Should civillians be allowed to issue traffic tickets to other drivers?

I think this is borderline impossible… unless there were restrictions on who could do so. Perhaps a class or some kind of certification first? I’d love to pass out tickets. I drive so carefully (I don’t even speed – which usually gets me made fun of), so I get really irritated with the jerks that go flying past me or cut me off, get away scott free. Being able to give them a ticket myself would make me happy.

I really don’t think it’s realistic, but it’s nice to dream about. :)

ONlyNeffie, what problems do you think you would encounter on a traffic stop? what if the driver is drunk? what if the driver tells you to go to h___? what would you do?

Chaos on the road. People would be trying to ticket people for the kinds of perceived violations and slights they currently only honk horns or shoot fingers for. And with all the guns people own nowadays, some “ticketed” people might decide pay their fines on the spot with bullets. I suggest we leave traffic ticketing to professionals.

Oh heck yeah! I’d be giving out tickets for no turn signals, and for people not yielding. Jerks.

I think @Austinlad summed it up pretty nicely. It isn’t realistic. But it would be nice if it were genuinely possible.

I think if anyone walked up to my window at a red light, my husband would punch them in the face. And he wouldn’t even feel bad about it.

Not a good idea.

I know I wouldn’t pull over for someone trying to pull me over unless they were a cop. I’ve even called 911 when an unmarked car was trying to pull me over to verify it was in fact a cop. I think it’s a bad idea and it would jam up the courts. I know I would fight a ticket issued by a civilian if I didn’t agree with it, because who is to say that they are interpreting the law correctly?

I think a better solution is to let civilians call 911 and report a car. Let the armed police do the pulling over.

Are you kidding me? I ride a bicycle and motorcycle more than I drive a car. I see a million traffic violations all the time including violations from police. I’d like to carry a really big chain in my saddle bags or panniers that had “YOUR STUPID” painted in big red letters on the links. Then I would throw said chain through the car, tuck, suv, or delivery trucks window.
I guess my point is that we need something harsher than a ticket for a moving violation. If only the police would not turn their heads so much.

@judochop No CCW pistol permit for you. ;-)

Our stupid what?

LOL! There would be alot of “disagreements”.

The question is asking if a specific form of vigilantism would be effective.

Vigilantes have no place in a society of laws.

If civilians could give traffic tickets to each other, the system would become so corrupt in so little time. Mafias of ticket-givers stalking other people, for example.

At times I wish there could be half-cops, registered people only capable of giving citations. But then I realize that not only would this end up corrupt too, there really isn’t such a thing as a half-cop – even a simple speeding citation can become a murder if the driver is a gang member with a gun for instance. So these people would need to be educated like police and outfitted in part like police, which means they should also respond to other policing issues, thus they are actually full police.

That said, I do wish I could mount a camera on my dashboard and submit untamperable evidence to them of other cars’ illegal actions. I can imagine how flooded that system would be, but maybe other drivers would stop doing really stupid/dangerous/illegal maneuvers simply knowing that they might be taped doing so. That would also have the benefit of encouraging these people to do these maneuvers on their own time away from other cars, thus reducing the chance that they kill anyone but themselves, which is totally fine with me.

This would never be able to be enforced by civilians. The cases would be hard to prove. Putting it mildly this would be absolute chaos.

I certainly don’t think non-police should have the authority to pull people over. I would like to see a system in place to report bad drivers. In theory, repeat offenders would rack up a lot of reports from many different people, which would hopefully make their car insurance very expensive (while reducing the cost for us good drivers) and possibly require them to pass more thorough road testing from the state when they renew their license.

Obviously, such a system would need to protect people against deliberate sabotaging of records which might be tricky to get right, but I think such a system might make the roads a lot safer.