Do Police Traps Create Hazards?

It is always interesting when you go by a police trap and you see how cars back up. It is a combination of people looking at the individuals who are stopped and just the overall fear of being stopped themselves. It makes you wonder when they set up these traps, is it really that safe?

One of the ways to look at it is, how many collisions occur when they have these traps set up? Cars are usually pretty on alert so there may not be that many, but if any are caused by the trap, were the number of speeding tickets justified by what happened as a result?

The presence of police on the road always slows people down. While sometimes it is interesting to watch a car flying along suddenly see the cop and try to come to a complete stop before it gets pulled over, most people are relatively alert. I have always wondered if just putting dummy police cars out there with nobody in them would solve a lot of the slowing down problems. Sure, that would not get the increased revenue that speeding tickets do, but it might solve the very problem of the speeding issue.

I absolutely hate when speed traps are out in the open in areas that do not really seem like they have many collisions. Those seem to be more like a way to create a highway tax of speeding tickets and increase people’s insurance rates for no reason that truly has an effect on safety.

The legislature should look at putting the police where they are the most necessary and where they can reduce crashes. That would be the simplest way to make things safer for all drivers.