The police may be in existence to serve and protect, but often, they are used by municipalities and state governments as an alternative stream of income.
Traffic cops should be on the road to keep them safe for law-abiding citizens, but they often behave in a way that ensnares those who violate liberally-defined ordinances.
Casting a wide net, police often ticket drivers who don’t pose a threat by any reasonable definition, boosting revenue for governments that lack funding due to artificially low taxes. How is this fair?
David Turlington knows exactly how you feel, as he is a lawyer who specializes in traffic law. He knows about all the tricks that police forces pull on the people they are supposed to be serving in a fair and balanced manner, allowing him to mount successful defenses for his defendants in court.
Below, we’ll describe the offenses they are on the outlook for, as well as the tricks they use to catch you breaking these laws, if only by a little bit.
1) Speeding
Of all the traffic violations out there, speeding is the biggest earner for municipal police forces, and it’s not because there are a lot of speed demons out there terrorizing law-abiding drivers.
It’s because speed limits are often set below what they should be, despite the capacity of a road to handle more aggressive styles of driving.
When you have an expressway where the limit is set at 45 miles per hour when it can easily handle 60-65 miles per hour in a safe manner, the natural instincts of a driver eventually kick in, and the flow speed ends up being faster than the actual limit.
In these conditions, all police have to do is set up a laser or photo radar trap, and they can make all the money they want to make (or need to make – just don’t mention quotas to a police officer … they get angry when you do that).
2) Parking violations
When you roll into a new city, pay rapt attention to the regulations a city places on parking. From parking on opposite sides of the street depending on the day, to hour-based restrictions, there are a myriad of ways they try to snare you into breaking the law.
When you park at meters, keep an accurate measure of how much time you have there, as meter cops patrol these areas aggressively in a bid to catch drivers being a few minutes over their limit.
3) Outdated registration, etc.
We have all gotten letters from the state DMV informing us of our pending renewal for our driver registration. Placed in the pile beneath other bills, it gets forgotten about until the deadline passes.
One day when commuting to work, you see police lights in your rear view, despite not doing anything wrong (or so you think).
Nailed with a fine and possibly an impound fee to get your vehicle back, these instances are one of the crappier days we have in our lives.
When the police are out in traffic, they are running plates for warrants, but they are also checking for out of date registrations, broken tail lights, uncleaned snow on your roof, etc.
Ensure that this task gets done before the due date, and if you miss, commute to work and then straight to the DMV to get your hands on registration stickers for the next year.