Baltimore Parking Tickets Revisited | Hacker News Reader

Baltimore Parking Tickets Revisited

blog.statwing.com

29 pointsglaugh9 comments

Interesting website for those interested by the mention of speed-camera burning: http://www.speedcam.co.uk/gatso2.htm

I hadn't heard of this happening in the US until now.

A few months ago, the District of Columbia (a Baltimore neighbor) increased their speed camera fines to minimum of $150 per violation. The late fee is double the fine if, for example, one changes addresses and the USPS doesn't forward the ticket to the new address like they should (or by design). That would be a total rage-inducing price tag of $300.

How is it even possible to speed in DC traffic?

I'm glad to see another take on the data. I'm also relieved to see that our results are along the same lines! :)

You say that "Red light violations" are automated. That didn't even cross my mind! I just assumed that they were manually issued without even thinking about it. I think it'd make more sense that it would be referring to automated red-light cameras, but are you basing that on anything or did you just make the opposite assumption?

I'd also just like to point out that I made an update yesterday with some more conventional statistics (standard deviation, Z-scores) and new weights accounting for days of the week.

http://robert.io/posts/4.html#updates

Ah, I missed your update, thanks for posting that.

I guess we can't be totally sure that the red light tickets in question are automated. But it seems pretty likely given that Baltimore does have automated red light ticketing (http://cityservices.baltimorecity.gov/parkingfines/), and this dataset seemed to only contain automated versions of moving violations (ie, it had mobile and fixed speed cameras but not policeman-in-a-cruiser speeding tickets). Also it's just a ton of red light tickets, and in my personal experience street cleaning or meter tickets feel way more common than manually dispensed red light tickets.

I was a bit disappointed that this (and other datasets in Baltimore and SF) didn't have a codebook anywhere to explain the data. I'm guessing you weren't able to find one, either?

No, I wasn't able to find anything explaining the data either. I actually called a couple of offices to ask how complete it was, and nobody knew what to do with me. The first number I could find was the mayor's office. The person who answered transferred me to the DMV, and the lady who answered there had no idea what I was talking about and put me on hold. I hung up after a while. :/

From a quick glance of the data, there's something very odd: there are no speed camera tickets on weekends. These make up more than half the data... something to look into.

Cool site btw, it's a good interface to quickly look into the data.

Maryland's speed cameras are only active in school zones (which are not school zones outside of school hours) and work zones (which are usually not work zones on the weekend).

Thanks, that explains that.

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