Hopefully other states don't follow this pattern; I don't think the government should be installing surveillance arrays, even if it's "for the children" or public safety.
Trading a little liberty for a little safety and all that.
Trading a little liberty for a little safety and all that.
The "problem" being solved with cameras is "cops aren't generating enough traffic ticket revenue"
Looking even at normal arterial streets, many streets in Seattle are marked 25, but you'd be hard-pressed to find even a cop going under 30 most of the time.
I truly don't understand US road design. The construction of the road and the posted speed limit almost never are even gently correlated other than on a few select residential side streets in a few select cities who have rebuilt streets based on safety studies.
> I remember in Chicago the interstates having posted speed limits of 45mph... the average flow of traffic outside of rush hour was easily north of 70mph.
> 45 mph (72 km/h) in downtown Chicago, where all the major interstates merge
That seems pretty reasonable. I've seen a few places in the US where several major interstates merge and the post speed limit is quite low -- 45-55 mph.
The local cops here have always just run plates for stolen vehicles. Getting a ticket is almost unheard of. I don't know what their deal is, but you can speed right past them in the other lane, or if they're just parked on the corner.
I'm guessing you still can't pass them on a two-lane road without poking their ego.
I'd love if the police enforced this insanely dangerous behavior instead of trying to catch people going 10 over on the highway.
In my city, certain traffic lights literally turn off at night. There's not enough traffic flowing to justify them.
In my neighborhood there used to be a traffic light that would be red for a long time despite not usefully regulating any traffic whatsoever. It stopped traffic despite the fact no other traffic could possibly conflict with it. People realized this and routinely ran that light with zero consequences. At some point the city realized it too and redesigned the traffic controls so that the light would be green in this situation.
The correct action is to constantly bug your local representative to fix the problem, not break a law written in blood.
Jaywalking laws were also written in blood. People break them every single day regardless because they have eyes and can look both ways to determine if it is safe to cross the street before actually doing it.
Obviously, if you can't see the road where the cars will come from, then you cannot know if there are any cars coming towards you in a potentially intersecting trajectory.
At 60kmh a vehicle travels 16 meters per second. In freedom units: at 37mph a vehicle travels 54 feet per second.
A vehicle will materialize out of nowhere and crash into you.
God I hate these sort of responsibility shirking opinions and their peddlers.
I do this several times a day in a major US city for close to a decade now and I've never had a close call closer than the "two people trying to pass each other in the hallway" routine with a driver trying to take a right on red.
Vehicles and everything else on this rock flying through space obey the same laws of physics.
If the traffic on a road goes X miles per hour, then simply don't cross it where you don't have a sufficiently long line of sight. If crossing where the lines of sight are sufficient is not tractable due to traffic volumes or road construction then cross at a marked crossing, intersection that interrupts traffic flow or use proper body language and someone will stop for you.
Sure, you might get exceptionally unlucky and choose to cross at the exact minute some car that's a few standard deviations above the norm but you might also get hit by lightening.
I, I, I
> Vehicles and everything else on this rock flying through space obey the same laws of physics.
Yes. Yes they do.
That's why some countries (e.g. Sweden) actually have this in drivers ed: how fast a vehicle travels, how long it takes for the driver to react, what the stopping distance is for a vehicle etc.
They even teach things like "parked cars are a double problem because you can have people especially kids suddenly appear from behind them".
Or things like "at night you only see this far, and judging distance to things becomes harder".
But all that, including laws of physics, is invalidated by a litany of "I, I, mine, my, me".
Adieu.
If you can't understand the fact it's safe to run a red light when you can see the roads are clear for several kilometers ahead of you, then I simply don't know what else to say.
Even police does this while roaming about on patrol.
Honestly, these arguments sound like cartoon logic. Guy looks both ways and sees the roads are clear but on the exact second he starts to cross the street 10 cars materialize out of nowhere at 200 km/h and nearly run him over just to teach him a lesson. This isn't how the world works.
My thesis has been an uptick on BS calls. Said differently the bad neighborhoods have gotten worse and funding for police is mismanaged.
A big part of traffic stops was to find weed and trade up for an arrest. With legalization, they’ve shifted to camera work, which has gotten even bigger with Flock.
Depending on the situation, it might be dangerous for a cop to also run a red to give chase, so consider it might be their job to let it go.
There are real surveillance arrays, please worry about those instead.
It's even possible to set the cameras up in such a way that they only store data when a traffic violation occurs. That would address the surveillance issue.
I have a strong sense that the primary objection people have to red light cameras is that they don't like getting caught running red lights, and that the surveillance argument is a rationalization, not the real objection.
All surveillance increases safety. The cost is freedom.
Do you trust humans with the ability to judge the situation and the freedom to decide to run a red light if they think it's safe? Or do you surveil every intersection and punish all infractions regardless of conditions or the existence of actual victims?
For people like me, it's a matter of basic human dignity. I want to be a human with the capacity for judgement and the power to act on it. I want to decide for myself. I want to live in a society that recognizes this. I won't sacrifice this dignity in the name of safety.
Absolutely not.
> For people like me, it's a matter of basic human dignity. I want to be a human with the capacity for judgement and the power to act on it.
Your human dignity does not require you to be able to run red lights when you think it's okay.
This is libertarian ideology taken to the extreme.
Is said in place of using actual arguments or evidence?
But I'm guessing you are only correct sometimes. I bet some of them can be live-viewed, or track license plates.
These camera systems have always been about surveillance. Flock adds the Silicon Valley software process, while the older tech is “law enforcement tech”.