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The people in the UK have other methods:
- http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/18/1863.asp
- http://www.speedcam.co.uk/gatso2c.htm

First I read a few months ago that Australia impounds cars for speeding (even if it's someone else's car) and cars are impounded permanently and auctioned-off (proceeds going to govt of course) making lots of money:
"Car confiscation is big business in Australia. The state of Victoria seized 3437 cars generating $1 million in net revenue between July 2006 and December 2007."

And now they're going after iPhone apps?

What gives Australia? Why do you hate your citizens?

I'm just waiting for the day when the "reenact prohibition" assholes get enough power to try to make these things mandatory in all cars.

Your wait is over:

http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/16/1672.asp

Wait, you mean fuel taxes pay for roads? What fuel taxes? Oh, you mean the absurdly low $0.46/gal (26.2c state + 18.4 fed.) that doesn't change with the price of gas and accounts for $20 billion (fed. portion of $29.6b total) out of $40 billion of federal highway spending? I don't think the electric cars are going to make that much difference--they aren't even *trying* to make gas taxes actually pay for all the roads in the country.

err the last link above should have been http://www.thenewspaper.com/rlc/docs/finalreport.pdf

And cities have been proven to have shortened yellow signals beyond the limits to increase violations.

And it's not just the municipalities. The standards themselves have been modified to allow shorter and shorter yellows.

Georgia required that intersections that use red light cameras to have yellow signal timings one full second more than the federal minimum. When that law went into effect, red light cameras caught 80% fewer people running the red lights.

Source.

The cameras became unprofitable and in many cases were removed. (Oh yeah... they were there for "safety")

...and why is this modded "Interesting"? I would say flame-bait. Especially since the laws created and signed by the Legislative and Executive are being abused by the Judicial not the other way around... Consider me baited: I live in MN which is so Democratic we had to invent our own Democratic party (the DFL) and are the only state that voted for Mondale.

What's happening here? time, and time, and time again MN's courts uphold our constitutionally protected rights.

I might mention that it is a completely conservative state that is currently re-writing history to be more pro-american. Is that the Hope and Change you were looking for?

Minnesota Supreme Court Strikes Down Red Light Cameras
The Minnesota Supreme Court delivers a unanimous decision striking down the legality of red light cameras.

Minnesota Supreme CourtThe Minnesota Supreme Court today delivered the highest-level court rebuke to photo enforcement to date with a unanimous decision against the Minneapolis red light camera program. The high court upheld last September's Court of Appeals decision that found the city's program had violated state law (read opinion).

The supreme court found that Minneapolis had disregarded a state law imposing uniformity of traffic laws across the state. The city's photo ticket program offered the accused fewer due process protections than available to motorists prosecuted for the same offense in the conventional way after having been pulled over by a policeman. The court argued that Minneapolis had, in effect, created a new type of crime: "owner liability for red-light violations where the owner neither required nor knowingly permitted the violation."

"We emphasized in Duffy that a driver must be able to travel throughout the state without the risk of violating an ordinance with which he is not familiar," the court wrote. "The same concerns apply to owners. But taking the state's argument to its logical conclusion, a city could extend liability to owners for any number of traffic offenses as to which the Act places liability only on drivers. Allowing each municipality to impose different liabilities would render the Act's uniformity requirement meaningless. Such a result demonstrates that [the Minneapolis ordinance] conflicts with state law."

The court also struck down the "rebutable presumption" doctrine that lies at the heart of every civil photo enforcement ordinance across the country.

"The problem with the presumption that the owner was the driver is that it eliminates the presumption of innocence and shifts the burden of proof from that required by the rules of criminal procedure," the court concluded. "Therefore the ordinance provides less procedural protection to a person charged with an ordinance violation than is provided to a person charged with a violation of the Act. Accordingly, the ordinance conflicts with the Act and is invalid."

http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/16/1688.asp

Story #3 has already been used to great affect in the state of MN. Red Light cameras were declared illegal by the MN Supreme Court under that premise. I have a citation here for your reference.

Thats not true of most states. In most states, if your car has completely entered the intersection when the light turns red you didn't run the light.

Now on the other hand, you're right that TFA is a good example of why Florida gets its own Fark tag. Red light cameras are illegal in Florida, see here: http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/30/3059.asp of course that doesn't stop cities from putting them up, despite the fact the state legislature declared them illegal. The towns and cities that have them are now trying to treat them as civil cases between the company that installed the cameras and the person issued the "ticket". Basically you can just rip up a Florida red light ticket, they are not even remotely legal.

Another fun Florida fact is that breathalyzers are no longer permissible as proof of intoxication for DUI stops. They do a good old fashioned "walk the line" sobriety test, which if you pass, even if you blow too high, you still walk. It got that way because the company that provided the breathalyzers would not provide the code for the software that drives them to opposing council, or even the court itself.

The same law applies in Texas. If you are past a clearly marked 'Stop' line before the traffic line turns red, it is legal to continue through the intersection regardless of the light color.

"(d) An operator of a vehicle facing only a steady red signal shall stop at a clearly marked stop line. In the absence of a stop line, the operator shall stop before entering the crosswalk on the near side of the intersection"

http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/18/1805.asp

Unfortunately, many cities in Texas are making up imaginary 'stop lines' that don't actually exist, moving the legal 'point of no return' farther from the intersection, and collecting citation fees as a result.

California has rules on the minimum length of yellow lights. At least one city in CA had to refund a bunch of tickets after someone measured the time the lights were yellow and found that it was too short. The city had to issue $1M of refunds.

For those interested in the redlight camera controversy, visit http://www.thenewspaper.com/ for tons of articles and documentation on why it's such a bad idea, being utterly counter to public safety. (But fully in line with viewing citizens as wallets to be emptied.)

Furthermore, if you are unsafe to drive, you can pull over. Yet if you are drunk, you still get charged. So if you are drunk, the law actually encourages you NOT to pull over and keep driving. And if you are diabetic, an attack can set upon you quite suddenly. But if you pull over, they'll treat you like a drunk. (example(s) below)

And it doesn't take much googling to find that having a clear breathalyzer doesn't automatically free you of harassment:

http://www.wlwt.com/news/20693221/detail.html ... http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/content/printVersion/733637 ... Oh wait, this guy was pulled over! NOT driving. Still treated the same. ... and sometimes they lie .

But hey, if I can pull up those examples in 1 minute, you can bet there are 1000s more.

And really, are you incapable of googling "Without breathalyzer"? At least spend 10 seconds before you say "I think what you said sounds fishy". You waste both our time, and mislead the public. People are also charged when blowing below the limit. You might have to dig down in those results some, but what you are looking for is available without needing me around to show it to you.

Just Google It(tm)

Please. Understand that reality sucks more than you think it does :)

11/16/2006 is when this was reported:

Massachusetts State Police Offer Cops Money for Tickets
Court system and insurance industry pressures Massachusetts State Police into giving cash overtime bonuses for writing traffic tickets.

Police unions are up in arms over a Massachusetts State Police offer of cash for traffic tickets. Under a program that became public last week, troopers are given a 1.5 hour bonus on their time sheet for writing a ticket, but only one hour for a written warning and just half-an-hour for a verbal warning. The move cuts in half the amount of credit given for the verbal warning and brings troopers half-an-hour closer to lucrative overtime payments for every ticket issued.

The Boston Herald reports that insurance companies and the courts had pressured police into making the move because both make millions from traffic fines. The overtime bonus payments can increase a trooper's hourly wage by 50 percent, or even double it during holidays.

Union officials in the Western and South Shore areas where the program is in place told the Herald that the program eliminates officer discretion and that, like a ticket quota, troopers are being threatened with punishments for failure to issue more tickets.

"I absolutely refuse to write tickets unless somebody really deserves it," one trooper told the Herald. "You think twice before you take $600 out of somebody's pocket."

Source: http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/14/1460.asp

Is there any point in the modern world to having a radar detector? I've always been under the impression that a lot of law enforcement agencies are now using LIDAR, which is virtually impossible to detect until your car is being painted with it (i.e: it's too late to slow down). Even the ones that use radar generally turn it on and off with a trigger instead of leaving it running all the time -- which further reduces your odds of detecting it before it hits your vehicle.

While there have been a huge number of advances in radar technology, the radar detector technology keeps up with it well. The two are made by the same company, after all. LIDAR is definitely not ideal for so many situations. To use LIDAR, a police officer must be stationary and actually outside of his cruiser. LIDAR is also defeatable because laser jammers are legal in most states. Finally, there are entire states that do not use LIDAR. This is why radar is still much more common. I do know that radar detectors are still very useful because I have and use one myself and it has saved me from a ticket in a number of situations. It would be my guess that the radar in use by the Ford Taurus is very different and distinguishable from that in use by the police.

The BBC Top Gear team did a different experiment: worth having a look.

Having said that, there's no way my car will be any more economical than it is right now, regardsless of how gentle I drive - 4 wheel drive has its price. And at top speed is frankly gets embarrassing as that takes 5x as much fuel as a normal 70mph trip would - but I've only done that once out of curiosity :-)

Not that I really want to help groups like the RIAA But what if they treated it like a speeding fine! Everyone speeds sometimes, if you get caught you pay $100. Most people won't be bothered to argue against it. http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/04/462.asp The can make billions from it! I think going after 1 person for millions of dollars is a stupid approach, why not go after 100,000 people for $100

The threshold for dogs to identify a scent can be as low as a few molecules. (I forget what it is for cocaine, but it's a very small number.) You gotta wonder how much "drug money" was just some poor slob carrying his life's savings, either through distrust of the banks (which is still common with foreigners) or being on his way to purchase something with cash.

Example: http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/12/1296.asp

Given that large cash transactions are now considered "probable cause", add in the positive from the drug-sniffing dog, and it may not matter how innocent you are.

Related thought: people who handle money all day long, like cashiers, may be exposed to enough cocaine that they could conceiveably test positive, or at least dog-sniff positive.

Those two statements are correct, and that's the problem because many red light cameras target the vehicle, not the operator. (California seems to require a picture of the driver and the license plate)

The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that red light cameras violate state law for that very reason.

Driving in traffic requires people to be predictable. It's a team sport where everyone plays by the same rules so everyone can get where they're going faster. In your ideal world, everyone would follow at a safe distance. In the real world, that would mean that there would be constant gridlock in many large cities. During rush hour here I have to sit through 2-3 light cycles sometimes just to get through the intersection. By following closer than you can safely stop, you can get many more people through an intersection at a time, which reduces congestion. I'd have to sit through 5-6 cycles if everyone went a "safe" distance, and the turn lanes would back up into the normal traffic lane. If people behave predictably, following closely is not a problem. When you introduce red light cameras, you get people panic-stopping at times when they should not be, and acting erratically due to fear of being ticketed. This will make traffic worse, and much more dangerous.

The hilariously sad part is that NJ decided to still allow the results because some retired ex-judge decided it still 'mostly worked'.

http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/22/2280.asp

It appears that the NJ Supreme Court wasn't swayed too much by the source code evaluation. They're planning on reinstating the device with only minor modifications.

In 2007 the Minnesota Supreme Court told the City of Minneapolis that their Red Light cameras were violating state law. The Supreme Court found that Minneapolis had disregarded a state law imposing uniformity of traffic laws across the state. Minneapolis had to pay back the money they had collected in Red Light Tickets from the system, around 2.6 million dollars. The court also struck down the "rebuttable presumption" doctrine that lies at the heart of every civil photo enforcement ordinance across the country. http://definitions.uslegal.com/r/rebuttable-presumption/ They stated: "The problem with the presumption that the owner was the driver is that it eliminates the presumption of innocence and shifts the burden of proof from that required by the rules of criminal procedure," the court concluded. "Therefore the ordinance provides less procedural protection to a person charged with an ordinance violation than is provided to a person charged with a violation of the Act. Accordingly, the ordinance conflicts with the Act and is invalid." Text of the Ruling http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/13/1356.asp

Yup, it is. Either you're exaggating the problem, or you never actually timed the lights. You also don't know if 30MPH is actually the appropriate speed limit for the road. Given that 85% of ALL roads in the US have limits lower than enginneing standards would dictate (by 8 - 12 MPH, on average), I'd say the speed limit for your road is likely too low, and as what always happens when engineering principals aren't followed, people are going more than 30MPH, and so the light timing is set too low because the speed limit is set too low. Speed also isn't the only factor in setting yellow light time: http://www.thenewspaper.com/rlc/reports/rlcreport5.asp

Here's the interesting thing; engineers say the speed limits should be set according to what almost everyone will do anyway on that road. That's the safest speed limit. So you're faulting people for violating laws which are incorrectly implemented for political reasons... you're part of the problem, I'm afraid. Until you demand that states and cities follow engineering guidelines and stop passing laws which just happen to make a lot of people money, you're part of the problem. Please, do your research and come back.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limit#85th_percentile_rule

When you reward a company with money per traffic violation, obviously it will be in their interest for there to be more traffic violations. And the traffic laws are there to protect lives. Basically, governments are rewarding companies for killing people.

http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/06/602.asp

How about giving the companies a bonus relative to the decrease in the number of traffic accidents in an intersection? Now that seems smarter.

> I don't think that it's possible to sue a stack of cash, no matter how big it is.

Actually it is. I picked the first example I could find from a little Googling, but here's the docket for the United States of America v. Thirty Thousand Dollars ($30,000.00) In United States Currency for your reading pleasure.

I also found this news article about how this works in another case, which is more than a little disturbing. You're simply not allowed to have too much cash these days. They think it proves you're doing something illegal. Even if they're right most of the time, I think it's terrible what they can do to the innocent.

At the bottom of this PDF link/a> is an old formula for figuring out safe stopping distances on the duration of transition signals (yellow lights). Here is another with some actual examples you might find interesting. This one actually claims a city near me placed the traffic light timing in an unsafe timming and "By doing so, the city also placed motorists in harm's way without regard to their safety." They used math to determine that too.

You might find it useful in figuring out your timing length for road speeds. The NHTS rules recommend between 3 and 6 seconds but isn't a hard limit and states are free to set their own lengths by law. Most states do require the cities to "permit" their traffic signals which means they will have to follow state laws and formulas if there are any. Some states claim that an engineering study is needed so it might be more difficult to determine their rules.

For your proof, This site seems to think there is proof as reported by another site. It's short on details and I decided to give up on searching the other site for the details so take it with a grain of salt.

2007 Virginia Study shows that red-light cameras increase rear-end (and total number) of accidents at intersections.

An immediate question: but were there fewer injuries, since more rear ending, but fewer injuries overall, would still be a positive result.

Answer: No, there were more injuries.

Next question: how severe were the injuries?

Answer: They were worse, after the cameras were installed (page xiii of the report).

This seems crazy to me. Perhaps the speed limit of the road should be reduced, or the amber light lengthened, or a safety campaign started to try and convince drivers that it isn't worth risking running a red light to save 20 seconds.

That was easy. For your next trick, I suggest you demand proof that some chicago cops are corrupt.

From: http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/20/2068.asp

"The city's second highest revenue producing camera, for example, is located at the intersection of Greenville Avenue and Mockingbird Lane. It issued 9407 tickets worth $705,525 between January 1 and August 31, 2007. At the intersections on Greenville Avenue leadding up to the camera intersection, however, yellows are at least 3.5 or 4.0 seconds in duration, but the ticket producing intersection's yellow stands at just 3.15 seconds. The yellow is .35 seconds shorter than TxDOT's recommended bare minimum."

Correct. ITE shortened the yellow light timing in their 1985 updated standard. It was further reduced in 1989. This coincided with the time that New York City started testing red-light camera systems.

Goal: Recommend legal definitions for the various aspects of the change interval and a defensible methodology for calculating and evaluating change intervals. (1985, page 5; 1989 page 27.)

Allow easy identification of violators by law enforcement agents. (1985, page 5; 1989, page 28.)

2007 Virginia Study shows that red-light cameras increase rear-end (and total number) of accidents at intersections.

I've been following the issue for a while... seems like initially they bring in money, then as conditions change they begin to be a financial liability. There is tons of info on the problem, and how camera enforcement negatively impacts our right to due process, at http://www.thenewspaper.com/

Also, cities cheating yellow light timing shorter to ensure more violators is a big issue (and illegal in most states, but some places do it anyway) -- and radically increases injury accidents. (So let's not hear any bullshit about how it's for "public safety". It's a revenue grab, and nothing else.)

Conversely, increasing yellow light duration by as little as ONE SECOND pretty much does away with both accidents and red-light violations. At which point there's no money to be made with a redlight camera, but people are better off.

The other thing that bothers me about these redlight cameras is that the providers are foreign -- and they collect about half the revenue. That's money being leeched out of the country at no benefit to our citizens, yet fines must double to maintain the same level of revenue as before. How is this not extortion?!

I agree wholeheartedly, though I am tempted to say [citation needed] on the 50% figure.

Well, you'd be right to ask for [citation needed], per the source I finally found, it's more like 22%, only the worst toll roads bust 50%.

Still, compare it to the gasoline tax - Toll roads cost $22 per $100 collected. On average, gas taxes for the whole USA cost only $0.88 for that $100.

Some other links -
$82M revenue, $19M costs, 23%
$169.5M, $48.8M toll and administrion, 29%
Same data as in first source

With that great of a difference in efficiency, it's cheaper for me, in the long run, to accept some inequality in charges because the 'unfair' gasoline system is so much more efficient that the 'fair' toll system is more expensive.

The only other fair usage fee for road use that I can think of would be an "odometer tax": pay for your road use according to your odometer reading, just like you pay for your electricity use by your electric meter reading. But that would be much more expensive to collect, and easy for people to avoid.

It also doesn't necessarily cover the 'driving a heavy vehicle' or 'driving like an ass' tax gasoline taxes tend to impose - both tending to increase road maintenance costs.

If, however, plug-in hybrids ever become a significant fraction of the cars on the road, then there will have to be a "gasoline tax" equivalent on electricity!

I said elsewhere that I see a good chance that electric vehicles will end up being pretty much restricted to urban usage - at that point you treat the roads like schools, parks, etc... Basically, fund them through real estate taxes - In general property owners are responsible to pay for the general maintenance on the roads fronting their property and an appropriate percentage of the feeders. Basically, the city gets an appropriate amount of fuel taxes for the estimated driving via taxed fuel in the city; it's up to them to make up the difference as they see fit. This will likely end up being a substantial subsidy of electric(or plug-ins that the owner manages to keep mostly electric) vehicles; but I can live with that - powered by whatever non-polluting systems that come up, they're very clean. Air quality is a substantial concern in cities, and IC Engines still produce localized pollution even if they're running ethanol/biodiesel/whatever. If that's excessive, then you back it up with an odo tax.

http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/26/2632.asp

Pranking people with the speed cameras has already been done. Same has occurred with the red light cameras, though I don't have an easily copy/pasted link.

I'd also like to point out that this is GREAT for CREATING JOBS... all those people that worked the toll booths, hope you got other employment lined up!

http://www.autoblog.com/2008/12/24/teens-copying-enemies-license-plates-to-get-revenge-via-speed-c/

http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/04/458.asp

http://wcbstv.com/politics/congestion.pricing.london.2.597052.html

It has already been done.

http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/26/2632.asp

What is to stop someone from making sets of fake plates with YOUR number on them and running through these toll roads or red lights?
already being done by kids here

That's a problem with operation not the tech. The article you link to even says that: "The private companies that mail out the tickets often do not bother to verify whether vehicle registration information for the accused vehicle matches the photographed vehicle."

Falcon

What is to stop someone from making sets of fake plates with YOUR number on them and running through these toll roads or red lights?
already being done by kids here

http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/18/1844.asp

"""
3. The cameras were associated with an increase in rear-end crashes. The EB method showed a significant increase in four of the five jurisdictions and a nonsignificant increase in one jurisdiction (Fairfax City). To the extent an average is useful (see Conclusion 1), the EB results suggest that the point estimate of this increase is 42%. A simple before-after comparison after normalizing by time and ADT suggested an average increase of 27% by intersection.

4. The cameras were associated with a decrease in red light running crashes. In two jurisdictions (Fairfax City and County), there was a significant decrease; in one jurisdiction (Vienna), there was a nonsignificant decrease; and in Falls Church, there was a nonsignificant increase. The exception was Arlington, which showed an increase for all crash types. When all results were aggregated, the EB method gave a point estimate of an 8% decrease, with the confidence interval ranging from a 22% decrease to a 7% increase. A simple before-after comparison after normalizing by time and ADT suggested an average decrease of 42% by intersection.
"""

Of course their methodology was crap...

I think the crooks running the city of San Diego originated this. They had the redlight cameras shut down in 2001 for doing it. They put them at intersections where there was a high percentage of people that would pay the tickets and not at "Dangerous" intersections. Then they tweaked the timing on the lights and started raking in the dough. Read about it here.

There was another study in Virginia that showed that while fatalities decreased (right angle crashes), total accidents increased significantly after putting in red-light cameras, and this effect did not diminish over time. Source: thenewspaper.com. I'm sure you'll find a similar refutation of the Texas study; it is still too soon to see that.

There was another study from the Univ. of South Florida with similar results.

In short, traffic cameras show no statistical improvement in accident rate, and in some cases show no improvement in injury rate, either. By contrast, yellow light studies consistently show a significant improvement, and have never been shown to cause any increase in accidents.

Here are five more studies on the subject.

As for comparisons with yellow light cameras, I'm having a hard time digging those up, but here's a story about an experiment on one particularly bad intersection in Fort Collins. Here's a study on all-red intervals that is also relevant here. Either way, it should be clear that if studies show red light enforcement increases the number of accidents and yellow light timing changes decrease it, it doesn't take a genius to know that photo enforcement is not a good solution to the problem.

Every study of red light cameras has shown that increasing the length of yellow lights to a minimum of seven seconds has the same benefits in terms of sideswipe accident reduction without the increased rate of rear end collisions, without wasting tons of fuel, without causing road rage, etc. Unfortunately, the people in power are not about to admit that they were wrong, so the only way to fix the problem is to wrest control away form them through a referendum.

Got any links to these studies? I googled "red light camera study" and found a recent news article which makes some interesting claims:

The study was conducted by the state, and surveyed red light cameras specifically for intersections in communities throughout Texas. A lot of those are right here in Houston. The results, according to this study, show that red light cameras appear to work.

..and the latest research from the Texas Transportation Institute supports that. In the state wide study, right angle crashes declined by 43% after installation of red light cameras. Although rear end crashes increased slightly by 5%, the overall decrease was 30%.

Ah, well here we go. Here is a page that has a collection of 10 or so studies which seem to suppport your claim.

Hopefully this information will be of use to the typically [in my experience] ungrateful /. crowd.

This is what happened in Missouri:
http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/19/1961.asp
or http://www.libertylounge.net/forums/19812-video-transcript-guy-pulled-over-crazy.html

This young man had video going of the entire event, even predating it (including a semi-clear shot of his speedometer). How can I rig up my car to do something similar? I'm going to make up a dream-car-surveillance wish list for the ultimate CYA capability:

- Always-on functionality: I'd like footage from the time I unlock the car with my remote to when I lock it as I walk away (and perhaps a few minutes after that).
- Audio: so there's an accounting of things people say to me, or that I say.
- Redundant microphones: One at each window, at least. Multiple sourced-recordings means that it should be harder to claim that it's been doctored.
- Multiple viewpoints: Front (over-driver's shoulder), rear (to see if people rear-end me?), sides. This way, if I am off-camera for one view, I am hopefully in another one.
- Redundant cameras: If one is discovered/destroyed/disabled, I'd like another to be already filming a similar shot. (So, I think that makes something like 8 cameras? Yikes.)

Now, this ensures that any time I am involved in an accident, a traffic stop, or any other Event while I'm in my vehicle, in theory I should have (multiple) recordings of it for reference/evidence after the fact. It could mean footage of the license plate of a hit-and-run, or "proof" of my innocence when disputing a ticket (how admissable would that be?). Heck, if I'm a witness to an accident or other Event, it would help make sure I don't mis-remember what happened.

There are, however, weaknesses which need to be addressed:

- It'll catch YOU doing bad stuff. So, don't break the law, or cause any accidents. ;)

- Local legality: Is it legal to surveill things in your area? Some states allow conversations to be recorded as long as ONE party knows of it, but only a local lawyer can tell you this. I also don't know if it applies to video footage.

- Vulnerability to destruction: If your car is destroyed, or the cameras discovered, it's possible that your in-car storage will be located (esp. if your car is impounded as evidence? do I watch too much CSI? Probably.), and could be destroyed. It's necessary, IMO, to have off-site backup for all footage your car takes. (Thus, I add another item to my Wish List: Automated upload of footage from any major "event".)

- Your next of kin and your lawyer both need to know about this AHEAD OF TIME. If you're killed in an accident, or shot by overzealous police, or tasered into a coma, they need to know that there is/could-be evidence which needs to be preserved/captured.

- You'll need to take effort to ensure that it's admissable as evidence. I don't know what this might entail; a lawyer and/or professional expert witness can probably answer this well. You'll certainly need to make sure recordings are automatically timestamped and organized, and probably automatically checksummed when archived (to help detect modification). If it can't be used in court, it's unlikely that it can actually help you.

- That's a huge amount of data! This is, I believe, the biggest hurdle: if you can't store the data, or it's too much, then you can't actually use it, even if it's legal and admissable. So, especially if we want off-site storage (automated via wireless network? ;)), we need a way to cut this down somewhat.

So, what can we do to reduce the amount of data storage we need?
1) Assume we only need permanent storage in case of an "event". We could have a "start recording" button (which would mark any data from 5 mins before, until "stop" as des

http://www.myfoxstl.com/myfox/pages/Home/Detail?contentId=4315900&version=2&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=VSTY&pageId=1.1.1

or http://tinyurl.com/2npqnb if that long URL gets truncated.

Controversial Video Of St. George, MO Cop
Last Edited: Monday, 10 Sep 2007, 5:36 PM CDT
Created: Monday, 10 Sep 2007, 5:15 PM CDT

KTVI - myFOXstl.com) -- A police officer in the tiny community of
St. George, MO is caught on tape yelling at a young driver. On the
tape, the officer is cussing, yelling, and threatening to throw the
man in jail. Now, the St. George Police Department is investigating.
FOX 2's Teresa Woodard has the details.

- - - - - -

raw Google video: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2715792117793977759

12 min 55 sec - Sep 8, 2007

Not safe for work (profanity)

- - - - - -

Transcript at http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/19/1961.asp

Missouri: Police Threaten, Detain Motorist for Parking After Hours
9/10/2007

A St. George, Missouri police officer is caught on tape threatening to
invent charges to arrest a motorist for parking after hours.

A motorist who refused to discuss his personal business with a St.
George, Missouri police officer was threatened with arrest last
Friday. Brett Darrow, 20, no stranger to unconventional encounters
with police [ http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/15/1522.asp ], caught a
St. George Police Sergeant named Kenline stating that he had the power
to invent charges that would put Darrow behind bars.

"Try and talk back... to me again," yelled Sergeant Kenline. "I bet I
could say you resisted arrest or something. You want to come up with
something? I come up with nine things."

The incident began at around 2am. Darrow was to meet a friend who was
working late and was going to pick him up. Darrow headed toward a
24-hour commuter parking lot in an unincorporated part of Saint Louis
County in his 1997 Nissan Maxima. He put on his turn signal and
entered the lot which, aside from Kenline's cruiser, was essentially
vacant. After stopping the car, the police officer approached and
began questioning Darrow about what he was doing. When Darrow declined
to discuss his personal business, the police sergeant exploded.
Although the video clearly shows Darrow driving properly and using his
turn signal, the police officer insisted that Darrow had broken the
law.

"Oh, while you were coming towards me you were swerving back and forth
within the roadway," Sergeant Kenline said. "I might give you a ticket
for that. You want me to come up with some more? When you turned in,
you failed to use your turn signal, your right turn signal."

Without the video, Darrow points out that he would have stood no
chance disproving the officer's word in court. Twenty-eight percent of
the St. George municipal budget comes from traffic citations. Darrow
wonders how many of the tickets were legitimate.

"Looking into this guys eyes, he was crazy," Darrow said. "I was
really scared he was going to assault me. I just wonder how many other
people have been arrested on these charges."

After ordering Darrow against the car and searching him, Sergeant
Kenline released the motorist.

View video of incident below. Warning: Police officer uses graphic language.

Transcript of audio made by Brett Darrow:

1:07
Officer #1: How we doin? What's going on?
Brett: Nothing.
Officer #1: Why you parkin here?
Brett: Can't I park here?

The cop is a real d-bag, until he notices the camera. Then, he's just concerned with the driver's safety. http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/19/1961.asp http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/09/21/madcop.video.ap/index.html Officer Kuehnlein vs. Brett Darrow The officer was fired.

Yeah, it sucks but what am I going to do?

First, sign a petition like the reply before me has suggested. Then give the CCTV cameras the same treatment as speed cameras are getting. Prove to the government that the presence of CCTV actually increases crime, mostly arson.