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Criminal Charges Against Speed Trap Tweeter
martinlp writes "A Twitter account named Pigspotter is making big news in South Africa. The traffic authorities in Johannesburg are taking legal action against Pigspotter, an individual who is tweeting up-to-the-minute information about speed traps in and around the city. He has recently stopped, stating that his Blackberry is going in for repairs, but it may be out of fear of getting prosecuted. The police claim he must be getting inside information and suspect that disgruntled traffic officers may be involved. There is also speculation that it is more than one individual that is tweeting."
Police here in Victoria, Australia actively encourage the publication of speed camera locations, which are not particularly precise. So radio stations can report that there is a speed camera on $HIGHWAY without saying exactly where it is and drivers slow down all along that route.
Now if you tell the public exactly where the speed camera is (1km past $CROSSROAD) then the camera could be moved by the time you get there, or you might get the location wrong, or forget by the time you get there. So giving out the precise location might not save the drivers from a ticket and again they just have to slow down and keep a look out.
What the police might not like is a distributed iphone or android app which broadcasts their location in real time and presents it on a map showing your location. You could have "Police Camera" button on the screen and press it after you go past. But the information is going to get stale fast and police could game the system with cheap decoy speed traps.
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South Africa has the highest homicide rate in the world.
It's good to know that the police are concentrating on fast driving.
No doubt an increasingly broke and hopeless government has learned how to make more money. Err... I mean, save lives.
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Freedom of Speech, you either have it or you don't... Although, I suppose this particular case is a little sticky. Do you think that when people are actively trying to avoid law enforcement, their speech is still protected? I side with the idea that it should still be protected. If someone posts a list labeled "100 best places to drop dead bodies off where they'll never be found", I don't think they've done anything wrong. At least not by posting the list, their research methods may be in question.
I suppose if it turns out that the tweeter is in fact a cop then they have all the right to fire him as I'm sure it is a breech of contract. But otherwise he/she should have the right. Johannesburg just needs to find better methods and stop their internal leaks, don't take it out on the messenger. Of course, I don't know what the actual laws of Johannesburg are, I'm just considering what they should be.
On aspect of TFA struck me as awfully peculiar:
One thing is for certain, though: PigSpotter has deeply offended senior members of the JMPD. Some openly accused him of racism yesterday.
"This guy's use of words such as 'pigs' and 'bacon rashers' is alarming because you find that most of these officers are black and he is white. Why is nobody talking about this?" a police source said yesterday.
Is this a South Africanism, the notion of 'pig' being a racial epithet? As an American, 'pig' is a not at all uncommon term for the police; less polite perhaps than 'po-po' or 'Five Oh', but certainly nothing racial. Or is this merely a vague attempt to villify the guy, since the police know they're not exactly going to get the citizenry rallying behind them on this?
I think you are overstating the ease with which a camera may be moved. A speed camera has to be aligned exactly (angle/height/equipment etc) to measure the correct and valid speed of a passing vehicle. You cannot simply move it within a few minutes lest your measurements are out of bounds and any ticket you write is invalid - for people that have the energy to fight it before court, that is. I know that is the situation here in The Netherlands at least.
Actually, announcing speed traps is sometimes done by the police themselves here, and transmitted using a system called "TMC" (traffic message channel). Additionally, radio channels ask people to report them and announce them on RDS.
But in the end, some speed traps are never announced or the announcement is never received: last week, there was a motor driver who died as a result of a car braking for a speed trap. This could stir up debate that police, like in for example Sweden, are forced to announce the speed trap before it actually occurs.
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Dude, its Africa. I've lived in Africa all my life, and people crying "racism" is very normal here. Its just another way of saying, "We don't like what you're doing and the easiest way to get you to go away is to call you a racist and then everyone will hate you."
It's all very childish. But that's African Politics for you. It is also sad that it distracts from the real racism that nobody ever notices...
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ffs is it so hard not to speed? unless you have a woman in labor in your vehicle what is your excuse really?
The ruling majority (ANC) are incapable of: (1) Handling any criticism (2) Arguing/debating in a rational manner
Thanks to our recent history (apartheid) they are left with a large uneducated mass of people who remember only one thing (how bad "racism" is) and will believe what they are told without question. So anytime someone attempts to criticize or make a suggestion on how to do things in a sane way they are simply labeled as a racist and ignored. Due to the unquestioning stupidity of the masses this works every single time leaving little incentive for our utterly useless government to ever improve.
"Racist" here is the equivalent of accusing someone of being a "pedophile" in America, except on sterioids.
I'm not disagreeing with you, but if you're in the fast lane and someone is going faster than you, the right thing to do is to move over if you can and let them pass. The other guy's an asshole, yes, but by not moving out of his way you can only make it worse, and that makes you an asshole too.
Laws vary by location, but generally it's considered that the "fast lane" isn't the lane you use when you're going over the speed limit, it's the lane you use for passing. Assuming we're not talking heavy traffic (or southern California), you should never just be cruising along in the fast/passing lane... if you're not actively passing someone, stick to one of the "slow" lanes.
The other guy could pass you on the right, but that's usually illegal and a much more dangerous situation. Moving out of the way is as much a safety thing as a not-being-an-asshole thing.
When I was a kid I remember one of my parents telling me about people flashing their lights on the highway (I-90 thruway in NY) to warn of upcoming hidden police cars, I guess because I noticed someone doing it and asked why. Since that day, though, I don't think I've ever seen anyone do it again, and I've done a lot of highway driving (for my age anyway - driven across the US about five times, and lots of driving in between and at either end). I decided to do it once when I spotted a police car on the opposite side, but I think the people going the same way I was thought I was signaling them instead or indicating that I had a problem or something. Hard to tell since it doesn't seem to be a universal speed trap signal anymore.
Is it regional? Are there still places where this signal is common knowledge? I ask because the slashdot department line mentions this, and I haven't heard of it since I was a kid, as I said.
It is a South Africanism, in that everything here gets turned into a race issue whether it has anything to do with race or not. Despite the fall of apartheid and having a democratically elected government, the new 'leadership' still has a vested interest in creating the perception that whites are still out to get blacks - it's a nice diversion to distract their voters away from the government's corruption and hypocrisy. Everything the ANC seems to do these days creates the impression that they deliberately keep their own supporters beaten down in order to retain their support, blaming the supporters misfortune on racism and 'the legacy of apartheid'. I get the impression that we'll still be blaming apartheid in another 50 years time... that is assuming that the ANC doesn't finally give up all pretenses and just publicly turn the country into another Zimbabwe, rather than trying to do it behind the scenes.
An unfortunate side-effect of the continuous cry of racism is that a (hopefully small and insignificant) number of the youth of today are growing up indoctrinated with the belief that everything is still a race issue. A key example of this is the leader of the ANC youth league, Julius Malema. While he's generally ridiculed universally for his stupid utterances and ridiculous beliefs, the sad reality is that he actually believes in what the rest of us consider to be drivel. And he is poised to rise into the leadership of the ANC and therefore the country within the next decade or two.
Every time you read a report of something being connected to racism in South Africa, take it with a grain of salt. Yes, there is still a lot of racism going on, but it's the same sort that you experience anywhere else... nowhere near what we used to have. It's sad to see the ANC that fought so hard to end apartheid is now working so hard to ensure that it prevails.
What you got to remember is that the world is filled with people with very small penisses who can only think of the world as them vs the state and everyone else.
They think their car is a source of income for the state when even the simplest look at the figures will show that cars COST the state far more then they pay in road taxes and such things. This in itself is not a problem. Society needs roads and transport but if you start to base your political outlook on a basic misconception (road taxes meet the costs of road construction and maintenance) it all goes wrong. Because then you start thinking that public transport, school and medical facilities must be paid for by their users as well. And not by your traffic fines.
Even if traffic fines were a serious source of income, as in not just meeting the costs of police but deliviring more! then who cares? What do I care for a tax for assholes. Don't be an asshole and you are not taxed.
But as you see from the majority of reactions, a lot of people are assholes and come up with bizarre explanations of why they should be allowed to speed.
It has been proven time and time again that if everybody drove the same speed, as indicated by people who are smarter then you, traffic would flow a lot more smoothly. The ultimate example was given a few years ago in a simulation with cars crossing each other on a busy level intersection with no trouble whatsoever.
The problem with speeding is NOT wether you can or cannot handle it, but if everyone else on the same road can. Considering cars are the biggest killer out there, it seems clear that people can't.
But don't worry, the police are all corrupt, you can drive 50 miles over the speed limit and when you kill someone you just shrug it off as an accident.
Because nobody is reponsible for their own actions and should never face the consequences. Oh and if someone dares to slam their car door in front of your house, the swat team should be called out and a speedbump the height of everest installed to slow those demons down.
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You can just get rid of the adjective completely. Politics is childish all the world over.
Racist.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.