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About Speed Traps
A speed trap is a location whose police have a reputation for writing an
unusually high number of traffic tickets, usually for speeding. Sometimes, the
posted speed limits are not easily seen; in other places, police have chosen to
strictly enforce speed limits, and the limits are typically set far lower than
warranted by road conditions or population. Speed traps often are found in small
towns, often near major highways, in which travelers are unlikely to return to
challenge a speeding ticket.
Some communities with reputations as speed traps have a disproportionately large
number of their local workforce involved in law enforcement or judiciary
occupations.
In some small towns and counties, traffic fines make up a large fraction of the
income of the local government, which gives the police an incentive to write
tickets. In the state of Texas, this conflict of interest was so severe that the
state legislature passed a law limiting the fraction of revenue that a local
government could derive from traffic tickets. Several other states have passed
similar laws.
Another tactic used by some states to limit this conflict of
interest is to require that a substantial amount of all local traffic ticket
revenue go directly into the state treasury, instead of having all revenue go to
the issuing jurisdiction.
In the village of New Rome, Ohio, a speed trap that has received national media
attention, a police force of 14 presided over a community of only 60 and
collected around $400,000 in tickets annually. This comprised nearly all of the
village's budget and nearly all went back into funding the police.
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