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Comment by leoedin | Hacker News Reader

Lots of countries have speed cameras which are fairly automated. In the UK they tend to be placed in areas of frequent accidents (where speeding is definitely dangerous) and trigger at around 10% over the speed limit.

Rather than use algorithms to assess the general traffic speed, why not just have sensible speed limits?

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In the US, speed limits have a tendency not to be set to a "safe" speed, but rather to a speed that will optimize revenue from tickets. It's not terribly hard to find, in any town or city here, plenty of streets and even highways which have limits that are obviously below both the average speed of traffic and the design speed of the road, set largely for political (often money, though sometimes to appease residents who feel a street is "too fast").

So yes, let's have sensible limits first, and then worry about the enforcement.

Because issuing tickets is a source of revenue.

I'd love red light cameras if they were designed to make the roads safe, but that's a secondary concern.

Indeed, in Germany we have speed cameras installed next to streets, we have mobile speed cameras in cars that are parked on the site of the street and specifically for the autobahn the police has cars and bikes with cameras that allow them to measure your speed and I think even safety distance while driving.

I always assumed you would find them everywhere.

We have a 25 mile stretch of SPECS cameras near here. Fixed infrared cameras, with automatic number plate recognition, that calculates your average speed between 2 points. They do seem to work and it's a pretty fair system.

It's really masking that the fact the road needs widening to handle the traffic safely.

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