Part of the problem is the judge's and prosecutor's salary comes from the same kitty fed by the traffic citations.
This is akin to the tax farming of the Roman Empire: Wealthy or soon to be wealthy men would buy the right to collect taxes, fees, tarriffs, or tolls, over a certain geographical area, for a certain period of time. The government was paid up front, and the people were squeezed to make the profit. Such was the life that Matthew the Publican led.
Let us hope that we can give these new ticks "religion".
the day will come when you will post a required bond account which will confirm and certify driver and vehicle to operate at each start-up. There will be a required transponder in every vehicle which will identify the vehicle to the network. The driver will be required to enter his drivers license and PIN into the transponder in order to recieve start-up authorization. A network of roadway sensors will trigger the transponder to transmit by cell phone type communication (similar to "On-star") to a central database which connects the vehicle and driver identity nationwide to an internet connection. Any infraction will debit the identified transponder account automatically. Serious infractions or driver credit default will disable the operator controls and switch to remote control through a vehicle systems interlink, steering the vehicle safely to the arrest and control point and the seat belt will lock the driver in the vehicle like full body handcuffs until the police arrive
The government will also know where every vehicle is at all times by GPS satellite ID built into the transponder.
thereby making red light cameras obsolete and a part of distant history, freeing police from the taxation duties of traffic enforcement, and allowing them to focus on other enforcement and revenue collection priorities
Yep, and also the salaries of the cops.
The best thing that could ever happen would be for a federal law to be passed that mandated that cities and counties could not keep any of the fines collected from traffic offenses - it all had to go to some overseas charity.
If that were the case, the police department would start focusing on real crimes rather than meaningless traffic offenses and the police dept would stop being a revenue collection dept.