A “Predatory” Stop-Sign Camera Is Terrorizing My Neighborhood

Good news, doesn't affect your driving record. Bad news, everything else that is wrong with it on every level still applies.

There's still issues of authenticity, integrity, time keeping precision, etc - but I think these are better understood problems; no idea if source code for those was ever demanded (or available), or if they were challenged.

This is strange as many jurisdictions take an officer's written report of crimes as a higher form of evidence than any other evidence (video), combined with post court revealations that officers routinely lie under oath.

Then you have the whole escalation issue, where a failed turn signal, excessive (or, now less than excessive) speed, or failure to stop leads to a situation where 1. The police officer is likely to be hit by a vehicle while on the side of the road 2. The stopped driver may react erratically 3. The stopping officer may act erratically.

With recent American police failings coming to light, we should welcome video evidence as safer and more accurate for all parties

>The court argued that Minneapolis had, in effect, created a new type of crime: "owner liability for red-light violations where the owner neither required nor knowingly permitted the violation."

The case where the source matters is the breathalyzer--and in that case it shouldn't matter because the the system is *inherently* seriously flawed by biology: breath alcohol is not a good indication of blood alcohol. The breathalyzer should only be used to figure out who needs to be blood tested, it is not remotely reliable enough for court.

This is my issue with alcohol breath-analyzers as well. I have no knowledge about how they work, whether they truly measure the amount of alcohol one has ingested, or they infer it from some other measure. I have read accounts from people saying even eating a lot of carbs can trigger the detectors. But since I am no expert, challenging the issue at a traffic stop is very difficult.

I am very particular about never driving after having a drink, I even go so far as not driving the same day if I've had even a single beer. But every time a policeman stops me and asks me to blow into the device, I'm scared that it will go off. And my point is that I shouldn't be scared, given that I am not breaking the rule.

This kind of automation gets that relationship exactly backwards, and is not the basis of a healthy balance between freedom and order.

As an aside, this has always been funny to me—you called them American stops; in America they’re called California stops; in California, we called them L.A. stops. The buck stops there, though: in Los Angeles, nobody stops.

I think moving the goalposts and changing the rules from "any speeding gets you a fine" to "excessive speeding always gets you a fine and lesser speeding can be grounds for an ad-hoc fine by a present officer (who would explain how speeding was dangerous in that particular situation)". It would hopefully get rid of the feeling that unaccountable machines are preying on our missteps while allowing reasonable police officers to discipline unsafe drivers. You could still of course have police who are just out to annoy others, but I'm not sure that something new ticketing laws can fix.

1) Red light cameras tend to displace the accidents from the intersection to just before the intersection, but they don't reduce accidents or injuries.

2) Regression to the mean--put a camera in a spot with a high accident rate and see the accident rate drop. But blips tend to average out anyway, unless it's a fundamental problem with the spot you would expect the accident rate to drop back to normal.

Also, we don't have cameras here but I have observed a pattern to traffic enforcement: I have *never* seen traffic enforcement other than DUI checkpoints at a location where there wasn't a mismatch between the law and the reality on the road. Examples:

1) There used to be a *big* speed trap on the highway northeast of town. One day they finally raised the speed limit there--and I haven't seen a cop there since.

2) One mile is full of houses, narrow, legitimately 35 mph. Then there's a mile built to 45 mph standards, but it has *one* house (which I believe is not occupied) and is 35 mph, even on the southbound side which in the area near the house is isolated from it by a barrier no little kid could cross. The next mile is built to the same standards and is correctly 45 mph. One guess as to where the cop sits.

3) We used to have a stupid law prohibiting turning on red when there were multiple turn lanes. I'm thinking of a T intersection where the road widened to 4 lanes just before the T. Just after the right turn there's good shelter for the cops to hide--and they really rack up a score on people making perfectly safe turns from the rightmost lane. I believe the legislature finally fixed that. Life has changed, I haven't been though that intersection since to see if the trap went away.

4) One that used to apply right near our house. The half-main street is built to 35 mph standards, but when we moved in there was a spot 1/2 mile along it that was undeveloped and thus narrower--25 mph. That resulted in the whole mile being 25 mph. The cop sat 1/4 mile along, where it still looked like a 35 mph road even though it was 25 mph. When the narrow spot was fixed the limit was raised to 35 mph and I haven't seen a cop there since.

And the purely abusive: Crosswalk enforcement, I got nailed in a situation where continuing on was completely safe but I'm not sure I could even have made a panic stop before the line, certainly not without asking for being rear-ended. Not only that but the only place served by that crosswalk was closed.

Edit: The only legitimate traffic stops I have ever seen involve a cop driving along and witnessing a problem.

Might amuse you to know that in the US, they're often called "California" stops, and in California, they're often called "Hollywood" stops ;)

In this case, change the ticketing model to have a graduated scale so e.g. going 1mph through a stop sign is $1, going 2 is $3, going 10mph is $100. Ideally, enforce it through technology at all stops. And then anyone who accrues more than say $10 in fines in a month has to pay it, and everyone can see where they are towards that.

And then to make it properly "fair" make it equitable, e.g. ticket costs indexed against your personal income rather than a flat rate.

I once also saw a 3-way stop, meaning a 4-road junction, where one road had right-of-way and the others had to do the precedence order. Obviously, this was insanely dangerous - if anyone on the stopping approaches thought it was a 4-way stop, and assumed that all other vehicles would stop, then it would pull out in front of a vehicle that actually had the right-of-way.

Then there's right-turn-on-red, which is scary for pedestrians...

The US just has a lot more of that.

We also just have roundabouts all over the place and Americans seem to be allergic to them for whatever reason.

There are very few 'yield' intersections here in Toronto, Canada. It's all 4-way stops which are very confusing because the right of way is inconclusive and circumstantial.

The exceptions are:

A merge does not normally have traffic control devices except possibly a yield sign, or special merge signage.

Obviously a one way road forking (like part of a divided highway) does not need signals or stop signs.

Driveways do not usually count as roads for determining if an intersection exists. Commercial driveways are sometimes treated as roads, typically with stop signs, and ocassionally in heavy traffic areas with traffic lights. Large commercial areas (big box stores, or shopping centers) are more likely to have their driveways treated as roads.

Two roads intersecting without anything present to control traffic basically never happens. The less important street or less traffic street will typically get stop signs. If both roads are negligible traffic and build to the same standards, the stop sign direction is picked arbitrarily. If there is significant traffic, but both roads are approximately equal in importance and volume, 4 way stop is typically used, basically functioning as a poor-mans roundabout. In cases with really high traffic, traffic lights are typically used at intersections.

Most areas in the US do not make heavy use of roundabouts. They are becoming increasingly more common over time, but mostly in newly developed areas and it still varies by location. Retrofitting existing intersections is not super common (although it probably happens a lot more in some parts of the country).

> Data from MPD shows that in June 2020, the camera in question snapped 82 violators. Then there were 2,850 tickets in July 2020 (compared to 231 tickets in July 2019). Then the camera started flashing like paparazzi in Cannes: From August through November, a total of 17,216 tickets were issued. That’s $1,721,600 from one camera at one intersection in just four months.

This is the SAME CAMERA, just recalibrated, and it issues 34x as many tickets one month to the next. In four months, this single camera has sucked almost $2 million from the residents. How many stop-sign violators do you think this tiny intersection has? And if you're caught by this clearly malfunctioning camera, you basically have no recourse in the legal system?

This is abusive, plain and simple. Whether or not it was intentionally done like this another question (probably it wasn't, probably it's just a miscalibration), but either way it doesn't make it right.

Remember: the purpose of a camera like this is to improve conditions for residents, but instead it's bleeding them for money with absolutely no proof of any improvement in safety.

EDIT: oh, and another thing:

> “I’ve got five tickets,” Gopalakrishna told me. “Before I found out about the first one, I’d gotten four more.”

If you don't know that you've gotten a ticket until much later, how exactly are you supposed to modify your behavior? How could you possibly avoid getting tickets 2-5 if you don't even know about getting the first one?

Where to stop is less clear.

In California, the DMV handbook says:

"...you must make a full “STOP” whenever you see this sign. Stop at the white limit line (a wide white line painted on the street) or before entering the crosswalk..."

You could argue that the 'at the white line' part is unclear.

Does it mean that the entirety of your car must be behind the white line?

If so, how far behind is acceptable? Anything over 1/16th of an inch? Is 1 foot behind OK? How about a yard?

If not, is it OK as long as some part of your vehicle is above the line when you stop?

If not, how far over the line can you be?