As reported by ridelust.com, Police in Michigan have conceded that speeding tickets are actually about money, not safety. While I’ve been saying as much for a while, it is certainly more poignant coming straight fromt the horses mouth:

“I’ve spent eight years in traffic services, and I was a crash reconstructionist for five years before that,” Michigan State Police Lieutenant Gary Megge told the News. “So I’ve seen my share of fatal wrecks, and I can tell you: Deaths are not caused by speeding. They’re caused by drinking, drugs and inattentiveness. The old adage that speed kills just isn’t realistic. The safest speed is the speed that is correct for that roadway at a given time. A lot of speed limits are set artificially low.”

So if speed enforcement doesn’t make us safer, why are the police constantly writing speeding tickets? It’s about the money, obviously. All local governments, from towns right up to the state, can get a piece of each of the money paid by every speeding ticket issued. It is, for all intents and purposes, simply a tax. It is a tax that politicians need not take any flack for, and which they can actually spin as a public safety necessity. Not a bad racket at all.

But the most obnoxious part about speeding tickets is not the money. Yes, every speeding ticket can cost you thousands of dollars by the time you have paid the citation and the accompanying insurance surcharges that go along with it. The worst part is that as speeding tickets add up, your license can be suspended. Yes, you usually have to be driving so obnoxiously so often that you actually tally up enough tickets to affect your license, but as the system works, you are in jeopardy virtually every time you go on the highway.