While there are outliers where ticket revenue is a primary source of income, a small town in Texas comes to mind, tickets are more about reminding “the people” that we live in a society where driving is a privilege. As a society governed by law, we have very specific rules that all licensed drivers have already agreed to abide by when they initially asked for the privilege of driving. Break those laws and “the people” of the state ask for you to receive a little pain in the form of financial compensation for your errant ways.
As Mark said, unless the error is egregious, some people receive a verbal warning rather than a citation. Sometimes laws may be broken for extenuating circumstances, “I was speeding because my wife is in labor and we were rushing to the hospital.”
Imagine a world where we suddenly stopped giving tickets. On Monday everyone is doing 5 MPH over the speed limit as they pass a Highway Patrol vehicle parked on the side, and nobody is ticketed. On Tuesday, these same people push it a bit further, curious about just how much extra speed they can get away with. By Wednesday, this speed has increased incrementally. By Friday, nearly everyone is doing 80 MPH and still, there is no reaction from the cruiser. Over the weekend there is speculation about no more speeding tickets, so bright and early Monday, most traffic is approaching 100 MPH. Now extrapolate this out to a month or more and you have each car going as fast as it absolutely can. Some junkers hang out over to the right because 80 MPH is hard enough, while Teslas and sports cars are doing 165 MPH in the #1 lane…then someone gets a blowout.
Yes, it’s doubtful there wouldn’t be an incident for a month, but you get the picture. No more tickets…then Billy Bob in his raised F350 with the monster truck tires ain’t gonna worry about those commie traffic lights either. We would rapidly descend into mayhem, with no one being able to drive anywhere. It’s a slippery slope thing.
Because you can not be sure if you will or will not receive a citation with its associated fines and potentially higher insurance rates, we all drive with a minimum level of civility.
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Hope this helps
