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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.
I've often thought if I got one of these tickets I would take it to court and ask for the right to see my accuser.
Duplicate plates? When I was in school, we used to actually swap the plates themselves lol.
Kids and technology these days.
If sharing a song makes you a pirate, what do I have to share to be a ninja?
This is the inevitable result of the 'panopticon' model of legal harmony. A car does not positively identify a person, nor does a license plate or a blurry photo.
The authorities can cast a wider net by being lazy, but this is the real reason we shouldn't tolerate it: it's almost laughably exploitable.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
If we're lucky.
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
the cameras send the picture to an office where the clerks look at the registered drivers license face photo to see if it corresponds with the face of the guy on the photo.
This is not failsafe of course, since you can always take your wifes car and drive past the cameras in high speed, or a rental car, or wear a mask - but at least you get no false positives.
...when they usually pay through the nose or get jailtime for counterfeiting an official document (which a license plate is).
It's interesting though that penalties are apparently tied to the car in the us, not the driver. I still remember the police showing up regularly at the door showing me a (usually bad) picture of my father and asking if I knew the person. Thank god^M^M^M the constitution for family privilege.
Fleur de Sel
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.
Glossy photo paper print out of their face to wear as a mask for those cameras which capture faces too.
Another good idea is to mount a flash-activated camera flash next to your license plate. When the speed camera (or red light camera) takes a picture, your flash will fire and blind the camera to your plate.
...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.
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.
The Monty Python folks referred to this as, "the other, other operation."
Profit?
Driving and politics . . . sounds like a deadly mix to me.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Looks like a few public officials need to have their plates "cloned" in this way. The only way for them to see the idiocy of this sytesm is for them to be clubbed repeatedly around the head with it.
I have no idea whether or not this information is actually accurate, but I found it interesting none-the-less.
While watching an episode of Top Gear where Jeremy Clarkson was in Japan driving a car, he mentioned that photographs taken by speed cameras were only valid if your face could be identified from the picture. He had a paper cutout of another person's face that he would hold over his own whenever passing by a camera so that he could not be given a ticket.
I'm sure that this was mostly for comedic effect, but if true, doesn't something like this make speed cameras completely pointless?
I've also read a few stories where those who especially hate speed cameras will obscure its vision in some manner so that it cannot take accurate pictures or any pictures at all. Assuming that the rate of this mischief is high enough and there are enough other methods available to circumvent the accuracy of these cameras, is it really worthwhile to use them?
Is that not illegal? Oh well; I personally find it pathetic that students are engaging in such obscene debauchery! If you really need to get revenge on a fellow student or teacher, there are obviously much more legal and embarassing ways to do so IN SCHOOL.
THough, if actual humans were used in this process, perhaps more jobs could be created? And the situation could be partially allievated? It should not be that hard to differentiate between glossy paper and painted metal if you can read the plate on camera.
Incediantally, My first response, in keeping with the quote at the bottom of the page, was, 'No, that'd be silly.'
In Arizona, all tickets are reviewed by
the police or local municipality of which
the ticket was issued.
ie, if the car doesn't match the ticket,
no ticket gets sent. If the driver is
one sex and the vehicle is registered
to the opposite sex, a notice is sent,
not a ticket. I can drive my wife's
vehicle and speed all I want, she gets
a notice that says, "Do you know this
person".
I can't see any instance where this would
work except same vehicle, same sex driving.
So... Fail.
-AI
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion
This entirely new type of crime can only come about because of speed cameras! If we didn't try to punish people breaking the law this kind of thing would never happen!
The story does not mention any victims. The story does not mention any perps who have been caught. Indeed, what makes the idea so clever is that it sounds like the perfect crime. OK, perfect misdemeanor.
How do we know this is actually happening?
How would the perps know for sure that their victim was actually ticketed? Wouldn't this be an unsatisfying prank if you couldn't find out?
This sounds much more like a great idea than like something anyone is actually doing.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
The more computers come to handle criminal and civil matters, such as with traffic light monitors, the more Joe jobs will become a problem. I can foresee underworld specialists in Joe jobs commonly offering for a fee to destroy your enemies with anything from this simple tactic of photocopying license plates, up to using well-known tricks to get child pornography onto victims' computers, followed by anonymous tips to the F.B.I.
A truly excellent pizza parlor is a delight unto the heavens. Treasure the sauce and the toppings!
can some sort of mechanism to identify each car by RFID or something equivalent help ?
Well, the accuracy of the cameras is now no longer in question, however you can introduce some doubt as to whether it was actually your vehicle that was photographed. Interesting thought on whether this can be used as a viable defense.
This just shows again the problems with applying a digital measure to our analog world. Speeding is by no means a crime. A crime implies harm, and having an instantaneous velocity over a certain point on a road hardly qualifies as a crime. Here we have a case of the computer being judge, jury, and executioner. This means that gone are the *very* valid justification that "that's the speed limit because driving any slower was dangerous."
Before, real-life situations could trump an engineer's arbitrary classification of a road. Which is good, because in real life, the situation *is* more important than the simulation. Now, instead of a judge who makes an informed decision that can be understood and formally disagreed with, we have a contractor, who is completely removed from the job. No one to get mad at, and, most importantly, no one to feel guilty. Every person in the chain has no responsibility and no reason to feel bad.
No matter the efficiency advantages of doing otherwise, every penalty applied to a human should be applied by a human.
www.eissq.com/BandP.html Ball and Plate System. Amuse your friends. Crush your enemies.
We could just require all the cars to have GPS in them, and wirelessly report where the car is and how fast it's going, several times a minute. This would be handy for levying tolls and road taxes, and they might be able to build an index of all the speed limits and automatically ticket people for speeding / not stopping / going the wrong way / parking in handicapped spots.
That would be totally cool. Or not.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
So we have a system with a vulnerability and we are publishing the full details of the exploit instead of warning the vendor and wait for a patch?
I bet some people could consider this right for real world and wrong for the digital one or viceversa. What about systems where the line dividing digital world from real are more blurry?
Last year, this happened to my brother.
Some bitch copied his plate and he got some ticket from being down in London, yet he was in Ayr...
Totally different locations, makes sense...
He was being pestered about this for months.
He finally got it sorted out though.
There is probably going to be know way to prevent something like this from happening without having 24/7 surveillance. But apparently people don't like a Big Brother state, even if it means a better life.
You already don't have privacy, what harm can constant street monitoring do?
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.
The more computers come to handle criminal and civil matters, such as with traffic light monitors, the more Joe jobs will become a problem.
One of THX-1138's many social commentaries. A slow, dry movie but damn insightful, IMHO. Still it does not make up for Jar Jar.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
If I lived in Britain, and started getting speeding tickets I knew weren't mine, I'd go and rob a bank. Then lie low for a few weeks, and wait until the wankers get what's coming to them.
If I felt guilty, I'd return the money to the bank (anonymously, of course) later.
I seem to recall there was some kind of legal provision regarding this type of thing...
Most of the cameras here are intentionally broken and never fixed by the state. I'm really not sure why the EZ-pass has a speed limit on the other hand, I always felt like the person behind me was too close if I slowed down to 15mph when I can't make it to the High-speed EZ-pass lanes or they do not exist. Cars in front or real people from the cash lanes are an entirely different story, but I've never gotten a ticket in the mail but I'm pretty sure it doesn't get points on your record. My speeding ticket cost me $200 but $40 would seem like a level n misdemeanor. Sometimes it is easier just to pay the fine because it doesn't go on your driving record.
I don't think anyone's really stupid enough to ...
Henry Mencken disagrees:
"No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public." -- Henry Mencken
I know, he was talking about profit, but I think the sentiment applies more broadly.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
Get ready for mandatory RFID license plates, and all the privacy and security problems that come with them.
This is exactly the same as any security system that trusts the client. You can *never* trust the client if you want to be secure. Speed cameras trust that the client (the car) is displaying the correct plates. An RFID system would be similar, it would trust that the car had a tag, and that it was the correct one.
You could, with effort, engineer a system with a reasonable level of tamper and spoof resistance, but it's hard - these sorts of systems still regularly get cracked.
Speed cameras make money. Not extra money, not bonus money but MONEY money that police and government count on.
Taking out the cameras would mean money straight out of their wallets.
Now why in hell do you think that they would just shrug their shoulders and take it like that?
Only thing that can come out of this is MORE surveillance, not less.
For example, tagging your car, driver's license and while we are at it any and all equipment and tools you are required to have (like the first aid kit, or winter chains, or spare tire...) - with RFID tags and placing RFID reading arrays along the road.
You drive too fast - you get a ticket.
Your car lacks the proper safety equipment - you get a ticket.
Your driver's license ID and your car's ID don't match for some reason - you are arrested for stealing your own car.
Sure... it may cost a bit more of taxpayer's (that would be you) money at first to implement such a system but just think of all the extra fines they could deliver with properly tagged drivers and cars.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
grandtheftauto
Police will park nearby those cameras in unmarked cars. When someone runs the red light, They will get stopped by real police officers, and their license plates will be checked. If it's a forgery, they get jail time. When the kids learn that their friends are going to jail, they'll stop the practice or do it sparingly once they think police have stopped patrolling the area. It could become a problem that occurs occasionally.
I can foresee that people who actually do run red lights will tell the judge, "but someone forged my license plate!" How do you prove or disprove that you weren't their at that time? What little amount of evidence would you need?
The camera video quality will need to be improved drastically and have special light filters to remove windshield glare so they can get the faces of the driver and riders as well as the license plates. That will be expensive, but the best method for getting the best evidence at the scene of the infraction.
Texas private investigator legislation is causing problems for robo-cop traffic enforcement. A Texas judge said the company running a red-light camera was acting illegally because it did not have a private investigator license. On the basis of this ruling, motorists are challenging traffic tickets. The problem started when the legislature said computer forensics experts needed to be licensed like private eyes. See deails: http://legal-beagle.typepad.com/wrights_legal_beagle/2008/12/e-discovery-forensics-private-investigator-license-for-computer-data-collection-and-assessment.html --Ben
Benjamin Wright, Dallas, Texas, benjaminwright.us
This is one o the reasons I bought a canary yellow delorean, try matching that "bad guys"!
I recently had received a notice about an unpaid parking ticket from a town I have never visited. I called the municipal court office and explained that I have never visited the town and was at work 50 miles away when the ticket was written. I suggested that perhaps the officer had misread the plate. They said it happens quite often and put me on hold to look at the photo. After a moment, they came back much more hostile and said the picture was very clear and I had to either pay it or go to court.
I was serious ticked as I have never been in the town, but since I couldn't afford to take a day off from work for a $40 ticket, I just paid it. I also went to the DMV that weekend and changed my plates. If I had fought it, it might have been interesting... their clear photo of my plate versus my timesheets, e-mails, etc that prove I was elsewhere at the time.
The municipal office was adamant that plates can not be duplicated, but obviously this is not the case. I'm just glad it was only a parking ticket.
Hm. So someone puts a printout of the license plate of my lexus on a junker honda and ...
Gee, I think I'd notice when I got the citation with a printout of the photo. I smell hoax or urban myth.
Worked for him!
I thought most cameras also caught the person driving?
At least then you could have plausible deniability in the case of a mistake ( or outright fraud )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
http://www.snopes.com/autos/law/snaptrap.asp
Be excellent to each other.
Heroscape, it's like legos combined with anachronistic wargames.
The idea of setting up your enemies is nothing new.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
In California, at least everywhere here that I've seen them, the cameras are installed in pairs. Though, we only have red-light violation cameras, so maybe that's something unique.
One is behind the intersection and captures the license plate. The other is in front and captures the driver.
I'm told that when you receive your ticket, it includes the two photos and you can contest it if it's not you. They mail it to the owner of the license plate, and if you're not the driver you can presumably fill out a form to redirect it to the person in the photo.
I'd have to imagine that a similar process exists in other situations. For example, even if it was your license plate, couldn't you claim that you weren't driving the car at the time?
-David
Comment removed based on user account deletion
In Germany at least, this was first most widely used by leftwing RAF terrorist.
They took two sufficiently "generic" cars with the same characteristics (model, year of production, color) and stole one of it, copying the license-plate of the other.
These "doublets" were very difficult to spot and caused a lot of hassle for the person owning the actual license-plates.
Germany's Toll-Collect road-pricing (for trucks) infrastructure with plate-reading cameras all over the (autobahn-) place would make it much easier to filter out two cars with the same license-plate.
But a court-ruling stopped the large-scaling license-plate reading of all cars some time ago. For now.
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Granted while it wouldn't work with angsty teens, adults with a grudge could just rent a similar model car.
plan all the way through. All the "enemy" has to do is go to court and get them to pull the picture.
"Hey, that plate doesn't look real and that's not even my car! In fact, that's my archenemy [redacted] with a fake license plate. I think you will find the car in the picture registered to him. Go arrest him for counterfeiting and fraud!" Boom, enemy wins and the charge is much worse than speeding.
I'm sure that this was mostly for comedic effect, but if true, doesn't something like this make speed cameras completely pointless?
Of course it depends on the regulations governing their use just how 'useful' speed cameras are. In Germany for example they are a significant source of revenue for some communities. Camera operators usually make an agreement with a township or a city, the community gets the penalty fees and only has to pay for rent on the camera if the camera is generating 'profit'. The contracted company will make sure that the cameras are situated in 'profitable areas'. Examples:
People who get caught in these situations usually aren't doing more than 8-10 km/h over the limit when they get photographed but in a setup like this the camera operator can easily get dozens or even hundreds of penalty fees rolling into his coffers every day. The really annoying thing is that the places where these cameras would be really useful, since their usual effect is to cause people to radically lower their speed temporarily, places like crossings where school children walk on their way to school aren't profitable enough for these camera companies to bother with. They are to busy maximising the 'profitability' of their camera network to care about traffic safety.
N.B. I'm not against speed cameras but since the I think the traditional measure-once-and-click cameras have a limited utility when it comes to encouraging people observe speed limits. All they really do is make people to slow down for a couple of minutes. The multiple camera setups that penalise you only if your average speed is to high over a certain distance make much more sense. I have found myself escaping an accident because of some idiot exceeding the speed limit by 30, 40 or even more km/h far to often to advocate peoples freedom to drive at insane speeds but unfortunately speed cameras are often more about profit than actually persuading people to observe speed limits.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Here in Norway (nearly?) all speed trap cameras use roadbed sensors which detect each vehicle axle as the car/truck passes over it.
There are two such sensors a few meters apart, and the speed trap logic will calculate both the speed the car must have had between the two sensors, and the distance between the vehicle axles.
The gear is supposedly sensitive/accurate enough that the axle distance can be measured within a cm or so.
This still leaves a lot of possible car models, but it is used as a first-order check of the license plate OCR sw.
When the ticket is mailed to the (assumed) owner of the car, it includes a copy of the photo, so the owner can verify that it is indeed the correct car and driver.
Terje
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"
you ask for a copy of the photo and it will not be your car or you driving and you don't get charged.
I got one of these darned things once in Davis, Calfornia. It cost me something like $350, and the thing that was sent to me had 4 distinct pictures, one of the front plate, one of the back plate, one of the car overall, and one of the driver (zoomed way in for good detail). When it happened, I read all kinds of articles on it, and apparently it never is successfully appealed, most judges treat it as absolute without even thinking about it twice.
More about using a face photo and fake tag for tripping up someone else at a speed camera...
There was an episode of the old TV show Columbo (I think) where a murderer used their image from a speed camera as an alibi to prove they could not have committed the crime. Am accomplice held up the photo over their face as they triggered the speed camera while the crime was taking place. Columbo saw that the photo lighting wasn't right and as always nabbed the bad guy.
Still, the combination of a fake license and a holding a photo up over your own is a great way to mess up the process. Gotta give it to the kids to come up with something. Now if only such thinking would make a new product we could have the .com days all over again.
I found it trying to find the story about a state in the South West that keeps lowering the speed limits on the interstates to boost revenue.
Not too hard to buy. There was a case here a few months ago where I woman was getting parking tickets from Philly. Although a trip to Philly is not out of the realm of possibilities she claimed she had never been to the city of Brotherly love. It took 3 months to get it all cleared up, where it was found that the traffic 'cop' had switched a number on the license plate.
So if she had lived in Philly and she may have not contested it.
Will you still think it's awesome after being run over by a "prankster"?
This is obviously a non-problem as the persons traveling a couple of mph above the speed limit are in VAST DANGER OMFG THINK OF THE CHILDREN and will certainly die within moments. You didn't think that speed limits were pulled out of someones ass to create revenue and 'work' for the police, did you?
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
Mobile speed camera van issues 17 tickets to itself
Five words: James Bond Revolving Number Plates.
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
Way to read the article.
mediocrity rules, man
One guy in our neighborhood made a license plate saying 'got you' and sped three times next to the rather newly installed speed camera he didn't like. Just to f*** the institutions. However when the police examined the photos they noticed there were only three cars of exactly that make and color in the entire state and one of them registered on an address close to that road. They could positively identify the car and the driver and fined him three speed tickets and one for false license plates.
I travel through the state of Illinois quite often, a state which has a sick fascination with toll booths. Despite the fact that most of the money comes from the feds they still feel it is their right to extract 8 bucks each way to and from Chicago, despite the fact that neighboring states have few if any tolls. Because of this as a matter of priciple I skip every toll and go through the "Easy-Pass" lane. I often see the flash of the camera behind me and at first was quite ready get caught, but after about 4 years now I'm convinced the whole thing is a hoax. Even if I do get one sometime I have saved literally hundreds and perhaps nearly a thousand dollars which will not be going to support unfair taxation of out of state travelers. As a side not I hated Gov. Rod long before his recent scandle thanks to his name appearing on every toll station in the state.
Edward Owusu, Assistant Principal at Wootton High School said, "It is unfortunate that kids have a lot of time on their hands that they can think of doing such a thing."
Damn it, what does it take to make you kids STOP THINKING??
At least if you look at how things were actually done during the Cultural Revolution, or even today in Cuba and North Korea. Local party members inform on those whose political purity is questioned.
And what does the government do a little girl opens a lemonade stand and tries to keep the profits? Little handcuffs and off to the gulag!
There's a very scary scene depicting what these local committees were like in the movie The Red Violin. Go rent that and see how local government worked under Mao.
Of course, these elections never actually happened anyway, or any elections for that matter, local or national, under any Marxist regimes. Or a single, fixed election, like in Venezuela.
Sorry brother, but when I hear "Marx," I don't think "democracy."
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
BTW, you're meant to drive on the road, not on the pavement.
In US English, "pavement" is the hard surface of a road or street (or any other paved surface for that matter). We use the word "sidewalk" for a paved pedestrian path along the the edge of a road.
Naturally, we frown upon driving on the sidewalk over here, just as you discourage driving on the pavement over there! :-)
Speed cameras were originally tried in 1969 in Texas but they were taken down when people started shooting the cameras. The system was called Orbis. See pg 20 of the January 2008 Popular Mechanics. The systems eventually came back and stayed, maybe because people are now more tolerant of surveillance.
All is good until a "friend" takes out a license plate and puts it on your car, as a prank or simply to get you in trouble.
Just as you can steal a plate to put some people in trouble so can others do it to you.
The problem is simply the fact that the number is easy to exchange.
For example, you could probably solve this problem by actually writing the number on the full car, in an infrared visible color. Or painting a pattern on the car, like the pattern used to prevent copying machines from copying bank notes. Or the pattern made by color laser printers with yellow dots.
I can also think of another solution, like placing (micro) speed bumps at 2-3KM intervals, preventing people from reaching a speed higher than the maximum allowed.
Here in Arizona, we have a little trick that works quite well. You just drive a car that is registered to someone else. They can't ticket you because they don't know who you are, and the person to whom the car is registered is not liable because he is not the one who broke the law. My younger brother has gotten out of two tickets already by driving the parents' car. So, if you have a family member or friend whom you trust, just swap cars and ignore cameras to your heart's intent.
The other option you have is to just challenge every ticket that they send you. They have lawyers here who chargea flat $35 and basically take you through the process of challenging a ticket. It's really easy to get off, because by the time it's all said and done, it costs them more to get a judge to force you to pay it than the ticket is actually worth.
"Driving needlessly endangers other people's lives. Heck, so does existence. ...
In any case, not to get distracted from the subject at hand, I refute that speeding, as defined by going faster than a posted limit, is needlessly endangering lives. "
The simple fact is that that the faster you drive, the more dangerous it is, period. If you hit someone at 15 mph, chances are they will survive. If you hit them at 25 mph, the chances are slim. And the faster you are driving, the faster you are likely to be going when you hit someone or something.
In short, it is absolutely true that, if you exceed the speed limit, you are making it more dangerous for everyone else than if you drive within the speed limit.
And yes, either way you are dangerous when driving an automobile. So act like an adult and turn off the cell phone.
Or has 100 cats. Remember, these associations are voluntary.
But a "friend" can do that already. If a person did that to me, I would have the license plate dusted for fingerprints, and get a lawyer to defend me in court. Let's see how the "friend" enjoys the prank of me getting him busted.
Er, no.
Making duplicate plates is hard work. What those people do is mostly steal your plates. It is vital to report such thefts immediately to avoid being held accountable oneself for assorted traffic offences committed by the thieves.
In principle, one ought to be able to demand in court that the prosecution's images be shown, and then contest them. In the UK, this causes the prosecution to allege that you have modified your vehicle in an attempt to avoid conviction. This sort of thing continues in spite of high profile cases where someone is charged with speeding offences in a part of the country entirely different to the remote location where one uses one's tractor.
So yes, it is entirely possible both to obey the law and fulfil your social responsibilities, and yet still get prosecuted.
Automatic numberplate recognition is wonderful -- but it should be an addition to policing, not a replacement.
The technology is already there, it's just waiting for someone to abuse it.
Using video tracking, from a legal standpoint, someone can argue that these kids are impersonating a license plate--i.e. stoeln license plates and that's a real offense and the video will just do some data mining on the cars in question to find out make, model and eventually who did it. It's bound to happen and these kids, while being smart are just going to spoil it for then rest of us.
.
Sure, the red light cameras are useless and may cause more harm, but disrespect for these stupid laws by being unlawful just gives more incentives to the gov't wonks to make stupider laws.
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.
In that case, the person to blame was the idiot who didn't keep enough distance to be able to break in time.
At any time a car in front of you might stop short (red light, but also children or animals crossing the road, etc.) if you don't keep enough distance, you're always at risk of doing a read-end accident.
Traffic laws in most jurisdiction (at least here in Europe) explicitly ask the driver to keep enough distance with the vehicle in front, in order to be able to break and stop short in case of emergency.
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.
Technically, according to most traffic laws around (although I don't specifically know the USA ones. Maybe you don't drive like anyone else) when the traffic light switch to yellow, you supposed to stop already if you can and only go through if you're too fast and too near to the traffic light to be able to stop in time.
It does *NOT* serve the purpose of a sign telling "Warning, the light is going red soon, hit the accelerator as strong as you can and try to make it through as fast as you can before it goes red". Although, when looking at how some idiots drive, you may be led to believe that's actually the case.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Remember, these associations are voluntary.
Like hell they are. Most are requirements of the planned cookie-cutter community the person moved into.
The funny thing is, I've lived in one of the earliest planned communities in the US, and it wasn't as restrictive as most HOAs and it's not cookie cut either.
Steal the plates - bah amateurs, I stole the plate making machine!
Yeah, and if that "friend" wears gloves so leaves no fingerprints? What do you do? You lose a few days in courts and you lose a few hundred/thousand dollars in lawyer fees and get aggravated.
The whole system is really dumb and it's amazing how easy you can get in trouble.
A few years ago this wouldn't have been a problem because there were no speeding cameras. Just another problem that shouldn't be in the first place just because some folks need some easy money.
In Germany you can go as high as you want on Autobahn and as far as I know the number of accidents is very low, so I guess speed doesn't hurt if you build the road properly.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobahn#Accident_record
It's always "just a prank" to the geek.
But the cop who pulls you over has to consider other - more dangerous - possibilities and he won't be taking any chances.
The dumb-ass move you make now can put you in a body bag.
It isn't likely to end that way - but it can end that way. That is why you get ninety days in the cooler to think things over.
http://www.davesdaily.com/pictures/908-mischievous-aussies.htm from a few years back.
Maryland HIGH schoolers holding it down!
In Seattle at least you do not have to pay these tickets. You go to the court and state that it wasn't you driving the vehicle at the time. They then ask you who was, but you can refuse.
I actually did a paper about red light cameras a few years back. They do decrease the incidence of "T-Bone" crashes at intersections but they increase the rate of rear-end collisions even more.
Imagine that there are 3 zones as you approach an intersection. A "Must Stop" zone, a zone of decision and a "Must Go" zone. If the light turns yellow while you are in the "Must stop" zone then you have to stop, if it turns yellow while you are in the "Must Go" zone then you must keep going and if the light turns yellow in the zone of decision the driver must make a judgement call. What these damn cameras do is shrink the "Must Go" zone and expand the zone of decision toward the intersection. The result is more people slamming on brakes and getting rear-ended because they are more worried about getting a ticket than whether or not they can stop safely.
I also found instances of the yellow light time at red light camera intersections being mysteriously shortened as if to catch more people running red. And looking at accident statistics in my local area showed that they weren't putting the cameras at the most dangerous intersections which one would suspect if the point were really to decrease accidents.
Maybe it was also because people weren't running the red lights very often, so it might have made sense.
I'm sure everywhere has its own reasons which probably include profit in some cases, and I'm not convinced on private companies being involved in these things, but I really wish we had some red light cameras near where I am.
Especially in the rush hour (but also other times), I can nearly always guarantee that when I'm waiting to cross the street as a pedestrian, I'll get a cross light, wait for about another second, and then the last car zooms through the intersection.
At last. My county is in the news. Let's hear it for high school kids showing some creativity. :-)
1. Distract the operator of a mobile speed trap.
2. Steal its plates and put them on your car.
3. Proceed to speed past it 17 times.
http://www.davesdaily.com/pictures/908-mischievous-aussies.htm
Nothing about to concern yourselfs. It won't happen to you or anyone you know. Please continue on with your bleary lives.
thx,
The Mgmnt
So much blabber about so little. Just save a life and drive the speed limit.
I'd Rather have a list of plate numbers for all known stolen vehicles. print them out and stick em up at plate height to make the active scanner cop cars go ape shit.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
He was not speaking only to "America"; he was speaking to the world.
Many of us here understand his point, even if you perhaps sadly do not.
The part about US$ was sort of helpful though. How many tanks of gas (petrol) does this fine equate to?
.
- aqk
F U
I live in Minnesota and the red light camera's that were in place have been disabled (last I checked) due to related issues. My cousin let his mother drive his car to the grocery store and she went through a red light. And guess what a ticket was issued to him instead of her or even not issued at all. Clearly he wasn't 20 years older and female with different colored hair. But he had to pay the fine straight up, or go to court and take time off work that he wasn't guilty of this crime. Which goes against our constitutional right.
If you are willing to commit a reasonably serious offence you can inconveniance other people pretty easily.
its an infraction, unless its a repeat offense, and you are on probation, and you are trying to drive to your family's christmas party and resist arrest
TFA contains a rather awful quote from Edward Owusu, the Assistant Principal at Wootton High School.
Did this educator really just lament that kids have free time for thinking? Should they instead be spending all their extra time on rote memorization and household chores so that the devil won't get a foothold?
>> 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.
This is news? I had this done to me about 15 years ago! Got a phone call from a police force about 250 miles away asking if my car was still in the driveway as an hour ago a car with my plates had driven away from a petrol station without paying.
Even longer ago a friend saw a duplicate of his car in the town he lives in (no one said the bad guys are smart) and chased it down.
If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done?
The idea to elect clever people is a sound one, the problem is that democracy as we practice it is too blunt an instrument and it creates disenfranchisement.
When we vote for a government we normally vote for a very reduced number of issues (in the last US elections was the economy) but then you get all kind of nasties riding that (in the current UK government we have got a run of puritanical, authoritarian Home Secretaries that are ruining the freedoms of people in the UK).
We need to find a way to fine tune policies in accordance to what people, or I would argue, informed individuals, think is best for society.
Buying wholesale to all the ideas of a group of people in a party is not working, we need to change that somehow (perhaps we should have elections for 10 or 12 different executive posts, each one in charge for different parts of the government, I see how that could be chaotic, but maybe certain overriding authority could be given to a head of government or state).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Show us some links to examples of what you claiming. I just don't believe a single thing.
I have driven in Germany extensively many times and the only time I got a fine it was my fault, no trickery required.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
If you drive a car at 60km/h it has a certain momentum, and that momentum will affect in certain very specific ways most people that are unfortunate to be hit by it.
Do you remember those documentaries about dummies in cars, where they crash the cars to see the effects on humans involved in such crashes? Well , say hello to speed limits derived from this information, information that says at which point your car becomes a mortal artefact.
Add to this the response times measured from most people while driving, and this will relate to the max speeds in highways.
Endangering people in public places has always been a crime, if you want to drive without worrying about organized society then rent a racetrack and close it for your personal driving pleasure.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
At least in Arizona, a ticket must be hand-delivered in order to be valid. It's a bit like jury duty notices that aren't sent registered mail. They have no way of proving that you got it.
IMHO, this is nothing more than a money-making scheme for the camera companies. In some places, the city gets $2 of a $50 ticket. WTF?
Court Rules Patriot Act's "National Security Letter" Gag Provisions Unconstitutional
There are numerous cases going through the federal court system seeking to strike down enforcement through speed cam as a violation of due process law, since the owner is given a fine without proof he was actually driving the vehicle. I think this is why all the articles I've read state that the authorities controlling these things don't put it onto your MVR -- they know people will stomp them flat in court and people are less likely to challenge them if it's "just a 50 to 100 dollar fine, not worth the hassle, i'll just pay it".
There is an earlier ruling from 2007 which struck down such cams, but google is dominated by a recent decision (the 9th) in a federal district court in ohio that stated the things were constitutional.
Personally, I think it's a corrupt judge, as the lack of due process is glaring.
The parties involved plan to go with this all the way to the supreme court if necessary, and my guess is it will, in the end, get struck down as unconstitutional. This is not some "politicized" issue, it's a clear cut case of state abuse.
For those who are infuriated by the idea of speed cams, I know for a fact Georgia has made it illegal for municipalities to install them.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
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.
Teaching felons how to make licenses seems to have failed. ;)
You know, I kind of pissed off my city because I figured out that a lot of our red light cameras were designed improperly. I found that if I'm going 25 MPH and I come to a quick stop right at the line, it will snap a picture with nobody in the intersection. (They are charged per picture here)
It was funny, I did this for about a week straight, and all of a sudden, they were working on the cams at that intersection... I then moved on to another intersection to check and see if that worked as well... I'm on my 5th Light right now :P
In the US, or at least in Michigan: when fighting a tick it must be provable to a magistrate that you were in fact the one driving the car when the infraction occurred... else you're off the hook.
That is the whole point of these stupid cameras! They don't have to pay cops to pull people over, and they make a bunch of money catching everyone anyway.
The cops aren't there.
I don't have time to research this, but I'm skeptical.
Like many such stories I've heard over the years, this one requires the "prankster" to commit a crime. Whether you are tripping cameras or not, putting a fake tag on your car has always been easy to do, and it has always been illegal. So, great, you can pull a fast one on your rival...as long as you are willing to drive around speeding and running red lights in an illegally marked car.
Also, in the State of Maryland (where I live,) and every other jurisdiction in which I've received a camera ticket, the citation includes a photo of the event. Unless the car is identical, it would be easy to disprove the charge.
Even if the car was identical, it would often be easy to disprove the charge anyway, by showing that you were some place else at the time (work, school, etc.)
So, while it would certainly would be possible to do this, I think the requirements for success make it unlikely that it is widespread. Unless it was meant strictly as a joke, in which case the prankster wouldn't care that the citation is unlikely to stick. Otherwise, I call bullshit.
Oh, by the way...The Montgomery County Police said they have not seen or heard of this prank occurring but said they will keep an eye out for people committing the crime.
Evil is the money of root.
IANAL, but my understanding is that hearsay is a major hurdle for admitting evidence to court. often, a person needs to appear in court to say yes- i or they said, signed, was present, etc. "insert details here" before the evidence can be used, even contracts. whether these pranksters realize it or not, evidence of automated traffic enforcement may be found inadmissible to court due to constitutional protections if challenged under the right circumstances (such as this), where there is no one to summons for appearance in court, you know, to confirm "yes, I pulled that person over for speeding".
You mean, like throwing shoes could get you in trouble?
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
The parent said that "our civil rights are exploited," and the entire premise behind the Speed Camera Program is called into question as a result of the growing this fad among students.
Well, I guess this is one way to wake people up to the problems inherent in this.
Seems like the logical next step would be to start duplicating the license plates of city mayors, town councilmen, etc. and see if you can't bury them in a wave of bogus tickets. Not that I would advocate people engage in crimes, but it would be damn funny.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
Might I make the point that the percentage freedom in a society is roughly inversely proportional to the amount that freedom is mentioned. Call it Nimdur's theorem, if nobody else can take the credit.
In Lithuania after 1990, there was very little mention of freedom, but it increased with each year's increase in the number of laws. I expect that they are very aware, by now, how free they are in the European Union, and how much freer they will be if Russia reconquers them.
I doubt if non-warlike aboriginal tribes even have a word for freedom (and yes, those do exist, though all modern governments are apparently agrarian/warlike).
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Having worked for a company that produced and managed red light cameras and I've seen and heard all the arguments laid out here before. In fact, before working for this company I had gotten RL tickets and been supremely ticked off because the situation was never taken into account. But the longer I worked for this company the more I grew to understand the different aspects of why these cameras were put there.
1) Safety - Whine, cry, and complain all you want but there is a safety factor involved. There are studies that show the percentage of RL runners from the initial installation of a camera system to a period of weeks later. That number starts high and curves down to stabilize. In some instances it can be a 50-60% drop in runners. How many fewer accidents do you think happen then? Don't you feel safer crossing the street?
2) Surveillance - The police jurisdictions often use video for the purpose of reviewing accidents and proving fault. If some jerk runs the light, hits you, then blames YOU for it, wouldn't you like to have video backing you up in court? Likewise, some guy robs a store and takes off through one of these intersections you can get information on the vehicle (and sometimes even have generated a ticket for that person!). The surveillance provided by many of these sites can lead to arrests of dangerous criminals or the catching of child abductors.
3) Money - Yes, they do make a lot of money because it costs a lot of money to put these systems in and maintain the infrastructure. Jurisdictions DO get very mad when the revenue stream starts turning downward (see point 1). Generally these systems continue a maintenance stream equal to their cost and the public response is generally favorable when all aspects are considered. The overall driving goal is money, but the bonuses that are achieved should be seen as a value to the citizens.
For those of you complaining about your tickets, guess what? You broke the law. I've broken it too, but I paid the ticket anyway. You should be GLAD you get a ticket running that light, because it might stop you from doing it the next time and getting creamed by a truck. (Motorcyclists especially pay heed, seen too many of you guys splattered in the intersection because you ran a light.)
Just obey the law, deal with it, and move on because there are bigger things in life to worry about. (e.g. Death, Taxes, Windows Vista, etc.)
PS: Posting anonymously just in case someone tries to get me in trouble.
Yes I remember that one (I watch it as a rerun on A&E). The way the murder's alibi was unraveled is on topic though... the mask was just a flat 2-D picture, so it didn't have the correct shadows a real face would. Of course it's unlikely that the police bother to do the image analysis even with modern digital pictures (in those days it was photo-print enlargement), unless it complicated an investigation into a major felony like murder.
They are voluntary in as far as you can choose to buy a home within a HOA, or one without. I shopped around to find a house outside of a HOA. I would rather risk my neighbor painting his house pink than live under some of the rules I saw in HOA's in this area. For example: -No parking in street, or parking in your driveway overnight. -No washing your car in your driveway. -No fixing your car in public view, must be inside garage with closed door. -A friend in an HOA last week received a letter. "You have 6 months to repaint your house, in one of these 4 approved colors." If he doesn't, they can force him to sell his home.
To detect duplicate plates, all they need to do is track every plate all the time, speeding or not.
The database wouldn't be used for anything else.
well, except terrorist suspects. (or anyone near a major government building)
and pedophile suspects. (or anyone passing near a school)
and drug dealers. (or anyone who's ever been to a pharmacy)
and those suspicious weirdos, who seem to be deliberatly avoiding the government, schools, and pharmacies (Scientologists?)
Wait 'till your neighbor paints his house purple. Or has 100 cats.
My neighbor has the right to paint his house any color he wishes, including purple. I welcome his creativity, and no I don't care if it devalues my home. My right to make a profit in my investment ends at his property.
As far as having 100 cats, as long as those cats are not coming into my property, not being mistreated, and as long as it's not violating any municipal/city/state/federal health codes, it's none of my business either.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
And there's nothing worse than being willfully ignorant (and proudly admitting to it).
How about being a politician? (That's like A+B)
Is it just me or is the whole idea of automated law enforcement the most repulsive thing in modern society?
I am really very much opposed to having my laws executed by automaton.
that Marxists always say about failed, despotic Marxist-Leninist regimes: "They just didn't do it right."
I'm sorry, but when every single example of a Marxist-Leninist-based regime leads to vast human suffering, corruption, and human rights atrocities, maybe it's time to just admit that Marxist-Leninist governments do not work, as they ignore human nature and the nature of capital.
But leftists always let their dogma run over their karma, and want to try it again and again. If only you had so much patience with capitalism!
Capitalism, regardless of what you think of its fairness, just works. You don't need dictatorships, mind control through force, secret police, informants, or re-education camps. Just let people do their thing, and it goes. Now which system is consistent with human nature? Which one is free and which one requires compulsion?
Marxism must be instituted and kept pure by force. Because no matter what, sooner or later, that little girl is going to want to open a lemonade stand. And what are you going to do then?
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Democracy (a.k.a. Tyranny of the Majority) sucks! Long live the republic!
As an adjunct to Democracy AND Socialism, something that thrives when people collectively pool their assets and liabilities, is that the people cherry pick the benefits while dumping the costs at the foot of society. Long Live the free market. Vive la liberte des marches.
Not trying to be a smart-arse (for a change), but doesn't your neighbour's painting his house purple and thereby devaluing your house therefore extend onto your property? Not trying to make a point, but to clarify one.
Athy, athier, athiest.
Not trying to be a smart-arse (for a change), but doesn't your neighbour's painting his house purple and thereby devaluing your house therefore extend onto your property?
Things people do affect me all the time, but I don't have a right to tell them not to do it unless they actually physically do it with my stuff (or to me). For example, day traders dumping a stock I own is devaluing my property, but they're doing it by exercising a right to their property (their stock).
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.