“speed limit enforcement as the primary traffic safety measure”
Right, it’s for “safety”. If you had to send the fine to the federal gov’t instead of the local courthouse, there would be no more speed enforcement.
How right you are.
Here in Washington, an initiative is being proposed to have all redlight and speed camera revenues go directly to a state fund instead of the local government. All the local politicians are crying their eyes out about it, claiming that then they won’t be able to “afford” these cameras, and would have to remove them.
This after claiming for years that they were completely for safety reasons only and the revenue wasn’t important.
Yeah, just like getting the seatbelt law passed they told us that it would “only” be a secondary offense, never a primary one. Now there are regular “Seat Belt Enforcement” patrols, loudly trumpeted by the local snooze media, out stopping and fining anyone they can find who doesn’t have the seatbelt on.
Pure revenue enhancement, plain and simple. As soon as you take away the revenue, the safety factor suddenly is forgotten.