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Aside from the other response to you, showing what is clearly not routine policing: >The status quo is that a significant percentage of drivers violate the law

Aside from the other response to you, showing what is clearly not routine policing: >The status quo is that a significant percentage of drivers violate the law every time they get behind the wheel and a lot of Americans more or less think it's no big deal... This is pretty damning evidence of negligent road design. The roads are built for speeds so far above the posted limit that police officers are then required to enforce limits that are, compared to the road's design speed, pernicious and arbitrary. Traffic engineers like to pretend that speeds can be limited only by enforcement, in glaring contradiction to the fact that all of the design process centers around a (fast) design speed. There's an engineer in Minnesota who is trying to sue the pants off of egregious offenders to send a message, and it's the most inspiring use of litigation I've ever heard.[0] [0] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/5/29/an-open-letter-to-the-city-of-springfield https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/5/29/an-open-letter...

dionidium 5y ago
Yes, this is right. Enforcement should be third, behind better road design and automation within the vehicle (i.e. speed governors and geofencing). There’s some skepticism in left-leaning circles about the fairness or utility of automated enforcement, but I hope articles like this one demonstrate why it’s so much better. (In this particular case we're mostly talking about Interstate traffic, it seems, which, to be frank, I'm far less concerned about. If anything is wrong with their relentless ticketing it's that it's focused in the wrong place.)
- bobthepanda 5y ago
  There is also automated enforcement outside the vehicles. It seems like this works to great effect in Europe although they seem to have political systems that don't result in, say, quietly changing yellow light timings to get more revenue.

dionidium 5y ago

Yes, this is right. Enforcement should be third, behind better road design and automation within the vehicle (i.e. speed governors and geofencing). There’s some skepticism in left-leaning circles about the fairness or utility of automated enforcement, but I hope articles like this one demonstrate why it’s so much better. (In this particular case we're mostly talking about Interstate traffic, it seems, which, to be frank, I'm far less concerned about. If anything is wrong with their relentless ticketing it's that it's focused in the wrong place.)

bobthepanda 5y ago
There is also automated enforcement outside the vehicles. It seems like this works to great effect in Europe although they seem to have political systems that don't result in, say, quietly changing yellow light timings to get more revenue.