But I did get a chance to question an “automatic traffic
enforcement unit” supervisor and engage in some byplay with nice-enough June
Cleaverish judge whose legal career has awarded her realm over the county court
dedicated to speed camera violations.
Some people are outraged by abortion, some by the easy
availability of guns, some by war. The single issue upon which I will vote for
or against local candidates is the misuse of speed cameras (I am kind of.a okay
with red light cameras, because running red lights does cause accidents.)
As everyone knows, these cameras are set to enhance revenue
for jurisdictions whose leaders are too chicken-shit to actually raise taxes.
As I have told the several public officials I know, “Tax me, but don’t disguise
the act as traffic enforcement.”
The camera in question has nailed me in the past, so I
naturally am somewhat careful on a heavily traveled road I have used
approximately 3,000-4,000 times. I and the spousal unit have probably gotten a
total of five speeding citations, which we have routinely paid because the
county (and state) will not assign points or contact your insurance company,
even though you are menace to life and limb.
My questions and testimony dwelt on the fact that no matter
how fast you may be going, the camera always records your violation at 12 miles
above the artificially low posted speed. I asked the officer, “If I were going
100 mph, would the citation read 100 mph.” He replied with the “factual inexactitude,
“Yes.”
A similar road elsewhere in the county has 50 mph limit, and
I learned from the judge and officer that these limits are set by community
groups. Boy, would I like to get on one of those! I am against speeding. I am
against reckless driving. I sometimes wish I had a James Bond car, or a
Batmobile, that could evaporate offenders. But these cameras are placed on
roads (especially hills) and in neighborhoods designed to scoop up money that
would go uncollected if the violations were actually seen but not noted by an
actual police officer. Of course the cameras are operated by a private company.
There might have been 100 names on the list of cases, but
only about 20 showed up for this morning’s court (the rest having paid already
or decided to skip and wait till their registration renewal is denied.)
I went, knowing what would happen, but I have time these
days and I wanted at least the judge to hear the enmity that local government
engenders it is driving public. A few other people, one a scientist, said her
three tickets recorded at exactly the same speed “strained credulity.” (I think
she had to pay only one of them.)
The result was, for showing up with an oral excuse, that the
$40 fine was cut to $20 plus court costs of $22.50. You do the math. Plus the
$4 it cost to park.
As a bonus to having the judge and other traffic miscreants
hear my case (one of them congratulated me on my performance later on in the
hall and I recalled Abbie Hoffman’s dictum that “In the halls of justice the
only justice is in the halls) there was someone taking notes on every case on a
reporter’s notepad.
She is an “investigative producer” for a local station,
which already did a piece on this abomination of justice – with the reporter
doing the “standup” guess where – at “my” speed camera. I expect to contact
her.
I may even start a political movement to rid the county of speed cameras
and replace them with a rotation of actual cops, whose presence for one week at
a given location, will reap benefits for months. What if such a movement of everyone at a given location going exactly the speed limit tied up commerce so badly that politicians had to listen? What about establishing "rolling roadblocks" on multilane highways at exactly the posted limit?
In the meantime, there are several liberal Democratic local
officials – buccaneers – who will never get my vote because they smirk “Don’t
speed” as they happily spend public money garnered in such dastardly fashion.
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