I looked it up ... The town is basically a 2x6 street grid with 40-50 homes on either side of a large pass through route & railway.

The typical adult living here makes in the ballpark of $20,000 a year and has a kid.

I don't think the town will pool together money anytime soon for a public works project.

I don’t know if speed cameras in LA are legal or not but something like a typical European speed cam setup would be probably less than the salary of one police officer for a year and they could easily get rid of one police officer for a year if they installed one of those.

The problem is that the desire isn’t really to curb traffic issues here. The existence of this ticketing setup serves several purposes, but ensuring the health and safety of the populace by reducing speed is only a secondary goal here, if even a goal.

Except that speed cameras (and any other automatic enforcement) remove the ability of you to face your accuser in court.

Essentially they become judge, jury & executioner.

In the UK we have speed cameras. They have been successful in reducing serious accidents at accident blackspots. We just get a notice of prosecution if the speeding was over a certain limit; in this case we go to court, or a £100 fine and 3 to 6 points on our driving licence. Works well for us. Less than 3,000 deaths a year in road accidents with a population of 60 million.

I find LA and OH's small town justice to be rather quaint, to be honest.

I was totally fine with the way I saw speed cameras set up in Sweden, Latvia, Lithuania etc. in those places you generally see them only when you are genuinely passing through a place that it is unsafe to be speeding, most often this is the main crossing point in a small village where one of the only the bus stops is. A totally reasonable place you don’t want people rocketing by at 100 kmh. The key is that in Europe you are almost always warned exactly where, in meters, the speed trap is, often multiple times. So you have ample time to slow down and it’s not a “gotcha” like speed traps you might see in the States or the infamous red light cameras that you would only know they are photo enforced as you are driving through them because the barely visible sign is right before the light.

In short, the key thing about European speed cameras in my experience that makes them reasonable and effective is that they are actually designed and implemented as a way to slow people down, not as a moneymaking agenda

Side note I think Norway has gone just a bit too far with them. Especially in Oslo area

Executioner? I'm no fan of excessive speeding, but the death penalty is a bit harsh.

But you can still challenge it in court if you disagree. But you must be pretty sure it wasn't you, because there will be photographic evidence.

"If they really care about public safety, they would design their traffic situations so that people are less likely to speed. You can do a lot with clever traffic design, and it's more effective than simply fining everybody."

It is effective, but it might also be unpopular enough with the locals that you lose the next election. Especially if the measures inconvenience them.

I think the incentive for cities such as Fenton is a bit more specific: they want to fine unsuspecting strangers, who don't vote in local elections, while not bothering the locals too much.

You can interpret this as a modern, legal version of ye olde highwaymen. But there is a catch: transiting traffic is a genuine local problem (exhalations, noise, not contributing to local economy), so the incentive to make some money on it isn't as completely evil as it would be otherwise.

Maybe less highwaymen and more a local baron suddenly levying a toll on a major road. That sort of thing happened a lot, and never failed to upset merchants who would protest with a higher authority.

Except in this case there's a random aspect to the toll, and you can avoid the toll by knowing the situation and lowering your speed in time. I'm pretty sure the locals are all familiar with the situation and know how to avoid these fines.

They can't afford diverting a highway or making the necessary infrastructure changes for it, they are a small town of 300 people with low income. Furthermore, highways are usually the responsibility of county or state governments.