Running red lights to me is way worse than doing 75 mph in a 65 zone. However, red light violations aren’t enforced where I am and indeed every single day I see

Running red lights to me is way worse than doing 75 mph in a 65 zone. However, red light violations aren’t enforced where I am and indeed every single day I see someone running a very red light. As a motorcyclist this is terrifying. Here is what happens in the US: police departments derive a non-trivial amount of money from speeding tickets. Everyone speeds because our roads have poor quality control (you can have pristine pavement or potholes and bumps that will send your head through your sunroof) and speed limits haven’t been updated. Actually going the speed limit will cause huge traffic jams. However, if you are caught going over the speed limit you’ll be issued a fine of a few hundred dollars. Who gets caught? Mostly people going faster than average but generally it is a lottery. A cop on the side of the road decides that your car today looks like it deserves a ticket so he takes off after you. Oh and you can fight tickets by simply requesting a second review and get a 50% or so discount unless it was more than a routine speeding ticket. Also in the US a speeding ticket is a criminal thing. You are presumed innocent until proven guilty. Therefore you can’t just scan the license plate and issue the ticket to the owner of the vehicle. You must identify the driver and a camera can’t do that. Therefore you must take a picture of the driver and match it to a known face, a hard problem that is costly. Moreover, in lots of places if you install a speeding camera, the proceeds must be split with the local school system. That means a police department has to pay a lot of money up front with a slow ROI. Pulling random cars over is better business. The entire system is inefficient, unfair, and is full of backwards incentives. The solution is: raise the speed limits to realistic levels but also enforce them strictly. Highway limits most places should be 75, not 65. But if you go 77 or above, ticket. Moreover, we need multiple classes of driver’s licenses. Your basic license should allow you to go the speed limit and no more. But if you take an advanced test, have a car that won’t let you text while you drive, and have a clean driving history for the past N years, you can go 5 or 10 above the speed limit. You get a different license plate color to easily identify you. Again as a motorcyclist who is much more vulnerable on the road than a car driver enclosed in 3 tons of an SUV the guy doing 90 in his Civic worries me a lot less than a soccer mom with a latte and a cell phone in her hands doing 70 while seemingly unable to keep her vehicle in her lane. One of these is paying attention, the other isn’t. Speeding tickets issued by cops penalize the wrong behavior.