When economy goes down, traffic citations increase

When it rains, it pours. Or, as Paul Harvey likes to say, "there's no use worrying, nothing's going to turn out right."

If you're worrying about the economy, don't think going for a drive -- using that low-priced gasoline we're all now enjoying -- is going to make things better.

It turns out, as a couple of economic researchers have discovered, that when the economy goes south, traffic cops are more likely to write you a ticket.

Authorities will, of course, deny pressuring police into meeting a quota of tickets, but the study of 14 years of data from 96 North Carolina counties indicates there's an inverse relationship between local government revenue and the number of traffic tickets written in that jurisdiction.

Roughly a 1 to .32 ratio, to be exact. That is, for every 1 percentage point drop in local government revenue, theres about a .32 percentage point increase in the number of traffic tickets the following year.

The study, "Red Ink in the Rearview Mirror," by Thomas A. Garrett of the St. Louis Federal Reserve, and Gary A. Wagner, formerly of North Carolina but now an economist at the University of Arkansas Little Rock, will be published in next month's Journal of Law and Economics.

Not only lower local government revenue, but other factors like higher unemployment rates, seem to boost the number of traffic tickets written.

While there might not be direct pressure on officers to write more tickets, they are aware that local governments, which benefit most from traffic tickets, can't raise taxes during a recession.

As Garrett noted, lottery sales, casino gambling, hotel occupancy and traffic tickets -- are "hidden taxes" that are politically appealing because they are largely paid by nonvoters and nonresidents.

There's no doubt that traffic tickets are well intentioned, and perform the important task of improving safety and reducing fatalities.

But the "Red Ink" study is interesting, none the less.