Do you want to drive on safe highways?

To All Taxpaying Drivers and All Pennsylvania Media:

Contact your Representative and Senator and tell them how unpopular speed cameras and RADAR are, and urge them to VOTE NO on SPEED TRAP BILL SB 172 and SPEED TRAP BILL SB 251.

Do you want to drive on safe highways? Do you want to end traffic enforcement for profit? Do you want to end the practice of turning the average driver into a cash cow in a 4-wheel ATM?

Then tell the Legislature to VOTE NO on SPEED TRAP BILL SB 172, authorizing speed cameras in work zones and on Roosevelt Boulevard in Philadelphia; and VOTE NO on SPEED TRAP BILL SB 251, giving municipal police RADAR and LIDAR.

Hard facts and statistics govern true highway safety, yet urban legend and outright lies are being used to sell speed cameras and RADAR. There is no epidemic of speeders running amok on the streets. Even PennDOT says that Pennsylvania’s roads are the safest they have ever been.

Speed cameras and RADAR exist ONLY to raise revenue: They are NOT for safety. The camera companies and RADAR gun makers want to sell their product, insurance companies want the policy surcharges that tickets will generate, and government wants the flood of money cameras and RADAR guns will steal from safe drivers. The special interests donate generously to the politicians so they will pass harmful laws like SPEED TRAP BILL SB 172 and SPEED TRAP BILL SB 251, and some seem all too glad to oblige, in spite of the facts. Legislators, are you listening?

Work zone accidents are primary caused by the workers themselves, not by “speeding” cars. Speed cameras will unfairly tax motorists. And, if speed cameras are enacted as a “pilot” project, they will soon spread to every road in Pennsylvania, like a cancer.

On Roosevelt Boulevard, traffic could be tamed by synchronizing the traffic lights to a reasonable speed, and pedestrian accidents ended by putting the crosswalks underground. Why won’t Philadelphia officials do these things? Because there is no money in it.

Local police do not need more speed trap tools: speed limits in Pennsylvania are posted 8 to 16 miles per hour below the safest speed 90% of the time, on purpose-to make it easy to write “speeding” tickets! We need to set all speed limits at the 85th Percentile Speed, the safest speed, for safer roads. Not put up ticket cameras.

A Plea to All Pennsylvania Senators and Representatives: make the roads safer for your family and mine: VOTE NO on SPEED TRAP BILL SB 172 and SPED TRAP BILL SB 251. Remember, this IS an election year. Thank you.

Sincerely,
Tom McCarey Member, National Motorists Association
The opinions expressed in this letter belong to the author and do not necessarily represent those of the NMA or the NMA Foundation