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I understand that there are a lot of injuries and deaths each year due to traffic accidents. I also understand that speeding, impairment, and distraction are leading causes of traffic accidents. So I get it, your routine "speed trap" can help get people to slow down and maybe reduce injuries and deaths.

That said, some speed traps are just there to generate revenue. LE and their supporters (of which I generally count myself as one) can try to deny it, but I see it with my own eyes. Between where I live and work there is a miles long stretch of nearly uninhabited, straight, county road. The speed limit is only 45. During morning and evening commutes people routinely go 55 or so - some a little more, some a little less. We've all been up and down that road every single work day for years - in some cases this amounts to 7 to 10 thousand trips. We know that road probably better than the back of our hands. Aside from a close encounter with the occasional skunk or prairie dog there's no danger to be found on that road. Yet at least once a month a Sheriff's deputy will be out there writing tickets on some poor guys and gals just trying to get to work, just rolling along with traffic. That's not safety, that's just filling quotas. And no, I've never been ticketed, this isn't sour grapes - just an observation.

I lived on a road that was dense with houses, lots of families with kids, posted 25 mph. But driving out, there was about three blocks of industrial park, mostly vacant lots after you got by all the houses. Everyone who lived there would observe 25 in the housing but routinely pick it up to 35 in the industrial park.

Then we had a problem with some teenagers speeding through the housing area in the late afternoons, after school let out. Concerned for the children in the neighborhood, we asked the police to do something.

So the police set up a speed trap in the industrial park section, at 7:00 am, and wrote tickets on almost every parent and resident as they headed out to work that day.

Did nothing to address the problem with the teenagers speeding through the neighborhood but we learned to not ask the police for help anymore.