Speeding ticket insurance?

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A new service offers “Prepaid Traffic Tickets,” investments as a sort of hedge against the likelihood of getting a speeding or other ticket in a specific amount of time in the future — all while stressing that it does not in fact condone or encourage folks to speed.

Basically, the company issues a voucher to an individual for a specified price ($13.33, for instance) reedeemable for a certain amount ($100) to go toward paying a speeding ticket incurred during a certain time period after purchase (six months). Different levels of voucher are available — check them out at PTT’s site.

“Don’t get us wrong on this, please,” says company founder Keith Kelly. “We see these vouchers as a means of communicating the all-important message of safe driving,” urging voucher holders to “think of them the way they would think of a string tied around their finger,” a reminder to stay below the speed limit.

But hey, why not just tie the string around your finger, keep your foot off the pedal and hang on to your money?

Kelly says he got the idea for Prepaid Traffic Tickets during a game of Monopoly with his kids. “I drew the Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free cards,” he says. “I thought back to a speeding ticket I had received a couple weeks before…a light bulb came on, the dots connected, and here we are,” which doesn’t exactly go very far to explain the connections, but there you have it.

What’s next for Prepaid? Don’t know, but if they really wanted our money, they might have included no-idling fines, eh? I understand enforcement at Hunt’s Point and in California spots has been up of late, particularly when the temps are high. What hyperactive law enforcement have you seen out there lately?