Oklahoma Speeding Tickets

Australian flashing speed limit sign

One of my biggest irritations is how we do speeding tickets here in Oklahoma. I haven't had one in 3 years and generally try to follow the posted speed limit, but the way our system is set up here, it is all about the money, not about safe driving.

Kay and I were in Australia last year and they are very serious about safe driving and speed limits, much more so than in Oklahoma. How can I tell? First off, they have three times the number of posted speed signs. Many of them flash, the standard speed sign is much bigger than here, and you see them EVERYWHERE. In Oklahoma, our road engineers just post maybe one or two in a 20 mile stretch of highway. You might see one small sign semi-hidden or posted unobtrusively on the way into a small town. Does the town complain? Heck no, that is a license to print money from unsuspecting motorists! These small sparsly spaced speed signs are not really designed to warn motorists, but instead just to give police officers the ability to easily write more tickets. If towns were serious about slowing motorists down that pass through their town, they would invest in flashing speed signs like in Australia, or the ones used on the Interstate that flash your current speed as you approach a construction zone. But no, these towns are more interested in the money they can collect from motorists who do not live in their town. They don't really care about safety or speeding at all. If we took the revenue they collected from speeding fines and put that into the general Oklahoma operating fund, then you would see them cut the number of speeding tickets and find more creative ways to slow motorists down as they approach a small town.