9 South Carolina Speed Trap Towns Drivers Learn About the Hard Way

South Carolina logged more than 37,000 speed-related crashes in 2024.

We’re all for pulling people over for the kind of speeding that causes those kinds of crashes.

But sometimes, it feels like police departments create speed traps to bump up their revenue rather than to keep the roads safe.

These are the South Carolina towns that have a reputation for speed traps.

Note: This is general information, not legal advice. Speed limits, fines, and points can change, so confirm current details with the South Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles.

1. McBee

McBee sits on State Highway 151 in Chesterfield County, and its town hall is now the subject of a criminal case.

The State Law Enforcement Division (SLED) charged McBee’s mayor and three police officers with running a ticket-quota scheme between 2023 and 2025.

Text messages in the case show the mayor pushing for “4 or 5 a day,” then later asking for 12 tickets a month from six officers to help cover a vehicle purchase.

A speeding ticket in McBee could run as high as $440, compared to $25 for a seat belt violation, so the quota pointed straight at drivers on Highway 151.

Officers told investigators they faced a quota of ten speeding citations a shift.

Ten a shift.

2. Turbeville

Turbeville, a small South Carolina town, sees a steady stream of cars that aren’t headed to Turbeville.

The town straddles US-301 in Clarendon County, right on the route drivers take between Columbia and Myrtle Beach.

A 2016 civil suit accused Turbeville of writing nearly 2,500 tickets a year, close to double the rate of much larger towns nearby.

Many of those citations land during the summer, when beach traffic thickens along US-301.

Does Turbeville’s police department really need to issue nearly 2,500 tickets a year to keep less than 1,000 residents safe?

3. Society Hill

Society Hill has 563 residents and, by one count, five full-time officers, nearly three times the statewide average for a town its size.

Local records show fewer than a dozen crashes a year in Society Hill, so five full-time officers isn’t about crash response.

That’s overstaffed for the job.

One driver who got caught reported a fine of $185.63, the kind of number that only comes from a court that has done this many times before.

4. Wellford

Wellford writes speeding tickets at a pace that outruns nearly every other Spartanburg County town.

An investigation into Upstate ticket data found Wellford issuing roughly 5 tickets for every family of four in town each year.

Those fines pour close to $285,000 into Wellford’s general fund annually, nearly a third of the whole city budget.

We’re going to go out on a limb and assume nobody budgets for a third of their income by accident.

5. West Pelzer

West Pelzer, a South Carolina town two miles from Williamston, polices the same stretch of road very differently.

The same Upstate ticket investigation found that West Pelzer police pull drivers over 21 times more often than officers two miles away in Williamston do.

Same road.

Cross the town line into West Pelzer, and the odds against a driver flip hard.

6. Duncan

Duncan’s police department writes the third-fastest ticket rate of any Upstate town, according to that same investigation.

Pass through Duncan and Wellford on the same road trip, and two tickets can push a driver’s point total closer to the suspension line than a single stop would suggest.

Police there write close to one speeding ticket a year for every resident, in a town that’s grown past 4,000 people.

Almost one per person.

7. Yemassee

Yemassee has spent the last several years annexing land well beyond its old town limits, and its patrol area on US-17 grew along with it.

The town annexed the Cotton Hall and Tomotley areas in 2021, stretching its reach deep into Beaufort County along the highway.

Yemassee ranks seventh among South Carolina cities on the National Motorists Association’s speed trap registry, with ten reported locations along the highway.

Eighty-six percent of the drivers who reported it agreed.

It’s a speed trap.

8. Ridgeland

The small town of Ridgeland made national news in 2010 for a pair of I-95 cameras that photographed anyone going over 81 mph and mailed the ticket home.

In four months the system nearly doubled Ridgeland’s ticket count, to somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000 citations.

South Carolina banned that kind of mailed camera ticket statewide the following year, so Ridgeland’s cameras came down.

The police force didn’t shrink.

Ridgeland still runs about 11 sworn officers for fewer than 4,000 residents, a staffing ratio that beats 75 percent of comparably sized departments.

They work I-95 the old-fashioned way now, from a cruiser in the median.

9. Bluffton

Bluffton drivers keep flagging the same intersection to the National Motorists Association’s speed trap registry, the traffic circle where South Carolina Highway 46 (SC 46) meets SC 170.

Reports describe the posted limit dropping from 55 to 35 mph in a short bend, with little warning before the change.

Blink, and you’ll miss it.

Drivers also flag the stretch of SC 278 near the BMW dealership, where an unmarked cruiser sits off the shoulder on Saturday and Sunday mornings.

A driver coasting off the highway at highway speed hits that bend before the new number registers.

South Carolina’s Statewide Speed Crackdown

South Carolina isn’t only fighting speeders town by town.

The state joined Georgia, Alabama, Florida, and Tennessee for Operation Southern Slow Down, a week of stepped-up patrols on interstates and state highways across all five states.

South Carolina logged 37,043 speed-related crashes in 2024, and 372 of them were fatal.