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Originally Posted by jar_e
I mean if you want traffic laws to be black and white, enjoy getting a dozen tickets every time you're pulled over. I can guarantee between Vehicle Equipment Regs/Municipal Bylaws/TSA that every time you're pulled over, there's a multitude of things that could be enforced and ticketed.
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You certainly could not guarantee that and I think you probably know that.
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Unfortunately (or fortunately), policing still involves actual humans making decisions who have varying thresholds for what they will enforce or not enforce in any given time, especially when it comes to traffic. If I pulled everyone over for every traffic offence I witnessed, I wouldn't make it five blocks away from my office all shift.
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Do you think if the police committed to stopping everyone who speeds that we would see more or less people speeding? If your answer is less, then that should tell you there’s a problem with discretion.
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I'm not sure the majority of public would be looking at a binary "you broke this traffic rule and now you're getting a ticket with no thought or context" concept. And furthermore, just cause you received a break, you can still fight the ticket and get disclosure (notes, body worn, in car, etc).
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Context? The law is if you’re going X over the speed limit you get a ticket with a fixed fine. A person fighting a ticket isn’t going to be able to get the disclosures for all the cases where someone else got a better deal than they did for the exact same offence.
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A great example of this is pulling some over for no sticker/unregistered plates. Now they produce an expired insurance card or can't find it on their phone. Is this worthy of $500 in tickets plus towing it because they were a week late in registering their plate? I sure don't think that's reasonable and would never write both.
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But the problem is another officer might not be as lenient. So why does one person deserve a warning and the other the fines/towing when they both did the same thing?
If the laws are unfair then we should change the laws and/or penalties, not leave it up to police officers to arbitrarily determine the outcome.