We're Number One...But Not in a Good Way

From the Mission Viejo Dispatch:

The National Motorists Association has named Mission Viejo the worst speed trap city in California with a population under 100,000.  The worst cities nationwide are listed on its sponsored website, which also identifies particular locations in town reported for speed traps accompanied by comments from drivers.

Mission Viejo is a city built on hills. There aren't that many flat sections of road in this town, but lots of fairly steep grades combined with relatively low speed limits. It's speed trap heaven for the cops who love to sit at the bottom of the grades and catch drivers who didn't ride the brakes all the way down the hill. I've never been nabbed, but it really bugs me when I see a cop at the bottom of a long hill pointing his radar gun at me.

Frankly, I think it's kind of...well, it starts with "chicken" and ends with a four-letter word.

If I was on the city council I'd work on requiring the cops to do their speeder fishing elsewhere or else raise the threshold for tickets on a downhill slope to 10 mph over the speed limit.  It's very easy for your car to pick up speed downhill and we don't always notice it because the speed we're driving is not unsafe.  Plus, we don't want to buy new brakes every six months.

If someone's going 10 over the speed limit they should get a ticket.  Below that, if a downhill slope is involved, the driver should get a break (assuming traffic conditions and weather are favorable).  After all, we know that streets are engineered for faster speeds than the posted speed limit.

I'd rather see the cops working some of the dangerous intersections around here where people routinely run red lights.  That poses far more danger to public safety than someone going 8 mph too fast down a long hill.

And for those of you who may be traveling in our fair city, here are a few of the locations where you need to be extra careful:

• Muirlands between La Paz and Alicia
• Rancho Santa Margarita between Melinda and Marguerite Parkway
• Alicia between Jeronimo and Trabuco
• La Paz between Chrisanta and Marguerite Parkway
• Marguerite Parkway between Alicia and Trabuco

Basically, anywhere there's a hill in this town.  There are lots more at the link in the article above.

I think the cops could better spend their time looking for the pervert who spent part of yesterday flashing his shortcomings at local high school girls.