I drove over 7K miles last month. I would much rather see traffic enforcement cameras than police cars sitting on the side of the road.
Traffic cameras attempt to document actual behavior with real evidence in an impartial manner.
Most cops are dumb, undertrained, and overpayed parasites on society who have violent and agressive behaviors. Then they sit on the side of the road being bored out of their minds all day. When an accident does occur they mostly stand around directing traffic while the paramedics, firefighters, and wreckers do all the work. Hell the most useful thing I have seen them do is remove debris from the road with a broom and dustpan.
City I lived in had a serious issue with people running red lights at a few intersections. Many fatal accidents and pedestrian injuries happened because of it. They put in a red light light cameras on the worst intersection. The first month it generated over $350K in fines at $125 each. Around 2,800 drivers ran that intersection. Within 3 months the number of tickets dropped to under 20 per month. The number of accidents dropped respectively as well.
They just stopped using the traffic cameras in my county this year. I’ve been pulled over twice this year now after never getting a camera ticket and not being pulled over for the last 15 years. I guess they have to make the money somewhere. I’d prefer the cameras.
Red light cameras are fine as long as they work properly, but fuck the speed cams. Glad they are still illegal here.
Flat fees for breaking the law are only a tax on the poor. If money can buy you privilege then you live in an oligarchy.
A little over a decade ago I slid to an icy stop as the yellow light came on in a turn only lane, about an hour north of Seattle. The guy in front of me tried to stop and ended up going through the intersection as the light turned red. I got a ticket with a photo of the intersection, but you could clearly see my car was stopped a good four feet behind of the line. It was dismissed, but I was pretty mad that I even had to fight that.
I don’t know if the tech has improved or if they have people double checking tickets before they are issued now, but I can’t say my experience made me feel positive about the automated ticket system lol
Mix an increasingly affordable and easy implementation of nanny-state technology to a shift towards tyrannical governance, and things will likely start getting ugly fast.
I would prefer to be judged by a person. I truly hate cars but here in the general Seattle area if you don’t have a car you just can’t function. So, say you are late to work every day but you blow thru every intersection to get to work not too late, just late. That’s obviously a you problem and one day it will be someone getting hit by you and you end up in jail. But if you’re just a random person or a visitor to the city, you’ll get a ticket by surprise one day.
As someone likely to be profiled by cops, I like the concept of objectivity with automated patrolling, but this comes at such an overbearing scalability and privacy violation that it’s still the greater evil. I just hope automated driving becomes the norm soon enough to obviate the need for this. That comes at a cost too, but the lives saved from that will be on the order of what some vaccines have accomplished and the efficiency with regards to time and energy all add up to make that a worthwhile change in my book.
There is also a complete lack of segregation of duties with these things. The companies that install, configure, and maintain also get a cut of the income. This is really bad.
Right; I’m considering requesting cameras in my city to protect crosswalks, pedestrians and cyclists as none of the laws are currently enforced in any meaningful way. One of the most cost-reasonable, effective ways to do that would be to have automatic cameras but the lecherous vendors that want 20-30% of the cut and authoritarian state are two massive concerns I have that make me, at the cost of my own daily safety, hesitant to call this stuff out.
I’d assume there are better ways to curb speeding (albeit more expensive), like making the streets narrower and more difficult to drive on. Won’t stop those that run red lights though
We should work on separated bike paths to narrow down the street.
I though to cross post here because it talks about Bluetooth tracking of people.
You need to pay up for your speed racing.
I’m so glad my city banned that shit.