Originally posted by: Captante
Originally posted by: FallenHero
Originally posted by: Captante
Originally posted by: Aluvus
Originally posted by: videogames101
So If i slow down because i DID detect residue radar with a detector, well the cop has done his job. I've slowed down, and neither cop nor me has wasted any of our valuable time. Either way i slow down, but in reality, a radar detector helps law enforcement by saving them time. It enforces the law without having to pull the car over.
"His job" is not to get you to slow down briefly and then resume driving 80 miles an hour.
Correct ... the job of a radar-enforcement unit is to bring in revenue for the town/state that pays his salery.
If the goal was really to control the speed people drove, there are MUCH more effective methods of going about it which don't involve issuing citations, however they don't help finance the annual budget.
I would LOVE to hear these means.
I should have further specified limited access highways & the easiest thing to do would be to simply have patrol units traveling at roughly 5 mph over the speed limit every few miles like a pace-car ... make it simple, pass the pace car & receive a ticket in the mail. Patrol units could then be freed up to go after reckless/erratic drivers & in fact the pace cars could easily be driven by none-officers who pull in substantially less money per hour.
Late at night or when traffic is very light speed limits should be adjusted to a more realistic 75mph which would result in most people not speeding. (US highways were designed with this limit in mind & objective studies show it will not increase fatalities)
Both these ideas took me about 10 seconds to come up with & with some fine-tuning could work, but they arn't likely to happen because they cut in to ticket-generated revenue which is a very significant amount of money ... unlike many I don't blame Patrol officers for this, but claiming otherwise is just plain inaccurate.
Also one point its impossible to argue is that current methods are completely ineffective at enforcing speed limits (at least in NY/NJ/CT) ... the only times traffic around here travels anywhere near the posted limit is when theres a Patrol unit riding along the highway within sight (or if drivers know theres one nearby ) ... the rest of the time it travels between 70 & 80 mph. (not counting rush-hour when its stopped half the time)
On two-lane local roads, especially in rural areas radar patrol units are often the only effective way to enforce speed limits, but even then its seeing the patrol unit that slows people down more then anything else.