VIEWPOINT - Targetting Little Old Ladies Going to Church

I just told you about the little old lady getting a ticket on her way to church just to make my point about the RCMP and their inordinate concentration about catching the average driver in one of their speed traps. I had to smile at how the lady recounted her story to the neighbourhood, I will simply say the Officer who gave her a ticket will not be on her Christmas list.

If you wonder why I’m a bit cynical about the RCMP and Govts. about speeding I will share this with you. A few years ago I had the opportunity to attend a lecture by a prof at UBC who’s topic was how company’s and Govts. manipulate statistics to either sell or promote whatever their promoting at the time. He stated a few stats on Co.s etc, and then got to Govts. The Govt. of the day and the RCMP were trying to sell the concept of photo radar at that time to the public and were pulling out all kinds of statistics of how speeding had gotten way out of control and they had to do something to stop it and photo radar was the answer.(Sound Familiar) anyway this prof took exception to their statistics and decided to prove them wrong.

He  had the stats on how many accidents were caused by speeding and then showed how they were arrived at. Their Nos. Were directly correlated to the weather. This is how he explained it. We all know that when there is a dump of snow overnight in the lower mainland there is a lot of accidents the next day. Any way when the police record the accident they state the driver was going too fast for road conditions. Even if your sliding down a hill with no chance of stopping your still going too fast for road conditions.

Now enter the spin doctors, ah going too fast “Ipso Factor” speeding. So they enter the cause of the accident as speeding. This prof had charts going back 10 years on the weather and also the stats on speeding causing accidents and there was a direct correlation between the years we had bad weather and the increase in speeding causing accidents. He pointed out that the year before there had been a lot of morning commutes made after a snowfall and the speeding stats causing accidents were way up for that year as well.

These were the stats the police and Govt were using in their spiel to convince us that photo radar was necessary to quell this epidemic. Of course they knew differently. The spin doctors won, we got photo radar, and other than enriching the Govt. coffers nothing changed. The people detested photo radar so much (It was obviously just a cash grab) that the next govt used getting rid of it as an election ploy. They won and photo radar was gone.

Any way, there’s an old saying “Liars figure and figure’s lie” so I’m not convinced that the Officer who caught that old lady speeding in his quite conniving speed trap shouldn’t have been spending his time more productively in getting the people who really are a hazard to the rest of us off the highway.

I read your response to my comment on crazies and I feel compelled to reply to your comments in your last paragraph where you say that police enforcement when it comes to speeding should be fair and impartial and target high accident areas. Any of us that have moved or travelled around B.C. have soon discovered that the RCMP operate in the same fashion in every town when it comes to setting up and operating their speed traps.

They are set up where there’s going to be the most productive area in producing tickets. (The analogy is the same as Willy Sutter, the famous bank robber used, when he was asked why he robbed banks. And he answered “because that’s where the money is”

They are set up where the highway configuration and location are conducive to an individual inadvertently not realizing there exceeding the posted speed limit till it’s too late and they're caught. Generally speaking they're located at the entrance to town (so a driver is somewhat complacent after having been driving at normal highway speed for some time) at the bottom of a hill (the steeper the better so it’s harder to slow down) where there is a change downward in the posted speed limit, and where there is adequate concealment for the police and their car.

In our area the approach into West Kelowna off the “COKE”, down the steep hill past the sawmill, a change of speed limit at the bottom of the hill, and a police officer concealed in the tall grass on his knees or sitting on his butt with his radar gun just passed the speed change sign is a good example as it has all these conditions in spades and from the stories that people have told me and from my own observations this is a very lucrative and productive area for producing speeding tickets.

The police will never admit it but they operate on the same principle that sales people do,(I will generalize here) when a sales person knows from experience that if they make 50 cold calls they will get 5 appointments and 1 sale. The police know that if they target a certain stretch of highway if 1000 cars go by in an hour 5 will be exceeding the speed limit enough to ticket. One day they may get 0 but the next day they get 10, if it’s averaged out over 100 set ups provided the traffic pattern stays approximately the same and there operating at the same time of day they will average 5 speeding tickets per hour, just as in sales it’s simply a numbers game.

You never see a speed trap set up where the highway conditions are not conducive to drivers exceeding the posted limit. Why would they? It would be a waste of their time. They also know that if they move their trap to an area of highway where the highway configuration is such that it is produces 10 speeding tickets per hour they can be more productive in a shorter time span. Yes from time to time they will target specific areas usually at the request of people living alongside a piece of highway who complain about speeders but soon revert back to their familiar and more lucrative haunts.

Speed traps are not generally set up in high accident areas as these areas are not conducive to speeding due to the highway being configured in a manner that actually makes people slow down, twists and turns and blind corners, crossroads, etc. So what is the end result of the RCMP and their speed traps? They don’t deter anyone from inadvertently going over the posted limit which is the excuse the RCMP use for setting them up. The vast majority of drivers getting speeding tickets are not a hazard to other drivers , they are driving quite rationally and safely and are simply victims of the clever speed traps that enterprising RCMP officers have perfected over the years.

Ask an one who has to drive for a living and they will say the more time they have to spend on the road the more tickets they will accumulate, again just a numbers game. The police know that they will give out roughly the same amount of tickets in a given spot the next day and the next so to them it’s just a job. The individual receiving the ticket is upset as they realize they will have to contribute a fair bit of money out of their next pay cheque not for being reckless or unsafe but simply a victim of happen chance. So who gains?

The police officer certainly contributes a great deal of money into Govt coffers for a very limited time spent so this certainly contributes to deferring the Govt expense for the RCMP. If you were to quantify the amount of money made for time spent a speed trap would have to be one of the most lucrative ventures in B.C. next to drug dealing.

So to my way of thinking they should disband these speed traps, buy a bunch of unmarked cars and have our police force out on the highway catching the “CRAZIES” and the drunks and anyone else the officer see’s as being stupid behind the wheel. Our highways would be a lot safer but unfortunately the Govt would be a lot poorer so this idea will never fly as you know a politician would never give up anything that pays as well as a speed trap. Just thought I would give you something to think about...