Traffic Tickets Are Good For You, America

June 2, 2010 - PRLog -- "Take your traffic ticket ... and eat your vegetables"
Posted by Joseph Rose, The Oregonian August 31, 2009

Over at Slate, "Traffic" author Tom Vanderbilt asks, "What do Timothy McVeigh, Ted Bundy, David Son of Sam Berkowitz, and 9/11 ring-leader Mohammed Atta have in common?"

Yes, they're all murderers. But Vanderbilt also points out that they were brought to police attention by "routine" traffic violations. The point? Traffic tickets are good for you, America, Vanderbilt argues very convincingly. And they're not just effective at netting madmen, he writes in "In Praise of Traffic Tickets." They're good for you in more ways than you think.

In the U.S., where the car is the dominant mode of transportation, he
writes, "most crimes involve driving. But another factor is that
people with off-road criminal records have been shown, in a number of
studies, to commit more on-road violations."

Of course, there are also the otherwise law-abiding citizens who flout
traffic laws. Vanderbilt laments the nation's long-standing tendency