Leave The Moms Alone!

I kid you not, the morning after I wrote my "Road Kill Of Another Kind" post, I was taking my daughter to school and saw not one officer pulling over a mom in a minivan, but THREE . . . all at the same time, right there in front of the middle school.

It looked like a sting operation!

I understand the profit motive, the explanation that Jouda touched on, that the recession is stretching everyone's budget, including the city's. But why squeeze it out of moms? In many cases, we're the keepers of the family till, and these days, the till is pretty empty. As moms trying to battle through a recession and climbing unemployment rates, we do our best to make sure that there's enough money for three meals a day for the entire family, gas in the car, heat and electricity, and maybe an occasional Happy Meal. I assure you that we don't have the funds to be paying $250 traffic tickets for going just a few miles over the speed limit.

Can't the city make money in another, more humane way? Oh, I don't know, like cutting down on the number of traffic cops patrolling in front of a middle school?

Road Kill Of Another Kind

Speaking of road kill . . . I have discovered that I am living under martial law in my new town. Cops are EVERYWHERE! Especially everywhere where you don't want them to be, like parked surreptitiously behind trees in the morning when you're driving your kids to school and need to break a few rules of the road to get them to class on time.

I fired off this picture last week. When I first saw this traffic cop, I was in the right lane, coming from the other direction, and when I made the turn, he startled me because there he was all of a sudden, off his bike and hiding behind a tree with his radar gun.

Isn't that entrapment or something?

What I'm ticked about is that these cops are going after moms in mini vans who are maybe driving a few miles over the speed limit. Big whoop! It's not like anyone is really speeding because there are so many cars going to the same place, the same school, there's no room to go very fast. Simple physics.

About a month ago, I was ticketed on this very street for driving only five miles over the limit. FIVE MILES! Down in Orange County, you were driving too SLOWLY if you were driving only five miles over the speed limit.

This highly patrolled, small town is going to take some getting used to for this former Southern Californian who was used to breaking traffic laws and getting away with it.

Here's another shot of the Enforcer. Looks like he's going to fire on me with a real gun for taking this picture, doesn't it?