Small towns profit off speeding tickets. That’s how cities and police departments make money. In fact, if it weren’t for the municipal court cases created from speeding citations, there wouldn’t be a police department.
Officials always argue that speeding laws are about safety. I think it’s possible that they started out that way, but it didn’t take long for city officials and cops to see how quickly they could make money from speeding laws. Then, cities and small towns started budgeting based on the revenue they were projected to raise from traffic citations. Then, police departments started issuing quotas for their deputies based on what the city had budgeted.
They still of course use the safety argument, but no one can deny that money plays a significant role in the excessive issuing of speeding tickets.
And police often target out-of-towners on interstates, knowing that someone who lives far away likely isn’t going to go through the hassle of fighting the ticket. The person will just mail in their check to be done with it. Cities and police departments depend on people doing just that. They don’t want people fighting their tickets, because then they have to pay someone to fight back. Some cities don’t want to have to pay for a prosecutor.
Essentially, ticket revenues are what pay for the police department to exist and expand. Then, these cities end up hiring even more police who pull people over for speeding, and they rake in even more cash.
If this is truly all about safety, then police need to abide by the speeding laws as well. But I don’t think this is about safety anymore. This is about making as much money for the city and police department as possible.
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