Municipal Violations

A few years ago I got a collection notice from some company in Pennsylvania. The notice told me that I owed over $600 for two traffic violations in Florida, including late payments and collection fees. I had never gotten a traffic violation in Florida, assumed it was a scam and ignored it. 

Pretty soon they started calling. They'd leave threatening messages and, on a couple of occasions, spoke with my wife. While I'm more of a go down in flames fighting the man kind of guy at times, my wife is practical and reasonable. This didn't sit well with her. She made me get to the bottom of it and, it wound up, I had driven through two tolls in Florida and, 18 months later, this was the result. (For the record, I believe I had paid for the rental company for the toll meter but I had no record of it or even of which company I had used on that trip).

Either way, I wasn't going to pay it. I just won't go back to Florida then -- to heck with that state if this is how they operate. Well, more threatening collection notices later along with an inexplicable letter notifying me that Florida has an agreement with Minnesota whereby they can revoke my license across state lines.

I tried to work it out by phone. Florida told me that there was nothing they could do since it had been turned over to a collection agency. The collection agency told me there was nothing they could do since it was sent to them from the state of Florida. 

In the end, I paid it. It was disgusting and I feel completely scammed by the whole thing, but I paid it. 

I'm lucky because I had the money. This video is not appropriate for work, but it is a really important one. As our cities go further and further into insolvency, getting cash from fines is going to become more -- not less -- prevalent.

Every now and then a police officer parks outside my office at a bend in the road. It is the perfect place to nail speeders since drivers can't see the officer until it is too late and pretty much everyone is speeding because the street is designed like a highway, there are no intersections for 1,000+ feet and the speed limit is the statuary minimum of 30 mph.

Knowing this is a bad spot for speeding, does the engineering department ever do anything to the design to induce a slower speed? Of course not. That would be bad business.