Filed under: Government/Legal, First Drive
Raising taxes through speed traps
As many states and local municipalities struggle to balance budgets and find funding for services like police protection, it seems like many are turning to alternative means of raising revenues. Since politicians are invariably loathe to actually raise taxes to pay for the services that people expect, speed traps are becoming increasingly popular. According to Detroit News columnist John McCormick, not only are more speed traps being used, the fines are getting increasingly punitive. Drivers in Virginia might want to be particularly watchful of speed limits. Surpassing the limit by 15 mph will now cost you $1,250 plus court costs. Topping 80 mph will cost you double that and possibly jail time. All this seems pretty extreme, especially if a driver isn't driving recklessly or the speed limit is set artificially low. Speeding in a residential area is unacceptable, but going 80 on a wide open highway in clear conditions is not necessarily dangerous.
[Source: Detroit News]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
TURNERSVILLE 2:07PM (11/21/2007)
"services that people expect"....Like Health care, welfare and other socialist programs? This is just the beginning!!
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paul34 2:12PM (11/21/2007)
No, like actual police protection instead of having the officers out stopping someone for going 10 over and observing all other traffic courtesies and laws 100%.
Oh whoops, sorry, this is for "your protection," of course, how stupid of me!
CastleCharles 2:44PM (11/21/2007)
Time for a tea party......
tankd0g 2:14PM (11/21/2007)
Wow, and I thought the british had it bad.
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info 2:20PM (11/21/2007)
The infatuation with speed, or better going faster than 70 or 75 in an empty freeway is laughable at best. Traffic fatalities on the Autobahn in Germany are lower than those in the US and that with a substantially higher traffic density. Germany has 85.5 million people in a space the equivalent of Minnesota and Wisconsin combined. I just spent three weeks in Germany where I routinely went at speeds between 100 and 120 and would quite often be passed by cars going substantially faster than that. I never felt unsafe in any way.
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Vincenzo 2:26PM (11/21/2007)
Idiots are not allowed in German autobahns.
My German friend told me that she didn't drive there because she had to spend a lot of time and money in a driving school, and then try to pass a very difficult driving test.
Also, the most economical speed is 55 mph.
Shipey 2:47PM (11/21/2007)
That 55mph/economy thing is a total myth. That was an arbitrary standard chosen by our government. Each car is most efficient at its own speed. It's all determined by gearing, aerodynamics, and engine load.
My Mustang gets its best mileage at 72mph, humming along at a leisurely 2200rpm.
Eff Virginia, I say!
info 4:07PM (11/21/2007)
Your German friend actually hit the nail right on the head, apparently without noticing it. It is indeed the case that to get a driver license in Germany is a lot more difficult and thus more expensive. But the flip side is that drivers there in general are a lot better educated and ultimately are not necessarily better drivers, but they know how to drive a lot better. By this I mean they are more aware of the traffic around them and follow the rules a lot better. In the US, on the other hand, it is okay to receive the majority of your driving education from your 80 year old grandma, as long as she has a license and “driving” tests appear to put more emphasis on parallel parking than actual driving. Driver education in the US is a pitiful joke.
seoultrain 4:37PM (11/21/2007)
There is actually a license tester at a NJ DMV lovingly nicknamed Hitler. Mind you, he is German, has the small moustache, and is incredibly harsh on first-time drivers looking to get their license. I didn't have him as my tester, but a lot of my friends did, and he failed more than half of them, some multiple times. He's become something of a legend in the area, and I believe he's single-handedly prevented dozens of potential accidents. Though annoying, I think we need more people like that working at our DMV's.
info 4:51PM (11/21/2007)
It's good to see that people like that are actually around. Unfortunately, they are the exception to the rule.
rar 2:23PM (11/21/2007)
$1250.00 is a bit much for a 15mph over the speed limit but that is a cool looking police car. Maybe thats why they need the money, to pay for cool looking police cars
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In2uition 2:40PM (11/21/2007)
Agreed, I live in VA and its crazy how some people I know are getting tacked with this "tax". Some roads and entrance ramps in my opinion have a speed limit set to low. On the topic of police cars, the state police have some nice Chargers and the unmarked ones are very difficult to detect.
saabyurk 2:23PM (11/21/2007)
One of my favorites is Linndale, Ohio which I've seen in action. It only has about 1/4 of a mile in both the Northbound and Southbound lanes of I-71, near Cleveland, and has no exit/entrance ramps to I-71. But Linndale Police hide under an overpass over I-71 waiting to ticket speeders, where the speed limit is only 60 mph, to "protect" the citizens of Linndale.
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CastleCharles 4:33PM (11/21/2007)
YES, I live in Cleveland. This is a classic speed trap. The highway/71 just grazes the corner of their hamlet and YES, the have no direct access to the highway. It is more than half of the "city's" revenue. The good news if you have a good attorney, you can call their bluff. They are sued often basically for not even having the right to patrol the highway.
Aaron B Brown 2:26PM (11/21/2007)
Simply raising speeding fines higher and higher in his supremely unfair to low and middle income folks in this country. I have long been a proponent of tying speeding fines and DUI and DWI fines to income. So let's say after your third offense in a three-year period, a judge would have the option of fining you 10% of your income, based on your last year's tax return. So someone who makes $10,000 a year would have to fork over a grand, while someone who makes $10 million a year, a celebrity like Mel Gibson lets say, would have to come up with a cool million. That's much more equitable and fair.
Wealthy Americans and celebrities like Paris Hilton would then have some real motivation to do the responsible thing and go out and hire a personal driver for $40,000 a year the year plus benefits, instead of getting out on the road after they've been drinking, or getting behind the wheel of their high-powered vehicles and going for a high-speed joyride on the public streets and endangering everyone's lives.
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Eric Biran 2:57PM (11/21/2007)
I like this idea. It makes minor offences not so much of a financial hardship for low income individuals/families, and it actually serves the purpose of a punishment for those whose net worth makes the current fines seem like losing the change out of their pocket. The only flaw I could see is for scaling back the more serious offences for low income, such as DUI/DWI. If this was set at a high enough % for of total worth, then it would work for everyone though.
Mostly I think the punishment should fit the crime though. Fines should be minimal unless damages were incurred, and the results should promote good behavior and discourage bad behavior.
For example, DUIs should all result in suspended licenses for at least a year and AA meetings. More serious DUI's, second offences, or driving without a license should result in revoked license for LIFE. (Most deaths in accidents where drunk driving was the cause involve youth and/or people with prior convictions. Keeping the latter off the road would discourage the former.)
Or in the case of speeding, gradated licenses. Everyone starts with one that tops out at 55mph. If you're free of tickets and accidents for say, 3 years, you get it bumped to 65mph (or +5 to 10mph in other zones). If you do get a ticket or cause an accident, then you get bumped down a level back to 55. If you avoid trouble for another 5 years, then it goes up to 75mph. This could conceivably go up to rather high limits, but would discourage reckless driving.
I'd also like to see the focus on speed shifted to other offences, like tailgating, illegal lane changes, weaving, failing to merge properly, and the big one: obstructing traffic. It would also be great to see the police actually do stuff like aid stranded motorists (you know, to *serve* & protect) instead of accosting the rest of them for tax dollars.
Sean Flanagan 3:23PM (11/21/2007)
"getting behind the wheel of their high-powered vehicles and going for a high-speed joyride on the public streets and endangering everyone's lives."
This is exactly why jurisdictions can get away with unbelievably high speeding fines. They have people convinced that the public is somehow in danger of people driving at high speeds. Speed has very little to do with it.
According to the FHWA, one-third of all FATAL accidents are speeding-related. Of those, about two-thirds are single-vehicle accidents. So, roughly 21% or all fatal accidents are multi-vehicle incidents involving speeding of some sort. According to the NHTSA, there were about 6.4 million accidents in 2005, and roughly 40,000 were fatal. There were 2.9 million injuries from the 6.4 million accidents.
Working this out, of the 6.4 million accidents, less than one percent were fatal (0.625%). Of those fatal accidents, speeding was a factor in one third (0.208%). So, approximately one-fifth of one percent of all accidents are caused by speeding and fatal.
Now, put that into perspective of actual people, not just accidents. About 40,000 people die every year in accidents. Since we know that one-third are speeding-related, we know that about 13,500 die from speeding. About 12 million people die each year in the US. That makes it roughly one-tenth of one percent who die each year due to speeding. Our population is about 300 million, which means that one in about every 22,000 people will die each year due to speeding. Those numbers don't draw a distinction between "illegal" speeding (going above the posted limit) and "unsafe" speeding (driving too fast for the conditions).
To recap: about 0.2% of accidents are fatal and caused by speeding, and one in every 22,000 people dies from speeding. You're more likely to be murdered or commit suicide than die as a result of speeding: one in every 18,000 people is murdered. One in every 9,000 commits suicide.
seoultrain 3:48PM (11/21/2007)
lot of good ideas here. A more bulletproof (though admittedly not completely bulletproof) way of implementing income-linked penalties would be to fine the greater of $x or y% of income for an offense. That way people who cheat the system on their taxes still pay a real penalty.
Graduated licenses/speed limits is a creative idea, but it would be a nightmare to impose. Police wouldn't know what to do with someone going 70mph. This would probably lead to even more age discrimination than currently exists. Even with electronic identification of license plates, there would be no way to know who was driving. That extra step may be imposing on privacy a little too much.
seoultrain 4:00PM (11/21/2007)
Responding to Sean:
I like how you broke the numbers down. Makes things seem very clear, but while I agree that speed by itself isn't the most dangerous vehicle violation out there, there are 2 weaknesses to speed-related accident statistics.
1. There is no way to completely know for sure whether someone was speeding, especially if he/she was slightly over the limit. Sure, you can tell by skid marks and body damage if someone was going 20-30 over, but in most cases, people will say after an accident, "I was going exactly the limit, and this guy came out of nowhere."
2. Does speed by itself cause a lot of accidents? no. Could lower speeds have prevented a lot of accidents? I would say so. Braking distances theoretically increase by the square of speed, so going 35 in a 25 (which many people do, including myself) effectively doubles your braking distance.
But overall, I still agree that impatient, unaware, and chemically influenced drivers are 1000x more dangerous on the roads than speed.
dan 5:00PM (11/21/2007)
I am self employed and my job is very much feast or famine.
Tying speeding fines to income would mean if I got a ticket on December 31st they would take $500, but the very same ticket next day - when I close a deal that year - they would take $4000. That is just plain capricious.
Furthermore, the real world effect of this would be a police crackdown on motorists who look rich. If stopping one millionaire becomes a $25,000 jackpot, you had better believe every podunk town there is will send their cops out with a Lexus quota and it will no longer be possible to drive while affluent.