[freehunter]

Yes, I obviously read it since I said "the way they're treated is criminal" and also quoted the article itself. The million little cuts is terrible. But one of the little cuts, which the article makes out to be a very common one, is easily avoided. Don't shrug it off with a "I have a lead foot, it's no big deal". It obviously is a big deal because it's leading to people going to prison. How many people would never find themselves in this horrible spiral if they just obeyed the speed limit?

I was driving on the Illinois tollway over the weekend, which is under construction and at a 45mph speed limit. I was in a hurry to meet a client, but I'm at a point in my life where I can't afford the $375 ticket for speeding in a construction zone. So, with people flying around me at 70mph, I set my cruise control to 45.

Because the $375 ticket would cripple me financially right now. It's not a hard concept.

[crazypyro]

Right, but that literally has nothing to do with the article. People are also getting tickets for things like not having proof of insurance and expired registrations. Furthermore, the system is set up in such a way of encouraging the police to use predatory tactics to produce revenue. This includes giving tickets for things that most other departments consider not being worth enforcing by tickets. Boiling down the argument to "Don't speed if you can't afford" it adds nothing to conversation and completely misses the point of the article.

[freehunter]

No, the point of the article is people going to jail over minor offenses that snowball into major jail time. And one minor offense they call out repeatedly is speeding. Speeding is the beginning of the record for numerous people cited throughout the article.

It's a controllable factor which costs literally nothing, unlike registration and insurance. So why does speeding claim so many?

[crazypyro]

Speeding claims so many because the extraneous police departments in STL. Furthermore, poor are being targeted by speeding tickets at an even higher rate than average because police expect to get more ticket possibilities. The bottom line is police departments need to get revenue to sustain themselves and instead of looking elsewhere, they are using predatory tactics that disproportionately hurt the poor.

You arguing in a similar way to the people that say if Mike Brown didn't want to get shot, he shouldn't have been walking down the middle of the street. The problem is that all of those poor people getting tickets at a higher rate is symbolic of a larger, societal problem (poverty), in much the same way that Mike Brown's death was symbolic of racism (and also poverty too, of course).

[wehadfun]

>So why does speeding claim so many?

You probably think it is because poor people speed more than non-poor people. I would guess that all of us technically speed as soon as we pull out of our drive way. The difference is these places have cops enforcing speeding laws more rigidly

[basseq]

"... poor are being targeted by speeding tickets at an even higher rate than average because police expect to get more ticket possibilities"

Can someone explain this? Are the poor really being targeted? Why are there more ticket possibilities? (Because you could get someone for expired registration, too?)

Is this a correlation ≠ causation thing? (I.e., police are more likely to pull over a speeder with multiple violations? That doesn't mean you're targeting the poor.)

[crazypyro]

Older, more beatup cars tend to have higher "value" for the police officer. Someone driving a brand new Audi isn't going to have the same potential ticketing "value" as a 20 year old rusty car with a beat up bumper, as an example.

[basseq]

... because they're more likely to have multiple violations?

Interestingly, I wonder what has a higher value/ROI for "the system". A) A couple small tickets (worth, say, $200) that don't get paid, result in multiple missed court dates, arrest warrants, nights in jail, etc. Or B) A small ticket (worth, say, $75) that gets paid in full immediately, no court date required.

[crazypyro]

I'd imagine a large majority of all traffic tickets get paid. Knowing that, even if say the average chance of any given traffic ticket being 99% chance of payment, if the beat up car was instead 95%, or even 90%, but you can also tag on an expired tag fine, you've just made your department more money, over a number of traffic stops.