466A Speed Trap
 

I though I would bring this up again.

Watch your speed on 466A. I have been here a week and have traveled both east and west on 466A between Fruitland Park and Wildwood over a dozen times each way. On every trip I have seen the police having someone pulled over and writing a ticket.

One day I was going 40 (speed limit is 45 in that section) and a guy passed me. He was not going fast and I would be totally surprised if it was more that 10 mph faster than me. The cop came out of nowhere and pulled him over. He did nothing to attract the attention of the police.

On another day the police had two cars pulled over in Fruitland Park near the school. This was after school hours and the speed limit there was 35.

I've also noticed the heavy police presence on 466A. Have they nothing better to do? The posted speed limit changes about 10 times, so you have to be careful.
On 466A westbound, about halfway between 441 and TV, one motorcycle cop "hides in plain sight". He positions himself directly in front of two advertising signs & its impossible to see him until you're almost on top of him. After passing him, I blink my headlights to warn oncoming trafic of his presence. Makes me feel like a real rebel !!!

When we were down for a few weeks in October, guess what? We were one of those cars pulled over to the side in Fruitland Park. We were going 33 mph in a school zone. We had no idea we were even in one. The distance is very short. What was surprising to us, was that the officer had a car pulled over; he left that car and came after us. The car in front of us was going even faster than we were. We wondered if it was our CT plates. We were the lucky recipients of a $209 ticket. He said that we really should be getting a $400 ticket because it was a school zone, but he was going to be a 'fair' guy. We knew just by his demeanor not to even argue with him. We just politely took the ticket and crawled our way home. They must make a MINT off us unsuspecting Villagers. I've since heard that they give no warnings, just tickets. Lesson learned! Newbies beware.

The more ticketing the better!!!
 

The more speed traps the better.
If they are not investigating a crime they should be nailing speeders in TV.
In a retirement community what is the hurry? Gotta get to yer t time? Geritol? Home to take a nap?
I wish FL had citizen's arrest, but they do not. I would be turning in and happy to witness in court for the rediculous things the old farts do here behind the wheel.
Yes it is FL friendliest home town unless they are behind the wheel...cars and golf carts.....
It is the few that are to blame and I support ticketing as many of them as can be caught!

btk

What's the best way to avoid getting a speeding ticket? :police:

Hmmm, lemme think.....

Geritol??? ya got me on this one....GN

Do they still make Geritol?

I wonder if only those of us of a certain age remember it?

The best way to avoid a speeding ticket??

Up north, the county sheriffs were elected officials and had campaign funds. If you contributed more than a minimal amount or bought tickets to a fund raising affair, you received a plackard or wallet card that indicated that you were a "friend" of law enforcement. If you were stopped, you gave the card to the officer along with your license. He would give you a warning and send you on your way with no ticket. Down here, I don't know, maybe its the same.
Personally, I'll make a small donation to a few of the police outfits that call you looking for money. They'll usually give you a window decal for your car. Of course, I don't speed, so I don't know how effective they are in avoiding tickets.

There is a fool proof way aside from bribes

The VERY best way to avoid a ticket
 

The very best way to avoid a speeding ticket is to be a cop or related to one. The officer stopping you for speeding will always extend "professional courtesy" to another officer or a close relative of one. The courtesy sometimes extends to more serious violations like dwi/dui, if conditions permit. Some will deny this, but the practice is common and widespread, at least "up north".

There is an even better way to avoid receiving a speeding ticket.

I got passed by another golf cart today on the bridge over Lake Sumter (posted 10 mph). Seems like a $200 ticket would be fitting for that fellow.

The ABSOLUTE best way to avoid a ticket
 

Yeah, I know, don't speed and you won't get a ticket. But with the ticket writing frenzy going on around here, you never know. I've heard that some towns rely on the ticket revenue for their financial existence. The money grubbing towns are almost as bad as the doctors.

The one sure way not to get a speeding ticket is to not speed. No brainer. Use cruise control if you have it and if it helps and youre comfortable with it. Even if speeding tickets are a big source of income for these towns.

Just need to watch your speed... 466a is patrolled alot between SCSO and FHP and Fruitland Park Police. I talked with Chief Isom of Fruitland Park. He said he gets complaints all day about speeders on that road. Then when they start ticketing the people, they gets complaints of speed traps.
If the speed limit is 45 do 45. if it is 35 do 35. speed limit on 466a is 45 and 35. those are the only 2 changes to it except into school zones.
Talked to Deputy that works that Charter School on 466. They stopped 2 speeders their last week, going 55 and 62 in the school zone with the caution lights flashing. He said both cases neither driver knew they were in a school zone. Go figure..

Bottom line, dont do the deed if you dont want to pay up!!!

don't drive Rhen no speeding ticket

I am also in favor of giving them tickets. Too many cars are speeding at his time of year.
I also think that people who warn other cars by flashing the car lights are not using sense. If you pay attention and drive the speed limit, use your turn signals and not be an agressive driver then you will not be pulled over and given a ticket!:police:
How many times have you seen cars passing on hills, no passing zones and double yellow lines around here?....lots!:mad:
When cars are pulled over the officer might find a fugitive, narcotics,etc.
So flash your:censored: lights to warn people breaking the law and let them slow down before speeding again.....NOT
Driving for 45 years, cars, motorcycles, commercial vehicles,hazmat vehicles and never had a ticket.........wonder why?

I did get pulled over in a school zone in 1992 for going 10 over. It was the same officer that was my teacher for mph radar certification!
didn't get a ticket (yes I was in uniform in my own car) but he chewed me out big time! Yes people make mistakes and most officers will take things in consideration if you have a decent attitude with them.
During the time I was a patrol sgt. I issued several thousand tickets. At least half were warnings.

I usually get into more trouble than it's worth when I try to explain this, but here goes again.

On the matter of a town, county or state using speeding tickets to generate revenue:

Here's the way that works. When a town council, county legislature or state government is preparing its budget, it looks at the revenue that was generated "last year" from court imposed fines in their jurisdiction. They then must consider that as a revenue stream, just like license fees and tax revenue. Its real money that was generated. It is put into the budget for next year as a real source of revenue to run the jurisdiction They never tell cops, "hey guys, you gotta hand out 2-million dollars worth of tickets." It's expected that "on average" a certain percentage of people will get caught breaking the speeding laws.

Now, do cops have a quota they must meet on tickets? Well, you can answer that yourself. Let's say you have 20 police on your force and part of their job is to enforce traffic violations. 10 cops write an average of 50 tickets per month. (that's a little over 1 a day). 5 officers hand out 60+ per month. (more aggresive) 3 write 40 tickets per month. But, two of them only write 3 tickets a month.

You say to those two, "hey guys, what are you doing while on duty? The other guys are outproducing you by 300%"

Now, if you tell them to start doing their job like everybody else have you established a quota.

If you own a widget factory and everybody makes 60 widgets except for two guys who make only 2, they are out the door, right?

Let's say for a moment that there is a quota. What that would really mean is that the police are told to catch as many law breakers as possible. In a ticket quota system, they would never be told to give tickets to people who are "NOT SPEEDING." Isn't that want we want, for them to catch law breakers.

One final question.....................................If a speed limit is 45 miles per hour and somebody is driving 55 miles per hour in that zone and a police officer sees them, what should that officer do:

1. pretend he didn't see them
2. give them a ticket

The so named "money grubbing" are ticketing those who
 

break the law. They are not money grubbing. They are taking advantage of a revenue opportunity that some inconsiderate drivers are providing by speeding.
Do you notice hoe everybody slows down in those towns with a reputation for speed traps. Proves the concept works....eh?
Since when is it a negative when an action taken by the police promotes adherance to the law.

More cops....more tickets....TV has way too many who drive recklessly and too fast....go get em Dano!!!!!!!!

btk

There's those pesky widgets again!!

"Not speeding" is no guarantee of not getting a ticket - not when radar is treated as infallible but, yet, it IS quite fallible.

If reasonable speed laws were posted, this wouldn't be a problem.

Here in NH, we had a big project (Nashua's "Exit 2" as part of the US-3 widening through town) that built an extra bridge across the Merrimack River between Nashua and where I live in Hudson. Previously, it was a 1-mile or so 2-lane bridge that ended at "T" intersections on either side with traffic lights because each end was a connection to a major road (the Daniel Webster Highway in Nashua, and NH-3A in Hudson).

After the project, there were TWO THREE-lane bridges (one for each direction) with a much larger intersection (with dedicated turning lanes) in Hudson at NH-3A and onn/off ramps for the DW Highway in Nashua - and the "bridge" continued on to join up with a huge new "Exit 2" on "the turnpike" (US-3).

Speed limit for 2-lane secondary road: 55MPH

Speed limit for 6-lane expressway: 45MPH

And in D.C., which I drove through this past July and August.. Speed limit for I-395, 6-lane expressway with no traffic on a Saturday morning: 45MPH (I got a ticket via photo radar for doing 56MPH)

Isn't that 11 miles per hour over the legal limit?

Just flash "your tin" and drive away smiling for the rest of us keep at the speed limit and pray.:police:

Yes - but my point was that it was a *45* zone - 6-lane, limited access FREEWAY going dead-straight (no twisting curves like I-89 in the Vermont Green Mountains).

What COULD have been a 65 zone, but being generous and saying it SHOULD have been 55 since it IS more of an urban area, was marked as *45*.

Do I get your point that the speed limit was set at 45 in order to generate speeding tickets rather than being based on some traffic safety study. I find it odd that a city the size of Washington would deliberately bollix up normal traffic flow by instituting a lower speed limit just to give tickets. I would rather believe that a safety study showed that 45 was the proper limit.

But then, I may be wrong, they may have done it to generate revenue from speeding fines. I'll bet they have a hay-day on weekdays.

They got you on video doing 11 mph over the limit. Sounds to me you were speeding and got caught. If the sign says 45, do 45.

Could not agree more!!!!!

So you'd be ok if they slapped a 5MPH speed limit on a road near you, made the sign hard to see (the spot the got me was literally right after the freeway "started") and then nail you for going 16MPH on a road clearly made for higher speeds?

Oh - and from what former D.C.-area residents have told me, they only actually issue the tickets to out-of-state plates when they review the data becaues people from the metro area can easily fight the ticket BECAUSE of the lack of marking. For me, being from NH, it's not exactly easy to go 500+ miles to fight a $50 ticket.

While I'm generally a supporter of the police, I'm not blind in that support. Especially when things happen like how a cop pulled me over for screeching my tires for a fraction of a second - brand new car more powerful than anything I'd had and I let the clutch out a little too fast. I'd had this car for less than 48 hours after driving an econobox for years. He cited me for "Creating an environmental disturbance: Noise".

...AT BOSTON'S LOGAN AIRPORT.

I fought that ticket and won. If I lived in MD or VA I would have fought the speeding ticket. It's not like I'm some demon on wheels. The last time I'd gotten a ticket of any kind before this was either 19 or 20 years ago.

Part of the responsibility of having a driver's license and operating a motor vehicle is obeying the rules of the road. If you drove for 19 or 20 years without a ticket you must agree with that or have been extremely lucky. You said that on the Saturday morning there was no traffic. Did you expect them to run out and change the signs and speed limit to 65 for your convenience? Try driving that road at 4:00 pm on a weekday. Accept the fact that you were caught speeding, pay the fine, and move on.

BTW - I'm sure many roadways were designed for a certain speed but speed limits are set lower due to traffic flow, growth in the area, number of accidents, new traffic lights, new intersecting roadways, and countless other factors that may save your life someday.

This thread was started about the 466A speed trap. Cops hide all over the place and swoop down from out of nowhere on poor souls exceeding the speed limit by 5 or 7 mph on the open road. Is it a major drug corridor or something??
Do the drivers on Route 441 have immunity of some kind? I'm on 441 every day around there (between Lady Lake and Leesburg) and I have NEVER seen a car pulled over. No evidence of police presence. Cars, trucks, etc speed all the time and the police don't seem to care at all. Today I was doing 43mph in a 45mph zone and a guy in a pickup truck passed me like I was standing still & just kept going. Its much more dangerous than 466A because of the high volume, mixed traffic, etc. As some people say, where are the police when you need them?? At Dunkin' Donuts maybe??

I accepted the fact that I was ticketed. I paid my fine within a couple of days of getting the notice in the mail. The one thing I *will* say in favor of D.C. is that they made it easy for me to pay over the web and I didn't have to wonder if a mailed check got lost en-route.

And, yes, conditions changing over the years can have an impact on speed limits.

In a perfect world, that would be ALL that would affect it.

Any good cop will admit that there are what's called "cherry patches". These are places where cops who are a little too far under their quota (you usually want to be right around or a little above the average but you don't want to be knows as "the hot pencil") can easily pull over a few violators.

Like the example I used earlier - widening roads and eliminating traffic lights isn't usually a reason to lower a speed limit - especially when it's changing from a secondary road to a limited-access highway (expressway or freeway depending on your area of the country).

Why do you think red light cameras are approved when studies show that they INCREASE accidents? The vendors (who get a kickback) make all sorts of bogus claims about safety when, in fact, lengthening yellow lights has been proven to reduce accidents. Putting in a red light camera means more people slamming on their brakes at the intersection for fear of a ticket causing more rear-end collisions.

It's all about the money in THOSE cases.

Every time there's an accident, it seems that someone wants to pass a new law to prevent future occurances. Sometimes that's a good thing becuase of changing technology (like texting while driving - didn't need a law against that in 1970 but apparently today's "distracted driving" or "driving to endanger" statutes don't cover it). But we ignore what is a factor in OVER HALF the accidents in this country - alcohol. The double-standard used to be worse than it is today. I hate drunk drivers as one nearly killed my ex-wife, a friend and the friend's baby while destroying my car. But think about what the laws would be like if we went after drunk drivers the way people want to go after text-messagers.

You might need glasses, Fruitland Park makes a killing on 441. They had 4 of them pulled over lastnight by Phillips Pontiac.

Can we get your plate # to pass on to the police. Can't wait to hear your explanation when doing 35 MPH in fruitland park when the sign reads school zone when flashing and schools out. Your driving 25 and get a
$400.00 ticket. Then lets hear your comments. This thread talks about 466A speed traps and not the villages in general. Yes the drivers in TV need to slow down, but we need to stay on this threads point.

I cant belive people are still whining about this. Follow the speed limit, no ticket. Simple as that. You dont like the speed limit, find some way to protest it and I dont mean by speeding. If no way to protest, then just obey the speed limit. Youre not forced to like it, only to obey it. The speed limit is there for a reason that I may not understand cause Im not a civil engineer but thats the way it is. End of story.

Not always true:
I was cruising along one evening in a 40 mph zone. I was doing between 35-38 mph. A car pulls up on my bumper, then passed on a double yellow line. A few seconds later another vehicle appeared in my mirror, lights flashing. I slowed down further, then pulled off and stopped for the officer to pass. Instead, he pulled up behind me and wrote me a ticket for doing 55 mph. Said I had been going faster than that, but he was writing me for a slower speed as a favor, whatever that means. I told him I knew how fast I was going and it was no where near 55, or 45, or even 40 mph. Not surprisingly, he wasn't impressed.
I pleaded Not Guilty and appeared before the judge with the P.O. present and explained my case. After discussion and questioning by the judge, the officer admitted he'd lost sight of the vehicle he'd clocked at excessive speed and could have been mistaken. The ticket was dismissed.

Thanks for sharing your experience with us. It sounds like the officer was doing his job but erred. At that point you could have argued more forcibly but that would only have exacerbated the situation. I would like to think all judges were as willing to listen to your case as this one. Justice prevailed!
My only ticket was also successfully argued in my favor before a judge. I was in a strange (to me) city (Spokane, WA.) in a rental car moving with the traffic albeit over the speed limit. I was able to get my case before a court that same day. As I sat waiting for my case to come up I was able to observe the judge. He was no softy but seemed fair. When he heard my circumstances he waived the fine and costs.
I think the arresting officer selected me as I was driving a rental car. However, based on the cooperation of the prosecutor's office getting my case heard that day and the fairness of the judge, I have positive feelings about Spokane.

Would a review of Florida Law have any bearing on this issue?
Florida statue 316.610 reads:

For speed exceeding the limit by:
Fine:

1-5 m.p.h ............ Warning
6-9 m.p.h ............ $25
10-14 m.p.h ............ $100
15-19 m.p.h ............ $150
20-29 m.p.h ............ $175
30 m.p.h. and above ............ $250

I find this a very interesting statistic. I've never heard of this before, and would like to do some follow-up research. Can you please provide a source for this statement?

Certainly. I had a hard time believing it myself. You can find some interesting information at a website that, while probably slanted, has the sources. From:

http://blog.motorists.org/red-light-...that-prove-it/

They quote several studies on that page.

From a 1995 Australian study:

From a 2007 Virginia study:

There are also quotes from a 2001 study commissioned by then US House of Representatives majorioty leader Dick Armey, a 2004 N.C Agr & Tech University study and a 2003 study from the Ontario (Canada) Ministry of Transportation.

In addition to the quotes, there are links so that you can download the entire study in each case.