There are two types of enforcement in America – revenue based, and to grease squeaky wheels. My sense is Lincoln has the second kind. America basically doesn't do data-driven enforcement based on accident counts and causes, which is one reason traffic enforcement doesn't affect safety. Police go where residents complain and hang out until residents are reassured that the Select Board really loves them after all.
Hand in hand with greasing the squeaky wheels, avoiding inconvenience to residents is a top priority of a small town police force. I'm sure our police force understands when to patrol to get the maximum fraction of nonresidents and the most visibility to possibly housebound residents. They must have a sense of which types of cars are likely to contain residents. Somebody on the way to my house, not driving a high end car, got stopped. The police officer was thinking "jackpot!", a black non-resident. But she said she was going to see somebody in town. Which would make her almost as good as a white resident. So the officer argued with her about whether she had legitimate business in town even though it was completely irrelevant to whether she should have been pulled over and whether she should get a ticket. (If you are interested in this subject matter, get a copy of _Suspect Citizens: What 20 Million Traffic Stops Tell Us About Policing and Race_.) There are consequences if police in a small town ticket too many residents. Utica, Indiana let go of most of its police force because they didn't understand who should get tickets. There was no suggestion that the tickets were not legitimate. But you just don't DO that. As for the specific speed limit mentioned, it was set in the 1950s for no reason that appears in records. It was not reviewed when the law changed to require a written reason, nor when the standards for setting speed limits changed and changed again. It is just an obsolete relic left by some long dead official in the state DPW. Possibly it was based on what speed through the curve was comfortable in a Ford Model A with bench seats and no seat belts. Formally, this many degrees on a ball bank indicator indicate that many miles per hour. The numbers were based on what was comfortable in a Model A. The ball bank indicator is no longer a legitimate basis for regulatory speed limits, but it lives on in fossil form in a thousand signs from the 1950s and 1960s. This is one reason why speed limits in Massachusetts bounce up and down apparently at random a few times per mile while other states pick a speed limit and stick with it for miles if not tens of miles. John Carr On Wed, Dec 27, 2023 at 7:09 PM Marcus Ruopp <[email protected]> wrote: > > Good evening Lincoln Talk, > > I was hoping to engage the community regarding the speed limit and police > presence on Trapelo Road. We were taking the family today to dinner, and like > many days, there was a police presence taking speed limits by Lexington Road > coming downhill where the speed is difficult to control. We are conscious of > this these days, but my overarching feeling is that they are typically > pulling over Lincoln residents where the risk of accident or untoward event > is quite limited. > > Appreciate any input from the community. > > Happy holidays to all. > > Marcus > > Winter street > Lincoln, MA > -- > The LincolnTalk mailing list. > To post, send mail to [email protected]. > Browse the archives at https://pairlist9.pair.net/mailman/private/lincoln/. > Change your subscription settings at > https://pairlist9.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/lincoln. > -- The LincolnTalk mailing list. To post, send mail to [email protected]. Browse the archives at https://pairlist9.pair.net/mailman/private/lincoln/. Change your subscription settings at https://pairlist9.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/lincoln.
