Hacker News Reader

Comment by DanBC | Hacker News Reader

I have never quite understood the problem with speed traffic cameras. There's a problem if they're set too close to the speed limit for that road, but other than that they only catch people committing a criminal offence. The problem there is not the speed camera, it is either an inappropriate limit on a particular stretch of road or the speed limit law in total.

In England speed cameras have gone through a few weird changes. The first is that they must only be put up in accident blackspots. The second, following from the first, is that the cameras must be highly visible.

So now instead of grey cameras installed on many roads helping keep all drivers under the speed limit we have a few very visible cameras in known locations that many drivers can slow down for, but driving fast at all other times.

Frankly, anyone getting caught by a UK camera deserves the fine.

View on HN

Opposition to speed-limit cameras exposes the absurdity of most speed-limit laws: it's a law so bad many (most?) people are opposed to having it strictly enforced. If that's not a bad law, then I don't know what is.

> Opposition to speed-limit cameras exposes the absurdity of most speed-limit laws: it's a law so bad many (most?) people are opposed to having it strictly enforced. If that's not a bad law, then I don't know what is.

Not all laws that are heavily disliked are bad laws, and not all laws that most people like are good ones.

True, but as someone who considers myself a safe and considerate driver, my opposition to strict enforcement of speed limits comes from this: when the police can easily enforce something numerical, they optimize for maximum revenue and devote nearly 100% of their traffic enforcement resources to speed traps.

This leaves all manner of unsafe drivers free to proceed with making illegal and unsafe maneuvers on the road without a snowball's chance in hell of ever being prosecuted for it. In most North American jurisdictions, what do you think the ratio of speeding tickets to tickets for all other traffic offenses is? Do you think someone doing 55 km/h in a 50 km/h zone is more dangerous that the person who always plays chicken with left-turn traffic by blazing through the tail end of yellow lights at intersections? The person who stops traffic to make an illegal left turn in the same place every day? The person who doesn't turn on their lights on the freeway driving 100 km/h at night when it snows?

I'm not sure how you can claim that most people are opposed to speed limits being enforced.

Especially in the UK.

I think most people would like speed limits enforced with some sensible discretion. To give an extreme example, you shouldn't receive a $150 fine for going 1 km/h over the limit. Before photo radar, there were a limited number of police officers to enforce speed limits, so most limits weren't enforced most of the time. Police focused on catching the worst offenders, so going, say, 60 km/h in 50 km/h zone or 110 km/h in a 100 km/h zone was unlikely to be prosecuted. With photo radar thresholds set in many places as low as 3 km/h over the limit, the dynamic is totally different, especially since many speed limits are set comically low, and often times photo radar is placed in locations where the limit decreases for a short distance, or at the bottom of a big hill.

To my mind, the goal of speed limits is to promote road safety by encouraging drivers to proceed at a safe speed that is suitable for road conditions. This is undermined when authorities build an expressway-style road that you'd find rated for 80+ km/h in a traffic engineering handbook and then set a much lower limit and have it enforced with radar traps. This is about collecting revenue, not promoting safety.

I visited Norway, which has photo radar, but also warns you that you're approaching it. The intention seems to be to get you to slow down rather than to stick you with a ticket. It works and I agree with photo radar when it is used this way.

In the UK, most cameras allow 10% + 1mph. So in a 30mph zone, 35mph is the speed at which you'll get prosecuted.

> I have never quite understood the problem with speed traffic cameras.

Here are reasons that (if true) make a lot of sense. It sounds like where you live, the laws around them are very reasonable; for many people that's not the case.

I don't have sources for these claims, I'm only repeating what I've heard/read, since you asked. I don't have real feelings about them either way, as we don't have them where I live.

- Red-light cameras actually increase accidents and injuries. More people slam on the breaks to avoid tripping them, instead of being slightly past the stop bar or entering when the light is yellow.

- When they are hidden (as many are), they do not effectively slow people down; they don't make the roads safer.

- As conditioning for future behavior, they are ineffective; studies show that when the punishment is after the misbehavior, the mind doesn't link the two together as well.

Your milage may vary depending on local laws, etc.

Disclaimer: I don't live in Seattle any longer so the situation I am about to describe may have changed in recent years (but I doubt it).

Story: There's a 5-way intersection near the University of Washington campus. The city put up cameras and started collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in fines. Problem: city ordinance stated something like any ticket resulting from a photo must come from a camera mounted at a 90 degree angle to the street. Notice the bit about it being a 5-way intersection? None of the roads came together at a 90 degree angle. Point was, the city continued to violate their own ordinance for years because that single intersection was a cash cow - the whole system was automated so the pictures were taken, cars identified, tickets mailed. THAT is why there is so much outrage about cameras in the US - it's the Man kicking us around.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com