As much as I am loathe to take seriously anything said by Megan McArdle this is probably true:

I don’t know about other parts of the country, but around here governments are partially dealing with their revenue shortfall by upping their traffic enforcement to outrageously persnickety levels; my sister got a ticket the other day for stopping at a stop sign for three seconds instead of the apparently requisite five.  There were no other cars around–except for the cop who handed her a gigantic ticket.

Now, I didn’t drive from 1995 to earlier this year when a car became necessary to get me to exotic locales such as Oakdale, Twin Bridges, Woodside and Mt Davidson, CA. I used to be able to get from lovely San Bruno, CA to San Jose on I-280 in almost no time because seeing a CHP car was about as likely as seeing a Yeti. A few months ago this flipped to the point that I have seen speed traps on 280 and 101 more often than not. And this is in addition to local patrols at stop signs and traffic lights. I’d love to know how many tickets it would take San Mateo county to make up for our $150 million exposure to Lehman.

Contra all of this, on Friday I got pulled over for the first time in California. Google Maps lied to my navigation system and I ended up on a (supposedly) private road leading to the football stadium where I needed to shoot a game. The officer yelled at me for a minute and then let me go without even checking my info. Is the CBS media credential that powerful? Anyway, I used my lack of detention to catch Sacred Heart Cathedral running back (and University of California Berkeley recruit) Dasarte Yarnway breaking of a couple long runs. He is almost fast enough (even in the pouring rain) to get speeding tickets!

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