Hoping to avoid a speeding ticket? Turns out there are some intersections in Los Angeles—and certain hours of the day—that you're more likely to get a ticket. (Or you could just, you know, slow down).
CBS Los Angeles crunched the numbers from the LAPD and found the top five intersections in the city where police officers gave out speeding tickets in 2012:
- La Brea Avenue and Coliseum Street in Baldwin Hills (1,605 tickets)
- Laurel Canyon Boulevard and Canton Drive in the Hollywood Hills (1,241 tickets)
- Woodman and Collins in Sherman Oaks (1,055 tickets)
- Roscoe Boulevard and Nagle Avenue in Sun Valley (1,018 tickets)
- PCH and East O Street in Wilmington (814 tickets)
These are spread out across the different city but the most-ticketed intersections do tend to have something in common: they're near the bottom of hills. Police target areas where they know drivers are more likely to be driving above the speed limit.Traffic attorney Sherman Ellison told CBS that he thinks these kinds of tickets are unfair: "It's chicken (expletive) to issue those types of tickets. It's like shooting fish in a barrel. It's unfair. They're sitting there because they know the human tendency is to go a little faster."
But police defend staking out intersections like La Brea Avenue and Coliseum Street in Baldwin Hills, because they want to educate drivers in an area like that prone to accidents. Captain Brian Johnson told CBS, "I think the issue is are we providing the proper education to the public. The engineering study and all the information that demonstrates it has been a problem with our traffic statistics."
Altogether, the department gave out 43,426 speeding tickets in 2012. It turns out the Tuesday was the day Angelenos were most likely to get them, followed by Wednesday and then Sunday. And most tickets were handed out between 8 and 10 am—during the morning rush hour when we're all trying to avoid being late to work.
