speeding tickets - bogus money making or actual law enforcement

For many (probably most) jurisdictions speeding tickets have become a money maker for the state or local governments. The police in this case are just the collectors for the politicians. As people have begun to oppose taxes and defeat the politicians ability to raise taxes they have tried the back door route of raising money through speeding tickets. A number of Freedom of Information Act types of law suits have uncovered memos and other documents in many state and local governments specifically giving police quotas for issuing tickets. A second reason for the increase in speeding tickets is complaints from neighborhoods about speeding. Here police move in in force and hand out hundreds of tickets a day to temporarily slow people down in that area and placate the complaining neighbors. The police and everyone else then continues to drive above the posted speed limit in the rest of town. The next time you see a police car pass you going with the rest of the traffic (not chasing someone with their lights on or driving like they are speeding to a silent alarm - but just driving like everyone else) check your speedometer and you will probably see that you are at or above the speed limit which means that the police car that just passed you is definately exceeding the speed limit - concern for safety is obviously not their real reason for giving out tickets when they don't pay attention to the speed limits themselves.

if they spent all day pulling over every speeder they wouldn't be able to concentrate on the more severe criminals. Though I agree if a speeder is extreme they must be pulled over, same with aggressive drivers.