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Comment by i_am_proteus | Hacker News Reader

I've been out to France. Nice country. Legal all over to have those radar-actuated speed cameras, illegal for the folks who live there to have radar detectors. The way I figure, that translates to more people abiding by the speed laws. Lower speeds, less shenanigans, less road deaths. Simple.

Those sorts of laws in the USA vary a lot. Out West, especially on the long flats, speed limits end up more a suggestion than a hard-and-fast. USA's got more distance between places, makes sense. Plus it's no secret that the car's a way of life in the USA a bit more than over in Europe, and comparatively we hand our licenses out like child's candy and we're a bit more hesitant to revoke 'em for misbehavior that doesn't involve the bottle.

Not saying one way of life is better or anything, don't think that's a thing I'd be qualified to say, but there's plenty to suggest why things are different in one place compared to the other.

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> illegal for the folks who live there to have radar detectors

I can't get over the idea that its illegal possess devices sensitive to certain types of RF like radar detectors. I don't use radar detectors, I don't see the logic of paying hundreds to attempt to avoid paying a ticket instead of just following speed limits and save hundreds overall. However, the basic concept of outlawing a machine sensitive to certain EM waves seems absurd. Imagine if IR cameras were made illegal or it was illegal to own a SDR.

"have" and "own" aren't always the same thing, especially in intent-based legal systems.

I can own a blue flashing light. I can operate it in my house. I can't operate it attached to my vehicle on a public road. There is a very high chance this is also true in your country/state. Context is king.

Of course there's a legal distinction, otherwise the state wouldn't be able to make such laws. The question is whether such laws are logically reasonable to have.

Your blue flashing light example makes sense to prohibit because it is misleading other people. Whereas a radar detector is increasing your own senses. Should there be aspects of your personal physical reality that you are legally prohibited from finding out?

Or alternatively, what basic tort would using a radar detector be similar to?

Still, outlawing the operation of such a detector in a vehicle seems a bit of a stretch to me.

Operating a blue flashing light on a car on a public road is partially impersonating an emergency vehicle or police officer. You're directly affecting the people around you with that.

A radar detector is a fancy radio receiver that beeps when it sees certain wavelengths. Its not directly affecting anyone else. I do agree things like radar jammers should be illegal to operate in public spaces, which they are already separate from anything about attaching them to your car, as that's directly affecting other people especially with modern car safety features utilizing radar and laser systems. Public radar jammer operation is illegal though under FCC rules, so there's already things in place to punish those operating such equipment.

FWIW in Virginia and D.C. it really is illegal to possess a radar detector. The police will confiscate them. I imagine there are other places in the world which have similar rules.

The vast majority of radio frequencies are illegal for private use in Japan, but that doesn't mean that radios are illegal, or that people don't use radios, or that anyone even checks for compliance.

Illegal to transmit on, or illegal to listen on? I agree with the government determining who has rights to transmit on which frequency ranges. If it was entirely a free for all, it would be hard to operate the kinds of wireless networks we all enjoy.

In Germany it's the latter – you're allowed to listen to amateur radio, plus any public broadcasts like radio, TV, CB radio, weather satellites, maybe a few other things, but nothing else that's only intended for a limited target audience.

So while e.g. in Switzerland listening to air traffic control is legal and Zurich airport's official plane spotter info page even provides a direct link to liveatc.net, in Germany it's officially illegal unless you're a pilot (and even then it might possibly be technically illegal if you're listening in not directly in conjunction with flying, i.e. while not wearing your pilot hat figuratively speaking).

That sounds terrible to me. If I'm being irradiated with energy I should be able to analyze it without the law preventing me from looking at it. If the communications are supposed to be private it should be on those parties involved to secure it or limit it from reaching me, not just outlawing listening to verboten frequencies.

Would operating a general SDR would be illegal in Germany? How would they even begin to know you're listening to those frequencies as opposed to something else? I've got a hand-held amateur radio which easily tunes into the air bands, would such a radio be illegal to operate in Germany?

FWIW, this is one place in US laws which is like this. There's a section of frequency ranges which analog cell phones operated on, and supposedly radios which are designed to tune to those frequencies aren't allowed. I'm not entirely sure how SDRs work in such a legal system, but they seem generally legal despite physically being able to tune in to those frequencies easily. Its kind of a moot law these days anyways, there are no analog radios susceptible to this basic "attack".

Operating scanners or amateur radios or a SDR is fine, you're just not allowed to intentionally tune it to any non-public frequencies, and if you're just idly browsing through the spectrum then as soon as you realise that a transmission isn't public you need to stop listening immediately and forget anything you have received so far.

> How would they even begin to know you're listening to those frequencies as opposed to something else?

Or course the can't know that – what it effectively means is you can't do in public and shouldn't talk about it too loudly (hence e.g. liveatc.net doesn't have any coverage in Germany).

In Virginia, it's legal to own a radar detector; but, you just can't use it.

You can actually have it in your vehicle, as long as it's not accessible to the driver/passengers and not connected to a power source. They cannot be sold in Virginia.

You know what else France has? 70-80mph speed limits on some of the narrowest highways I have ever seen. 60mph speed limits on narrow, rural 2-lane country roads. Americans would absolutely shit their pants to drive there. People in France drive fast and aggressive. Sitting in the left lane at 80mph in my Fiat, got people up my ass, lights flashing at me. There is no tolerance for holding people up and being inconsiderate. People pay attention and drive, and don't act like entitled assholes or road vigilantes. They just get up and go. Horns are used to let people know where you are, and nobody gets offended or road raged because of it. Their mirrors are all convexed and they don't have blind spots. Motorcycles and scooters filter up at lights and are gone before cars even get through the intersection.

Here in the US, people are too busy doing everything but driving. Mind wandering, waiting for their Wall-e chairs to be developed to take them to McDonalds. Surfing Facebook, reading their iPads car wandering all over the lane, bouncing off the lane reflectors. People in the US can't even be bothered to use their turn signals for fucks sake. We have the absolute shittiest driving habits in the world, the worlds slowest, least attentive drivers. The driving exams are a joke in every state. We let anybody behind the wheel.

Some data; traffic-related deaths per 100,000 population:

US (2018 figures): 12.4

France: (2019): 5

Of course this neglects many confounding variables, but a factor of nearly 2.5 is quite large.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...

You'd probably be better off comparing the deaths per billion vehicle-km (7.3 for the states and 5.8 for the French).

Figure that it's the bit about traveling in the vehicle that bears the risk, not just being a person in the country.

Are there any average speed cameras in the US, taking two photos with cameras far apart from each other and checking the time between them is possible within the speed limits?

There are; to my understanding the state of Oklahoma uses a system similar to this on their toll roads.

The Turnpikes were like this back in the day. You got a timestamped slip of paper when you got on, and you paid based on mileage driven when you go off. And if the times showed your average speed was too high, you would get ticketed also at the exit.

I'm honestly surprised this hasn't been done in more places with electronic tolls. If my state was greedy enough they probably could retroactively go through my toll history and mail me a sizable ticket.

I do find it funny seeing speeders slow down when approaching toll bridges. If they really cared about your speeding they'd obviously know based on how fast you went from the last bridge, slowing down to the speed limit just before the bridge isn't going to change your time.

Most toll bridges where I am have parking spots specifically for the police. You also have people changing lanes stupidly at the toll plazas.

I knew of this back in the day on the Indiana Toll Road, but do they still do it these days? I haven't had reason to use it in well over a decade. Key difficulty: it's now privately-operated.

Few, if any. They are a really good idea in so many ways, but Americans regard speed cameras of all sorts as unsporting and invasive.

I used to feel the same way, until some combination of experience with traffic cameras in other countries and maturity changed my mind.

Traffic-stops are dangerous for all concerned, expensive, don't scale, and are rife with the opportunity for profiling/abuse.

To the extent that we can agree on speed limits that delineate the difference between safe and unsafe behavior, average-speed cameras are a great way to ensure that those limits aren't radically exceeded.

There are places, like Highway 20 in Washington State, where the privacy risk is limited. If you pass through Newhalem, you're either going to the mountains or you're going to Mazama, 60 miles away. On that stretch of road, if a car arrives >10% earlier than can possibly be safe, why can't we fine the car's owner?

Speed cameras would be fine if we fixed some major problems. For example, the revenue goes to the local government so they have a vested interest in using them to generate as much income as possible. For another, American speed limits are often nonsensical and having nothing to do with the actual road conditions. I've been on tiny twisting roads with a limit of 65mph and I've been on giant thoroughfares that were 45 and seemed designed to tempt drivers into getting tickets.

You'd probably just see a large uptick in people obfuscating their plates (which is much easier with US-style plates than European-style ones).

That's what's happened in NYC. All the drivers who go out intending to blatantly violate the law just started making it so their plates can't be read (or are outright missing) and don't care about the cameras at all.

As someone much further north, unless I just came out of the car wash, my plates are basically illegible 4-6 months a year because of the heavy level of salt/sand/crap on the road in winter.

I don't think you're getting away from requiring a high level of traffic stops to influence driver behavior significantly.

When have traffic stops ever influenced driving behavior? If that really worked, then there should be no more speeding. Millions upon millions of speeding tickets have been written, and people still speed. Cops can patrol an area, and as soon as they leave, people go back to speeding.

> why can't we fine the car's owner?

That's the rub, in many places. You can't fine the owner unless you can prove that the owner was in control of the vehicle. I know some identical twins, one was driving a car and got caught by a red light camera with a clear picture of the driver. Both twins show up to court, claim that they share the car, and the photo can't distinguish between them. They got out of the ticket.

Personally, I'd be in favor of turning speed camera pings into an "excessive use fee" on the car's registration (pay on renewal, or no renewal).

Edit: the notion of moving speed infractions to an administrative fee does have some issues -- in cases of dangerously excessive speeding, it seems like a good idea for a cop to intervene. A sloppy implementation would result in double-jeopardy. If a car is stolen and used to commit a crime, but the thief isn't identified, that could result in significant legal difficulty for the owner.

> To the extent that we can agree on speed limits that delineate the difference between safe and unsafe behavior

That can’t be the case though? If the posted limit is the boundary between safe and unsafe, drivers will be close to the limit all the time, and really in danger should they exceed it. The limits have to be set well away from that boundary, and the boundary itself has to assume the lowest common denominator of driver and vehicle.

I think that's why average speed cameras feel especially unsporting. A reasonable driver in a modern car could beat a posted limit by 10% while remaining so far inside their safety envelope they wouldn't even notice.

There is a big difference between "the car can handle it" and unsafe.

For an extreme example, see: School Zones.

All the camera operators here in the US are totally corrupt. They have been caught all across the country lobbying and bribing politicians. They all take a large percentage of the ticketing revenue, and thus are incentivized to get as many tickets as possible. Camera operators have repeatedly been caught making roads less safe in order to maximize ticketing and revenue.

https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndil/pr/former-redflex-ceo-liai... https://ww2.motorists.org/blog/6-cities-that-were-caught-sho...

I mean, I could literally find 100000 links to various stories. These were just the first two that came up with a quick search.

Only vaguely related, but there used to be a 17 mile long stretch of highway in South Carolina that went through the grounds of the Savannah River Site. In the cold war days, that's where they produced nuclear material for bombs.

The highway was open to the public, but you had to check in at both ends as you entered and left the site. You were given a pass with time written on it, and if you took too long to pass through the site, you could be subject to additional interrogations and searches.

As far as I know, it was the only highway where taking to long to cover distance could get you into trouble.

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