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AZ Trying to Lower Speeding Fines

3K views 27 replies 7 participants last post by  AZ_HighCountry 
#1 ·
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#2 ·
The criminal offense for going more than 20 miles over the limit is the real bugger. If you get one in Arizona, you must go to court and appear before a judge. You cannot skate around it by going to traffic school. Get one of those and you could easily see your insurance rates triple.

I think most people end up going to traffic school for minor offenses. That can cost $200, but the offense does not show on your public record that the insurance companies can access.

Steve, I know you are new to Arizona. You can go to traffic school up to once per year to avoid the boost in insurance rates if you get a ticket. The police will still see the violation, but the insurance company robbers will not.
 
#6 ·
Yeah did traffic school several times in CA so familiar with the process. The wife and I even once spent a romantic Saturday attending traffic school together.

Though now that we moved and are doing almost zero travel and when we do, since there is so little traffic and the likelihood of a traffic holdup is pretty much nil I no longer feel the need to hurry like I did in CA. Where some travel was measured in hours per mile instead of miles per hour.
 
#3 ·
Going to take the contrarian view here. Jack the fines up. DPS has had the option for a long time of how they wrote the ticket. If you were being polite and courteous and all that you usually got a "wasting a finite resource" citation. Acting like a douchebag was a guarantee you weren't. I still spend enough time in PHX that I can tell you that speed limit signs on the urban freeways are a suggestion. Morning traffic reports on local stations even report the average speed.....coming down the Black Canyon in the 55MPH section.....67MPH.

When I'm going down to the valley there is a section from Sunset Point to Black Canyon City that is flagged as 65MPH....it is a safety corridor......people blow past the radar alert stations at 80+.

Jack the fines and get more officers in the safety corridors. AZ pays higher insurance rates as it is because of the high number of uninsured / under-insured as well as all of the accidents. Back in the days when I was a construction engineer DPS would put an extra trooper in our construction zones. They had a field day.
 
#7 ·
I know the spot you mean! That first downhill past Sunset Point going to the back side of the Bradshaws has an advisory speed of 60. It isn't there for decoration:eek: Some people have learned that the hard way. My big truck has an eleventeen speed transmission on the back of the Cummins and holds sixty in cruise without the exhaust brake. My little Ford being older, I have to do it manually. 87's worse but the big truck doesn't care LOL.

I agree. Jack the fines and use more minimum marked vehicles. DPS has the shades of grey, county is issuing them too but mostly, those poor guys are too busy shagging calls to do much traffic. I don't think I've ever seen PPD out doing traffic. The guys I know are all just going call to call and there aren't enough motors to really make a dent. On the way back from the tax guy couple weeks ago I saw DPS in an unmarked red Mustang with his ticketbook out LOL. Oops, I mean ticketPAD.:D:
 
#4 ·
I don't know what the legislature is trying to do here but this is what cracks me up; the old "waste of finite resources" ticket was a federal thing thirty years ago. Remember they marked the spedometers with a circle around 55MPH? Or maybe not, LOL. If states didn't lower the speed limit to 55, to save fuel and all, they lost their federal funding. I'm thinking the finite resources ticket was $45 but it was cheaper than a speeding ticket under 701A. When that law went away, so did the waste of finite resources ticket.

That's all people do around here is speed-speed-speed. Just like Gillie Wallace LOL. Ain't nobody follows them speed laws and a lot of cops I know don't start writing until 15 over. I don't remember the last time I hung a 20+ on someone, got dinged in court once because I put 10+ for the speed and left it at that. Gave a guy a break and he still took it to court. That all came out in court and it wasn't my fault he also really irritated the judge with his BS. Guess who got the full fine? LOL.
 
#5 ·
I don't remember the last time I hung a 20+ on someone, got dinged in court once because I put 10+ for the speed and left it at that. Gave a guy a break and he still took it to court. That all came out in court and it wasn't my fault he also really irritated the judge with his BS. Guess who got the full fine? LOL.
As I said above, act like a douchebag and see how that turns out for ya'. Heard more than a few stories from my DPS buddies about the douchebags they have to deal with.
 
#11 ·
Whether you agree with them or not, speed limits are not a suggestion. Drive at your own risk.

Winslow story....years ago I had to stop at the Post Office there. There was a block wall on the back side of the parking lot. I'm walking away from my truck and hear a thud on the hood. Beer bottle falls to the ground. Walk around the corner; a couple Indians were getting drunk and tossing the empties over into the Post Office parking lot.
 
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#12 ·
That's Winslow! I know a couple of guys who used to be cops there. They quit because they said they spent their lives dealing with drunks.

And the 1 or 2 mph over the speed limit tickets were all done by the same cop, who was mad at the people I worked with because his wife left him for someone who worked with me, so he took it out on everybody there. It used to be a cute little town way back when, now it's a crime ridden place to avoid. I moved out of there.
 
#20 ·
Dude, you're starting to wander. The 55mph limit on the interstates way back when was federally mandated. On that one I'll agree; the energy crisis at the time caused a political move. I don't know how much input the FHWA had on that. I am sure some. Was it a good idea? Don't know, don't care. That was 40 some years ago when it was enacted. In 1987, AZ raised it to 65. Now on the rural interstates it is 75. People drive 85+.

BTW, I-17 from Black Canyon City to Sunset Point it is 65MPH for vehicles, 55MPH for semis.
 
#23 ·
Not wandering at all and this conversation is NOT AZ specific The Interstates were designed and built for higher speeds and it was politicians that lowered them from what the engineers spec'ed.

I simply used the speed limit disparity between CA on one side and AZ on the other to highlight that. That crossing an imaginary line somehow made it safer or more dangerous on one side then the other on the exact same road.

I believe the Black Cyn-Sunset portion is a downhill section right? So in that case it makes sense that speeds would be lowered by traffic engineers to account for that.
 
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