Here is something that is slowly gaining popularity. Politicians actually making requirements for speed traps and road blocks and speed/red light cameras to be visible by at least 300 feet away.
Some places believe in traffic enforcement being 100% visible. No more hiding speed trap personal behind a bush, box, vehicle, over-pass, or power pole. Even making sure that roadblocks have warning signage and emergency lights on, to make sure of real safety for all involved. Nothing is worse than rounding a corner to have to suddenly stop, in order to avoid rear ending a line of cars. Or in the worst case scenario, trying to avoid running over a police officer who thinks that stealth will make more tickets to be written. Some officers do get ticked off when a slight distraction on their part, results in frazzled nerves and a near miss by the oncoming driver.
Another traffic issue, is for those officers that park their cruiser on the side of the road, at night, with no lights on. A driver, paying attention, may see odd little lights off in the distance and slow down wondering if it is an animal on the side of the road and then curse about safety needing to be applied to all equally, when they see the police car doing radar in stealth mode.
Remember when photo radar, based out of a parked van, was around, The Officer parked on the shoulders of the highway with no signage or lighting to identify the parked vehicle to highway traffic(and occasionally at night too). There was even the occasion where an in-town officer must of gotten to hear some nice screeching tires behind him and a couple of weeks later, he did have his warning flashers on, for that parking lane that turns into a rush hour lane. Officers need to obey traffic laws that state the shoulders of the highway are only for emergency stopping.
What about them sidewalks too? Aren't they for pedestrians and not for parking police cars on? Look there's an officer in the middle of the road and no police car, but then you see his car on private property and wonder if he has permission to park there.
Which is a reminder that the RCMP now have orders to ask for permission of the owner before trespassing on the owners property to 'train' police dogs. PDF http://bccla.org/pressreleases/11RCMP_dog_training_release.pdf The police would get annoyed if you hopped to the other side of the detachments front counter without permission, so you should be annoyed when they pop in to your yard to 'train' for something or another.
These visible means of traffic enforcement is meant to show transparency of Law enforcement. What use is giving an automated ticket, if the person could continue to break traffic laws, before getting their first ticket, with more to come in the mail. Well other than profit and what can be called 'delay of due process', due to the delay of enforcement on each traffic violation(the traffic ticket is in the mail, after it's been processed and after it is supposedly checked for errors).
In Washington State, the police would cause an action to happen, to then be able to ticket drivers. The action was to have an officer in plain clothes continue to use a crosswalk in order to make drivers stop for him. If the driver did not stop, then a motorcycle police officer(about 1 dozen waiting on the side road) would be sent to then stop and ticket the driver. Some call that entrapment, since without the officer purposely using the crosswalk for no productive reason, cars would of not been ticketed for missing to stop for the plain clothes officer.
Observe traffic. It is becoming quite, shall we call it, painful to see vehicles that have troubles staying in between their painted lane lines, without using most of the shoulder(or the oncoming lane of traffic ) to round a easy curve. But of course some people will deny their little trip across the line based on the line being missing in that particular spot, since road maintenance never got around to repainting the line for many months. But then again, how did that line on the curve disappear? Oh right, by drivers driving on the line, causing it to be erased.
Some drivers are doing something called 'impeding traffic flow'(a ticketable offense). It is where a driver will purposely drive slower than the speed limit in order to force other drivers to go slow too. In some cases, the driver impeding traffic will speed up when they come to passing lanes/lines(rural areas), in order to keep a bunch of now pissed off drivers, behind him/her. Nothing is more scary than seeing 30 vehicles get bunched up trying to pass a driver that may be driving at 5mph(10kph) or even 10mph(20kph) below the speed limit. Some of these people impeding traffic will get out on the highway and keep pace next to a car in the slow lane, in order to prevent people from driving slightly faster than the speed limit, which of course causes a rolling blockage in highway traffic.
There was an interesting judgement many years ago, about the area where the posted speed limit changes(200 or 300 feet on either side of the sign), to be unenforceable(within reason) for the speed limit, due to it being the zone of acceleration and deceleration of vehicles.
Vancouver has even made some new lowered speed zones, due to issues of cars and the homeless having conflicts. The police know it's useless to write a ticket to a homeless person or someone who is on a very nasty high, so politicians just lower the speed limit in order to have the accident be at a slower speed. Not really a solution to the problem, but it's close enough to some.
There are those 'this is your speed' radar trailers/signs, that get put on the side of the road. Sometimes an officer is hiding behind them or just down the road from it. So don't use that non-ticketing speed sign as a challenge to see how high you can make the number display.
And those reflective vests that police should be wearing at all times(or wear the yellow storm uniform)? They are used for making sure that some of our less skilled drivers and some of our short sighted drivers can see what just or is about to jump out in front of them. As hitting an officer would get the driver arrested/detained for mangling a person, for what should of been an avoidable accident, by a simple application of visibility.
