Freedom from Un-American Speed Enforcement

Local Speed Enforcement Efforts are Driving Citizens Crazy

This should be about taming or removing drivers operating their vehicles at dangerous speeds.
Instead, they seem to be more often about harassing good drivers operating their vehicles safely, but at speeds inconsistent with often difficult-to-spot, carelessly set, and unreasonably low speed limits.
Speed enforcement is quickly becoming simply a new form of unfair and unnecessary taxation.

FUSE will place the steering wheel of speed enforcement back into the hands of citizens.

... has become an irrelevant test for elevated signage awareness rather than a valuable safety tool.

Signs are displayed infrequently, with little consistency in how frequently they are placed.
Limits often change arbitrarily along the same road in sections as drivers pass into new municipal jurisdictions.
Limits often set lower than they ought to be based on driving conditions or the reasonable intuition by drivers.
Municipalities have not demonstrated competence in the administration of speed limits.
Officials typically have no idea why the speed limits are what they are.
They don't seem to ever re-think them or notice their inconsistencies.

Example: One stretch of Olive Street Road in Chesterfield has different speed limits eastbound vs. westbound!

Waste of taxpayer resources on unnecessary police personnel.
Distracts police department from its more important duties of protecting life and property.
Makes our roads more dangerous by adding the hazards of vehicles pulling-off and reentering roads, and adding pedestrians alongside vehicles on busy thoroughfares.
Unnecessary expense to drivers, who would rather spend money on their families than on municipal fines.

It inverts the relationship between citizens and their government.
Citizens should not be living in unnecessary fear that their government may arbitrarily deprive them of freedoms:
- Freedom to spend their hard-earned dollars on their families instead of on government penalties.
- Freedom as a safe driver to hold a drivers license not subject to revocation.
Citizens should never be scolded for perfectly acceptable behavior, just as a business ought to never scold its customers
The current system in which drivers pay extra money to avoid points mocks justice and breeds disrespect for government.

Develop and distribute municipal legislation to correct the problems of local speed enforcement.
Serve as a clearinghouse for learning that can improve local speed enforcement legislation and administration.
Monitor progress in the community and provide feedback.
Maintain a website to communicate with the community.

Formation of municipal citizens committees to provide oversight of the setting of speed traps, speed ticket challenges, and police administration of limits.
Elimination of police ticket quotas.
Refunding all speed limit collections to taxpayers rather than expanding government or paying for limit enforcement.
Harmonizing speed limits of adjoining municipalities.
Elimination of use of traffic light cameras for speed enforcement.
Membership in FUSE by supporting municipalities and municipal officials as affiliate members of FUSE.