1) Why aren't law enforcement more focused on getting people to slow down than writing tickets?
2) Why do traffic cops have monthly quotas for tickets?
3) In places where monthly quotas are against the law, why do 'performance revues' of traffic cops only focus on '# of tickets' as the largest performance metric? (basically a quota by another name)
4) Why is it so easy to bargain down a speeding ticket in a large city, whereas in a small town they are only willing to haggle on the points on your license (hint: because they still want you money)?
Just because they weren't conceived for a purpose doesn't mean that's not how they're used. Speed enforcement is very frequently performed by small town cops sitting on highways that are just barely in their jurisdiction. They're doing it for money, plain and simple.
See https://www.google.com/maps/preview?client=safari&q=hampton+... for proof of this.
Where I live, in Chicago, the speed limits are so low on some freeways that 91-98 percent of people are going over the speed limit, and the average speed is over 70mph. So everyone, including the police it seems, agrees that the speed limits here are not for my safety, but exist as a way for the officers to cherry pick essentially any car they want and write them a ticket.
My mother got snagged in one of these in Virginia a while back - they have a hill where the speed limit drops from 65 to 45 at the bottom of it, with a specially planted copse of trees where the police sit with their detectors. A quarter mile down the road, they have a specially built parking lot for people to get their tickets. They even provide envelopes and stamps for people to send their checks! Nice people.
I suspect that this business model is in trouble if GPS makers begin to track speed-limit information and pass that along to their users.
No, lawmakers don't say "Hey, I know! Let's charge people money for driving over a certain speed!", they instead say: "lets install these red light cameras on this intersection that doesn't see a lot of accidents.", or "this long straight stretch of highway, with few accidents, but lots of speeding should be better policed". The enforcement of laws becomes more about making money from the tickets than from concerns about safety.
I live in an area where stationary speed cameras are around every corner (Montgomery Co, Maryland). I've lived here long enough to know that there's no way the county would spend money on the equipment and man power to maintain and operate that network, just to break even for the sake of safety.
If speed limit laws didn't exist, can you imagine lawmakers saying, "We need more money. Hey, I know! Let's charge people money for driving over a certain speed!"