Smart license plate frame that prevents you from getting a ticket
nophoto.com
nophoto.com
My somewhat educated guess is that the product would very likely be illegal because the flashes intentionally obscure the license plate from being recorded and that is the part of the laws in most states, provinces and countries this falls foul of. Most of the laws are written in such a way to say that any attempt to obscure the license plate is illegal. That is usually meant to suggest mud, various coverings and so on, but can depending on the specific law, mean any attempt by you the owner or driver of the vehicle to obscure in anyway, the recording of the license plate by authorized agencies or companies.
Chicago?
When I lived there, I often fantasized about getting one of those super-sticky stickers (apparently the Post Office gives them out for free) and sticking it on the camera lens. If only I had a ladder.
Also if the camera taking the picture has a shutter speed faster than the time it takes this system to respond, it'll get a picture before the defensive flash occurs. They do claim the noPhoto is fast enough but it would take testing against actual, regulation speed cameras to come close to guaranteeing that.
This type of thing is so disgusting to watch. Everybody hates these, yet they're implemented anyway.
Having said that, there are some pretty suspicious placements that seem like clear revenue raising. For example, a new underpass was built here in Adelaide on a road leading into the city. It has a relatively steep incline and the road curves as you enter and exit the underpass. There's a speed camera placed in precisely the best place to catch people who happen to stray a few kph over the speed limit as they descend into the underpass, and it makes that underpass difficult to go through - you're aware of the camera so you're constantly watching your speedometer as you enter and exit, and as I mentioned before, the road curves and so you find yourself drifting over the line because you can't focus entirely on the road for fear you'll creep over the speed limit and get a $600 fine and a bunch of demerit points.
There have been a few crashes on the underpass already, although thankfully no fatalities as far as I know.
In many Australian states (including South Australia) the payments from fines goes to a Community Road Safety Fund which is then given mostly (except for funding for holiday double demerit campaigns) to community and motorist groups to run their road safety activities, not the road authorities or police who would advise on where to put the cameras. So hopefully there is no incentive for "revenue raising" cameras - wouldn't the potential and actual crashes in the underpass have caused the camera to be installed?
You also have to be careful with some of these statistics. Speed cameras often get put up in reaction to a series of accidents. But statistically you would expect the amount of crashes to go up and down, and if you have just had an unusually high level of accidents on a stretch of road, then you would expect the average measured afterwards to be lower in the majority of cases, irrespective of whether a speed camera was installed.
However, I think they should be more lenient on drivers that just barely infringe on a red light by a few milliseconds. And I think they should never be used to ticket speeders. Obviously, I also don't support shortening yellow lights to rake in more ticket dollars.
Then you should not support red light cameras. Instead, you should support longer yellow lights, or accelerating to beat them.
Studies have pretty well nailed down that traffic light cameras do not reduce accidents. Any benefit they have as a deterrent is canceled by drivers slamming on the brakes at yellow lights.
Worse, many local governments have been caught illegally shortening yellow lights to increase ticket revenue from traffic light cameras. That's particularly awful because increasing the duration of the yellow light has been shown to be one of the most reliable ways to reduce traffic light accidents.
Pedestrians need more respect of the big metal things zooming around and potentially not doing everything right (hey, the brakes could fail)
I don't listen to music while I walk/jog, pretty much for just that reason.
Certainly it would be safer if pedestrians (like me!) didn't listen to music while walking, but I'm not willing to concede the principle that traffic laws be obeyed.
Just because I didn't do every last proactive thing to avoid an accident doesn't excuse the person who caused it.
I haven't seen a many drivers running red while trying to cross on a late yellow. Instead the problem is drivers sitting at a red and driving through it because they're frustrated.
My design would have used something like an LCD in front of the license plate. When near a camera, turn dark. Otherwise, stay clear.
Your design would likely be illegal, whereas this one probably isn't. Yet.
This would address my other concern, having my car tracked in parking lots by private businesses.
Being able to detect a camera seems a knotty problem though. Maybe have it use GPS and enter locations where the plate needs to be impossible to scan from a distance.
It is cool though...
Also, I'm surprised there are no provisions in the legislation to make illegal any system that would render speed cameras ineffective. Why would laws be written without those provisions?
Unless what they are talking about is FCC certification which costs a lot less than $80K.
Second of all, this would be made illegal in a New York minute. To a politician, money==power and they get all pissy when you interfere with a revenue stream.
In the New York area, some 'red light cameras' are still cameras, but some actually record video as well. When you get the ticket they give you a URL and you can view the video of your car.
As government surveillance technologies improve, the anonymity (and accompanying privacy) that once accompanied some areas of public life is at risk.
Public opposition to that trend has largely come in the form of calls for better legal protections. However, my suspicion is that ultimately it will be the arms race between surveillance technologies and technologies like this product that determine what happens to public anonymity.
It rhymes with "Won't Screed"
1. if road is unsafe beyond certain speed, then better drive safe at the prescribed limit
2. if road has artificially lowered speed, then just get the legal speed increased
These license plate hiding technologies are a poor solution to real problem: people driving recklessly, and laws being too strict.
I'm Jon, inventor of the noPhoto. I was a bit shocked to login and find 14,000 views to our website today, and that a lot of them came from here! Thanks to all of you for your support. I figured I'd clear up a couple of points while I'm here.
1. The noPhoto does react more than fast enough. The shutter speed of the red light camera is actually irrelevant when dealing with optical slave triggers, technology which has been used in the photography world for a long time.
2. The noPhoto does defeat multiple pictures at once, and it does work in the daytime. I can't post a link here, but if you go to our youtube channel you can see a video we shot to show it working under a few different conditions.
3. Most studies that are not funded by the red light camera companies show that these cameras actually increase both overall accidents as well as injury-causing accidents.
4. We do not support running red lights intentionally. The noPhoto is not meant to enable irresponsible drivers to blow through intersections with impunity - rather, the hope is that by installing a noPhoto, drivers will drive as they did before the dangerous red light cameras were installed.
If there's any other questions you have, feel free to ask. Thanks!
It's awesome to see this actually being implemented and sold. Even though I had absolutely nothing to do with this, it's cool to see the product come to life.
Just my irrelevant 2c.
Queue reckless endangerment suit in 5... 4...
And it's "cue".