Enough with the speed trap!

That was the subject line on this email I received last Tuesday, which I have condensed somewhat due to length:

"Come on guys, enough with the speed trap at the bottom of the hill on A Street right by 70th. It is the equivalent of entrapment. You have people going down a hill, so their rate of speed goes a bit faster, and so you are jumping on them there. I was astounded to get a ticket the other day, because I have to pull out from a side street where I live, I was ticketed for momentum, basically. And by an officer who was sullen. I have seen this speed trap there for the better part of a year, usually at the end of the month when you need to write more tickets. It comes off as abuse of power. It is these sort of actions by policemen that causes us citizens to lose respect for you and bad blood between you and the neighborhood. Thank you for your consideration."

The complaints about speed traps are almost as common as the complaints about the lack thereof. There is no single issue that citizens complain to me more about than speeding in their neighborhood. I would say that this is especially true for anyone who lives within a mile or so of a high school. This particular speed trap is midway between two: Lincoln East High School and Pius X High School. The value of the hill is not in creating "momentum," rather it is in limiting visibility: you can't see the radar until it's already seen you. Since the citation this correspondent received was for 11-15 MPH over the limit, I think we can safely assume that gravity was not the culprit.

Citizens who complain about speeding in their neighborhood, of course, are normally referring to speeders other than their own friends, family members, and selves. I sometimes have to shake my head at the mental process whereby someone complains bitterly about red light runners, but then himself guns it through every yellow light he encounters.

Let us dissect the concept of a speed trap. Colloquially, I think this means a location where speeders are easily snagged by police officers. Snagging speeders, of course, is part of our job. Before anyone has a conniption, let me reiterate that the Nebraska Constitution specifies that fines be paid into the general fund of the school district: a ticket benefits the City of Lincoln and the Lincoln Police Department not one whit. If we wrote no tickets at all, we'd actually save quite a bit of money.

In Lincoln, as elsewhere, speed traps tend to have a few common characteristics. First, it's a location where there is a suitable supply of speeders. This criterion is met at places near high schools, arterial streets with moderate traffic flows that allow you to isolate single vehicles, and collector streets in residential areas. Second, it is a location where speed enforcement can be established with a certain element of surprise. Third, it's an area that is accessible to the police. There are some places where it's tough to set up enforcement due to such things as high-volume, elevated roadways, the lack of an area where stationary radar can be safely deployed, no good place to safely pull cars over, and so forth.

Since the characteristics of speed traps can be described, they are rather easy to identify if you think about it. There are several locations in Lincoln where to this day I double check my speedometer. Call it muscle memory from 40 years of driving in this City, but I'm tapping the brake and checking the needle anytime I'm westbound on Vine from 46th Street. And that, folks, is the purpose of a speed trap: it is our job to enforce speed limits. That means writing tickets, and trusting that people will have that experience (or the sight of someone else having it) in the back of their mind as their speedometer creeps to 57 MPH on Old Cheney Road west of 70th Street.

Speed traps are predictable to the thinking motorist, and fairly easy to avoid if you use your head rather than your foot. Enforcing traffic laws is an important part of our role in promoting public safety. Why should we be criticized for doing so with a certain degree of efficiency? Nobody likes to get a ticket, but I think we all realize that there is only one person to blame.