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Comment by rhokstar | Hacker News Reader

Since the introduction of cameras used at intersections to penalize stop light violators (made famous by a former mayor who ran a red light while getting a blow job from his mistress), San Diego has always been experimenting with surveillance technology especially thereafter. Those intersection cameras have been minimized from county wide implementation at its height.

Being a border city and a major military hub for the Navy and Marines, surveillance technology being developed by businesses here have been a response to these types of organizations' needs and challenges.

I could see backlash as this surveillance tech permeates the county and extreme edge cases are brought to the surface to be used as weapons for curbing implementation.

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It's not just border cities. I came back from a business trip to Memphis and were shocked to see blue lights blinking on top of street light poles [0] almost everywhere specially in poorer areas, they are cameras recording audio and video 24/7 installed by the city to deter potential crime.

[0] https://www.toledoblade.com/image/2014/06/06/1140x_a10-7_cTC...

>"Being a border city and a major military hub for the Navy and Marines, surveillance technology being developed by businesses here have been a response to these types of organizations' needs and challenges."

The border already has border security and military bases already have existing security. What specific "needs" and "challenges" does San Diego currently have that are not fulfilled by those existing systems and requires the deployment of all pervasive surveillance throughout the entire city?

The constant need to do a task cheaper and faster.

> "Those intersection cameras..."

Fun fact: Intersection cameras have been proven to cause more accidents, as more people slam on their brakes to avoid a ticket then coast through the light.

Fun fact. Anticipated behavior is less likely to cause harm, whatever it is. If someone anticipates that you'll fire a gun at them, they'll have a much better reaction than someone who has a gun fired at them without that anticipation.

In California it is legal to be in an intersection on red as long as you entered it on green or yellow. The slam-on-the-brakes effect should at least be smaller than in states where being in the intersection on red for any reason is an offense.

That sounds exactly like an urban myth along the same lines as 'seatbelts kill more people than they save'. Has it ever been proved?

Worth also noting that rear-end crashes are generally less dangerous than t-bones. For similar reasons, roundabouts can be preferable to standard crossroads even if they result in a higher number of collisions.

See https://www.motorists.org/issues/red-light-cameras/increase-... for various sources showing that red light cameras increase the number of accidents. Within The Netherlands there is a restriction on where such cameras can be placed due to this effect; basically the number of current accidents has to be pretty high.

"That sounds exactly like an urban myth along the same lines as 'seatbelts kill more people than they save'. Has it ever been proved?"

I hope you will look further into this - you may be interested to learn (I was) that a nearly perfect intervention for red lights being "run" is to lengthen the yellow signal.

It costs nothing and works as well, or better, than red light cameras - and with none of the artificial, unexpected driving behaviors that can cause rear-end accidents.

http://saferstreetsla.org/679/case-studies-longer-yellow-lig...

https://www.motorists.org/issues/red-light-cameras/yellow-li...

Yellows have been shortened on purpose to raise revenues from tickets. If cities cared about accidents and congestion, we'd have less lights and more traffic circles, but that means less tickets and more thought and effort than lowering the yellow light time.

Which mayor was this?

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