Yucca Valley, California Speed Traps

CHP are doing their radar thing religiosity on the gauntlet prior to the Morongo grade. Morongo drops to 50 MPH. Then again on the streach out of Morongo up the Yucca Grade CHP & SBSO radar. Once in the Yucca Valley town limits the speed reduces to 45 MPH to 40 MPH and enhanced enforcement is provided by motor officers. There are a lot of tickets written here!. The speed is changed on occasion so you must pay attention to the signs. If you pay attention to the skid marks on the Morongo Grade just imagine what it was like before the divider was in place. Also an other problem on the hwy is people turning from driveways into the left hand turn lane and waiting for traffic to open in their direction. That is illegal as well as dangerous.

25 mph speed limit. Downhill grade from Onaga to Hwy 62, easy to exceed.

Motorcycle cops – Believe its county. There are traffic traps all over the city along the major highways and Major access roads but these are not necessarily for speeding….since they are posted at 55 or 65 anyways. These cops are stopping anyone and I believe they are using a system of profiles. These roads are well travelled by tourists going to and from Joshua Tree National Monument. There is a high likihood that a ticket written here will not be contested. I have seen a half dozen cases where the cop went directly from writting one ticket to chase down the very next car and write another – and there was no speeding or even a considered observation of the vehicle involved. In fact of all the stops I have witnessed more than likely it was a senior citizen. I am speculating but I think the profiling may include motorcycles, more expensive autos, seniors. These traps seem to have appeared suddenly when the state was starting to gear up to layoff state employees and I believe in response the local traffic cops went into business for themselves …to justify their existence… be a profit center. Once a bailout was delivered via a new state budget and from the fed the absolutely daily constant presence of cops all over town always writing tickets seemed to slow down. But its still a lucrative business that they have had a taste of and now probably can’t let go. This is small backwater town midwestern hick stuff right out of the 1950s, and very typical of southern california corruption … very little enforcement of laws, frauds, cons, schemes are rampant and have always been, non responsive to actual calls and complaints but always where the money is. I am pretty sure this intersection is the centerpoint of a 3/4 mile radius of activity for one of these operations.

Speed Limit abruptly drops from 55 MPH to 45 MPH at the bottom of the hill with no warning except the sign where the drop occurs, traffic officer’s routinely are parked there and I see people ticketed there daily. Most residents know about this but for people driving through it could come as a rude surprise since they do not have warning the drastic drop in the speed limit is coming.

East and West SR 62 Old Woman Springs Highway. From roughly the Western edge of Johnson Valley to the sharp curve that sends you more south towards Yucca Valley. The trap is well defined and signed. As the CHP officer explained to me. People that live there cant even get onto the hwy when drivers are buzzing through at 80MPH plus. It just pays to slow to about 60-65 in that stretch (about 6-8 miles).