Duality of Responsibilities

Came across an interesting video below and decided to talk about something that has made me curious for over a year now.

Where I live we always used to be able to go 12 miles over the speed limit on most streets and highways. I think this was due to the fact that for so long everyone averaged 10 - 11 mph over the speed limit and speed traps were nonexistent proven by all the people that passed you at considerable speed. As the recession hit and jobs became scarcer I noticed speed traps increasing and 7 miles over would now get you pulled over.

Now I am not complaining but I was curious about a few things?

Question 1: Did the cities hire more personnel so that the traps could be increased? I think this is ok, although aren't we told that tax revenues are dropping. So doesn’t this mean more taxes are needed to pay for the extra personnel?

If the driver is such a terrible law breaker why don’t we put up more traffic cameras that snap pictures when lights are run and why can’t our GPS systems automatically report our speeding and send us tickets in the mail? And if we are going to do this lets please ticket those who are impeding. Seems to me this could be cheaper in the long run for all of us.

How you ask? Well with more police unemployed we would pay fewer taxes. If we all knew that any infraction would result in a ticket we would get fewer tickets. Insurance companies could lay off employees that monitor traffic offenses and rate increases and pass those profits to the executives. However, with fewer tickets our insurance would not go up. Granted it would not go down but at least it would not go up.

Question 2: If the cities did not hire more personnel what were the police doing prior to setting up more speed traps? Realize these are just questions; I have not researched any of this. I am just curious how dualities in responsibilities are affected. If there are more traps what service might have been cut back on?

However I could be completely wrong. Maybe speeding causes more accidents and keeps body shops and car dealers from laying off workers. (On a side note why did the auto industry change the best oil change practice from 15k miles to 3K miles? Was it due to the fact that the increased quality in our vehicles was hurting the auto service industry to make money. Sorry I got side tracked). Maybe traffic tickets keep insurance employees in their jobs. Maybe we could hire city employees at a lower salary that just do traffic traps and keep all the police we currently have for their more important duties.