speed traps - big business vs safety

counting down the ten worst cities for speed traps in the u.s., the cnbc article points out that while speed limits used to be created for the safety of drivers and pedestrians based on traffic studies, nowadays speed limits are often changed primarily to trap more safe drivers and make money for local governments, especially during tough times (number of tickets written correlates with the general economy, which should be illegal as it is unethical, but there is little consumer-oriented ethics in government and business, really)... beware driving anywhere, but especially in these cities:

10. Los Angeles, CA
Speed traps: 151
Los Angeles is a great example of speed limits not matching at all what traffic patterns indicate is a safe speed — which is how they’re supposed to be determined.

Most of the speed traps are on the boulevards in the valley, my L.A.-based colleague Jane Wells, who writes the Funny Business blog, says. “The speed limit is 35 but if you actually drove that, you’d get mowed down!” Wells says.

Fines and surcharges for speeding or failing to have proof of insurance can approach $1,400, the NMA reports. And good luck fighting a ticket in L.A. It’s always been tough, but with the city teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, motorists don’t have a chance.

“If you walk into a courtroom, because of the massive deficits at every level, they can’t let a breathing person walk out without taking their money!” Dornsife said.

9. Chicago, IL
Speed traps: 153
Chicago now uses red-light cameras to nab motorists for running lights and speeding, which increases the city’s ticketing power. And, while, speed limits are supposed to be determined by engineering studies, Dornsife notes that the last study on one red light speed trap here was done in 1994 and the Department of Transportation deemed the safest speed was 43 miles per hour. The posted limit? 30.

Dorsnife notes two problems here: First, some of the traffic-control devices are 20 and 30 years old. And second, on the interstates, local politicians control the speed limits — and the enforcement in the courts. So, good luck fighting a ticket.

Barnet Fagel, aka “The Ticket Doctor,” noted one particularly tricky speed trap: Motorists have to drive at a snail’s pace leading up to the entrance to Lake Shore Drive, which then opens up into a six-lane highway. A half-mile in is the speed trap, where the speed limit is 40 and police nab drivers just as they’re starting to pick up speed. “Comparable divided highways carry higher speed limits by as much as 10 to 20 mph more,” he said.

8. Dallas, TX
Speed traps: 156
Dallas is one of three Texas cities that made the top 10 for speed traps.

“Here’s what happens in Texas: We have these safety standards that you have to apply to make sure the speed limit is safe,” Dornsife said. “They follow none of them! They have what’s called ‘home rule,’ which means they don’t have to follow federal law.”

Dornsife said it’s not uncommon here for tickets to be issued for drivers going just a few miles over the speed limit, and they’ll do things like set a “school zone” two miles away from the school.

Also, good luck keeping up with fluctuations in the speed limit on a given road. Dornsife recalls being at a DOT speed-limit conference and a presenter from Dallas said there are sections of the freeway where the speed limit can change three to four times within a few miles.

And speed limits can be changed arbitrarily: “Somebody stands up in a city council meeting … say, a police officer with no training in traffic engineering … and proposes a speed-limit change and they vote on it,” Dornsife said. “Traffic engineers are supposed to decide what speed is safe – and law enforcement is supposed to enforce it,” he said. “Half of these cities don’t have traffic engineers.”

7. Orlando, FL
Speed traps: 165
You’re less likely to break the speed limit on your daily commute than you are on vacation, where you’re in a strange place and don’t know the laws or the speed traps, Dornsife says. So, Orlando, home of Disney World and Universal Studios and Sea World, benefits from a steady stream of tourists – and revenue from speeding tickets.

“Orlando definitely has speed traps,” said Amy Mariani, a former traffic reporter for Clear Channel Radio. Some of the worst ones, she said, are Colonial Drive (State Route 50), where the speed limit constantly changes, the Beachline (State Route 528) as motorists drive west from the airport (That’s right, they get you straight from the airport!) and I-4, especially downtown near the Millenia Mall.

Plus, Dornsife says, Orlando was one of the early adopters for red-light cameras – they were using them even before state laws allowed them to. In the first three months, he says, the cameras here generated 700 tickets.

And, they’re tough: One motorist noted on Speedtrap.org that officers on motorcycles often snag motorists in a short school zone for doing three to four miles over the speed limit.

6. Denver, CO
Speed traps: 165
Colorado, like Texas, has “home rule,” where cities don’t have to comply with state laws. As a result, traffic on some roadways indicate 35 to 40 miles per hour is safe and yet the speed limit has been set at 25, or 55 is safe and yet the legal limit has been set at 40.

One Denver driver said that many roadways have been designed far bigger than they need to be, which facilitates higher rates of speed. Then they post low speed limits and BAM! They can snag you for a speeding ticket.

And they’re tough: They have speed cameras everywhere, that resident said, and they’ll even nail you for going an inch over the line at a light.

Jayson Luber, the traffic reporter for 7News at ABC affiliate KMGH, said officers will even wait for drivers riding in the exit lane who dart back into other lanes at the last minute, and nab them for crossing a white line. He said holiday weekends are the worst but police are out in full force year round.

5. Jacksonville, FL
Speed traps: 175
Florida takes the prize for the state where motorists are most likely to get a speeding ticket, according to a survey last year by the NMA.

One man told News4Jax.com that he wasn’t surprised. “I probably passed 30 cops on the way down here, so they were sitting there waiting to get everybody that's for sure," he said.

Jacksonville, in particular, is known for speed traps where multiple drivers are pulled over at once, often by unmarked police cars, and motorists can be charged for going 5 mph over the limit. And, they get low marks on informing motorists of the speed limits.

“Many of their streets are horribly underposted,” Dornsife said of Jacksonville. “Some of the signs they use there aren’t even legal devices – they’re supposed to be a particular size, format and shape,” he said.

4. Colorado Springs, CO
Speed traps: 186
Remember, Colorado has “home rule,” where municipalities don’t have to follow state laws, and Colorado Springs takes full advantage of it.

To their credit, they fully disclose how tough they are: They state publicly that drivers will be penalized if they drive 1-4 miles over the speed limit, 5 to 9 miles over, 10 to 19 miles over, 20 to 39 miles over and 40 or more miles over (Literally, they break it down that far). They also state that “one’s intent is irrelevant,” which means they don’t care if you didn’t mean to speed, had a broken speedometer or have oversized tires. These situations are “Not a defense to speeding.”

Colorado Springs drivers write on Speedtrap.org that often police use unmarked vehicles. And, like Denver, wide roads are often slapped with a 25 mph limit and entering the city from the southeast, one motorist notes, the speed limit drops quickly from 55 to 25.

3. Las Vegas, NV
Speed traps: 187
They say what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas and tourists find out all too soon that applies to speeding tickets as well!

Speed traps are common on the highways heading into and out of Las Vegas, Dornsife said. Department of Transportation records indicate traffic could handle 80 mph but a 70 mph zone is strictly enforced. Even side streets have traffic stops, one motorist noted on Speedtrap.org.

Another motorist said he passed by an officer when he was driving north on US-49 and the officer was going south. Three minutes later, the officer turned around and pulled him over, clocking him doing 59 in a 55 when the driver thought the speed limit was 60. The officer actually wrote him a ticket for 67, saying he’d seen the driver speed up to 67 after passing him by!

Dornsife added that anytime there’s a budget crisis, the number of tickets written out seems to go up. And, good luck trying to fight them in court, especially when the city is still struggling financially.

2. Austin, TX
Speed traps: 189
The second entry from Texas in the top 10 is Austin, which one motorist described as practically a police state. Remember that here, they have “home rule,” so municipalities don’t have to follow state laws — and it seems they’ve taken that invitation to go quite seriously off the script.

That motorist said he was ticketed for going three to four miles per hour over the speed limit in a school zone, and when he was going 83 in an 80 mph zone.

There are serious speed traps at the northern and southern city limits, motorists note on Speedtrap.org, with many noting that everyone they know seems to have a couple of tickets. One woman wrote that she received a ticket and took a driver’s education course to eliminate it. A clerk called her a year later and said the ticket was now a warrant and the fine had been increased. Luckily, she had her paperwork to prove it had been eliminated. She also noted that she’d seen three cars pulled over at once.

Houston, TX
Speed traps: 373
And the winning city is from … Texas!

Seriously, the speed traps in Texas are so bad, Dornsife said, “any place in Texas could be No. 1.”

Drivers note on Speedtrap.org that there are traps set at the Houston city limits and near attractions like the Astrodome. And, the speed limit can change rapidly and dramatically. One motorist wrote that entering the city on Highway 59 North, the speed limit dropped suddenly to 55 from 70. Just as the motorist noticed the speed-limit change on his GPS, BAM! There was a speed trap.

The number of tickets was even more staggering when the economy was bad: In March of last year, KTRK Channel 13 found that Houston police officers wrote about 3,000 tickets per day, or 147 an hour!

TrafficTicketSecrets.com says the average speeding ticket in the U.S. is about $150. Multiply that out and that’s $450,000 a day — and $14 million for the month.

ATT does not care

in early March ATT sent me an email telling me they were deleting all my web pages that have been on their server for almost ten years and i had to transfer my account before march 31 to save the pages and emails addresses that i've had since the nineties...

so i followed the email instructions and transferred my account and it took eight hours on the phone with at least a dozen different customer service people, tech support people, supervisors, and managers and was transferred more over and over and had to explain the same problem over and over (email would not work after i followed their instructions) and was cut off or hung up on at least a half dozen times and finally the last techie i spoke to fixed the problem in less than two minutes after eight hours of run around) and then i went to download the web pages and found them gone...

i didn't have another eight hours to deal with their ridiculous left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing corporate structure, so i went back another day to the website to try to get help and found my account no longer was valid and in the fine print it said "if you transfer your account before saving your web pages, you are shit out of luck"...

ok, so it said the equivalent in more legaleze (which is more obscene, if you have ethics), but the bottom line is the pages were blocked... i wrote to ATT on every website they have, including corporate, and then sent back form emails promising to respond to my concerns (and emphasizing the return address on the emails were not valid in big "DO NOT REPLY" letters), but no response and the march 31 deadline has passed and the written gardens, my thousands of web pages and years of writings, both pouring my personal heart out and creative rhymes and images and more, all gone...

that is why, instead of trying the ATT u-verse, i am giving bright house a chance now after more than a decade of staying loyal to ATT wireless and internet services... ATT does not care... the rest of corporate america probably cares just as none, but ATT has taken up my time just to insult my intelligence and screw me and destroy my creativity and work once too often...

consumer beware... ATT has become too big, has too many departments, and the lack of organization within their organization prevents them from providing reliable service and makes it virtually impossible to resolve the problems that their lack of organization creates...

choose another company...

bright house, not so

more like dark house as the internet connection, promised to be 20mbps and touted to be upwards of 30-50mbps has not given me much more than my 2-3mbps that i got with my att aircard and tonight, there is an inability to stay connected to the internet and limited connectivity, down to under 100kbps at times when it does stay connected...

so i might be moving on to att u-verse next, but since the bright house tech said he credited my account for a month of free service, i'll give bright house another month... i was going to cancel the aircard, but i am very glad i did not do that yet... at least the tech was courteous and apologetic...

try try again...

Dear Mr President

so I wrote to the president...

There is a forwarded email making the rounds about the President and Congress not participating in the new health care plan. My first thought was "why?" but of course, realistically, if you can afford better care you buy better care. While that is rational, the next thought lead me to question the philosophy and direction of America in these current times.

It has been said that American companies produce inferior products, drugs, technology, to sell in the third world because they do not know any better and have no choice but to buy the inferior products.

Is the government, are our elected officials treating American citizens like the people of a third world country?

I understand the health care bill is geared to provide health care for the millions who do not have it, but what feels wrong is that government officials still get better treatment than the people they represent.

If elected government officials had to accept the same health care that all Americans are offered, they would have real incentive to pass a fair and adequate health care plan that provides the best health care in the world for all Amercians.

Unless the leaders of the U.S.A. no longer want to lead the world.


I would appreciate to know what our leaders think about this.

ric
407-325-1482

yes, the U.S. president...

wonder what the response will be...

health care reform

Healthcare Napkins All

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conversations with congreff

ok, today it is congress, he senate, specifically, who inspire me to ponder our consumer culture and the product, propaganda and doublespeak... the ability to use words to placate and say things that sound right or soothing or encouraging, but never actually address an issue or a questions, never actually providing a solution... i asked my local senator to address the corruption and unfairnes in government and bug business, especially the banking industry... note how quickly he drops others names and talks about what others are proposing and the potential consequences of others actions, but doesn't take any responsibility or provide a single concrete idea himself... action?... change?... real leadership?... not in this guy... this was his response:

Below is a response to the recent comments I received from you:

Dear Mr. Candor:

Thank you for your correspondence regarding consumer financial protection. I appreciate hearing from you and would like to respond to your concerns.

As you know, President Barack Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner have released their proposal for financial regulatory reform. Among other things, the Obama Administration proposes the creation of a Consumer Financial Protection Agency that would have broad authority over the regulation of financial products and services. Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) is currently developing the Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2009, which is a financial regulatory reform bill before the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee. In addition, Congress is working on legislation to address issues related to the banking industry that proposes several ideas for financial reform. Some of these ideas include stricter regulation on banks, as well as a single federal bank regulator in an effort to try and increase accountability and end unnecessary overlap.

The financial crisis of 2008 nearly ruined the financial markets in the United States and threatened the global economy. In addition, the failure of many financial institutions and the collapse of the stock market left many Americans with severely impacted retirement accounts. It is vitally important that we thoroughly evaluate where our laws and regulations broke down to ensure that such a disaster never happens again. These are very complex industries affecting citizens and businesses, throughout our country, so we need to be careful to reform and strengthen the system in a way that does not impose undue burdens on American businesses. I look forward to working with my colleagues in the Senate to get it right.

It is an honor and privilege to serve the people of the great State of Florida in the United States Senate. I take great pride in being a native Floridian, and I look forward to the tremendous opportunity to better the lives of all Floridians. I assure you I will work hard to represent our state to the best of my ability in the U.S. Senate. If I can be of any help to you, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Very truly yours,

George S. LeMieux
United States Senator


**Note: PLEASE DO NOT REPLY TO THIS E-MAIL. If you would like to reply to this message, please contact me through my website at http://lemieux.senate.gov.
GL/nyb

rah rah rah, but what are you actually going to do other than make speeches about how challenging the issue is and how more study is needed, more study by congress, paid for by tax dollars, your money, my money, to study study study, but not change anything... in fact, the corruption and unfairness, the divide between rich and poor, and the mistakes just get worse... and is procrastination part of the cause?...

this is what my esteemed senator responded to:

* No more bailouts: No bank should ever again be bailed out by taxpayers, so make sure no bank is "too big to fail." That goes for all corporations. Taxpayers should not be forced to bail out companies that are mismanaged. Let the millions come from the corporate executive salaries first.

* Reduce family debt: Make sure minimum loan payments cover some principal as well as interest, so people can actually pay down their debts. Fairness is not only morally right, it is good economic sense.

* Stop the legalese: Require mortgages, loan contracts and credit card terms be written simply and clearly so you don't need to be a lawyer to understand your rights and responsibilities. Do this before things get so bad that people start looking for radical change as they have in so many countries throughout history, including our own origins.

* End the 'quick profit' mentality: Pay brokers and bankers based on the long-term performance and quality of the loans they make. End 'keep the fee, pass on the risk.' There must be a reasonable salary and profit cap on business if the gap between the elite 1% and the rest of us is to stop widening. History tells us what happens when the gap gets too wide. Don't repeat the same mistakes.

* Curb the gambling: Limit the bets that banks can make, including the private side-bets that are not even reported. All transactions should be reported by law. Who's money is it, anyway?

* Don't leave consumer protection in the hands of those who failed to do it. Accountability,. You are accountable to hold bankers and corporations accountable, That is a large part of your job. Voters are accountable to hold you accountable to do your job.

* Lobbyists might pay for your cushions, but voters hire you can fire you. Listen to the voters before they lose any more faith jn the government and look for other means to create a fair and equitable society.

* Revolution does not come suddenly in the night, it is born and fed by continued mistakes by government in the light of day. I am witnessing the fall of the American Dream. The flaws of capitalism are becoming more glaring every year. It is time for a bold new enlightened approach to capitalism and government that brings us closer to the ideal of for the people, by the people, equality, and an equitable sharing of the wealth.

* I implore you to learn from the history of Rome, France, England, and other empires and live up to the ideals, hopes, and dreams of our founding fathers before it is too late.

rah!