Traffic tickets have nothing to with highway safety. We want to emphasize that traffic tickets and traffic law enforcement are not synonymous, and the first should not be considered a necessary component of the latter. State and local governments learned long ago that traffic ticket financial sanctions have little deterrent effect on motorists. Some might argue that fines could be increased to the level that motorists would be sufficiently intimidated to obey the law. In reality, large fines increase motorist resistance to paying high fines and instead, they demand a trial.
Trials take all the profit out of their system.
It's the points, not the typical fine, that catches the average drivers attention. But, the reasons go deeper than just putting extra cash in government coffers. Traffic tickets virtually fund many court systems. The number of traffic tickets issued is the measurement criteria for enforcement budget requests and personnel performance ratings. Traffic tickets are used as an excuse to raise the insurance rates for otherwise safe drivers to the cumulative total of billions of dollars each year.