Slashdot Mirror
Arizona Backs Off Its Speed Camera Program
crimeandpunishment writes to inform us that Arizona is putting the brakes to a controversial and contentious speed camera program. The cameras have been used along highways in the Phoenix area and in vans throughout the state. While the cameras are used throughout the country, Arizona's program was the widest use of the technology, and the decision to drop it is a setback for those who argue that the cameras slow speeders, reduce accidents, and free up police for more serious matters. "The camera program was instituted by Brewer's predecessor, Janet Napolitano, now the Homeland Security secretary. Cameras were introduced in September 2008 and were added until all 76 were up and running by January 2009. Lawmakers considered repeal proposals within months, but set the issue aside and appealed for calmer debate when a passing motorist fatally shot a camera-van operator doing paperwork in his marked vehicle in April 2009."
We're not the UK yet, we don't need this crap here.
Stop being stupid.
The cameras weren't removed because someone shot one of the camera-van operators. The decision on whether or not to remove the cameras was postponed so that the murder wouldn't influence the decision, the *exact* *opposite* of what you suggest.
Can you read? Or do you just not care?
Speed cameras, like any other Big Brother tools, reproduce by binary fission. Usually, once you agree to one, suddenly you find yourself facing down the lens everywhere you go. Just look at the folks across the ocean. They used to be a proud empire, now even their most fervent US-mockers recognize the extent to which their freedom has been curtailed.
The fact that folks in Arizona managed to get rid of the cameras is a testament to the fact that at least some of the U.S. still values their freedom, and that the Big Brother is not yet fully in control.
Also, if you read the article it appears as if that one incident wasn't the chief reason the cameras were scrapped, but rather that it was a contentious issue for the November ballot that they didn't want to deal with.
And school zones. While I was going out to get some errands done I hit a school zone. Flashing yellow lights held up above the road with a bright "20" lit up. Obviously a warning that school is letting out and the zone is now 20MPH.
The road is a 4 lane (2 each way) and as you could guess where I'm going with this.. A SUV flies by me on the right and weaves through traffic doing at least 45. He/She also ran a yellow with a ton of kids waiting to cross.
Absolutely sickened me. A bad slip up, unexpected lane change of another vehicle, or a simple miscalculation on the light and it could have been on CNN.
I would happily support cameras on each end watching and timing plates. Ticketing anyone who speeds in a school zone during morning and afternoon student/bus/walker travel times.
speeding cameras are really about making money and do little to increase public safety. How many times do people have to catch the read light cameras being intentially set with short yellows to figure that out (the yellow is changed short as many cameras operate at a loss if they don't) If the companies that make and operate them were forced to be a non-profit with the highest paid employee no more than $85k in total compensation I wonder how many people would be pushing them?
Surely that depends on how stupid your populace are? If you're dumb enough to repeatedly get caught speeding and not learn from it then yeah, they're not going to improve things. If, however, people go "there's a speed camera - what speed should I be doing? Better make sure I don't exceed the limit" then you're fine. They're only a money making scheme because people are too stupid and arrogant to keep to the speed limit.
Red light cameras are a bit different - they've got a variable you can tweak. Speed cameras allow a threshold (although they don't have to in the UK, by law) and can be tested and calibrated.
(Said as a former driver who now mainly cycles - but it applies to both parts of my commuting life)
There are many laws, and the fact that something is law, doesn't make it gospel. Just because it's on the books, doesn't mean it's right.
On the highways, away from residential areas, speeding laws are generally solely structured to bring in more income.
In NY, there are areas where highways have 50mph speed limits... or even 45mph... despite a wide, straight (or nearly so) well-paved road.
Ultimately, laws are meant to be the projection of the will of the people, moderated by the Constitutional interpretations of the Supreme Court... and we don't want the speed cameras.
Thing about speed cameras is that the focus rarely seems to be on actually getting traffic to flow at a safe speed.
I've seen some good systems which focus on indicating to drivers when they're going too fast.(rather than trying to keep them from realising they've slipped over the limit so you can fine them)
Traffic lights suspended over the road, if you're going above the speed limit it goes orange, then red.
As you drop bellow the speed limit it goes green again, you only get done for speeding if you fly through the red.
It sounds odd but since there are lots of them and people are used to them it's quite safe and it keeps traffic at a steady speed.
With the current system they seem only too happy to let you speed as long as they can get money out of you for it.
Imagine if you will a state where theft were punished only with a fine and then instead of trying to prevent thefts the police concentrated purely on issuing fines.
I agree it sounds that way, but in this case it's a real and present danger. We're not talking about some obscure law or politicians whim. Speeding through a school zone during school hours is just a _stupid_ thing to do.
Shit, I worry about driving on side roads for fear of a 5 year old chasing a ball at dusk. Obviously you can't stop driving in school zones or in residential areas, but you can _stop_ being a jackass and at least realize you're driving a 2 ton chunk of metal that will snap a kid in two in an instant.
That is why picture enforcement of school zone speed limits _is_ something I would support.
Y'know what gets people to slow down? A real cop, lighting you up, pulling you over, and having to sit by the side of the road (as you watch every car that was doing the speed limit glide on by for 20 minutes :) as you await your fate.
I got my first ticket in 20 years of driving during a recent road trip. I knew I was speeding, he knew I was speeding, and after he wrote me up, I actually thanked him for the reality check. Had it been a camera, I'd have paid the fine and not changed my behavior for the rest of the trip, because I wouldn't have known about it until I got home. As it was, I kept it to within 5 of the limit for the rest of my trip, and to my surprise, even in the extremely remote areas of the state - we're talking the kind of places where you're the only car within miles miles - slowing it down wasn't as boring as I'd thought it would be.
Speed cameras don't deter speeders. Immediate negative feedback does.
legislating against jackassery is impossible.
turn up the jukebox and tell me a lie
Seriously? You can't do five minutes of your own research? I simply copied and pasted your above statement into Google, and this link, http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/highwayworkzones/ , was fourth from the top. It includes a lot of documents that are relevant, including this useful summary:
During the 1995 to 2002 period, 844 workers were killed while working at a road construction site. During this same period there were 9325 deaths in the construction industry. The 844 worker deaths in road construction represent 9% of all deaths in construction. More than half of these fatalities were attributable to a worker being struck by a vehicle or mobile equipment. Workplace fatalities that occur at a road construction site typically account for 1.5 percent to 2.0 percent of all workplace fatalities annually.
of this document: Source: Fatal occupational injuries at road construction sites
Road construction fatality rates are disproportionately higher than most other occupations. As to whether or not Arizona is more or less prone to road construction fatalities, the document only ranks the top and bottom five, and Arizona was in neither. But even if their work zones were among the safest in the nation, that's not saying much. It's still a very hazardous occupation.
Further summarizing the document's contents, of the 693 fatalities between 1995 and 2002, 509 were due to a worker being struck by a vehicle. The rest were "construction" types of accidents, including falls, struck by objects, contact with electricity, etc. Of the 509 deaths caused by vehicles, 363 occurred in the roadway, and 119 occurred off to the side of the road.
So don't delude yourself for a moment into thinking that work zones aren't dangerous places for workers, or that traffic isn't the primary cause of death for the workers. It is.
John
So are you implying that they should not have a secure border or not? Hard to read your comment.
A secure border is one thing...
Stopping random people and asking to see their papers just because they look like they might be illegal is something else entirely.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
Multiple anecdotes (let alone single ones) aren't data.
The question in your case would be: does lowering the speed limit to 45mph in the construction area actually make things safer? If it then causes a mix of 75 and 45 traffic, the answer is- probably not. The goal here is to make things safer, right? Not enforce arbitrary limits because it makes you feel better. Has the big push for low work zone speed limits mixed with 2-5x fines actually reduced fatalities and serious injuries? If so- thats the cite requested.
You speed, you're break the law, plain and simple.
When you start following speed limits and making complete stops when you're on duty in a patrol car, I'll start to think that you really believe that law is important. Until then, you're just a meter maid in my book, and I'll treat you as such.
The use of COPS doesn't seem people from speeding past the school near me. They _often_ have police officers idling around when students are coming or leaving. What makes you think cameras will be any better at stopping jackasses from speeding?
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
Where is the percentage of accidents that would have been avoided if the driver were traveling at the posted speed limit?
I wasn't arguing that the workers aren't in danger- they do a tough, dangerous job, and if they are killed doing it, its a footnote on the back page, not a full front page spread that cops get. I really appreciate the work they do.
Thats certainly a step in the right direction study-wise (a world better than the above AC's 'cite'), but I don't see anything in the study that says speeding vehicles and/or lower limits made things safer. In many semi-permanent construction sites things could be done to make things safer for all, and mixing 45mph traffic with 75mph traffic isn't the first one I'd try. Unless of course, someone has done that kind of study and found that regardless of the chaos it causes it is the best way to go.
The common knee-jerk reaction to problems on the road is- lower the limit 10, 20, 30 mph. Guess what? It rarely works, but it does create a nice revenue stream.
So whats the relevant conclusion? That work zones should have a 20mph speed limit? Of course getting hit by a slower moving car is less likely to kill you. What is less clear is whether artificially low speed limits on freeways/hiways prevent accidents.
".. Worker being struck by a vehicle," does not always mean that they were hit by a passenger car. Sometimes it does, but I suspect that the majority of those incidents were along the line of, "run over by a (backhoe | forklift | dumptruck)."
In fact, "In 54 percent (274) of the cases, a truck struck the worker. Of these trucks, 36 percent were dump trucks, 21 percent were pickup trucks, and 19 percent were semitrailer, tractor trailer, or trailer trucks. Automobiles were the source in 28 percent (143) of all cases of struck by vehicle or mobile equipment at road construction sites. Finally, construction machinery, which includes backhoes, levelers, planers, scrapers, steamrollers, and road pavers, accounted for 11 percent (56) of the struck by vehicle or mobile equipment fatalities." In short, we tend to run over our own.
This data is also over a seven year period. Please read your own data, and note that it points to traffic not being the primary cause of of death for workers. Most of those trucks and some of those cars are probably workers. I pity the poor bastard that was taken out by a steamroller.
SIG: HUP
If it's a legitimate safety issue, then it's worth having an actual human police officer monitor or patrol the area. That's quite a bit different from the "administrative" issue of going a little faster than the speed limit on an open highway with no such hazards. The joke there is that speeding is not precisely illegal, it's just taxed. Which leads me to another point (from the summary)...
If we really cared about freeing up police for more serious matters, we'd stop prosecuting nonviolent drug users. Do the research sometime and look at how many cops, courts, and much jail/prison space is currently devoted to these victimless crimes. Then imagine what that effort would accomplish if it were put towards violent criminals and scammers who directly harm other people with their crimes.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Y'know what gets people to slow down? A real cop, lighting you up, pulling you over, and having to sit by the side of the road (as you watch every car that was doing the speed limit glide on by for 20 minutes :) as you await your fate.
Here's what I think would also slow people down in an educational way: A device reading the speed of vehicles (no camera needed), made very obvious, followed by a traffic light 50-80 meters further down the road which will turn red when someone passes the reading device at too high a speed. So that going at or below the speed limit is the fastest way to get through.
Alternatively, since license plate readers should be getting cheaper, a reading device plus a display a bit further which displays your license plate, name of the car's owner and speed when you go too fast. A flashing light "reduce speed" on its own helps a lot where these things are installed in England; with the additional information I think it would work very well indeed to reduce speed.
So whats the relevant conclusion? That work zones should have a 20mph speed limit? Of course getting hit by a slower moving car is less likely to kill you. What is less clear is whether artificially low speed limits on freeways/hiways prevent accidents.
Your bias is showing a bit, I think. Your challenge:
Specifically that people speeding in construction zones is an actual problem in AZ that causes injuries/deaths.
Since we can now all read the links above and agree that 'artificially low speed limits' reduce fatalities, you've opted to shift the discussion to just 'accidents' in general, without any respect to "injuries/deaths". However, this would NOT obviate the value in the limits. The reduction in death is enough to slow drivers down while in construction zones. The cost of doing so is assumed to be far lower than even a single human life... ...unless you're ready to shift the debate between the value of life and the right to drive as fast as you want.
You asked for citations, got them, and now are re-framing the debate. Why?
Again, I suspect bias.
Hundreds of children get out at the same time, they are like you on the way home after work. Some kids are dumb but it's more like unobservant or distracted. For SAFETY reasons the speedlimit is temporarily reduced. Nobody slams on their brakes at the 20mph sign, do they do this when leaving the 70mph highway to the 35mph side road? no, you slow down.
I'd rather inconvenience you for 500meters than have hundreds of kids crossing a potential killzone.
http://soylentnews.org/~tibman
You touched on it at the end of your comment, but my preferred solution is improved technology: is there a way to design roads and cars that can be safely navigated at the speeds people want to drive? Can we make a highway and a car both safe at 100 MPH?
The angry people always harumph and tell everyone to slow down, and I don't understand that. If we MUST choose between safety and convenience, then I'm willing to go with safety (to an extent), but in this case I think it's a total false choice. Let's have both!
A couple of construction zones in Ohio do it differently. They have a guy in a truck with sticks to hog the whole road drive at the posted zone limit all day long, he slows down the idiots by making them not able to pass him. It's quite effective as all he needs to to is generate a "pressure wave" of cars bunched up and the average speed stays down.
but talk about a boring job. all day to day you drive up and down the construction zone over and over and over and over....
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Do some research and try to find accidents that were caused solely by speeding. I do not mean accidents where "speed was a factor" but the actual impact was caused by the at-fault driver failing to yield right of way (indeed, the fact that someone is speeding is all the more reason not to pull out in front of them). I mean accidents caused by speeding alone; for one example, a case where (let's say) the tires could not come up with enough traction to keep the vehicle on the road at that speed, resulting in an accident. Or an accident caused by a hazard that the vehicle could have maneuvered around at the speed limit but could not maneuver around in time when exceeding it. Good luck, for these are difficult to find.
What my years in the auto insurance industry taught me were that two things are the primary cause of all the accidents and claim reports I saw: following too closely and failure to yield right of way. Most of the single-vehicle accidents did not involve high rates of speed, or at least the police reports did not mention speeding. Most of those involved people who fell asleep at the wheel, were drunk, were texting or otherwise engaged in distracted driving, or things of that nature. Yet "strangely enough" the emphasis of traffic enforcement is placed on speeding, likely because it happens frequently, is easy to demonstrate in court, and produces a lot of revenue for the state.
I laugh when my state plays public-service commercials on the radio talking about how you shouldn't speed and you should wear your seatbelt because the cops and the state care about your safety. Every time I hear those, I think "yeah, and if the ticket money went to charity I might just believe that."
The one place where speed limits make a lot of sense is also a place where accidents are relatively rare: residential neighborhoods where there may be children playing. Yet the cops don't seem to pay much attention to these areas because they don't generally have heavy traffic. I am much more likely to see a cop sitting near the 65mph highway running radar than anyplace where people live. If you assume that ticket revenue is what the state cares about, then this makes perfect sense. More traffic == more vehicles == more traffic violations == more tickets == more revenue for the state. To say this is about safety is a joke.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
No, it's incredibly rare for anyone to vandalise a camera.
I spend most of my time driving around the UK and I have never seen a vandalised camera.
Anyway, you should not be worried about radar type speed cameras. The insidious type is the "average speed camera".
These are linked in with the Automatic Number Plate Recognition system database, and work by calculating your average speed between two points. By doing this they effectively track the movements and location of every car in the country.
WTF? The stats you provide show the exact opposite of what you claim. Construction deaths in a workzone is akin to being struck by lightning. Literally. Murder accounts for some 306 times as many deaths. Driving account for some 670 times as many deaths.
844 deaths in a 7 year period. 120.5 deaths a year.
No more than half of those are caused by cars. 60.25
At most, likely less due to mobile equipment, 61 people a year die in work zones from cars. Nationwide.
That's one person a state per year. That's no where near dangerous. Here are some comparison numbers. http://www.weather.gov/os/hazstats.shtml http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr57/nvsr57_14.pdf
Deaths per year:
Car Accidents ~40,000
Murder: 18,573
Hurricane 116
Heat 114
Flood 64
Worker struck by Car in Workzone 61
Lightning 59
Tornado 56
Going grocery shopping is more dangerous than construction in a work zone.
I find being offended by me offensive.
Then maybe they should have murdered them all. Laws definitely will change when facing a violent uprising.
Yes, because speed cameras are worth reaching for the ammo box.....
Fucking idiot. I love the 2nd amendment as much as the next guy but you don't reach for the gun over a goddamn speeding ticket. Here's an idea, how about the good citizens of AZ vote the morons out of office who passed the bill to install these things?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Well, what can I say, I think you are driving like a jerk. You decline to share the road, and I think that's jerkish behavior. Obviously, many people think that anyone who goes above the limit are jerks, too; and reasonable people can disagree. It is my opinion that not only are you driving like a jerk, but also causing unsafe conditions. I wish you would reconsider your rude driving habits and drive in the lane appropriate to your speed.
For the record, I'm an American, and on highways I find my preferred driving speed is about 65-70. On some roads, despite a 65 MPH limit, this puts me at the very bottom of the speed of traffic, and I have no problem driving in the slow lane. Sometimes, less often, it puts me at the top of the speed of traffic and I use left lanes. I don't try to justify forcing other people to drive my speed -- those other drivers doing 80 are almost always driving perfectly safely, and I do not beef them for getting where they are going at their own speed.
Good luck. Really, consider driving in the slow lane. The slow lane can be very nice and relaxing.
You sound to me like a douche who shouldn't be allowed to drive. I KNOW that there are signs in Arizona that state that the left lane is for passing only. It doesn't matter whether you've seen them - maybe you should pay more attention. It doesn't even matter if those signs are posted on the specific stretches of highway that you drive on. You OBVIOUSLY know that it's the law, and the right way to drive.
If coping with traffic is to much for you, then quit driving. Get an apartment within walking distance of your job. Or, biking distance.
GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE LEFT LANE UNLESS YOU ARE PASSING!!!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
I'm against cameras as well, same as marked police cars sitting on the median. All it does is make people slam on their brakes who were going the speed limit anyway, so now everybody is going 15 under all because of that one police car.
I'm curious why you assume I'm going to ask for citations. I'm not talking about a car going 75 hitting my car going 45. I'm talking about a roadside worker or pedestrian getting hit by a car going 45. When I mentioned the ability to maneuver, I was talking about the person in the car. I doubt my reaction time would be fast enough to dodge a car going 45 or 75.
Posts not to be taken literally. Almost everything is sarcasm.
...act on a ban... and a little side info for you out of staters...
"Lawmakers considered repeal proposals within months, but set the issue aside and appealed for calmer debate when a passing motorist fatally shot a camera-van operator doing paperwork in his marked vehicle in April 2009.""
This is NOT why the lawmakers didn't move forward with repealing the plan. It was about money and lobbying - period.
Background - I'm from Arizona, and I've been helping collect signatures for camerafraud.com and their petition drive to ban ALL photo enforcement in Arizona. I've been following this issue VERY closely, and I've been in touch with multiple legislators - my rep in person multiple times - and here's the short, short version of the real story behind the state legislature's failure to do anything.
Arizona State Rep. Sam Crump, who adamantly opposes the cameras, authored a House bill to ban the state highway speed cameras. (While other legislative efforts were attempted with amendments to other non-related bills, his was the most prominent and likely to succeed.) It passed out of the Transportation and Infrastructure committee (which Sam sat on) on party lines. (Democrats universally opposed removing them. I'm not 100% sure why Dems were united... One said, "It's scary to drive on the roads." Another from the T&I committee said, "I'm an ER doctor," and went on to describe the "carnage" from accidents. And so on... But in the end, I think all the Democrats did it for political reasons - because the system was Janet Napalitano's brain child (along with Jay Heiler and other Redflex lobbyists pushing her for it), and they don't dare step on her powerful Democrat toes.)
After his bill passed the T&I and Rules committees, it suddenly stopped moving. I asked Sam why, and he assured me that he'd been promised it'd get a whole House floor vote.
At about this time, the driver was shot and killed in the van, and politics did get involved somewhat, but both sides claimed that the shooting supported their views. "The man wouldn't have been shot if he wasn't there in the first place with a speed camera," vs., "You see? Our society is falling apart. We NEED this kind of surveillance to discourage criminal activity," etc.
(Ironically enough, it was human witnesses that followed the shooter after the crime and gave detailed accounts that led to Destories's arrest - NOT all of the 24/7 video being shot by the camera van or any of the other $200,000+ worth of Big Brother-like technology deployed there in the van... Just like the NYC Times Square bomb was thwarted by people just paying attention... but that's another discussion for another time).
Meanwhile, the cameras were taking hundreds of thousands of pictures. Some were in high speed areas, but the more nefarious cameras were located right at 65 to 55 speed limit change locations (on the 51). Many people who didn't mind the cameras and generally drove safely were suddenly getting $181.50 tickets in the mail, and they were FURIOUS. This anger, combined with a New Times article that let the cat out of the bag about how you could just throw the tickets in the garbage, led to a general revolt against the cameras. As of today, only about 30% of all of the "criminals" were actually paid their photo tickets (the majority just threw the non-legally-binding "Notices of Violation" in the garbage, and forced process servers to chase them down - with only limited success. Many people were challenging the tickets in the state courts, which ultimately were being flooded to the point that you couldn't get a court date for several months for any issues.
Back at the capital, the state's budget crisis was growing by the day. Billions in annual shortfalls were becoming a reality, and the cameras WERE making some money from the people who actually just paid up. The top GOP man in the House - Speaker Kirk Adams - saw the political problems brewing. They couldn't cut the camera revenue and "let speeders off the hook" while they were cuttin
I agree with you. I just don't think it's worth picking up a gun over. Vote the shitheads out of office. Remember, it's soap box, ballot box, jury box, then ammo box.....
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.