Rough Notes


There is a real problem with traffic in the state of Florida. We have millions of visitors every year, and our roads are crowded from one end of the state to the other. This time of year, we see the perfect storm of congestion. Snowbirds return for the winter, vacationers arrive for the holidays, and year-round residents try to go about their daily lives. Add to that a growing number of young adults riding scooters, both gas and electric, darting in and out of traffic with little concern for safety or courtesy. Their behavior is not only reckless, it is often downright dangerous.
Even inside our 55-plus communities, where you would expect a certain degree of calm, we are now seeing aggressive and obnoxious driving behavior. People speed through gated streets, ignore stop signs, and tailgate golf carts as if they are on an interstate highway. The number of traffic accidents has climbed dramatically, and it shows no sign of slowing down.
What most people do not realize is that in Florida, your county sheriff’s office does not usually handle traffic accidents. That responsibility belongs to the Florida Highway Patrol. In some counties there are simply not enough troopers to cover the volume of crashes that occur every day. When that happens, some sheriffs assign a small number of deputies to handle traffic-related investigations, but only as a backup. Within city limits, the local police departments take over. Larger cities often create traffic divisions to handle these cases. The more forward-thinking cities have gone one step further. They use trained community service officers—civilian employees who handle the paperwork, measurements, and diagrams—so that sworn officers can focus on law enforcement, where their training and authority truly matter.
Let us move from crash response to traffic enforcement. Most county sheriffs in Florida do not handle crash investigations on a routine basis, and for a mix of budget and political reasons many also keep day to day traffic enforcement at a low level. Writing tickets is not popular, and elected sheriffs know it. That leaves the Florida Highway Patrol and the city police departments carrying much of the burden. When troopers are stretched thin, and when cities are managing their own call loads, the result is fewer eyes on the behaviors that actually cause crashes. Red light running, tailgating, improper lane changes, aggressive driving, and impaired driving need consistent attention, and too often they do not get it.
Now let us talk about what happens when a few bad actors distort the whole system. In the mid nineteen nineties the American Automobile Association publicly labeled two small towns on U S Highway three hundred one as speed traps, Waldo and Lawtey. AAA even erected billboards to warn motorists before they hit those city limits. The concern was simple. Speed limits stepped down quickly, and ticketing volume was far out of proportion to safety outcomes. Years later, the scale of the problem was undeniable. In one reported year a seven officer department in Waldo wrote nearly twelve thousand tickets and collected about four hundred thousand dollars in fines, which was a large share of the town budget. In two thousand fourteen, the Waldo City Council voted to disband the police department, and law enforcement duties moved to the county sheriff. By two thousand eighteen AAA removed the speed trap label from both towns after reforms, but the damage to public trust had already been done.
Those episodes triggered an understandable reaction in Tallahassee. Lawmakers advanced bills to ban ticket quotas and to require disclosures when citation revenue made up a large share of an agency budget. The intent was to remove the temptation to police for profit and to protect drivers from predatory practices. On paper that sounds sensible. In practice it set the stage for a long period where enforcement lost resources and clarity, while accountability did not fill the gap.
Now let us follow the money, because incentives drive behavior. Many Floridians believe that when a ticket is written the fine supports the agency that did the work. That is rarely true. Florida’s fine structure routes significant portions of each payment into state trust funds, courts, and county technology fees, with only a very small amount earmarked that indirectly touches law enforcement training. The statutes and local schedules make this clear. When you examine where a simple moving violation fine goes, only a fraction is linked to law enforcement needs. The issuing agency spends time and labor to make the stop, document the violation, and appear in court if needed, yet the revenue mostly flows elsewhere.
That creates a perverse outcome. Taxpayers fund the salaries, vehicles, radios, and training. Agencies then spend those resources to enforce the law. When violators pay, the reimbursement that could offset the taxpayer burden is minimal. Over time, agencies conclude that heavy enforcement is a net cost with little budget relief. Politicians sense the public relations risk, so they prefer fewer stops and fewer headlines. The public, seeing occasional abuses from the past, assumes that any revenue sharing would bring back bad behavior. Everyone retreats, and the roads get less safe.
The answer is not to repeat the mistakes of Waldo and Lawtey. The answer is to design incentives that reward safety outcomes, forbid quotas, and increase transparency. If an agency focuses on high risk violations that clearly reduce crashes, such as red lights, reckless lane changes, tailgating, and impaired driving, then a reasonable share of the civil fines should help pay for that enforcement. Tie reporting to monthly dashboards that show stops, violation types, crash trends before and after, and where every dollar goes. Keep the state trust funds that serve courts and victims, but restore a rational, capped share to the frontline agencies that actually do the work. Quotas stay illegal. Outcome reporting becomes mandatory. Public trust improves because the numbers are visible.
We also need smarter deployment. Community service officers can continue to handle the civil side of many crashes inside city limits. That frees sworn officers and troopers to focus on dangerous driving. When serious criminal violations surface, a sworn officer takes over. This division of labor speeds clearance times, reduces secondary crashes, and keeps commerce moving. Every hour a truck, a service van, or a sales team sits in gridlock is money lost. When enforcement is targeted and visible, behavior improves, crashes fall, and the entire system becomes cheaper for the taxpayer.
Let me come back to the taxpayer point because it is central. We already pay for law enforcement through our taxes. When someone breaks the law, the civil fine should help reimburse the people who are funding the system. Today, that reimbursement is weak, and the cost of enforcement falls back on the general taxpayer. That is a subsidy for bad behavior, and it is backwards. A carefully designed revenue share, with strict guardrails and public reporting, would correct that without reopening the door to the abuses of the past.
You may ask why the Legislature has not fixed this. I have asked the same question. I have spoken with people in government and in law enforcement, and I hear the same answer. No one wants their name on a bill that even looks like it sends ticket money back to police. The fear is that someone will shout speed trap, and a career will end. That is not leadership. That is avoidance.
This brings us to a broader truth. A nation declines when it avoids hard choices. We have watched that pattern in other areas. When we decide that enforcement is impolite, we get more violations. When we protect image over output, we lose manufacturing and we import more from countries that do not hesitate to act in their own interest. The same lack of political will that lets reckless driving go unchecked is the same weakness that tolerates fragile supply chains, declining standards, and outside influence in critical systems. Safety on our roads is not a side issue. People are killed, injured, and delayed every single day. Businesses lose hours they can never recover. Families pay higher prices because the system is less efficient. This is concrete, measurable, and fixable.
So here is the call to action. Revisit the fine distribution statutes with a fresh lens. Keep quotas illegal. Require outcome reporting that the public can read and understand. Prioritize the violations that cause crashes. Use community service officers to keep sworn officers focused on high risk behavior. Restore a fair, capped share of civil fines to the agencies doing the enforcement, so taxpayers are not paying twice. If we cannot summon that level of political backbone for something as basic as safe and efficient roads, then we should not be surprised when larger systems slip away from us.

For those who are retired, this hits especially hard. Property taxes climb year after year as home values rise, and that increase is compounded by higher insurance premiums, maintenance costs, and the constant drip of inflation in everyday necessities. The cost of living has become a slow squeeze, forcing many retirees to budget more carefully, cut back on travel, entertainment, and even simple pleasures, just to maintain the quality of life they worked decades to achieve. Add to that the growing congestion on Florida’s roads, longer drive times, higher fuel prices, and the ripple effect that poor traffic enforcement and planning have on everything from groceries to home services. Once again, the lawful and peaceful retiree is the one paying the price. This is yet another example of a government “fix” from years ago that no longer works, but few in office have the courage to admit it. Without genuine political will and backbone, it will remain broken—and I, for one, will not hold my breath.