Atlanta Suburb Turns Drivers Into Fuel Pumps
June 18th, 2008 Posted in Fuel, Speed Limits, Traffic Tickets
It’s a ridiculous concept, but somehow it seemed inevitable. Check out this story from USA Today:
The surging price of gasoline has come to this: a “fuel surcharge” on your next speeding ticket.
Drivers caught speeding in this north Atlanta suburb [Holly Springs] soon will have to pay an extra $12 — to cover $4-a-gallon gas costs for the police officers who stop them.
Is your police cruiser running low on fuel? No problem, just pull over someone driving home from work, ticket them, and you’ll have a full tank of gas in no time. It doesn’t matter who you pull over because — thanks to Atlanta’s notoriously under-posted speed limits — everyone is a speeder.
Need to balance your budget? Maybe you should look to Pizza Hut for inspiration:
[Police Chief Ken] Ball says he was seeking ways to maintain patrols despite record high gas prices. “I was hearing that Delta (Air Lines), pizza deliverers, florists were adding fuel charges to their services, and I thought, why not police departments?” he says.
Unfortunately it looks like this isn’t going to be an isolated case. As with any situation where money is available to be taken from citizens, local government is on the case immediately:
Ball says he’s being “inundated” by calls from police chiefs and city managers. “I’ve heard from at least a dozen police chiefs and half a dozen city managers,” he says of the measure passed Monday night. “They want to know how we did it, and could we send them a copy of the ordinance.”
Yikes. For an extra dose of craziness, check out this story on phantom speed bumps.
Other Related Articles
- The Old Man In The Buick — And The Return Of Drive 55?
- Reinstating "55," Are They Crazy?!
- Why Don’t Politicians Care About Transportation Issues?
- The Effect Of A National Speed Limit On Traffic Safety & Fuel Prices
- Georgia City Rakes In $1,136 In Traffic Ticket Fines Per Resident
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NO! Reduce the number of patrols.
But if not, the police should be driving cars like the Prius, not gas guzzling police vehicles (with 4 speed automatics)
That’ll keep me out of the Atlanta area when going to FL from SC
Let me guess, the speeding tickets in the next couple months will double, triple, or maybe expand to tenfold what it was in May!
The next part of the plan is to reward (maybe a trip to Hawaii) the officers who make the most money in a given period.
The next thing we will see that the city is now buying a few hundred assault weapons and maybe a bazooka or two because they need to spend their excess funds before the feds come to take their share.
Yea, we should have seen this comming. Another excuse to raise the price of tickets.
Our city just uses a ticket quota ,click this link and see the paper for yourself
http://www.prentissvoice.com/
Here’s an idea, ride a freaking motorcycle, or drive a GERMAN diesel. You need to arrest someone? Call for a Mercedes sprinter van.
Yes, I hate american cars. Esp. ford flotsam with an anemic V8 which my previous Passat 1.8T had more balls, and doesn’t blow up like a previous incarnation of the pinto.
As usual the government just found a way to make money off the problem and do nothing to solve it. They are parasites that will only put more of a financial burden on the American people.
The campaign for liberty is helping to elect freedom candidates for smaller government at local levels of office all over the country. There are a lot of us who want to stop the incremental police state that is america today.
http://www.campaignforliberty.org