason zones. I mentioned this to the judge who agreed with me (never looking up the entire time). He reduced it to court costs. When the city incorporated they dropped all the speed limits by 10 mph the same week. Very annoying.
No, it drops from 55 to 30. Or wait, you probably didn’t mean Lee, NH.
Speaking of speed changes…how come we have to vote on pointless things that affect almost no one like whether or not someone can have clearance to build a driveway, but we didn’t get a say in the town changing the speed limit by 10mph on one of the main roads without warning? I’m sure the town cleaned up for a couple of weeks giving out tickets to people who didn’t notice the speed limit the mile before the school zone had been dropped down to 40 too.