Slashdot Mirror
Using Speed Cameras To Send Tickets To Your Enemies
High school students in Maryland are using speed cameras to get back at their perceived enemies, and even teachers. The students duplicate the victim's license plate on glossy paper using a laser printer, tape it over their own plate, then speed past a newly installed speed camera. The victim gets a $40 ticket in the mail days later, without any humans ever having been involved in the ticketing process. A blog dedicated to driving and politics adds that a similar, if darker, practice has taken hold in England, where bad guys cruise the streets looking for a car similar to their own. They then duplicate its plates in a more durable form, and thereafter drive around with little fear of trouble from the police.
Wow, so you personally commit fraud and forgery to get your "enemy" a $40 speeding ticket?
sounds like a great idea until the first time a cop is on scene to pull you over.
I hope those kids like jail time!
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
...they could create a website listing the make, model and licenses of cars belonging to police and other public officials; with convenient license plate templates or maybe a PDF license plate generator. Don't host it the US or UK though.
But that would be wrong.
And teh best way for us to not tolerate it, is to exploit it to laughable extremes. Have everyone copy the license plate of Governor Martin O'Malley and let him get multiple speeding tickets in different parts of his state at the same time, the law will change much faster that way as compared to waiting for the legislature to actually give a shit about bad law.
We are all just people.
No, it will just be used as an excuse to make the governor and other politicians exempt from the law.
Do you look at your license plate every morning? Would you notice if the letters and numbers suddenly changed?
if you fill your own paintballs and fill them with glue instead of paint so the entire front glass has to be replaced it will work faster.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
The real problem, imho, is that speed limits are artificially low. In the US anyway, the only reason to follow the speed limit is to avoid fines. The numbers are unnecessarily conservative for most driving.
In fact, i can drive past a cop at the speed limit in the rain and not get a ticket though clearly I have a much lower margin of safety going 65 in the rain than I do going 65 on dry pavement.
Similarly, one is allowed to go the same speed at night as during the day even though visibility is definitely impaired.
(Yes, I know the limit is set as an upper limit and that cops can ticket you for going an unsafe speed for the conditions, etc, etc. but in practice it doesn't happen for up to moderate levels of inclement levels. And in fog or a downpour or blizzard, well most people slow down well below the speed limit anyway.)
I do like the "advised speed" that's attached to signs signaling curves ahead. That actually provides useful information about the road rather than info about the revenue generation and/or paranoia of the local residents.
Then target their golfing buddies and their largest campaign donors.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
What should we think of a government that tries to find new ways to make our highways safe.
However, red light cameras do not make it safer. In most places, red light cameras INCREASE the occurrence of rear-end accidents because people are afraid they might get a ticket and stop short. And in my area, those tickets are nearly $200. On top of that, the camera companies get a cut in the profits from the tickets. So there is an incentive to ticket people. And it has been proven in certain cities that the governments are shortening the yellow-light times to catch people off guard. So even people who are not trying to "run" the light get caught in it. And speed cameras on on-ramps are just friggin stupid. There are enough people out there who dont know how to merge into freeway traffic. THEY are the ones who cause congestion.
Tell that to the US citizens who were served National Security Letters under the auspices of the PATRIOT Act. Oh wait, you can't, because those people are legally prohibited from disclosure, so there's no way to identify who they are.
The problem, of course, is not the validity of your statement. It's absolutely correct. But as we can clearly see, there really isn't such a thing as a truly free society, only those that call themselves "free."
If you live in that much fear of government officials, then you have bigger problems than speed cameras. In a free society, the fear, if any, goes the other way.
Hell, It's not like some sick government Fsck could have you kidnapped right of the street and have you taken to a middle-eastern country to be tortured, in spite of the fact you were perfectly innocent...
I'm sorry, excuse me for just a moment... Oh, really?... Hmmmm...
Never mind.
The best way is to make the intersection designs controlled by insurance companies. It is in their best interest not to ever pay out, so the interesections that they can reduce accidents in will be made as safe as possible.