Volkswagen Type 2 Gatso speed trap bus - photos

[Altair]

Volkswagen Type 2 Gatso speed trap bus.






Previously:

Volkswagen bus tractor trailer - photo
Volkswagen bus dragster - photo and video
Volkswagen bus on treads and skis - photo
Backwards Volkswagen bus pickup truck - photo
Volkswagen tracked bus - photo

[TheElderBrother]

When we were teenagers, my brother and I used to work at our mother's auto body shop, and the police routinely set up a speed trap next to her garage because it gave them a perfect position to observe traffic, grab snapshots of cars speeding with their radar guns, and get into traffic after them. She objected to the use of her property for that purpose, but the cops told her they were entitled to do it, and she didn't have the latitude to sue them since she had a towing business and needed her spot on the police towing rotation to keep the business afloat.

We didn't tell Mom, but my brother and I went home and made signs out of scrap plywood, hid them along the route leading up to the speed trap.
When the cops showed up to set up, we would each snuck out in the opposite direction to set them up two or three blocks away. We'd spray painted "Speed Trap Ahead!" onto the signs, and left them on the sidewalk to warn oncoming traffic.

We ran out of sandwich boards by the end of the summer, but not before the cops gave up using Mom's property.

Speed traps are routinely abused by law enforcement as a way of supplementing their budgets, with only the most superficial concern for public safety, and clearly that department didn't care at all about Mom's property rights. I later became a cop, but I still don't regret setting out those signs.

[Sleykin]

When I was in Germany, they mailed the tickets to you. I got one in my 69 MGB ... never could go slow in that car LOL