A speed trap is a road that has the speed limit set below the safe speed of the road. Local politicians without integrity literally capitalize on this by using law enforcement to ticket drivers that are not endangering anyone. An example of this was Waldo here in Florida. From 1995 to about 2018, it had the dubious distinction of beaing a speed trap, and this ultimately hurt the economic development of the town since motorists avoided it. I know about speeding tickets, since I spent 18 of my 23 years on the highway patrol in traffic, traffic homicide, and supervision of both.
The Florida DOT has enacted several things that are counter to the efficient and safe flow of traffic in our county:
1. The eastern segment of US 90 remains 55 MPH, while in neighboring Madison County it is a proper 60 MPH. There is no significant difference in the two- they are both rural open roads.
2. In 2018, the DOT lowered the speed limit on US 19 north by the city limits from 55 MPH to 45 MPH. This is on a downhill slope, and the public record data I received showed the average speed through there was over 57 MPH. There were only 10 crashes in the prior 5 years, and none were caused by speeding. The beginning of this slope is now 35 MPH, see below. This is a recipe for drivers to unintentionally speed.
3. Again on east US 90, the DOT reduced the number of lanes from 4 to 2, instead adding bike lanes and a center turn lane. The fact was and is there is a lot more motor vehicle traffic through there than bicycle traffic, and the bike lanes run out when the road goes to two lanes. In so doing the DOT also reduced the speed limit from 45 MPH to 35 MPH on this segment.The latest impairment to traffic flow is again on north 19, where the DOT has reduced the southern portion of the 45 MPH zone to 35 MPH. This is a 4 lane highway- for now. As with the prior reduction, I requested speed and crash data. If in fact there have been a number of crashes caused by speeding in this area, that would be a justification for the reduction. According to the partial data I received, just like the 2018 reduction, there were none in both 2021 and 2022. The speed surveys for this area were omitted from the request for some reason. The sole justification was that there was on-street parking (this same reason was used for the 55 to 45 reduction noted above). An interesting footnote here is the DOT in the 2018 reduction never installed 55 MPH signs on the southbound side until this 35 MPH reduction, so traffic for the past 4 years was able to go 65 MPH all the way to the 45 zone. Despite this risk, there were no speed-caused crashes in that area.
The kicker here was that this change was made at the request of the city council. I urge Chief Mosley to avoid turning this safe stretch of roadway into another Waldo situation.
Unfortunately, this is not the first time the DOT has worked against traffic safety. In 2013, the agency made a change to the Traffic Engineering Manual (TEM) that allowed cities to revise timing of yellow and red lights and use cameras to maximize profit while minimizing safety. Once this was exposed by the National Motorists Association, the manual was revised to allow longer signal timing.
Paul Henry