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Comment by pj_mukh | Hacker News Reader

I mean ALPR's have worked wonders in my town [1]. So I'll keep supporting them until we restructure all our cities to drastically reduce car speeds. Plus post 2020 police backlash, detective work has basically disappeared and clearing rates have cratered [2]. Police are now no longer able to (or are refusing to) solve crime "the old fashioned way", and the public has no real leverage to "make them do it".

So I get it, we're in the middle of a populist uprising against it, and it's nice to ride that wave of support. But behind the scenes, these two factors are driving adoption, and we'll keep coming back to it when the backlash eventually fizzles.

I say we should just use this backlash to put in the protections EFF suggests or fix the two underlying causes. Those are the options.

[1]: https://www.oaklandca.gov/Public-Safety-Streets/Traffic-Safe...

[2]: https://stateline.org/2025/11/24/why-clearance-rates-dont-te...

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Have you driven 7th St. between Adeline St. and Linden St? I wonder if maybe the speed limit is too low. One good thing about not having automated systems like this is it allows natural breaking of rules that are poor rules to begin with, and there is effort in manually enforcing, eventually leading to change

“I wonder if maybe the speed limit is too low”

Super curious how anyone could think this. It’s not a highway, and there's pedestrians crossing. The buildings aren’t dense and the setbacks are large so maybe it “feels” like you should go faster but doesn’t mean it’s safe to.

And Oakland especially has really bad driving culture so I’m glad for this automatic enforcement.

> I mean ALPR's have worked wonders in my town [1]. So I'll keep supporting them

With flock, citizens are concerned by the privacy implications of the state keeping a dossier of each citizen’s movements.

But once we assure citizens the flock cameras have already issued 500,000 speeding fines in a single town this year, no doubt they’ll come to support the cameras.

Perhaps the cameras could also automatically issue parking fines, to garner even more popular support!

Yes we should just always give in to populism’s demands and it’ll have no negative consequences ever /s

…oops [1]

[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/18/headway/motor-vehicles-fa...

Issuing tickets doesn't require retaining any data on vehicles you aren't ticketing, you're conflating issues.

I'm not. There are two issues in my comment.

Did clearing rate crater because there was a change or because the police is throwing a toddler tantrum strike and refuses to work?

Since outright refusal to do their jobs is more common than any real difficulty.

"I mean ALPR's have worked wonders in my town"

Among those wonders being nearly 200,000 tickets.

There are claims of safety improvements but strangely zero actual statistics about improved safety, measured speed is a proxy for safety but it has to be matched with actual casualty numbers and it is quite suspicious that these don't exist. Did the accident rate go down? Number of deaths or serious injuries?

>Police are now no longer able to (or are refusing to) solve crime "the old fashioned way"

This is pathetic, and I don't want to be controlled by robot overlords because local governments can't get their ducks in a row.

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