Non Sequitur: Hiring More Police To Catch Traffic Violators

It seems economically feasible, so what am I missing?

Bay Area traffic has become brutal and sitting in traffic makes me lose my mind. This is a highly combustible dynamic.

With horrible traffic comes an increase in bad behavior — people skirting the laws to shave a few minutes off of their commute. Because police departments are (seemingly) stretched so thin, the risk-reward calculation in some sense favors breaking the law: Suppose you have a 5% chance of getting caught in the carpool lane. At a $490 fine, that’s a ~$25 expected value payment…certainly not enough to dissuade you if you’re feeling antsy (ignoring insurance hit, driving record, etc).

Sitting in traffic one day, I wondered why we don’t just hire more cops who’s sole purpose is to catch traffic violators. At minimum, they should be able to cover their own costs. More than likely, they would serve as “profit centers” for the department while providing a public good. I doubt this would materially improve traffic, but it would make all of us sitting there feel better that at least the assholes are getting caught.

Consider the following break-even math:

• Fully loaded police offer compensation + benefits: $180,000 (~$140,000 Santa Clara County average + $40K in benefits such as insurance, pension, etc)
• Motorcycle: $40,000 with 4 year lifespan, no residual value
• Gear + equipment: $2,000 annually
• Fuel: $10/day (100 miles per day, 35 mpg, $3.50 per gallon)

I don’t know if these estimates are too high or low, but they seem reasonable enough. One on hand, an officer who exists just to give tickets may warrant a lower salary than a fully trained officer (e.g., “traffic cops”). On the other hand, I’m not factoring indirect costs such as vehicle maintenance, supervisor allocation, administrative costs with processing tickets (mail, payment, collection, etc), legal expenses from folks challenging the tickets, etc. So let’s just roll with it.

Assume an office works 230 days per year (weekdays only, 12 holidays, 15 paid days off: 365 * 5/7–12–15 = 233).

Therefore, an officer would cost ~$844 per day.

At $490 fine per carpool violation, an office would only need to pop 2 delinquents per day to turn a profit.

I don’t know about you, but I can spot at least two rule breakers within ten minutes of hitting the road.

Am I missing something?

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