Free Republic

A bill allowing municipal police across Pennsylvania to use radar guns for speed enforcement details passed the state Senate Tuesday on a 49-1 vote. Pennsylvania is currently the only state in the nation that limits the use of radar exclusively to its state police. That’s a sore spot for many municipal officials and police chiefs, who feel they are handicapped in monitoring speeding in residential zones and local roads where speeders can really raise the risk of an accident. But it’s also been a treasured, 60-year-old safeguard for some motorists. Critics have worried that those same municipal officers would take...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — To some towns it’s an important stream of revenue. To some drivers it’s highway robbery. Tim Gant, a guardrail inspector from Clarksburg, says his tiny West Tennessee town is a speed trap that artificially drives down speed limits so it can drive up collections from speeding tickets. Gant has persuaded state Rep. Chris Crider, R-Milan, to introduce a bill that would require blue speed limit signs for any municipality that gets more than half its revenue from traffic tickets. "Most folks around my speed-trap town refer to the problem as ‘legal highway robbery,“’ Gant said in...