Fenton, population 226, brings in over $1 million per year through its mayor’s court, an unusual justice system in which the mayor can serve as judge even though he’s responsible for town finances.
Fenton, population 226, brings in over $1 million per year through its mayor’s court, an unusual justice system in which the mayor can serve as judge even though he’s responsible for town finances.
Reading the article, there is obviously there’s some shady-ass conflict-of-interest shit going down in this specific case.
However.
Literally any municipality in America could make bank if they enforced the traffic laws to the letter. Conditions permitting, most drivers regularly go 5-10mph over the speed limit. Distracted driving is common, and evolving (apparently the new things is people watching streaming videos while driving). In certain areas drivers leave their cars parked on sidewalks, blocking crosswalks, inside bike lanes, etc. Laws about stopping for pedestrians waiting to cross the street may as well not exist. Buzzed (and more recently, mildly-stoned) driving is socially acceptable. My local municipality could probably fund itself exclusively off tickets from drivers who don’t have their lights on in the rain.
To be very clear: enforcement is a terrible way to get people to follow traffic laws (an outsized number of encounters that end in police violence started with a traffic stop, traffic stops are disproportionately made against people of color, tickets are regressively priced, etc etc). However the case study of this little town reveals a big truth: lawbreaking while driving is widespread on American streets to a level so extreme that nearly all drivers on the road will break the law (however minutely) every time they get behind the wheel. What kind of a broken system is that?
Just to be clear, you mean that people ignoring the laws is what makes it broken, right? Not the laws themselves?
Cause your last sentence threw me off for a second.
If so, I totally agree with you.
I’m not from the US, but are people really streaming while driving? Cause that’s just ridiculously stupid.
I know people are driving much longer distances in the US than here, but at least put on some podcast or music to entertain you. Nothing that keeps your eyes off the road.
But speeding tickets are the most common type of infraction, and I think that’s probably a good example of a systematic issue.
There are areas in this country where the speed limit is set artificially low, just to always allow for police to issue tickets capriciously.
The Atlanta beltway for example would literally grind the city to a halt if everyone adhered to the speed limit signs, and it’s actively dangerous to attempt to do so as an individual.
That’s not a people issue, it’s a systems issue.
All of this is intentional. Think about the phrase “I have nothing to hide” when you see flagrant privacy violations. Yes… Yes you do
Is this not the case everywhere? If anything, speeding, distracted driving, and running stop signs / ignoring traffic signals is much more common in other parts of the world.
Honestly, just put up cameras at points where following the law is the most critical for road safety, place notices something like a mile before it on the road, and if anyone’s still breaking the law after seeing the warning, just send the ticket to the home address the car is registered to with a picture that captures the driver.
Voilà, road safety AND reduction of unnecessary cop civilian conflicts.
Still send out patrol vehicles but for like, actual dangerous situations that need an immediate responder, because the patrol effect is a real and observed phenomenon (literally even just having a dude in uniform sitting on a horse in the area reduces crime), something that would actually be improved on by having cops spending less time babysitting highways and more time being visible in high crime areas to deter petty criminal behaviour.
This is how it’s done in Korea, cameras everywhere and signs telling you where they are. The built-in gps systems in newer cars also have all the camera locations within their maps. It’ll warn you by dinging if you’re speeding ahead of a camera and give you a happy ding-ding if you pass the camera while driving under the limit. Seems to work fairly well, although it’s kind of annoying on their highways as everyone seemingly races to the next camera where they then rapidly slow down, then speed up, again and again and again.
Oh and cops don’t pull people over. I never saw it and drove many miles over several different visits.