News: Speeding tickets up, along with accidents

Blog Peoria Project blogger B. J. Stone often rails against speeding tickets, saying speeding actually plays a very small roll in accidents compared to driving under the influence and chatting on cell phones. There’s an article out of Clark County, Washington, that tends to back up his assertion.

In Clark County, troopers issued 8,186 speeding tickets in the first half of this year.

Why so many?

“We have more troopers working in Clark County than any of the other counties in the district,” said Capt. Bob Johnson, who also commands troopers in Cowlitz, Lewis, Skamania and Klickitat counties.

Clark County’s larger allocation of troopers is due to traffic volumes, population, calls for service and special problems, Johnson said.

An especially frustrating problem, he said, is that speed-related crashes are increasing in Clark County. For January through November, such crashes on I-5 and I-205 increased from 133 last year to 164 this year. That’s a 23 percent increase.

Does this mean that the increase in ticketing is responsible? Mmmm … not necessarilly. It could be that the increase in traffic is leading to BOTH the increase in tickets AND crashes. Would fewer tickets actually lead to more accidents because more people would speed?