It just seems a waste of money for them to outfit all of these unmarked vehicles

Seems to me that it wouldn't be any more expensive to outfit an unmarked vehicle than a marked one. Which brings me to your other point...

95% of the people they WANT to get are stopped by marked cars. If someone is moderately exceeding the limit, but driving in a safe manner, ala paying attention, then 99% of the time, they aren't going to get stopped.

This sounds logical, until you consider the fact that they do employ unmarked vehicles. In my eye, an unmarked HP has only one purpose: To sneak up on, and nail, otherwise-attentive speeders. (There's a Red October reference in here somewhere, I think...)

Sure, you may have spoken to some enlightened HP officers who espouse that philosophy, and they might even be in the majority. But there is still the one aspect of HP operations that's simply a ticket-making machine. That's the part that I'm concerned about.

The fact is that tickets generate a certain amount of revenue for the local governments and the state. Agreed, your fines don't pay for the highway patrol, but revenues from fines are a factor in budgets. If the highway patrol was only ever interested in safety, then they wouldn't have any need for ticket quotas or unmarked cars.

I'm not saying it's wrong to write tickets to speeders. The HP does a good job of keeping the peace on our freeways, and they perform a necessary function. I wouldn't have things any other way. The fact that they keep me on my toes is a good thing.

If only I could get them to enforce "Slower Traffic Keep Right" as much as they enforce the speed limit, I'd be a happy camper.

___________
Tony Fabris