need to put heavy penalties on the offenders” (3-3-5). By doing this, the states can show the their drivers that road rage is a serious crime and should be dealt with as such. New laws are constantly being added to our judicial system to protect our drivers and keep them as safe as possible. Laws and regulations such as limiting speed zones and areas are being added to “the book” everyday. The newest addition of law enforcement on the roads is photo-radar, or speed traps. The purpose of these speed traps are to control traffic from the obvious, speeding. A photo-radar vehicle is typically a van of some make with two ordinary looking cameras mounted on its side. When a driver passes one of these vehicles and has accelerated typically eleven miles an hour over the posted speed limit, two cameras take pictures of the vehicle. One camera takes a picture of the driver and the other takes a picture of the license plate of the vehicle. The camera’s photographs are crystal clear and flash at a fraction of a second. The first camera scans each available lane at one twenty-fifth of a second. With this kind of accuracy, few drivers are not caught. The only problem with photo-radar is that the citations have to be given to the offender by a police or department official. When this speed monitoring first became available, all the tickets were sent via mail. People soon learned that if they just disregarded the citation and forgot about it, nothing would happen. While the idea of controlling our present traffic through a mechanical system seemed appealing, the system has proved to have failed in many citizens’ opinions. More citations need to be issued from police officers to those whom break the law through traffic aggression and other forms of road rage. With the penalty and severity for road rage incidents increased, road rage will gradually become less of the problem that it used to be. Road rage i...
