Gonna be downvoted, because apparently this is car brain central, but the amount of mental gymnastics people will do to make red light camera enforcement “bad” is crazy.
The US’ private company control over these cameras notwithstanding.
Fuck me, so many people die on on roads, and especially at intersections.
The US’ private companies
this is entirely the problem, because they’re turning over info to ICE and other agencies and it’s being used oppressively.
Hence my carve out. I don’t support the privacy nightmare the US has.
I do support road safety cameras in general, if managed properly.
People don’t have the right to have no consequences for their dangerous behaviour.
I do support road safety cameras in general, if managed properly.
yeah that’s the rub. what municipality do you trust to manage them properly in this day and age? I’ve seen horror stories from all over the US, UK…
I fucking hate, absolutely despise the vroom vroom dickheads who make these technologies desirable. I want them to be held accountable but am not sure it’s worth the ice goons and yokel yokels who will abuse their capabilities.
The city I work for put up Flock cameras with specific instructions from Council that they were only to be used for identification of cars flagged in active warrants.
Within a week of their installation, police used the cameras to track the movements of someone who filed a complaint.
Fuck the police
Sounds like a police/privacy problem, not the idea of having cameras at all.
Police should need a warrant to access the videos.
The software should not log licence plates of every single car that comes past.
The software should be open source and developed by the public sector.
I agree what’s in place in the US is a privacy nightmare, but the idea of having cameras in general isn’t fundamentally bad.
Skill issue USA, git gud.
I just don’t think having this kind of surveillance state apparatus is ever worth it I don’t want the government or private companies tracking my every move.
I don’t even own a car and I want these cameras gone.
I don’t want the government or private companies tracking my every move
This is an issue with how the cameras are operated. I’m taking issue with people complaining that these cameras exist at all.
People claiming no system could ever be privacy-preserving aren’t being very imaginative.
I agree the surveillance state is bad, but taking a picture of someone running a red light and sending them a fine is a good thing, sorry.
What’s bad is allowing cameras to passively record every single licence plate at all times and store that information. A speed or red light camera should only take a photo/video when it detects someone speeding/running a red light, and no other information should be stored.
There seems to be 2 main camps in this thread.
Fuck the police, and fuck shitty drivers.
Both camps are correct.
I can condone taking down pedestrian surveillance, but people who drive cars should follow the rules or get fucked.
It is not necessary to install photo enforcement cameras to get people to follow the rules.
What better ideas do you have in mind?
Ea Nasir is a really interesting case study of how one piece of information can be interpreted in two completely different ways.
One interpretation, and the one most people know, is that the authors of the clay tablets complaints are legitimate.
The other is that Ea Nasir kept them as a record of people attempting to harm his reputation. So he could remember who to avoid doing business with in the future.
Also ancient Sumer had a pretty decent legal system for it’s time, it’s entirely possible Ea-Nasir was keeping the tablets for a possible court case. So the ancient equivalent of saving texts from a shit customer.
So it’s like the Lemmy modlog. Maybe it’s a log of mods calling out bad users, maybe it’s a log of mods lying and power tripping.
I would give this merchant zero stars if I could
Awful copper
Worst trade experiemce of my life. I will not be returning
Best copper
Best trade I ever had. I will for sure return.
Government surveillance tracking device you mean? Enrich the local cops devices? Over half of violations monies collected goes to the corporations that market them to local and state officials with lavish dinners and vacations devices? Financial incentive to calibrate them to flag innocent drivers knowing there is little to no recourse against the company devices? 5.5 lbs you say?
I just don’t think there’s that much copper in a camera. That’s a lot of weight for a camera by itself.
It’s true! Little known fact, they also have their own catalytic converter
Gold coin pop out the top WAA-HOO
I mean, being anti-authority is fine, but even if you achieve your stateless society, don’t you still want your stateless society to still have traffic co-ordination somehow?
Stateless =/= rule-less
Photo enforcement cameras are problematic for several reasons.
A) It has been shown that yellow lights with such cameras are very often set to a yellow duration briefer than generally accepted engineering practices to increase revenue *1
B) They discourage a rare misbehavior, actually running red lights, whilst causing another to become common. That is slamming on the brakes even when it isn’t safe to stop. Exacerbated by A. Better slam on the brakes when it flicks yellow even if you are way too close to reasonably stop whilst going only the speed limit.
People who are caught up by it are almost always those who found themselves a bit too far into the intersection to safely stop. EG those who cross the threshold right as it is changing. There is for reasons of safety a few seconds between one light turning red and another green. At 30 mph (44 feet per second) someone will fully clear a 40 foot intersection in less than a second. That is to say the only people you catch aren’t those who would have collided.
They are those
- you fucked with the shorter duration yellow oops
- people who hesitated because of 1 and slowed but ultimately decided to proceed thinking they can make it
- People with poorer brakes and or dealing with rainy conditions reducing stopping time.
C) Most of the money goes to the contractor who owns the cameras. Essentially you are letting a private company prey on your citizens as long as government gets to keep the scraps.
*1 https://ww2.motorists.org/blog/6-cities-that-were-caught-shortening-yellow-light-times-for-profit/
I’m not arguing for police states and surveillance, but this is wrong:
a rare misbehavior
Nearly half of all motor accidents are at intersections. It’s estimated there are annually a quarter million red light running accidents, and somewhere between 700 - 1000 fatalities yearly from these accidents. I suppose you could argue that with the number of deaths yearly from auto accidents (30,000 - 40,000 in the US) that a thousand “isn’t that much” but I feel like if a thousand people a year died to anything else we would be up in arms and demanding something be done about it.
Red light cameras have been demonstrated to reduce crashes at intersections, actual studies and data, so maybe check for all sources on all angles of a problem. The reduction isn’t drastic but it is there. It shows that there are ARE things that can be done about intersection accidents, but whether or not it’s cameras is a separate debate. I don’t think the harm of illicit data collection or the instances of some cities using corrupt methods for collecting funds outweighs the lives saved, but I guess you can ask the families of people who died how they feel.
I am open to better ideas for reducing auto accidents but everyone seems pretty stuck on the idea that we should have the freedom to pilot thousands of pounds of steel as fast as we can as a method for compensating for bad time management, and I think it’s safe to say that a LOT of the opposition to automated methods for managing traffic laws irritates people because they don’t feel like they have a way to “get away” with breaking the rules.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10487344/
https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/research/safety/05049/
I’ll add one more. They subvert our right to a trial and seeing our accuser. The fines are all supposed to be viewed by some sort of officer that is supposed to show up if you challenge the ticket. The only one I’ve received didn’t have any info on how to challenge it. It was like a bill that obfuscated my right to a trial. Guilt is assumed and forgiveness is ignored. 28 in a school zone in an unfamiliar city, instant fine with no “oops I fucked up” recourse.
If only it were possible to transport humans and goods without a network of cameras invading everyone’s privacy.
If only that was the natural state of the world for more of human history until just a few years ago.
There is some political horseshoe theory that connects “People who cannot stand any kind of authority at all and start shrieking even when a forum mod removes their comments.”
It’s the weird far-left anarchists and far right libertarians finding common ground in wanting a society where mommy doesn’t tell them to not run with scissors. Some of the “sovereign citizens” who make for hilarious Youtube content are sincere in their their irrational hate for any kind of rules and laws.
I have had enough dealings with these folks that I have a pretty strong opinion that nobody has been able to change, that these folks just have serious authority issues and do not give a shit about a broader society and are just mad at their parents.
They are the absolute worst people you could ever have as neighbors. I sometimes think we should drive them into the sea via mobs with torches.
edit: let me double down - if you get angry at the idea of authority (not considering the enforcers or management of that authority, which is a separate thing) you need to be driven into the sea via mobs with torches. We need systems and rules and taxes for a functional society. Work on changing the way that society enforces and motivates people to follow those rules instead of blindly lashing out at anything designed to keep people safe.
Honestly we would all be better off if we had somewhere we could deport these people to. Fascists to Russia, communists to Venezuela, sovcits to Somalia.
The fact that there are so many tankies who don’t in fact move to Russia is pretty telling. It’s not like there’s a huge barrier to entry, they are desperate for
more bodiesmore people who support their propaganda and nationalism :D
Personally I have found authority in America to be stupid, abusive, incompetent or all 3. Do you live somewhere else?
Police officers and FBI directors are broadly stupid, abusive and incompetent, but that doesn’t encompass all authority.
You face authority every day. You follow systems and rules and contracts so that society functions. You use traffic laws. You don’t shoot people who make you mad, you don’t write bad checks or walk out of stores without paying. You are under a system of authority whether or not you agree with the values and enforcement of the people who enforce these rules.
I’m fine with throwing out the leadership and officers who enforce the laws, but we HAVE to have rules and laws, and this includes safety issues like speeding. I don’t care what motivates you to follow these rules, as long as you do, because I am also on the road.
I don’t need a system of law not to shoot people or walk out without paying. Some of us have ethics. I have found authority in America broadly garbage from bottom to top. It’s not just the top that is fucked.
I don’t need a system of law not to shoot people or walk out without paying. Some of us have ethics.
I cannot take your word for that, even if it’s true, I cannot trust everyone, and even if someone is a good person, every human is vulnerable to emotions and failures of judgement, so yes we do need laws and rules and nothing can change that short of some system of taking away everyone’s free will. I already said that the enforcers as, top to bottom, are a separate issue.
Traffic enforcement cameras are one of the worst ways I can think of to coordinate traffic.
red light ones are not great due to increased rear endings from some idiot slamming the brakes on when they should have gone through / people rushing and assuming the person in front will go through the yellow.
speed ones work great, when placed appropriately (i.e. on a street with an appropriate speed limit for the road design and in areas of higher pedestrian activity). I hate that Ontario just banned speed enforcement cameras, because that means a loss of revenue to pay for the road network maintenance, more police activity enforcing speed (which a camera does automatically all day long) which means police aren’t doing more important stuff and also it’s a waste of my tax dollars, and they will have to spend more of my tax dollars putting shittier speed reduction methods in place like speed bumps (annoying as fuck, bad for fuel economy, loud because people race from speed bump to speed bump, ineffective because people pay attention racing from speed bump to speed bump instead of to what’s going on around them, annoying for bicycles and people with towing trailers, loud when people telling trailers go over them, loud when regular cars go over them, bad for snow plows…)
now, this is just for speed enforcement, not coordinating traffic flow. although in a properly designed network, there are times that this can actually be achieved, unlike those light cycles on arterial roads that let you go through if you speed just a little bit but if you go the speed limit you hit every single red light
There are plenty of areas where the speed that is safe and reasonable to travel is substantially different from the one set. This is only not wildly broken because everyone disobeys the law and the cops refrain from stringent enforcement because forcing the traffic to all slow down would completely break traffic flow.
Maybe this works well in Canada but America governments are about as stupid as Americans.
You think people pushing that thought further than “What’s the edgiest political personality I can use for posing online”
That can be done though street design. See: The Netherlands.
Sure, remove the red light but please also remove cars.
I heard the ones in school zones actually have 10lb of copper and a chocolate bar inside
The USA needs more speed traps (all sorts), red light cameras, traffic circles and draconian fines to prevent the undisciplined idiots from killing people.
draconian fines
nah fam
Why is that a problem ? Do you intend to risking the lives of others on the road ?
Class warfare. Rich people get a free pass commit crimes.
That was the point of Gamelfisch. Make the rich feel the fines.
I’d add the swîss system could be used with fines that scale with wealth.
I mean, it’s not a free pass, it’s just a pass they’re willing and able to pay for.
Copper you say?
Too bad it’s not true.
only reason you shouldn’t is have accountability for maybe not you, but for the bad drivers.
No bamboozle?
