Showing contempt for citizens

Gary Jacobsen
Published: July 21, 2008

“Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote”
— George Jean Nathan

Members of the Board of County Supervisors (BOCS) show contempt for ordinary citizens in a number of ways, but none as egregious as their support for speed traps on county roads.

Whether or not county officials push bureaucrats at the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) to establish sections of roadways that will ultimately become speed traps is determined by political
considerations, not by any concern for the safety of motorists or pedestrians.

There are many speed traps in the county, but I will discuss just one of them to illustrate this point.

The half-mile section of Smoketown Road between Minnieville Road and Rollingwood Drive is a notorious speed trap that has been enforced by as many as three county policemen at the same time (two
on motorcycles, with Chief Charlie Deane supervising). If this seems to you to be an extraordinary waste of police manpower, you are correct. But politics are at the heart of the matter; therefore the
expenditure of resources is irrelevant.

This particular speed trap exists in a roadway that has four lanes divided by a raised center median, no crosswalks, no stop signs, no traffic signals and no homes that face the road. To most people, that
would mean 35 mph, but politicians have pushed for 25 mph because (1) some residents who live on Jacks Drive complained it was difficult for them to make a left turn onto Smoketown Road during rush
hours; and (2) persons who live on Smoketown Road between Rollingwood Drive and Old Bridge Road (Lynwood area) are angry that motorists use Smoketown as a short-cut to get to Lake Ridge. The
theory seems to be that if you repeatedly punish motorists with traffic tickets for driving on this road, fewer persons will take it.

That has not happened, of course. The only thing the speed trap has accomplished is a general contempt for the police, for the politicians who encourage them, and for the highways engineers who
meekly approved an unrealistically low speed limit. The same can be said for a dozen or so other speed traps scattered about the county.

Members of the BOCS refuse to acknowledge even the possibility that most motorists are law-abiding folks. That is, the politicians mandate exceptionally low speed limits in some areas because they
think that drivers do not have enough sense to travel at safe speeds on all roads at all hours of the day. The truth is, however, that most folks do drive safely. They have no desire to create unsafe
conditions, either for themselves or for others with whom they share the road. Accidents sometimes occur, but more often than not they are due to inattention by a driver, not by speeding.

Even VDOT acknowledges, privately, that most people are safe drivers and therefore that speed traps are little more than expensive annoyances for motorists. VDOT usually follows the 85th percentile
rule, which is laid out in the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD). This rule states that the natural flow of traffic on a road should be recorded and the speed limit set within 5 mph of the
speed that 85 percent of the vehicles are traveling.

But don’t expect the speed traps in Prince William County to be eliminated any time soon. The politicians have created them in response to perceived needs by small interest groups, including
homeowners, merchants, environmentalists and others.

Citizens could, of course, vote supervisors out of office, but history has shown they are unlikely to do that. Most people do not bother to vote. Those who do vote prefer the devils they know to the devils
they don’t know. Thus speed traps and other annoyances will be with us forever.

Source: http://www.ite.org/standards/speed_zoning.pdf.

To date, Gary Jacobsen has avoided being snared in a speed trap.