Nevada California Traffic Tickets

Would Nevada drivers be safer with fewer Las Vegas traffic tickets ...

No one disputes that Nevada’s westerly neighbor — the state of California — takes policy innovation to new levels. Depending on your ideological bend and what periods you consider, you can easily make the case either that California policy-making in the last century has been a shining example of democratic governance and innovation or a train-wreck of…democratic governance and innovation. The state has been a leader in laws to regulate industries and protect employee rights but it has also overturned same-sex marriage and shielded property owners from tax increases. Now another instance of California dreaming is making waves: one small city is drastically reducing its issuance of traffic citations .

Thorough readers of our Las Vegas traffic ticket blog will notice that California’s largest city is also in the news as Las Vegas’ SoCal neighbor has ended its red-light camera program . LA drivers pushed back forcefully on the photo-enforcement regime and city officials opted not to continue the program after evidence surfaced that these red-light tickets were only being selectively enforced. Now a city roughly a tenth of the population of Greater LA is giving drivers another reprieve but for very different reasons.

The city of Roseville — just over the Sierra Nevada mountains from the Nevada city of Reno — has cut its issuance of traffic tickets by more than four-fifths even as its city manager claims to be making great strides in promoting public safety. In fact, even as traffic citations have fallen to 16 percent of what they were a year prior, traffic accidents have also fallen by about seven percent. City officials claim that this tandem drop is not a coincidence: police officers have been directed to shift their priorities away from issuing speeding tickets to acting as the eyes and ears of a safety-conscious city administration. Rather than camping all day in speed traps awaiting incautious drivers, police have been directed to spend their time patrolling the city and spotting accident-prone intersections and other areas. These problem spots are reported back to the city for priority repair projects. As for the traffic tickets, they are issued as necessary rather than in response to pressure from police leadership or city revenue concerns. This allows officers to build public trust and voluntary compliance by educating first and punishing second.

California, a history

Traffic, why we drive the way we do (and what it says about us)

Nevada

California, America's High-Stakes Experiment

California