Today I was on the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles website and saw this press release:
FHP conducted a statewide traffic enforcement initiative over the holiday weekend deemed "Operation CARE" wherein they made the following arrests:
4,548 speeding tickets
1,298 seat belt violations
98 DUI's
I'm not going to talk about the costs on a DUI which are in the thousands, but I just wanted to see if anyone was paying attention to the amount of revenue taken in by the State this weekend. What budget crisis?
Here are the basic State costs of any traffic violation: (there may be more)
• $1.00 for the Child Welfare Training Trust Fund
• $1.00 for the Juvenile Justice Training Trust Fund
• $5.00 for the Circuit's Driver Education Program
• $12.50 administrative fee
• $10.00 assessment fee
So we're at $19.50 before any of the actual fines of the ticket.
A seat belt ticket is $30
A speeding ticket is:
• 6-9mph over the limit: $25
• 10-14mph $100
• 15-19mph $125
• 20-29mph $150
• 30 and above $250
2008->Ch0318->Section%2018#0318.18">Florida Statute 318.18
Let's assume that on average the speeding ticket FHP issued this weekend was for 15-19 mph over the limit which is a $125 ticket plus the $19.50 = $144.50
Multiply $144.50 x 4548 = $657,186.00.
The cost of a seat belt violation is $49.50 x 1,298 which equals = $64,251.00
THIS ENTRY PREVIOUSLY SAID THAT YOU COULD NOT BE STOPPED FOR ONLY A SEAT BELT VIOLATION. AS OF JULY 1, 2009, YOU CAN BE.
So in 3 days FHP made $721,437. Even if only half the people pay the tickets (which I'm assuming is about right since most of the people I talk to have suspended driver's licenses because they "forgot" to pay their speeding tickets) that's a heck of a lot of money for 3 days worth of work. Where does the money go?
