There are lots of US cities that have fast/pricey sports cars specifically for when they need to chase down other fast/pricey sports cars. It might seem odd, but it’s cheaper than extra helicopters.

Houston (Texas) had about a half dozen Ferrari and Porsche “police” cars as they had people doing things like using I-10 to test Grand Pris racers. Seriously – I had a guy in my Defensive Driving class who was stopped for doing 192 MPH in a 55 zone. He would regularly take his racing cars onto the freeway for testing as it was cheaper than renting an hour or two at the local racing park. He’d get caught, opt to take Defensive Driving, and the ticket would be expunged. Texas eventually (in 1992) changed the law so that you couldn’t take Defensive Driving to get rid of speeding tickets where you were doing more than 25 over the limit.

@...RSIxidor: You’re correct on that. That was also added at the same time. I used to have “regulars” in my classes before then – people who were taking DD to get rid of tickets almost weekly. 😀

I didn’t mention that in the previous post as my example was geared towards the need for fast police cars. However, thanks for pointing that other part out. The third major change was that you could only take Defensive Driving to get rid of ONE violation, not multiple violations.

I’d commonly get people in class from Pasadena before then taking one class to get rid of three to six tickets – all for the same thing: school zone violations. Pasadena used the school zone laws to their advantage, writing many thousands of tickets a month on unsuspecting victims. The one they used to most says that ANY crosswalk within six blocks of a school is a school zone, whether or not it’s marked as such! I can’t tell you the number of people I saw in DD class for that particular ticket – doing 35 in a 15 (school) zone. They failed to slow down for an unmarked crosswalk that was within six blocks of a school. 🙁