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NYC Mayor Wants Traffic Camera On Every Corner
Mr_Blank writes "New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has made it clear that he wants to see more traffic light cameras in the Big Apple, saying that he'd have the devices on every street corner if possible. According to The New York Daily News, the city brought in $52 million in fines generated by red light cameras last year alone. Bloomberg doesn't just want a jump in the number of cameras, however. He also wants to publish the names of those who blow through the stop lights in local papers to help shame wrongdoers into changing their ways. What's more, the mayor wants to look into the possibility of adding speed cameras to the mix. Big brother is coming to NYC."
I'd love to see THIS law put to a direct vote. Of course it won't be, and Bloomberg will probably get booted out next opportunity, but the cameras would of course still stay.
It's all in pursuit of another revenue stream. New York City is full of this kind of nickel-and-diming. Check out this parking ticket scam on truck drivers.
but not LA/Socal? They're actually tearing them down in LA (at the police commission's request, amazingly) after realizing that yellow light time adjustments help as well: "My main objection to this whole thing is that I believe the same safety can be achieved by signal timing changes," Councilman Paul Koretz said. "I believe DOT has been pretty resistant to this concept. In budget committee, we found that DOT was not planning on immediately implementing the measure that the council had passed twelve to nothing to change the signal timing on all the signalized intersections [with cameras], plus the additional ones that were identified as more dangerous.... DOT claims it complies with the MUTCD, but the times in the manual are minimums." The same thing also appears to be happening in Houston as well. Does NYC know something the other cities don't? From what googling I've done, red light camera making firms are reporting major drops in revenues. What makes NYC different?
Publishing a persons name in the paper does not seem like a good deterrent. We all run red lights from time to time, almost every time I awaiting to make a left turn I end up violating the red light rule. There would be no space in the papers left to report the news.
If he wants to be able to track everyone, then I suppose he wouldn't have a problem with the public knowing what he is doing at all times either right?
Personally, I'd love it if governements found a way to tax only those who break the law in some way or another. Would leave me greatly financially happier.
If bloomberg really wants these cameras to stop speeding, red light jumping etc. then fine. My thought is that he wants to use them as a direct took for law enforcement to "get their men". Once every single intersection is cam-mined, it takes a very small investment in facial recognition software to track your citizens.
Much easier than mandating that people swipe a locating-card whenever they cross a street.
Red light running morons kill people.
And traffic camera's usually cause more accidents cause everyone does a break stand 1 microsecond after it turns yellow
well they trigger on right on red, just over the line, short yellow and other BS.
They turned out to cost more than they brought in. People aren't as willing to run the light when they know they're being watched. It's the same reason the highway patrol cops hide in the ditch. Visibility is a deterrent. Invisibility is a money-maker.
It sounds like a perfect plan. I *LOVE* the idea. It sounds great!
There are exceptions to it though.
The day they start doing it, I could just imagine flashmobs, or even the Anonymous group, going around with pre-printed license plate stickers with the mayors plate number on them. They could slap them on every car they can . Sure, it wouldn't be *every* car in the city, but it would be enough for the Mayor himself to be published as running stop lights thousands of times per day. That, parking tickets, etc, etc.
These printed plates with numbers on them are such old technology, and so prone to counterfeiting, I'm surprised they're still used. They rank right up with paper cheques for transferring money. They're trivial to print for illegitimate uses, once you have the required numbers.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
well they trigger on right on red,
Which, as it turns out, is an illegal thing to do in New York City.
Palm trees and 8
Oh, so close. It's "The light sees you".
Gently reply
...just hire more cops for traffic patrol? more people with income and no big brother concerns.
i really prefer the idea of spike strips that pop up when you run the light. nothing like instant gratification!
No incumbents, not no where, not no how.
Vote them out every term.
IF and only if no one under any circumstances is exempt from name publishing. And police cars are subject to the same when their lights are not on and are not responding to emergencies.
But that's not going to happen.
Better link to the actual source, the sometimes-sketchy New York Daily News:
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2011/08/22/2011-08-22_mayor_bloomberg_pushes_for_traffic_light_cameras_on_every_corner.html
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
i bet sales of BB/pellet guns and paintball guns increase exponentially
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Not at all. The best recent breakthrough in getting people to stop speeding have been big signs that show you your speed. Now, just about in every school zone, I get a flashing light when I'm going over 20mph. No cop, no ticket, no privacy invasion. I get a personal message that I am breaking the law. And really, that's all it takes.
While camera equipment is getting cheaper, I wonder what it would cost the police department to have the newspapers run the names or pictures or whatever of the red stop runnies.
In this day of people wanting to be famous for anything, i would think getting your name in the paper would be a good start.
Be seeing you...
Yeah, because they've never been shown to be wrong.
"Ubuntu" -- an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me". - stolen from Dan C alt.os.linux.slackware
Not at all. The best recent breakthrough in getting people to stop speeding have been big signs that show you your speed. Now, just about in every school zone, I get a flashing light when I'm going over 20mph. No cop, no ticket, no privacy invasion. I get a personal message that I am breaking the law. And really, that's all it takes.
Someone's obviously thinking about this problem. Sounds much more likely to have an impact than receiving a ticket in the mail two weeks later.
One other idea I had was to configure traffic lights to turn red for 5 minutes if someone is speeding in the road leading up to them, and a ticker at the intersection showing the number plate of the offender for all to see. There's no justice like angry mob justice :)
Why on earth would people who live in NYC drive cars?
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
Interesting Houston has been going through traffic camera limbo, first they voted to have them, then not have them, then have them again because of some contract and now finally the city has decided to break the contract and repeal the ordinance that allowed them in the first place. So all the traffic cameras that are up are going to be turned off and to get them back on again or install any new ones the mayor and the city council will have to pass a new ordinance which likely won't happen any time soon. It's been a surprisingly big issue locally.
My father recently got a 'fine' for not coming to a full stop on a red when he was going to make a right trun he slowed down stopped and then made the turn but the camera decided no it wasn't kosher he didn't come to a 100% complete stop for the required amount of time so he got a fine. All they could do was fine him 75 bucks and say he couldn't renew his registration till he did it. Turns out you can renew online and bypass any such thing so that's what he did and he still hasn't payed the silly fine.
Bloomberg's development is entirely predictable if one knows European history. He started out believing in government improving the lives of the "populace" by forcing it to eat right (his campaigns against canned soups, sodas, etc.), to buy into government health care (his first hypothesis regarding the Times Square bomber was "maybe someone unhappy with the health care bill", which is very telling of what was on his mind as to the most credible terror threat his city faces), to give up means of "violent" self-defence (his "mayors against illegal guns" initiative, which was very obviously meant to make guns extremely expensive by suing the manufacturers; makes as much sense as fighting malware by making SDKs expensive and totally registered). So now he goes straight on to forcing the messy and ungrateful masses to behave through total surveillance and collective shaming. Hurray for technology - poor KGB and STASI had to recruit a crapload of informants to achieve the same goal.
This is EXACTLY how totalitarian groups like Bolsheviks and Fascists got that way, from their elitist but well-wishing Socialist beginnings and the idea that progress could be forced on people for everyone's benefit. The XXth century produced nothing scarier than a frustrated progressive.
Bring back the pillories. Ignore the past 300 years of attempts to make civilization actually civilized. Get medieval on them. Give'em the rack! Lord Mayor Bloomberg of The New York demandeth order! Burn the heretics!
So, use TERROR to change public behavior?
And in every car, home and business.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
So a guy speeds (which is admittedly potentially unsafe) and suddenly you got a mob of people beating him to death? That's supposed to be just?
I hope you never actually have any say over such things.
FC Closer
Seriously, at very least, this pretty much assures Bloomberg's re-election, as who could compete with an incumbent financed by every traffic camera maker in the world?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Yes, we can tax the city for being irresponsible. Don't shop in those cities that use and abuse red light cameras. Boycott. That's what I do. I checked Plano TX, and they cheat. They claim that for a 40 mph speed zone, their yellow lasts 4 seconds. It does not. It lasts 3.9 seconds. Yes, they do bust people for violations of less than 1 second, so, yes, 1/10th of a second matters. In any case, the old rule of thumb of 1 second per 10 mph is known to be too short, so even if they followed their own standard, it wouldn't be good enough. If enough people boycott, the fall in sales tax revenue will more than offset what they make with these cameras.
These cameras aren't about saftey, they're all about the money. Everyone ought to realize that. The biggest safety improvement is making certain that the yellow light is long enough. If the city makes sure the lights aren't rigged to create violations, by for instance making the duration of the yellow unreasonably short, if they don't split hairs and bust people for missing the light by half a second, if it doesn't actually make safety worse by inducing more rear end collisions, if the intersection isn't negliglently designed and timed with ureasonably long reds that goad people into pushing the limits of the yellows, then maybe I could go along with the idea. But if they do all that, actually do a good job of designing the intersection, what tends to happen is that cities abandon the red light cameras because they don't generate enough revenue. We don't have much in the way of standards for how long a yellow light should last. Last time a standard of sorts was made was 1976, and it has considerable slop in it. This is actually quite deliberate. With no good standard, who can say how short a yellow is too short?
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Not surprisingly, the comments on this item are full of unwarranted panic and claims of Big Brother coming to a corner near you. I live in Manhattan, and I would welcome speed cameras and traffic light cameras. These are cameras intended to catch people who are violating traffic law, which makes them an enormous hazard on the crowded streets of the city. Cycling in NYC is basically running the gauntlet (fortunately, Central Park is a bit of a haven for cyclists and pedestrians), and reckless drivers are a hazard every day on the streets as a pedestrian. I really think that some deterrence would be an excellent thing for Manhattan and would encourage people to drive much more safely. I'd say they should go so far as to do the same thing for cyclists who disobey the law, as well.
I'd like to see cameras installed in all elected officials offices.
Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
The systems rely on registered owner data to serve tickets. Wrap your car in an LLC and if the ticket goes to collections (Even IF you are served) the collection company has no recourse. It's a $50 get out of all traffic harassment free card. ALSO: If you register your car out-of-state and your home state doesn't have photo enforcement laws you can completely ignore the ticket on the grounds of the state-to-state ticketing reciprocity arrangements.
Redflex executives deserve nothing less than a Bullet in their heads. They make money by increasing traffic accident injuries and call their bullshit technology a safety enhancement.
This should help make our guests from London feel right at home.
What color should a red light camera be triggered on? Mauve? Chartreuse?
You have a point that running into a red intersection just a split second after it turned red (let's call that a "cold red") is not actually as dangerous as flat-out bolting through a red light when it's already green for the other stream of traffic ("hot red").
The infraction has actual degrees of severity.
But bolting through a hot red should be grounds for a length driving suspension and a $1000 fine.
In other words, if the red light camera system were to take into account the severity of the infraction, the penalties would become more severe, not more reduced.
A few years ago I received a red light camera citation from New York. Only problem, I have never driven through this state and the car doesn't match mine. They determined my guilt from a blurry and crooked photograph of the plate. Multiple attempts to notify them weren't successful. They ignored my multiple notices. There is a Judgement now and on my record and I would love to sue their ass. Only if I wasn't living in Florida the whole time. Any suggestions?
Yes! I want a Mayor Bloomberg on every corner...
Hooking for investment bankers.
Hey! My wish came true!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
To rephrase your question, you are wondering how a tax on the stupid (impatient, distracted, harassed, tired) could collect so much money? Does it seem less surprising expressed in that form?
Nope. Studies have shown that red light cameras increase crashes.
Unfortunately, when opinion and reality conflict, most people choose their opinion over reality. http://www.motorists.org/red-light-cameras/
Learn to love Alaska
Okay, that has privacy problems. Why don't they just let us shoot at asshole drivers who burn through red lights? If they think they're so special that they're above the laws and need to get to their "super important" hair appointment or whatever after they failed to plan properly enough to allow enough travel time, maybe a few bullets in their tires and windows would convince them to leave early. In fact, just put a bounty on assholes and pay people who disable their vehicles. That's basically the same thing, just more fun.
Just today as I was crossing 14th Street on 3rd Avenue a driver in a red Zipcar drove through his red light right in front of me (about 1/3 of the way across the street). No police in sight, of course, and for some reason they seem to have been mostly pulled from traffic duty, leaving assholes like that to do as they please.
This type of thing is a fairly regular occurrence; I've also had drivers stop at the red light then pull off (while I'm crossing).
So yeah, I would have liked a camera to snap his plate. In this case he'd get billed by Zipcar for the fine plus their own addon fee.
Big brother is already THERE. There's cops everywhere. They demand (and have gotten) the power to arbitrarily search anyone entering the city, or using the subway. Their enforcement of the law is, of course, haphazard and largely unjust, but there's no shortage of enforcers.
This guy must be George Orwell's number one fan bringing Orwellian concepts to real life... a dream come true. George Orwell was an AHole and his followers are super AHoles.
So a guy speeds (which is admittedly potentially unsafe) and suddenly you got a mob of people beating him to death? That's supposed to be just?
No. Not just. Just effective.
If you are not doing anything wrong you have nothing to worry about. If your a dangerous driver then tough luck. It might diminish the number of injuries and deaths.
Do you really think *that* much effort is put into the system to prevent crashes? The reason is stated in the summary. It's about the money. And once there is a reduction in revenue from people driving more safely, the cameras will either be repurposed, or new laws will be put into place that can use the cameras to create more revenue. Laws like "no right turn on red" at every stoplight because it confuses the cameras, so now every time a camera takes a photo, it really is because of an infraction, and maybe any license plate in the photo gets the fine (unless you bother fighting it in court).
The best recent breakthrough in getting people to stop speeding have been big signs that show you your speed. Now, just about in every school zone, I get a flashing light when I'm going over 20mph. No cop, no ticket, no privacy invasion. I get a personal message that I am breaking the law.
Yeah, I get a big personal message that I'm traveling at 17, no, 36, no, 60, no, 14, 20, 5?
One other idea I had was to configure traffic lights to turn red for 5 minutes if someone is speeding in the road leading up to them, and a ticker at the intersection showing the number plate of the offender for all to see.
It's much more profitable to adjust the traffic light timings so that people have to travel 5-10 mph over the speed limit to get the green lights on a long stretch of road (and make the red lights last a long time). Then you have a steady stream of speeders to ticket.
What is this paper thing you speak of? Is it anything like cnn.com?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Or at least it would not be if people did not keep going through a RED light. I am getting SICK and TIRED of people going through a red, through stops, accelerating to speed way past the speed limit , ignoring my fucking right of passage, and then crying they got a fine. Respect the FUCKING law and you won't get a fine. See how easy it was ? This is not about big brother, this is about fucking moron thinking they can get away with their way of badly driving. As for the big brother accusation : you realize that those red light camera (at least for the system here around) only save data when a vehicule go past the red light ? Those are usually not *permanent* camera, just traffic violation camera. Same for speed trap actually which do not permanentely film, only when a speeding car is detected.
And don't get me to LAUGH. 52 million USD per year , is about 520.000 traffic violation at maximum (http://newyork.drivinguniversity.com/red-light-cameras/fines-and-penalties-for-running-a-red-light/ $100-300 for the first offense $200-$500 for the second offense in 18 months $500-$1000 for the third offense in 18 months) and that is very cvonservative. That's about in average 1500 red light per day if everybody are first offender. But wanna bet there are multiple offender in this ?
If you want to complain, complain about your fellow idiot car/truck driving fellows. Not about the law enforcement/city which has the duty to squash the antics of those moron in engine vehicule.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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visit randi.org
It's much more profitable to adjust the traffic light timings so that people have to travel 5-10 mph over the speed limit to get the green lights on a long stretch of road (and make the red lights last a long time). Then you have a steady stream of speeders to ticket.
Who sets the traffic light timings and who gets the collected revenue? Are they they same department? If not, I suspect it's well beyond two different parts of the government to coordinate themselves on that level and make it profitable for both parties without getting caught.
It's amazing how people can complain about the incompetence of government and then in the next breath accuse them of something that would require sophisticated coordination.
I like it. I think an angry mob is a bit much, though: Just a little name-and-shame might be in order, along with a much shorter extra wait: Perhaps 30 seconds.
A sign reading "This red light brought to you by green BMW, Ohio FC50PL!" along with a picture of the vehicle would be adequate to shame the driver, but inadequate for other drivers to bother with more than a few well-chosen words -- especially since they'll all be on their way again in 30 seconds.
The rest of the time, the fancy signage can display advertisements or safety messages or concert info or something. :)
Kid-proof tablet..
It's amazing how people can declare that government must be either competent and efficient at everything, or incompetent and lousy at everything.
The world (including government) is much more grey than that.
Kid-proof tablet..
More importantly they are designed to capture data exclusively in cases where there's a reason to assume you've done something wrong.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
"It's much more profitable to adjust the traffic light timings so that people have to travel 5-10 mph over the speed limit to get the green lights on a long stretch of road (and make the red lights last a long time). Then you have a steady stream of speeders to ticket."
It's actually WORSE then that.
I live in Bellingham, WA where the city is currently about to put to a vote whether or not to allow Red-light/Speeding cameras.
The city has already signed a contract with a company called ATS to run the system, and the voters are pissed. As it turns out, ATS actually spells out in the contract how much the fines should be and how much of a cut they get from each ticket. ATS has, understandably, sued the city to stop the vote. A local judge told them to get bent.
It is not that the cameras invade our privacy so much as the distasteful aspect of this company making profits from each ticket--simply put, it PRIVATIZES the punishments meted out for speeding/running a red light. Such punishments should remain wholly within the jurisdiction of the justice system, not in the hands of some for-profit company. THAT is why voters here are pissed.
That being said, I think Bloomberg is getting kickbacks or simply has "friends" in the business. Want to know who? This might have something to do with it...
"MAYOR BLOOMBERG JOINS MAYORS AND BUSINESS LEADERS TO FORM PARTNERSHIP FOR A NEW AMERICAN ECONOMY
National Partnership Will Push for Immigration Reform to Fix Broken Borders and Keep America Open to the Best, Brightest and Hardest-Working People From Around the World
Mayor Bloomberg Announces Co-Chairs Mark Hurd, Chairman, CEO and President of Hewlett-Packard..."
Mark Hurd was CEO of Hewlett-Packard, the company that owns EDS, the contractors for the red-light system.
Here is the press release I quoted from:
http://home.nyc.gov/html/om/html/2010a/pr287-10.html
There are some other interesting names in that press release, as well.
These scumbags are trying to figure out how to monetize the entire justice system, one sector at a time. "New American Economy", indeed.
Have you driven in the US? Culturally, the "speed limit" is considered the MINIMUM speed. It's very rarely speed that's the problem, it's stupidity like swerving in and out of lanes, tailgating, not signalling when turning / changing lanes, etc that are hazardous. If speed alone was the issue, then using that logic almost everyone who's driven in Germany should be dead.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
And this is why in the UK at least, license plates now have by law RFID chips embedded in them.
If this is not already the case in the USA, then it soon will be.
Freedom? We had it once, a long time ago.
We can't afford to run them anymore... and they keep getting burned by pissed off drivers anyway :D, Buy our old ones... then it wont be such a waste of money when you eventually get rid of them after realising they are the most expensive and least effective measure of traffic safety.
It takes less than 30 seconds for another driver to pull their constitutionally-protected "Original point-and-click interface" and register their disapproval in the form of high-velocity lead...
'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
Entirely incorrect.
The crime bill in 2001 allowed for "additional" information to be carried in number plates, and in 2008 and on they have been *trialling* use of RFID number plates, however theere is as yet NO law *requiring* them.
Just means you have to drive even faster to make up for those extra 30 seconds of wait.
And this is why in the UK at least, license plates now have by law RFID chips embedded in them.
Do you have a reference for that? I can find articles about a trial in 2005-ish, but nothing since then.
(Is it that much of a big deal? The plates already have a big, unique number on, which is reasonably easy to recognise by OCR. The standard way to get a fake number is already to steal someone else's plates.)
re-read it..
they trigger on "right on red" aka they take pictures of people taking a right on a red light which in most places is legal as long as you first come to a stop for the red light
NYC might be different but that was the intent of his comment.
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
NPR has been running interviews concerning NYPD's climbing into bed with the CIA post-9/11. People who live in New York City accept a certain level of inconvenience just to live there, but NYC is now definitely the poster child for Big Brother in America. I can't say that I'm really surprised after everyone sat back and let Homeland Security and the Patriot Act become reality. What I'm really wondering though, is what has Barack Obama so frightened that he won't do anything about it.
One wonders what the Field of View and other technical details on these cameras would be. That is to say, how much, collectively, of the city streets would these be able to cover above and beyond the license plate of an alleged offender? Would they be inter-networked? To the citizenry, it seems like folly, but to governments, broad data collection rarely does seem like folly. I worry about the details though, you know, where "The Devil" rents a condo...
If cities and other governments want to increase income from fines, they should enforce litter laws. In Florida, the fines are between $50 and $500. The lower threshold for the fine is higher in Oklahoma. I see plenty of littering, especially stuff flying out of the beds of pickup trucks. No special equipment needed, just the dashboard-mounted camera that is already in place will provide the evidence.
"To stop the terrorists."
The ones in Redmond, WA don't trigger for that if you stop... but they did give me a warning once for not coming to a complete stop first. The speed I was going?
0.012 mph
Yes, technically illegal, but I had thought I had come to a complete stop. The precision they have is beyond what a human does.
And studies have shown that red light cameras *decrease* crashes.
http://www.transalt.org/files/newsroom/reports/slowingspeeds.html
Really? In my city, there was a slight increase in total crashes in the first year (but a significant decrease in serious collisions - the kind with expensive damage, injury, and/or death). The second year, major crashes continued to drop, and minor crashes were back below pre-camera levels. The local media only reported on the "increase in total crashes" the first year (despite being given a clear explanation about the significant drop in serious crashes), and made no mention of the data after the second year.
LOL. The link to such a blatantly partisan website is to prove this statement correct, right?
I can't tell if you're being serious or sarcastic. While I wouldn't advocate bringing back the physical punishments, I think the social punishments would go a long way to getting people to think before acting. Post it where their friends will see it, on facebook or google+. Stick a sign in their yard. Publishing it in the newspaper may work, but there are a lot of people that don't read newspapers. However, before you do, make sure the facts are right and you have the right person's facebook account.
Edward Burr
Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a swimming pool.
I know my new plate (2010) had once and when I was digging around it lead me to believe it was not in force.
If I get the chance I'll look again.
Unfortunately I dropped my tools on top of the plate (more than once) before I fitted it. Gosh, hope nothing got broken.
I know my new plate (2010) had once and when I was digging around it lead me to believe it was not in force.
ARG! That should read "...it was *NOW* in force".
Curse my stupid fingers.
Maybe New York City should consider emulating what London and Stockholm have done, which is charge an extra fee to drive through the city during business hours. Something exorbitant enough that it will actually affect behavior, reduce traffic congestion and pollution, and actually improve the environment there. Not to mention the number of idling and double-parked vehicles. Vehicle idling should be made illegal too, even though it would be difficult to enforce.
Until our personal vehicles stop putting out invisible soot, the fewer the better!
-- thinkyhead software and media
If I hadn't given a cite, I'd have a bunch if pricks demanding [citation needed]. Instead I get pricks complaining that the cite doesn't agree with their incorrect opinions.
Learn to love Alaska
I ran into a speed camera set up in Spain that is very effective. If someone passes the sensor at excess speed a traffic light further up the road turns red for a time. The disapproval of the other drivers who are inconvenienced seems quite a powerful corrective.
UNIX: 'cuz you can tattoo it on your knuckles!
Wouldn't it be great if the revenue from the cameras was used to create a new traffic system that creates better drivability in the city, instead of relying on stoplight timers, which doesn't work? They could create traffic corridors in the city that are directional and don't stop, etc.
Currently hooked on AMP
There already is no 'right on red' in NYC, except for a handful of places. Literally a handful.
Wouldn't it be great if the revenue from the cameras was used to create a new traffic system that creates better drivability in the city
Better drivability would reduce the revenue from the stoplight cameras. It would be great, but so would a pony.
There already is no 'right on red' in NYC, except for a handful of places.
I'm sure they could think up something even worse, like using them for pedestrian jaywalking fines or tracking arab americans.
Literally a handful.
While I thank you for the correction, I can't pass up a chance to focus on the use of "literally". I can imagine a literal handful of jellybeans, but a handful of intersections escapes my grasp (figuratively).
The boot camp technique. Don't punish the perpetrator, punish his peers. Considering that most people fear embarrassment more than death, this sound a lot more effective than anything else I've heard of so far.
The ones in our city flash red and blue police looking lights when you go over the speed limit.
--- If the bible proves the existence of God, then Superman comics prove the existence of Superman.
It's amazing how people can declare that government must be either competent and efficient at everything, or incompetent and lousy at everything.
The world (including government) is much more grey than that.
I would suggest that the income gained from automatically-generated traffic tickets is an excellent motivator for them to develop a very specific competency at developing and optimizing the system that produces them. :)
But more seriously, it's a good point... There would be certain organizational hurdles involved in rigging the traffic lights to maximize ticket revenues.
Bow-ties are cool.
There, that was easy.
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
Even more amazing, it's often the same person making both claims, depending on whether the particular government function is one he wants and wishes operated more efficiently or is one he fears.
...sometimes, in order to hurt someone very badly, you have to tell that person terrible lies. - PA