New cameras to watch cameras that watch you | Hacker News Reader

New cameras to watch cameras that watch you

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29 pointsvectorbunny47 comments

Liberati says the cameras aren't a case of Big Brother nor a cash grab, police are simply trying to keep the public safe from reckless drivers.

Ha ha, very funny! If that were the case, for red light cameras at least, then they would just increase the length of the yellow light. That's cheaper than a camera, for sure, and has been proven empirically.

As far as speeding cameras, I might buy it except that in Denver they only show up in swanky neighborhoods that have a high-traffic street through them. Like on 1st Ave in front of the Denver Country Club. Or University by the gated "Polo Club" neighborhood. Never seen one on S. Federal, or Santa Fe Boulevard.

on the whole, I don't believe that an honest citizen can treat pronouncements about traffic cams with anything other than utter suspicion.

But what happens once people get used to the new duration of the yellow light? Do they approach it based on what they're used to from all the other yellow lights they've ever seen? Then the longest yellow light in the country is the safest one, until all the other lights are lengthened to match it.

This is actually a problem in the area this article is from. In maryland the yellow light is much shorter then in virginia, therefore maryland drivers tend to stop at yellow lights in virginia which causes lots of close stopping of drivers behind . If safety was really a concern then there would be a more narrower range of allowed yellow light duration between counties and states. As far as the speed cameras are concerned they only reduce speed for a very short distance once everyone knows where they are, its a pure profit motive.

Seems like VA drivers should stop racing yellow lights, and should maintain safe following distance. Even if the driver ahead chooses to roll into a stop at a green light, drivers behind should be able to stop safely.

Often it's not so much that people get used to it, as that the yellow lights are often set too short to react to in time (and safely) to avoid running the light. If people have to stand on their brakes to avoid running a yellow-turning-red, it's too short.

Some counties have been caught setting yellow times below the 4sec state minimum.

I always thought that the safety came from a longer period of warning until the cross-traffic started, not from a longer period to dart through the intersection on yellow.

By law, yellow means "stop if possible to stop safely". Drivers should expect the yellow light to be at least 4 seconds (legal minimum in most states). Stopping at a yellow is not a problem.

It should be noted that speed cameras can only be used in construction and school zones in Maryland. They're mainly used in school zones where the speed limit is either 15 or 25 MPH (depends on the access to the school.)

Every country, city and county has different unwritten rules about speed versus limits and crashing through orange and red lights. As a motorcyclist I learn to quickly adjust, as the alternative is not pleasant. Changing the timing won't change the behaviour - but traffic light cameras and speed cameras do work. I saw, for example, the average traffic speed on Melbourne drop by 15 kmph or so over a week, after speed cameras were introduced.

They are incredibly frustrating, and I do believe that they should be constrained to high risk zones, but are often used for revenue raising. Outsourcing is a really dumb idea as mentioned.

I regularly see Denver's speed camera vans on Sheridan between Alameda and Mississippi. That neighborhood is only slightly less crappy than south Federal, and just as bad as any stretch of Santa Fe Drive.

EDIT: P.S. your name seems very familiar. Do you know John Darrow (retired from Qwest around 2002)?

I only see the speed cam van on 1st Ave, more or less in front of Denver Country Club, and on University just north of Exhibition St, where the whole east side is the Polo Club neighborhood wall. I've never seen one anywhere else in Denver, so I'm please to hear that a speed cam is in another neighborhood. But Sheridan is the border between Denver and Lakewood. Is it a Denver speed cam or a Lakewood PD speed cam?

I haven't looked closely at the logo, but I've only seen it parked on the east (Denver) side of Sheridan.

The really insidious thing about these cameras in many if not most cities is that they are owned and operated by a private corporation and then the government splits the profits. In some cases the private company is paid per ticket issued which doesn't take much thought to realize how to maximize profit. http://washingtonexaminer.com/court-md.-drivers-cant-get-spe...

I've gotten tickets from these things before simply because my car was the only license plate visible in the frame even though the little yellow triangle designating the vehicle speeding marked a car on the opposite side of the road traveling in the other direction. The highway guard rail was obscuring the speeders plate though so they just sent it to me instead.

Speed cameras are akin to a lottery tax system where by motorists are randomly chosen to pay an extra tax and it's justified by the fact that some of them may have been speeding.

>The highway guard rail was obscuring the speeders plate though so they just sent it to me instead.

Speed cameras are akin to a lottery tax system where by motorists are randomly chosen to pay an extra tax and it's justified by the fact that some of them may have been speeding.

Sounds more like an implementation problem than a problem with enforcement cameras as a concept. A software patch would correct this.

You are assuming the system isn't functioning as performed.

They send out a ticket, act like a bureaucracy when questioned about it, and eventually get paid. ("They" being both the government entity and the private camera operator.)

Why would they bother changing it? Traffic courts are a laugh, since it's recognized that driving is a privilege and not a right.

Old process:

1. Destroy speed camera

2. Profit

New process:

1. Shoot out surveillance camera

2. Destroy speed camera

3. Profit

My thoughts exactly. Once again, poorly-considered reactive security measures waste money and accomplish absolutely nothing useful.

And we all know that as soon as this starts happening, they'll install security cameras to watch the security cameras.

Or, you know, vandals will just wear a $5 ski mask. No sense reinventing the wheel on that one.

4. Response from the cops:

Install cameras that watch the cameras that watch the cameras that watch you.

Real response from the cops: install a chip in everyone's brain. When a citizen happens to be within 10 ft of a "forbidden" object without authorization, his/her body experiences violent seizures.

Should be possible within 10 years, no?

Seriously, having security cameras with interlocking fields of view is very common. They watch both whatever their target is as well as each other.

Why can't they just amend the law so that the camera stations can be equipped with cameras which can take footage of saboteurs?

The saboteurs wouldn't care - they likely are not exposing any identifiable features to the cameras either way.

Seriously, what kind of goofball decided this would possibly be a good idea? "Yo dawg we heard you like.." is an overplayed meme, not a legitimate strategy for surveillance.

'The cameras work to slow people down' is the most annoying, nonsensical BS. If the cameras were supposed to slow people down they would not be cameras that capture information that leads to a citation; nor would the money go into local government coffers. I f-ing hate pathetic liars.

Only a $40 fine... that's a bargain! It does make it seem silly that people would respond by recking the cameras. I wonder if it's more a case that some people will vandalise anything they can.

(Here in Australia we pay at least $200 for a speeding fine).

In the US a speeding fine is likely to be $200 or more if issued by a police officer. Fines from automated cameras are much cheaper and carry less severe penalties both in cost and in consequences to your driving record.

The price point is carefully thought out. Its high enough to make a profit but low enough that most people won't go out of their way to fight the ticket in court etc.

How do these cameras work? If it is wireless, i'm sure someone could discretely hide a jammer near them?

I would imagine that it uses a wired data connection. Otherwise, imagine the mayhem that could result if some enterprising hacker were to inject fake data into the stream... such as copies of the mayor or chief of police's cars.

Let's assume it is using the cell network.....isn't jamming the cell network a much bigger felony than just destroying the camera?

On a seperate note, would anyone actually visit a website that had a private non fine generating camera over the freeway you take to work, and would pop up the speed and time you passed when u enter a license plate

just thought it might be a fun thing to learn opencv on - thoughts?

Oh great, now our spycams have spycams, rather Inception-esque.

Google cars will make this all obsolete anyway. ;-)

  It costs us $30,000 to $100,000 to replace a camera.

What?! At those sort of prices, Big Brother will be Bankrupt Brother before 2012 becomes 1984.

They have to measure vehicle speed accurately and in such a way that will stand up to scrutiny in court. So not just your run of the mill consumer type camera. I like your joke nonetheless. :)

Really? I would think that you could have three cheap cameras running - the frame rates for each would be comparable and self-verifying. Lenses might be the most expensive component but as they shoot Hollywood movies on cameras you can buy in Jessops I suspect this is really a case of dividing the whole cost of a government dept by the (small) number of cameras. Bad accounting most likely

if not - well an opportunity to disrupt !

Edit: to be fair it is probably expensive to dig a hole in a road, stick power lights and cable to it then put up a pole. But 100k? Prefer my bad accountancy or over priced theories

Price, of course, is not a function of the material or technology. From what I hear, these things quickly pay for themselves when placed "strategically" [1].

[1]: http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/a-788204.html - from German: Traffistar S330 cost 200k€ and earned that much in just 10 days.

http://www.thehighspeedcamerastore.com/high-speed-products

250fps seems pretty high for this use case a car doing 100kmh is about 30m per sec.

Measured over 10m capture zone 24fps is more than adequate

focal length, durability, weather proofing etc all seem more likely to be the cost - but really that's just housing.

How many judges know enough about the technology present (or not present) in speed cameras to legitimately scrutinize it?

In any case, I was under the impression that it was just a radar gun which tripped a camera once a speed some threshold over the limit was detected. The expensive part would be something to find and OCR license plates, and presumably feed that into some other automated system - theoretically a one-off software cost.

stand up to scrutiny in court

This varies by jurisdiction, but you don't necessarily have the right to what you would consider a fair trial for driving fines.

Don't worry, these cameras make millions of dollars in revenue on a yearly basis (55m per year, in the case of D.C.). Oh, sometimes, maybe, depending upon who you ask and which study you are citing, they sometimes reduce accidents by some (usually fairly small) percentage.

Do speed cameras really make that much money?

Parking fines certainly do - the London borough of Westminster rakes in nearly 100m pa iirr over a couple of square miles. But speeding fines seem in the UK at least to be a tiny fraction of the annoyance of parking

Yeah, they do.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/07/08/use-of-red-...

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“We think they started off with legitimate concerns and legitimate goals related to traffic safety,” said John B. Townsend II, the public and government affairs manager for AAA Mid-Atlantic, referring to the red-light and speed camera program currently in place in Washington, D.C. “Then they discovered there was a pot of gold at the end of that rainbow.”

Gold indeed: The District raked in $55 million in revenue from the cameras last year, the most so far under the program, despite issuing fewer tickets than in 2010. That’s because the city increased the fines for a number of traffic infractions, including a right turn on red, which doubled from $50 to $100, and red-light running ($150, up from $75). Mayor Vincent Gray’s 2013 budget proposal anticipates an additional $30 million in revenue based on plans to expand the use of cameras throughout the city.

At least it's not like California, where a safe rolling right turn is the same as ignoring a red light, and has a fine of ~$500

That's nothing compared to the tens of millions of revenue they make.

http://savage-guilford.patch.com/articles/maryland-cities-co...

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