JUST THE TICKET Ancillary revenue takes to the road

Posted on 02/11/2016 | About Lake Placid, New York

So here I am, with my 12-year-old son, happily breezing along New York’s bucolic, traffic-free Taconic State Parkway en route to an annual weekend hockey tournament in idyllic Lake Placid, New York.

It’s the best youth hockey weekend of the year and I’m daydreaming of seeing another of my goalie sons (this is the youngest of three) winning a gold medal on the same Olympic ice on which the US had their historic 1980 victory over the Russians. As we cruise along the gently winding two-lane parkway I find myself wondering why more people don’t take this route and avoid all the trucks on the highway. Moments later, after cresting a gentle hill, I get my answer. There he sits in the central divide with a radar gun focused on the only car on the road: which is me. Oh yes I forgot to mention that, unlike the 65 MPH speed limit on the highway, the Taconic is still set at the cockamamie 55 limit first imposed in 1973. But it’s too late to worry about that - I’m nailed. I hit the brake lights at the exact moment he hits the flashing lights. The NY State Trooper in the Central Casting big hat and sunglasses (the sun hasn’t been out all day) is disarmingly pleasant as he asks if I was aware of the speed limit on the parkway. “Yes sir, I am.” He then asks if I know what speed I was doing, to which I offered a, what I hoped sounded contrite, “Maybe 70 something-ish?” “Close but no cigar” comes the obviously well rehearsed response, “You were doing 78 sir. License and registration please.” He was kind enough to write me up at only 69 MPH which he indicated would “work in my favor” but we will see what that means when I settle the bill over the next few weeks: I would guess at least a $200 fine. Where my little run-in with the law got more interesting however was in the hotel bar that evening, when the team parents began swapping tales of their own drives from Connecticut. Without lacing up a pair of skates we found we’d already set a new team record. Previously, four speeding tickets en route to Lake Placid was the best (worst?) recorded – this year we had smashed that with no fewer than seven! Nothing like setting examples for your kids you might well say, however it did generate a wide-ranging conversation about the dramatic increase in the number of radar checks in evidence all along the 270-mile journey. Nobody could remember anything like it in previous years, which - did I hear, ‘at last’? - brings me to the point of this journal on my hockey trip. Based on my selfless research, ‘Snow Birds’ driving south for the winter should exercise extra caution over the coming months. Ticket-quota-hungry State Troopers are waiting for you all the way to from the border to Florida – ‘or wherever your final destination might be’, to borrow that most ethereal of airline PA announcements! And I always get the feeling there’s no more satisfying catch for them than an out-of- state plate, as they know their victims aren’t going to show up in court and plead innocence to get the mail-in fine reduced. Sometimes just showing up in court and pleading guilty with an appropriate display of contrition is enough to get a fine substantially reduced or dropped altogether, especially if the ticketing officer fails to turn up. According to the esurance.com blog, the top 10 states “where you’re most likely to see flashing lights in your rearview mirror” are: 1. Ohio2. Pennsylvania3. New York4. California5. Texas6. Georgia7. Virginia (sorry lovers)8. North Carolina9. Massachusetts10. Connecticut By my count, nine out of these 10 are on Snow Bird migration paths. Coincidence? Perhaps, but I wouldn’t bank on it – that’s their role – and they bank a lot. The average US speeding ticket is $150 (that's more like CAD $170) and can go as high as $2,400. Surveys have found that states issuing the greatest number of speeding tickets also tend to have the highest average fines. Some smaller communities even live off of their fast company neighbors: top of the list is Randolph, Missouri (pop. 47), which last year reportedly raised almost 80 percent of its $270,000 town budget from speeding tickets. While it’s not a popular spot on the southbound track, when you wander off the highway system there are plenty more Randolphs out there eager to issue visitors with some high priced souvenirs. So please advise your motoring clients to re-familiarize themselves with their cruise controls. In ‘do as I say not as I do’ mode, I strongly suggest setting it to no higher than 73 on highways posted at 65 MPH. And as I just learned at my cost, if you encounter a stretch posted at 55, I wouldn’t push your luck with anything above a painfully slow 60. If nothing else, stay out of the left-hand lane at all times except when passing dawdlers crawling along at the speed limit. In heavy traffic those annoying left-hand lane hogs are always the first to get nabbed. And, for those that have to drive like a Canuck out of hell, can I suggest you plan to do it in Tennessee, which at an average speeding ticket of just $50 strikes me as a terrific bargain. Note to the Tennessee Tourist Office – An ad in Travel Industry Today with a compelling line like, “Tennessee – Just the Ticket” might attract some speedy new Canadian revenues? On second thoughts, with all that good bourbon down there, perhaps speeding’s not what precipitates most of their tickets.