Dear Editor:

Contact your Representative and tell them to vote no on House Bill 606, RADAR for municipal police. RADAR is only for money, not safety: this bill is a tax on every driver.

What is the motivation for giving municipal police RADAR? The RADAR lobby says in order to make it easier to enforce speed limits. But the speed limits are politically set at unsafe speeds of between 8 to 16 mph slower than the speeds people safely drive, to make it easy to write tickets.

The House needs to put an end to the enforcement-for-profit-not-safety racket that has infected Harrisburg. Financing the government on the backs of drivers under the cover of “safety” is irresponsible.

The people can have truly safer roads by the Legislature enacting a law to set all Pennsylvania speed limits at the safest speed for each road: that speed is the 85th Percentile Speed (The Minnesota Department of Transportation defines the 85th Percentile Speed as, “the speed at or below which 85% of all vehicles are observed to travel under free-flowing conditions past a monitored point.”

Traffic and Transportation Engineers use the 85th Percentile Speed as a guide to set the speed limit at a safe speed, minimizing crashes and promoting uniform traffic flow along a corridor…) When the posted limits reflect the speeds people actually drive safely, there is no need for over-the-top enforcement efforts. The less than 3% who drive dangerously fast can easily be dealt with by law enforcement without RADAR.

Tom McCarey

Berwyn

member, National

Motorists Association