Reader question:
My car insurance rates are going because I got caught in a speed trap and ticketed. How do I avoid that?
Vicky
Great question.
Those speed traps are tricky, aren’t they? I have one near my house that I will avoid by going an even longer way around, just because it annoys me to go so slow. It’s on a well used road, and there are no houses, schools, or churches around for it to make any sense for there to be that short little area right there where the speed limit is fifteen miles an hour. A lot of drivers just zip through it without noticing. I haven’t seen anybody get caught for this yet, but I’m sure it happens often, because that spot is the definition of a speed trap. It doesn’t seem very fair, but so it is.
However, the best advice I can offer you is to slow down. It might help you, though, if you know the way officers catch you when you’re speeding. In the pasts they carried radars which detected how fast a car was going, but now many departments are upgrading to laser based technology that can’t be detected by devices that many people have called cop detectors.
Another way is the aerial method, where an officer in a helicopter will time how long it takes for a car to get from point A and point B and use this to determine how fast they were going. They then cal ahead to the officer who’s hiding a few miles down the road and identify the car for him so that he can pull out and put on the sirens.
Then, of course, there are the more blatant big signs equipped with radars that sit on the side of the road and flash the speed your going at you.
Some people think that speed traps are put up in order to raise more money with tickets. It’s true that tickets add more money to the state and city’s bank accounts, but they’re really there to add the fear factor and encourage people to slow down. So, if you don’t want to see your car insurance rates go up, keep your foot off the pedal.
Cheers,
Fashun Guadarrama.