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Anti-Speed Camera Activist Buys Police Department's Web Domain
Brian McCrary just bought a website to complain about a $90 speeding ticket he received from the Bluff City PD — the Bluff City Police Department site. The department let its domain expire and McCrary was quick to pick it up. From the article: "Brian McCrary found the perfect venue to gripe about a $90 speeding ticket when he went to the Bluff City Police Department's website, saw that its domain name was about to expire, and bought it right out from under the city's nose. Now that McCrary is the proud owner of the site, bluffcitypd.com, the Gray, Tenn., computer network designer has been using it to post links about speed cameras — like the one on US Highway 11E that caught him — and how people don't like them."
Y'know, this guy can make back his $90 and then some by putting ads on the site. The PD must have already setup links everywhere, all he has to do it set it up, sit back, and collect a check. What are the chances this guy will be sued?
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
Awesome! I tip my hat to this dude, nice one...
It's gonna be a real bummer for him when he gets stopped for speeding, he acts "suspicious", they search his car, and then they just happen to "find" some cocaine in the trunk.
Most of those races see upwards of 60,000 fans, usually over 100,000. They dont need cops to issue speeding tickets, they need cops to direct the stop and go traffic that surrounds such events.
I think that's hilarious and in a true 1980's movie fashion the police would bungle stealing it back, fess-up to getting caught, the commissioner would step-in, and everyone would have a good laugh. ...Or, in 2000's fashion he'll be marked as a terrorist and in the cross hairs of watch-list databases for the next decade.
Don't screw with the cops man, at best it's a College frat gone bad. However technically right you may be this is playing with fire while surrounded by dynamite.
-Matt
--- Need web hosting?
Thats not really accurate. Speeding by itself is not unsafe. Speeding in sub-optimal conditions is unsafe.
Also, if the limit is 50, but the flow of traffic is going 70, the few cars that ARE going 50 are impeding the flow of traffic and are themselves a hazard. Arguing whether its right or wrong is moot because its just the way it IS.
Traffic law enforcement is a complicated issue in my mind. I don't have a lot of sympathy for speeders who don't like paying speeding tickets, but I do think there's a reason that speeding is the only moving violation you really see enforced these days (and I don't think "safety" has much to do with it).
That aside, there are lots of things wrong with typical camera-enforcement schemes. They tend to be operated by private firms who profit off of the tickets. (This is a bigger problem with red-light cameras, because light timings can be manipulated for revenue-genration purposes, but I digress...)
Also, they usually don't even try to prove who's driving. For example, here in St. Louis County, a camera-enforced ticket is a non-moving violation. It's like a parking ticket - the ticket is against the vehicle, not the driver. They don't try to prove who's driving and they don't care - the owner of the vehicle gets the ticket. This also means no points on the license; the "enforcement" is purely monitary.
Ummm, yes. Our rights ARE more important than a few hundred lives. That was kind of the whole point of the revolutionary war.
I don't understand people that think speed limits are moral imperatives that fall on the same line as murder or arson. You people act like I just raped somebody if I want to go 55 in a 50 mile an hour zone.
I live in Houston on I-10, and due to a huge environmental/safety push they lowered the speed limit from 70 to 55. It was a joke, the highway is built for speed and it has excellent lines of visibility and intelligently designed merging sections, and they make you crawl down it. Nobody did the speed limit so they upped it to 60, which didn't really help. As a result you get fast swerving traffic trying to move at the natural pace down the highway, moving through slow road bumps.
If they would pick a reasonable speed limit based on the design of the road, and not the result of some safety pissing campaign then I bet you could get people to actually follow it.
The issue is more where will it stopped. Let's have cameras on all of the street lights "just to protect us". Then, as time passes, "Sir, I noticed that you were watering your lawn at 6:50 AM. You do know that you are breaking an ordinance. Here is your $100 fine." But, heck you are breaking the law. "Excuse me Ma'am. But, we noticed that you put your canary's cage outside. Here is your $10 fine. Yes, I know that the oridnance has been around since 1815, but it is still on the books." It's the law.
speeding is not a crime. is a manufactured crime designed to generate revenue. nothing more.
Is the Police Department now a commercial entity? Why do they buy and privately operate a .com name?
The police is a branch of the government. For security and trust alone, they should have a .gov in order to avoid being impersonated. And this couldn't have happened either.
speeding is not a crime. is a manufactured crime
You actually typed this, which is hilarious.
It is safety. The faster you go the higher the risk of fatality in an accident.
The U.S. Department of transportation's Federal Highway Administration review research on traffic speed in 1998.[19] The summary states:
* That the evidence shows that the risk of having a crash is increased both for vehicles traveling slower than the average speed, and for those traveling above the average speed.
* That the risk of being injured increases exponentially with speeds much faster than the median speed.
* That the severity of a crash depends on the vehicle speed change at impact.
* That there is limited evidence that suggests that lower speed limits result in lower speeds on a system wide basis.
* That most crashes related to speed involve speed too fast for the conditions.
* That more research is needed to determine the effectiveness of traffic calming.
http://www.tfhrc.gov/safety/speed/speed.htm
Fugga Wugga
How come it's always those who break the rules that complain the most about new techniques to uphold the rules?
"Speeding cameras are against the constitution" - so? Speeding is against the law and kills hundreds of people. Is your constitutional right more important than a hundred lives you endanger?
Just shut up and follow the rules!
Speeding doesn't kill anyone, driving beyond your ability to safely handle the car given the conditions does. Depending on the driver and car along with the current conditions that speed limit could be far too low or even too high. I would far prefer to see the limits raised and stricter training/testing required for a license, the things I see done on the roads are downright scary and a lot of these people shouldn't be driving.
Is your constitutional right more important than a hundred lives you endanger?
Almost certainly. SCOTUS has been very unsympathetic in the past to prior restraint of constitutional rights.
Mere "hundreds" of lives could be saved by restricting many of our constitutional rights. Unfortunately it's a slippery slope, and before long we're housed in tents, eating beans and rice and doing nothing else because it "may endanger the lives of hundreds of people."
Why stop at speeding? And what counts as speeding, anyway? Thousands of lives could be saved by cutting the speed limit to 30 MPH; surely you wouldn't advocate killing thousands just to go 25 MPH faster, would you?
And while we're at it, let's take a real close look at speed enforcement. We can use the "what is the right speed" as a jumping off point, asking ourselves if the speed limits we've set have any relationship to reality -- do they reflect the safety & engineering of our automobiles? Do they reflect the roadways we drive on (road quality, distractions, traffic levels, etc)?
When enforcing the speed limit, are we having a long-term impact on driver's speed choices, or merely a short-term impact? Is the enforcement structured around actual long-term "improvement" in speed choices or other criteria, such as revenue, citation volume, employee management (make-work for idle officers, a kind of punishment for politically inept officers, overtime generation for loyal officers, etc)? Is it merely an excuse to stop people at will for further interrogation? What about speed enforcement as it relates to the level of resources available for other kinds police work given that there's never "enough" resources for law enforcement (or that's what they told me when no one would actively investigate my car's theft or a break-in at my home).
It really doesn't take a ton of time if you think about it to realize that MOST speed enforcement has nothing to do with public policy or safety generally.
keeping the peace is not the same as draconian big brother and a big money making scheme. Notice how all of these speeding camera companies are not non-profits with their CEOs limited to $80k salary? If they want to enforce the speed limit then they should have actual officers there doing the job.
It's a .com because speed traps are commercial revenue generation schemes.
"In a 32-bit world, you're a 2-bit user. You've got your own newsgroup, alt.total.loser." -Weird Al
Having been to Bluff City and the Bristol race for many years now,
I can assure you that during race weekend a car goes anything but fast. The traffic in and out of the track is brutal, starting Friday and going well into Monday. 6+ hours before the race, traffic is already backed up for several miles, in both directions. After the race, it can take several hours to get out of Bluff City and be on your way. There are about 500 police officers (local, county and state) and a squad car about every 500 feet for a good mile in each direction because the pedestrian traffic is so heavy. I've arrived at the track 6 hours prior to the green flag and have parked 2+ miles away and walked, just because the traffic so obnoxious.
These camera's in Bluff City have very little to do with Nascar, and I would imagine speeding tickets on race weekend generate but a tiny fraction of the revenue these cameras otherwise generate.
jeff
He gets enjoyment for the $80. He got nothing but frustration for the $90. Sounds to me like the former is money well spent, and the latter not so much.
Make driving laws about safety and engineering, not revenue creation.
Join the NMA.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Technically, squatting isn't competition. It's extortion: they're forcing you to pay an excessive amount for something that should cost $6. I was looking for a business domain a while back, and I couldn't believe how many domain names were being squatted on. Anything even remotely related to business was already taken, most of them by squatters. We ended up paying a squatter $1000 to get the name that this business legally owned a trademark to. I wonder what would happen if the first-time registration costs for .com was raised significantly and the "free refund" policy was revoked, forcing squatters actually pay for resources they're effectively stealing.
Apparently, a lot of squatters play the float - they register and then unregister domain names just inside the free refund period. Between that and the $6 registration fee, one person can tie up hundreds of domain names very cheaply.
I agree completely that speed limits should be set sensibly to the road, and that it often isn't the case now, but do you really think that lack of enforcement is the best way to solve that problem?
I know the law is imperfect, but surely it's better to try to fix it than to bitch when technology allows it to be applied thoroughly?
We have a whole shitload of stupid laws on the books that are rarely enforced (not necessarily saying current speed limits are or aren't one of them), and this just leads to a situation where the cops can easily grab you for something or other if they happen to feel like it. Impeding the enforcement of these laws just allows more to pile up. The only real solution is near 100% enforcement - either the law will be generally accepted or you'll finally manage to piss off so many people that the law is changed.
Except that red-light cameras do not have any effect on driver safety, but they do cause a *large* numbers of rear-end collisions. (I've seen claims that they increase the chances of a rear end collision anywhere between 200% and 800%). See this for an explanation of how camera proponents lie with statistics.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Following this line of reasoning, you'd be perfectly fine with cameras being placed inside your home, right? After all, they are only being placed there to ensure you're not breaking the law. It's really just a reasonable measure to bust the people who beat their wives and have meth labs and such, so no one innocent should have a complaint.
Think of all the crime we'd stop if every household was required to have cameras? We could eliminate the need for 911 calls in so many cases too! And just think of hundreds of thousands of jobs we could save or create to monitor the video feeds!
"But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,..." - Nancy Pelosi
Having worked for the police in multiple cities, and for the government in many more, I can safely say that you'll never get a ticket for going 55 in a 50 zone. Yeah, I know there are exceptions, but just don't use that as an argument. It's silly and wrong.
Having said that, I agree with everything else you wrote. Some of the speed limits around here are insanely slow. Cars are different now - they can handle it. It's just the people I worry about. Everybody thinks they're a better driver than everyone else, but none of them are really as good as I am.
Haida Manga
You people act like I just raped somebody if I want to go 55 in a 50 mile an hour zone.
Well, unless by driving recklessly you cause an accident and actually kill someone.
So, is "reckless driving" related for driving too fast for reaction/stop times or is it related to tailgating, aggressive driving, and weaving in and out of traffic which is what happens when artificially low speed limits are applied on perfectly safe roads?
I hypothesize that more accidents are caused by said aggressive, distracted, impaired, or unskilled driving outnumber accidents genuinely caused by speed way more by several orders of magnitude. But such a study will never be conducted on the fear that police will lose justification for bullshit speed traps.
More Twoson than Cupertino
No, the real solution is to put the money generated by fines out of the hands of the police department that writes them; you'll see really quick what laws are important to the PD if they aren't seeing money coming in from writing traffic tickets. The only department that should be self funded is maybe the parking ticket guys, since there would be zero incentive to enforce those laws without it (and even that is ripe for abuse). Instead of pulling over people doing 5 mph over the speed limit you'd get them focused on pulling over people driving in ways that are actually dangerous, and of course you'd free up a lot of officers to patrol bad neighborhoods, respond to non-emergency calls (usually took about 90 minutes in Milwaukee at least), and do all the other things that the police should actually care about.
Let's do a check of your facts...
Find me a report that says increases in speed limits increase actual speeds. According to the US DOT, they did a study that found increasing the speed limit did NOT affect the average speed of traffic. http://www.motorists.org/speedlimits/home/effects-raising-and-lowering-the-speed-limit/
Next, I would trust traffic engineers too, unfortunately, there IS probably some anonymous guy in Texas setting the speed limit.. A politician. Engineers don't set speed limits.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Up here in Dallas, they seem to set speed limits based on driving revenue. Central Expressway, I-35(E/W), and 635 are all 60 MPH. Dallas North Tollway, 121, and PGBT are 70. The difference being you pay about $1.50 per 10 miles on the latter group. Gee, wonder why they upped the speed limit? Maybe to get more people to use them and get more money for the NTTA?
Doesn't stop everyone and their brother from doing 85 on Central, of course.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
yeah but that doesn't take into account the people that died in accidents that would have been murdered had they not... sheesh haven't you ever seen Final Destination.
Collector's Edition
"Traffic cameras are a slap in the face of freedom."
Why?
If the speed limit itself is not the problem, how does the technology of the enforcement mechanism make any difference? I don't understand why having a human issuing tickets protects freedom. It just seems more expensive and potentially less impartial.
Erm... sorry man but I have to point out that the National Speed Limit of 55mph was intended to reduce gasoline consumption by 2.2% in response to the 1973 oil crisis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Maximum_Speed_Law
So in this case the "reason" wasn't safety, it was financial which I believe may be in line with the main article and the opinion of many other posters here.
Last I checked, legal permission to drive a car on public roads was a privilege, not a right. Given that you get a drivers license, it seems hard to believe that driving at (insert speed limit here) + 1 mph is suddenly a "Right." I see this argument a lot. People think that they should be allowed to do anything they want, so long as THEY don't think it will hurt someone else. At best, these people are inconsiderate and need smacked down. (i.e. playing loud music in subway cars.) At worst, they are ignorant, foolish, and/or dangerous. (i.e. 90 mph in a 55 zone, at night.)
Lets start refering to The War Against Terror by it's initials. . .
Your evidence contradicts your premise.
Your evidence clearly states everyone going really fast is just as safe as everyone going really slow. It also states that not speeding can be dangerous.
Also your evidence doesn't even address fatalities yet your premise mentions it.
I find being offended by me offensive.
If the speed limit is 50, it was set there for a reason.
And usually that reason is arbitrary zoning, not how fast you can drive safely. Two local examples:
There's an interstate highway running through my town, and an interchange was recently completed, with a divided 4 lane street going over the highway. On the north side of the interchange, there's an elementary school, houses and apartment buildings. On the south side, nothing has been built yet. There is literally nothing around for miles - except for back the way you came.
And yet the speed limit is set at 35 for the entire length of the street. How does that make any sense whatsoever? On one side you have kids crossing the street to go to school, and on the other there's still farmland as far as the eye can see - the speed limit could easily be 70 mph instead of 35 mph.
A few miles away, there's a rural highway with a 55 mph limit that forms a T intersection with another street, and the speed limit drops down to 45 mph. Except that other street is currently being converted from 2 lanes to 4, and is totally impassable. Not only is the speed limit still 45 mph, but they haven't turned off the stoplight at the intersection!
People justifiably bitch about speeding tickets because:
1. Limits are seldom based on safety, and usually on arbitrary zoning
2. Limits can be set deliberately low on purpose, in order to rack up more tickets
3. Which means that most speeding tickets aren't about safety, they're a sin tax
I do, however, enjoy listening to anti-all-taxes Republicans bitch about speeding tickets, though. Vote to deny your state and local governments necessary funding, and they will look to other sources....like speeding tickets.
With some googling I found out that in the year 2000 15,517 people were murdered while 41,611 died in car accidents. That means that if we could prevent all car accidents the benefit in human lives would be almost three times greater.
You might only be driving 55 on a 50 mph zone, but a lot of people are driving much faster and statistics show it is fairly dangerous.
Where are these stastics that say ignoring the speed limit and driving the road for what it was built for is "fairly dangerous"? I seem to have found some statistics that claim quite the opposite(pdf warning).
Moreover, by your rationale, I shouldn't be allowed to eat butter or salt as more people die from heart attacks than from car accidents or murders combined. Or to flip it, since you'll likely try to spin this as something I'm doing to you; no one should be allowed to serve things containing cholesterol or salt.
-- ...only life can kill you
Or you're in Arizona and you don't have your passport on you to prove your citizenship and the judge won't accept the birth certificate your sister managed to convince the county to release to her (since it's not like they're going to let some illegal out on bail and leave the state to pick up their birth certificate) and you nearly get deported to Russia before a Senator steps in and convinces the judge to accept the certificate and release you.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2008/01/24/25392/immigration-officials-detaining.html
All it takes to fuck you over is a cop willing to claim he "suspected" you were Russian. Or Canadian. Or British, or whatever other country white people come from. Obviously you picked up the southern accent while you were here trying to blend in.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
I'm not trying to troll here, it just seems to me that there are many reasons a jurisdiction might set a speed limit to a specific number.
I don't imagine that it is outside the realm of possibility that a jurisdiction might set an artificially low speed limit to:
1. Generate ticket income.
2. Increase gas mileage.
3. Reduce CO2 emissions.
4. Encourage use of public transportation.
I'm no Nascar fan, but, puh-leeze. Citation needed.
That's just backwards - you'll never manage to get a Citation up over 55!
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Unless you happen to live in an area with an excellent public transportation system, and also happen to work somewhere with one, it seems like driving is positively necessary to, you know, pay the bills and all.
You might argue that one could walk or ride a bicycle or something, but that simply does not reflect the way that the vast majority of people get around. The average commute in the US is 16 miles. That is a distance that is not casually covered in anything but a motor vehicle.
People who deal with public policy have to deal with the world as it is, not the world as they would like it to be. In a perfect world, people would leave enough room in front of them so that if the other driver panic stops, they don't rear-end them. The problem is, won't don't live in a perfect world, and saying "Oh well, I'm going to pretend it is" (which is essentially what you are saying) does not make for good public policy.
Or, to point out another real world analogue to what you are saying: From a public health perspective, it would be great if everyone was monogamous and had protected sex. By your logic, it would be perfectly OK to cut public funding for AIDS testing and notification because, after all, if everyone is monogomous and has safe sex, there's no reason anyone would ever need AIDS testing or notification. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why this approach is flawed.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton