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Flashing is used to warn people of a road hazard ahead. Now if a line of cars is cruising along one after another and the first person sees a speed trap, what happens? He or she slams on the brakes creating a risk for anyone else following behind. Now you may say that you should not follow so close, but if you have never driven around Washington DC (My location) Los Angeles, or Dallas, then you have no idea what traffic really is. If you leave a one car length spot in front of you then someone will pull into it. Also, speed traps work most effectively as a visual deterrent. When you see someone pulled over on the road, or an officer on the road, you slow down. A camera will not curb you behavior until you get a ticket in the mail a few weeks later, so its ability to curb speeding has much less effectiveness. As far as radar detectors go, when people's detectors go off, they slow down. So putting radar out on a road can curb speeding for large sections of highway. So if the cops want to reduce speed, they need to be visible and actively run radar and speed traps. If the city council wants to generate revenue and not worry about law enforcement, then they run cameras.
As a side note, the past three tickets I have received over the past five years have all been at off times. I have gotten two tickets on Sunday, one at 9:30 the other at 11:30, both in the morning. The other was at 1:30 in the afternoon. At all three points there was a moderate amount of traffic on the roads, with all three areas being commercial business districts with no residential driveway access. If you want to catch a drunk or a guy with an outstanding warrant, run a speed trap at night. If you want a soccer mom or a mild person who mails in their ticket and pays their fine, run a speed trap during the day. On a Sunday. And yes, I will go to court for this latest one. If every single person showed up to court to contest every ticket, the judicial system would become absolutely gidlocked. I would like to see what happens.
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