Originally Posted by
mschwett
there are some jurisdictions in the Bay Area which are famous for citing cyclists, notably a couple in Marin county which have officers specifically dedicated to stop sign violations because of “resident complaints.”
I have not heard that San Mateo was one of them, but I’d think it more likely that they got some complaints and decided to make an example of some people than that they are imagining this as a serious funding stream.
I'm a resident and my 2 mph slow roll has never been a problem for any car or cop in >10 years. We have some weak evidence that city politicians and police are trying to raise more money and maybe 3 anecdotes of BS fines but proving a new increase without a large amount of retrospective data is difficult in real time unless we can get hard evidence of explicit citation quotas like in NYC. I still think it's suspicious that the police were asking for donations at the same time as I'm getting a ticket for BS that was never enforced before. The things I have concluded for myself: 1. The cop is a ************* regardless of whether the city is practicing taxation by citation. 2. More importantly, the fact that a nominally $50 fine ends up costing $300 -- that $250 difference doesn't have anything to do with safety, it's politicians funding completely unrelated things and the court system shaking down citizens to feed itself