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Comment by WarOnPrivacy | Hacker News Reader

After 3 decades living in WestCentral FL counties, I learned something about local police departments. You can measure the ethics of the police chief (and to a lesser degree, county commissioners), by whether they embrace or refuse revenue-generating traffic cameras.

    a school speed zone camera caught him going 38 mph when he thought 
    the speed limit was 40mph because the school speed zone sign wasn’t
    flashing when he was driving past an elementary school near his home. 

    In fact, despite the sign stating, "20 mph when flashing," the sign 
    isn’t even equipped with a flashing beacon.

    As a result, Weaver believes the cameras have become an easy money grab
    for counties and cities using a vaguely written law to cash in on drivers.

Bad sheriffs and bad officials adore cash-spewing traffic cams.

Hillsborough county officials have clearly lost their way.

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Real wtf is the 40mph is OK in a place kids are (e.g. some go early or stay late or weekend sports) generally around but only drive slow at certain times.

Schools next to a stroad really aren't that unheard of in the United States.

Yes so slow em down.

The previous context was, "Why on earth would there be a 40mph road next to a school"

The surrounding context was a comment about how the flashing light WASN'T on and how the speed limit was, per the sign, only enforced when the flashing light is on.

So, "why would it be 40mph?" because it's a stroad - a main thoroughfare through a town that's like maybe 5 or more lanes wide (including both directions and the 'turning lane'.

There's value in asking the question why there's such a wild variance in speeds between "normal" speed and "school open/close" hours, and that's a useful question to ask and likely comes down to the car-centric politics that filled the United States for well over 50 years, and will take a very long time (and a lot of political clout) to fix.

Depending on the size of the town, that may also, literally, be "the only road" that makes sense for that school to be on, so you have conflicting interests of a major, high-speed arterial road as well as the safety of children during particular hours.

And to add *even more* to that, if you're going 40 and expect the speed limit to be 40 and everyone around you also expects the speed limit to be 40 (because that's the posted speed limit, and the sign isn't flashing), then you going 20 creates a 20mph differential between you and the rest of the traffic around you and now you're *going* to cause an accident.

Have you seen modern US schools? They're basically setup like prison yards because of all the school shootings. There's no way the kids are going to run into the street without first going through a parking lot (and, often, a line of bollards).

On the bright side, there's zero reason to slow cars down when kids aren't being actively picked up or dropped off.

(Not that there was a reason to slow the cars down during off hours in the past, since the law has always been "When children are present" in places I've lived, which is good enough.)

To be fair, US schools have been very 'shaped like a castle with walls' for longer than school shootings. When I was in school, there was no way to get to the road, outside of entering and exiting the whole compound.

Your comment seems to imply that parking lots around schools are somehow strategically positioned to prevent school shootings? I'm not from the US but I'm intrigued by how that would work.

They retrofitted fences in the last decade or so. The only break in the fence is usually near the administration office / pickup / dropoff zone, which is generally next to the parking lot.

It doesn't actually prevent school shootings. There were 330 in the US last year; 349 in 2023. They're also adding cameras, weapons detection systems and "resources to address students’ emotional and mental well-being"

https://www.k12dive.com/news/school-shootings-2024-near-reco...

I am haven't seen a US school. What about walking? I'm guessing most people use the school bus or get driven then?

It varies greatly by area, but generally most too young to drive get bused or driven, and those old enough drive themselves.

Across the US, only 70% of students live within 3 miles of their school, and only 20% of students are within 1 mile. Toss in weather, carrying supplies for after-school activities, tight schedules (e.g., going from some before-school activity to the actual school building), a general fear of kidnapping, a car-centric culture, and the fact that buses are cheap and school dropoff is often easy to squeeze into a parent's schedule, and you'll find that various forms of driving are extremely common.

One suburban town near me forbids approach on foot or bike. I’ve heard of places where CPS was called about kids walking to school.

Wow what a dystopia

It only works if you are lucky enough to live the side of the school with the pedestrian entrance. A colleague lived near the side with car entrance so walking their kids to school required walking the extra 1/2 mile around the grounds as they weren’t allowed int he car entrance.

You would still be suddenly dropping a 40mph road to 20mph for a short stretch. These schools are frequently built on major roads.

Are you suggesting this is bad?

I am suggesting that having a major road that suddenly drops to half speed, without significant signage, then speeds back up is bad, yes. That's just a form of speed trap.

Perhaps the speed limit for the whole street (or road, if it isn’t a street) should be 20 mph then?

To elaborate - ideally there would be a street redesign in that area so 20 mph felt like the right speed. Narrowing, more visual obstructions, etc.

I'm aware of how natural speed limits work. And my point is these are frequently major roads that are miles long, not residential streets. Major arterial roads, sometimes state highways.

How do you propose ensuring safety for kids walking and biking to school in these places?

In the kinds of places I am thinking about, step one is choosing not to build directly on a major road, miles away from residences. Which is not always realistic, when residences are miles apart from one another. The decision for safety needed to be made about a dozen decisions ago in those situations. What is left is busing kids home.

Enforcing safe speeds a few hundred meters around a school doesn't help much for biking or walking when the rest of the infrastructure remains deadly. Placing the school there is just a bad choice if you want children to come to school independently from their parents.

The road that runs next to my local elementary is 50mph, 25mph when children present.

That sounds like they should just build a fence and keep it at 50.

How does that help kids walking or biking to school?

American urban design is almost a competition to see which town or city can rack up the highest pedestrian body count.

(*) suburban design, rather than urban. The nitpick is to keep from lumping pedestrian-safe NYC with, say, Memphis, which exceeds the Netherlands.

I get what you’re saying but the cities are stroad-filled wastelands too. Even NYC is terrible, though congestion charging helps.

The problem is not the cameras, it's the contracts.

The very simple solution is to prohibit camera companies getting a cut of ticket fines, direct funds to the state coffers, and mandate cameras can only be installed after proving via paperwork with photos that the stretch of road has proper signage.

Red light cameras? They drastically reduce t-bone impacts (which have high rates of serious injury and death) while slightly increasing rear-end collisions (which have very low injury rates and were the fault of the drivers speeding and following too closely, and/or driving distracted.) Not the fault of a traffic camera...

St. Augustine, FL: Trespass for peaceful assembly in a public forum declared a "private forum" simply to exclude free speech. https://youtu.be/dnZkf5-8gh8

Frankly, any county where the cash grab is done through automated speed cameras is probably blessed with a more honest and safer police force. And it is certainly one where the fines are levied more equitably across different races.

Lol, this would be assuming police have no control over placement of the speed cameras.

No, it just has to assume that they can’t turn them on or off depending on what color the driver approaching seems to be.

Do I really need to spell out the technique of placing cameras on predominately minority neighborhoods?

No, you just need to get over yourself and admit that it is less precise than simply picking the individual driver.

> According to state law, all the money collected by local governments through paid fines can only be used for public safety initiatives like crossing guards and police training.

Should the broken flashing lights be fixed? Of course, and "school" times in regard to community safety zones should also be standardised state-wide.

What's the incentive for implementing misleading automated ticketing cameras if the revenue generated can only be used to do what the cameras already do? The purpose of the cameras is to improve safety. The money isn't going to Christmas bonuses so the police chief can buy a boat.

> “It’s violator-funded. If you don't want to pay $100, it is a very simple hack—don't speed in school zones and you won't get a citation.”

Of course the police chief won't buy a boat, but he will need police training on the specifics of the implementing a speed boat enforcement division, preferably over Labor Day weekend.

Now all the money that went to to public safety initiatives from the general fund can go elsewhere. Money turns out to be fungible.

Any time a tax/fee/fine is earmarked for something, it doesn't mean that thing gets more funding. It'll get the same funding but it won't come from the general fund. It's a cruel lie to get people to vote for things they think will get the government to actually serve them.

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