But also, it would remove police discretionary power to turn a blind eye to friends, family and colleagues.
We obviously can’t afford to pay cops $200k+ a year without a huge increase in productivity, and only tech can provide that. It’s only a matter of time for the Americans to come around to it.
There is pushback in the US because the cameras got installed as a profit making exercise instead of a safety improvement.
Yellow-light cameras, for example, magically got installed on busy intersections instead of dangerous ones. And then the yellow light timings got trimmed down when they weren't making enough money.
For example this would not be an issue in a state that enshrines the minimum time of a yellow light in state law, and these issues occurred in jurisdictions where that is not true.
There are also two kinds of red light cameras; those to catch dangerous red light running, and those to catch violations of the “block the box” variety. The latter isn’t necessarily dangerous but does gum up traffic flow unnecessarily.
The timings didn't really need much regulation as they were generally set by Professional Engineers(PEs) who had to sign off that they analyzed the situation and it was safe. Those PEs would generally take into account the speed limit as well as actual car speeds, the general road conditions, average human reaction times, and average car braking characteristics so that you had sufficient time to stop when the light turned yellow. Normally they got it right, but occasionally they missed a bit (actual traffic speeding more than expected) and you got a "short yellow" which generally would get corrected if enough people complained.
And then some bright bulb got the idea to install enforcement cameras on the intersections--which doesn't sound like a bad idea. Except that the issue is the revenue goes to the police department AND gets split with the company maintaining the cameras--yeah, you can see where this is going a MILE away.
The cameras initially got installed on a couple of the most dangerous intersections and genuinely helped--accidents went way down on those. People were genuinely pleased about this. But, see, that's an issue as the revenue is now below projections. So, then the cameras started getting installed on super busy intersections instead of dangerous ones that were literally blocks away. At this point people started getting pissed off but could still be deflected with "Don't do illegal crap at the intersection". But, you see, revenue was still below projections because people adjust their behaviors--they either go a different route or adjust to avoid the camera firing.
It was at this point that they shortened the yellow lights to bump the revenue and where the shit hit the fan. The yellow lights were sufficiently short that you couldn't stop legally, accidents at the intersections increased because of rear-ending, people could document all this, and discovery pulled up the profit sharing agreements between the camera vendors and the police. At this point, everybody was pissed off and the cameras all got yanked because it was now an electoral issue.
I got to watch this occur in real time in San Diego, but they were far from the only municipality to pull this garbage.
This isn’t really the main issue though. People want to get away with speeding and running red lights, and these people vote so…