Dip in traffic fatalities proves local police don’t need radar | Capital-Star Letters

The purported rationale for giving RADAR to municipal police has been blown to smithereens with the following news from WTAJ-TV in Altoona:

These numbers indicate that Pennsylvania is rebounding from the high number of traffic crashes and fatalities seen nationwide throughout the pandemic.”

In statistical analysis this is known as “regression to the mean.”

In other words the pandemic years were an outlier, and nothing on which to base state policy. Fatalities in crashes involving speeding were the second-lowest in more than 20 years – 169 fatalities, down from 201 in 2021.

There is no crisis of “speeders” running amok.

Pennsylvania’s roads are the safest they have ever been. All of this has occurred without RADAR. So why do we need RADAR?

If the Legislature still wants to give RADAR to municipal police, they should at least come clean and admit that it’s for the money, not safety.

Tom McCarey, Berwyn, Pa.

(The author is a member of the National Motorists Association, which describes itself as a “membership-based organization dedicated to protecting the rights of the motoring public.”)