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Predator Drone Helps Nab Cattle Rustlers
riverat1 writes "KTLA reports police in North Dakota arrested three men accused of cattle rustling with the help of a Predator B drone from nearby Grand Forks AFB. The sheriff of Nelson Country was chased off by three armed men when he went to serve a warrant, so he came back the next morning with reinforcements, including the drone, which, while circling 2 miles overhead, was able to determine the whereabouts of the men on their 3,000 acre spread and the fact that they were unarmed. A SWAT team quickly moved in and apprehended the men. Local police say they have used the Predator drones for at least two dozen surveillance flights since June. The FBI and DEA have used the drones for domestic investigations as well."
I never would have guessed that they would actually take HL2 as a guide. Did someone forget to tell them it was just a video game?
three men accused of cattle rustling with the help of a Predator B drone
You know, the story would have been a lot cooler this way.
Before anyone goes all ape-s$%t about this being an intrusion of the military into civilian affairs, the drones in question are owned and operated by Customs and Border Patrol, a division of the Department of Homeland Security. They are housed at an Air Force base, but not used nor owned by the USAF.
CBP had been using drones for a couple of years to patrol the borders and this is an extension of that mission. Works better than a helo, especially for very large areas.
I'll take some cattle rustlers over militarized police chasing cattle rustlers any day, thanks. Much like the cure/disease metaphor, not every policing measure targeting every crime improves society, even if successful...
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
this story says otherwise:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/12/12/sovereign-citizens-members-arrested-with-help-of-predator-drone/
they weren't cattle rustlers, but members of "Sovereign Citizens" movement.
I mean ... that could just as easily be a police helicopter up there as a drone.
Look its just like anything else, if you're not a criminal you have nothing to worry about. Remember that scene in Minority Report, the one where those "Spider Drones" are released in the low income tenant building and proceed to crawl under every door, claw their way up the pant leg of every tenant, and then scan their eyeball for identification? Perfectly harmless!
It's poorly identified at the story link. The original can be found at latimes.com.
Dog is my co-pilot.
Some bizarre version of Phil Dick, Orwell, Terry Gilliam and Mat Groening.
If William Gibson had imagined anything like "The Kardashians" in Count Zero? It would have seemed over-the-top.
Now, we have the dystopian technologies, without the advances in immersive entertainment that these were supposed to come with.
Predator drones and Jersey Shore. The Jeffersonian experiment is really over.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
These aren't the drones you're looking for. ...
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
The six adult Brossarts allegedly belonged to the Sovereign Citizen Movement, an antigovernment group that the FBI considers extremist and violent. The family had repeated run-ins with local police, including the arrest of two family members earlier that day arising from their clash with a deputy over the cattle.
So it's a good chance they were violent nutters, which makes the use of drones a lot more reasonable in my book.
Still, you have to worry about the cost (~$3200 per hour) of using predators for civilian use.
This looks suspiciously like an effort to make the use of Predator drones in conjunction with police investigations seem acceptable to the general public. The fact is the Department of Homeland Security was behind the use of drones in this affair, and this is yet another camel's nose under the tent. A few more stories like this and then stories about the use of drones in police surveillance will no longer be "newsworthy". That's when their use will become truly ubiquitous ... when no one's paying attention any longer.
Seriously. Firstly they use a drone, then the drone establishes that the men are unarmed, and then they send in SWAT? WTF? 2 or 3 cops with pepper-spray would have done the job, or were the SWAT team bored?
SWAT teams are often called in when a suspect has threatened violence, and especially when violence is threatened against (presumably) armed law enforcement personnel, as it indicates even less fear about using it. Just because the suspects did not appear armed from the air does not necessarily mean that they couldn't have retrieved weapons rapidly from a vehicle or structure, or that they were not carrying concealed weapons.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
So you've ran off some law enforcement with lethal weaponry...but then, didn't you'd think they'd come back in force? I can almost see them: Bad Guys: Hurrrr hurr hurr...you shoulda seen them cops runnin...they ain't coming back at us hundreds strong with SWAT Teams or Drone aircraft now....harharhrharrharharhar.... If it were me after having run off some cops with some lethal weaponry, I'd be running myself too.
...in bed
The other reason is that there are a lot more SWAT teams than they used to be, so the threshold for calling them out is a lot lower. Gotta justify that taxpayer money spent on fancy equipment somehow...
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Maybe from:
the drone (...) was able to determine the whereabouts of the men (...) and the fact that they were unarmed.
Dilbert RSS feed
Cost of a predator drone: $30M
Cost of a cow: $2K
So, as soon as they use a predator to round up 15,000 cows stolen, they'll break even....
Check your premises.
If this was being flown by the military it better not have had any weapons on it. Otherwise they just flew a drone over the Rubicon.
Drone in action!
"The average professional in this country wakes up in the morning, goes to work, comes home, eats dinner, and then goes to sleep, unaware that he or she has likely committed several federal crimes that day. Why? The answer lies in the very nature of modern federal criminal laws, which have exploded in number but also become impossibly broad and vague. In Three Felonies a Day, Harvey A. Silverglate reveals how federal criminal laws have become dangerously disconnected from the English common law tradition and how prosecutors can pin arguable federal crimes on any one of us, for even the most seemingly innocuous behavior."
http://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/1594032556
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
I find myself wondering if there's any chance the drone actually saved the life of one or more of the men. I hear so many stories about police shooting unarmed civilians, that I wonder if the drone footage (confirming the men to be unarmed) prevented the situation from escalating to the point where the police would shoot first and ask questions later.
(Note: I'm not condoning nor justifying the use of drones against American civilians. I'm only pondering if one questionably unethical act played part in preventing something a lot more horrific.)
Where I grew up (large ranching community) if a cow wanders onto your property it doesn't become yours. In fact if you want to keep cows out it's your responsibility to fence off your land. I personally feel its ridiculous, but if similar laws apply here, they weren't allowed to keep the cows.
All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
The FAA is still trying to figure out how to integrate UAS's. (They are not called UAV's in the FAA NAS system).
Many legal issues remain:
- Enforcing see and avoid rules required in VFR flight
- Defining standards for communication with aircraft
- Who do you enforce rules with a violation when there is an accident if there is no pilot
- How to handle technical issues such as loss of control / software failure, physical issues such as loss of a trim type control, flap system, etc.
- Weather issues such as high winds, icing
As a pilot and somebody active in aviation software, I'm interested to see where things go here. The reason the military has been able to fly UAV's is because they don't have any rules. Do whatever you want. But in the civil area, we have rules because we choose to protect ourselves from our government and others.
"The average professional in this country wakes up in the morning, goes to work, comes home, eats dinner, and then goes to sleep, unaware that he or she has likely committed several federal crimes that day. Why? The answer lies in the very nature of modern federal criminal laws, which have exploded in number but also become impossibly broad and vague. In Three Felonies a Day, Harvey A. Silverglate reveals how federal criminal laws have become dangerously disconnected from the English common law tradition and how prosecutors can pin arguable federal crimes on any one of us, for even the most seemingly innocuous behavior." http://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/1594032556
No kidding. Consider patent law:
35 U.S.C. 271 Infringement of patent.
(a) Except as otherwise provided in this title, whoever without authority makes, uses, offers to sell, or sells any patented invention, within the United States, or imports into the United States any patented invention during the term of the patent therefor, infringes the patent.
I hope you all have Proof of Authorization to Use documents for your cell phones, mp3 players, computers, etc.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
When they use advanced tech to determine they are unarmed, then send in a SWAT team, yeah, that's dystopian.
What would they have done if they were armed? Call in an air strike?
The tech is not infallible. They appeared unarmed would be more accurate.
I do feel that the whole "police UAVs = 1984" thing is slightly odd, given that all a UAV is in this role is a cheaper police helicopter. Unless your objection is specifically against all cameras between altitudes of 1.6m and 100km, I don't see much difference between the platform being manned or unmanned.
Part of the reason that they're more common is that some of the criminal element that honed its own methods in much more brutal streets has been moving out into those areas.
A friend used to be married to a member of the Madill, OK, police department. For some years, he handled about what you'd expect a police department for a town of 4000 to handle: traffic stops, domestic violence, bar fights, the rare burglary or car theft (people still keep their keys in the car out there), and once in a great while a murder. Their busiest recent year was 2006 with fewer than 200 serious crimes.
But in the late 1990s and early 2000s, they started getting an influx of drug elements. Sales weren't much of an issue, but manufacturing of meth for sale in OKC and Dallas was becoming a problem, especially since those manufacturing were even more heavily armed than is normal for the area. Even before 9/11, a few of the force had begun SWAT training and were evaluating what SMGs and armor to purchase. But SWAT training is more than just how to shoot straight. It involves learning negotiation, how to overwhelm a suspect (or suspects) without firing a shot, and stress management should the trigger need to be pulled so that shots are placed as accurately as possible. A lot of SWAT deployments don't involve forced entry because the suspect knows that he's not going to win and often gives up.
Just because they're not in a big city doesn't mean that they don't have problems better handled by SWAT than by general officers.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
"The average professional in this country wakes up in the morning, goes to work, comes home, eats dinner, and then goes to sleep, unaware that he or she has likely committed several federal crimes that day. Why? The answer lies in the very nature of modern federal criminal laws, which have exploded in number but also become impossibly broad and vague. In Three Felonies a Day, Harvey A. Silverglate reveals how federal criminal laws have become dangerously disconnected from the English common law tradition and how prosecutors can pin arguable federal crimes on any one of us, for even the most seemingly innocuous behavior." http://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/1594032556
Yeah. Whoda thunk cattle rustling was against the law?
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
I do feel that the whole "police UAVs = 1984" thing is slightly odd, given that all a UAV is in this role is a cheaper police helicopter. Unless your objection is specifically against all cameras between altitudes of 1.6m and 100km, I don't see much difference between the platform being manned or unmanned.
It's the same thing as a GPS tracker on a car vs a full surveillance team. In both cases the problem is that the new tech is much cheaper. Because it is cheaper it will be used much more frequently and by many more agencies. My local police department can't afford their own helicopter, but 10 years from now I wouldn't be surprised if they have a drone.
It boils down to the previous expense made it much less common, and traceable. You probably couldn't use a police helicopter to follow some guy who made your shitlist 24/7, but drones will soon make that sort of thing inevitable. At least when this stuff was less common abuses were also less common; when it was more expensive, accountability was also higher.
Just because they're not in a big city doesn't mean that they don't have problems better handled by SWAT than by general officers.
I'm not arguing the specific case you gave here. But in general, I think the creation of SWAT teams should be a last resort. Let them exist at the state level, to be called in by local police forces.
When there are more SWAT teams they will get more use. And every time a SWAT team is used it's an opportunity for something to go wrong. See for example this map of botched SWAT raids, including numerous examples of SWAT killing innocent bystanders.
http://www.cato.org/raidmap/
You have to admit, that while SWAT teams do provide a benefit they also provide a cost. A monetary cost, a freedoms cost, and avoidable death cost. The question is if the cost/benefit is worth it.
And previously, they had been armed and chased the sheriff. They've already proven themselves to be dangerous; you approach them with caution.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
Of course it's not infallible. Of course they could have only appeared unarmed. If they knew for certain they weren't armed, they wouldn't have needed to bother sending SWAT. It's all a matter of finding as much information as possible about a situation before sending people into potential danger.
Because the government was never meant to have near omnipotent power over its citizens, which is where we are headed.
Originally, citizens were allowed guns to protect them from the military (and conceivably the police).
But now technology and tactics have advanced to where you cannot protect yourself from the government at all.
Sure crime, murder, and disorder are bad. But I don't want to live in a country where absolutely none of those exist because the government has absolute control of everything. The government does not even have to abuse this power (simply for that amount of power to exist is an abuse of power) for it to be a dystopia.
It helps to keep the government honest and just to know that really to control the country you need at least 50% of the citizens behind you. But with all the weapons, tech, and know how we have today the government could enforce anything on the people with only a comparative handful of people working with them.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Does anyone here know what FAA rules apply to drones? I know people flying RC aircraft have to pay attention to sectionals. How about police helicoptors?
right , the hell with a swat team they should have nuked them from orbit ... only way to be sure. right guys? guys?
i don't wonder why the US is in debt, and now i don't care. (apparently i have a lot of company - albeit not for the same reasons)
Mine from 1999: http://kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/fears.htm
"The race is on to make the human world a better (and more resilient) place before one of these overwhelms us:
Autonomous military robots out of control
Nanotechnology virus / gray slime
Ethnically targeted virus
Sterility virus
Computer virus
Asteroid impact
Y2K
Other unforseen computer failure mode
Global warming / climate change / flooding
Nuclear / biological war
Unexpected economic collapse from Chaos effects
Terrorism w/ unforseen wide effects
Out of control bureaucracy (1984)
Religious / philosophical warfare
Economic imbalance leading to world war
Arms race leading to world war
Zero-point energy tap out of control
Time-space information system spreading failure effect (Chalker's Zinder Nullifier)
Unforseen consequences of research (energy, weapons, informational, biological)"
Some ideas about managing such risks: http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/2846ca1b6bee64e1
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
"Military robots like drones are ironic because they are created essentially to force humans to work like robots in an industrialized social order. Why not just create industrial robots to do the work instead?"
Also, eating factory farmed meat in general is killing us and destroying our environment:
http://www.ravediet.com/preview.html
http://www.westernwatersheds.org/watmess/watmess_2002/2002html_summer/article6.htm
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/PCI_angioplasty_article.aspx
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx
So, maybe we'd be better off if the predators got rid of the cows instead of the rustlers?
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
This entire story is far more complex and subtle, than the "McNews" cattle-rustle story linked in the original posting.
Read Greenwald, who as usual, digs deeper into the context and background. It is indeed, a story of creeping fascist militarization of the US: http://www.salon.com/2011/12/12/the_growing_menace_of_domestic_drones/singleton/?mobile.html
The colonists overthrew George lll for lesser intrusion.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
The other reason is that there are a lot more SWAT teams than they used to be, so the threshold for calling them out is a lot lower. Gotta justify that taxpayer money spent on fancy equipment somehow...
When you're a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. SWAT teams and now drones are sitting idle, all brought in under the guise of terrorism. If they aren't used, the budget will be cut and they'll soon be gone. Better put them to use, somehow.
It's not just the UAVs. It's probably also the red light cameras. A war the will never end (there always has been and always will be the threat of terror/fear). The bill going through congress to allow the military to detain U.S. citizens on U.S. soil without trial (with huge bi-partisan and little outrage from the citizenry). Carrier IQ. The idea that a private vendor doesn't have to play by the same rules as the government even if they're acting on behalf of the government. The government needs a warrant to tap your phone, or they can just buy the info from your provider. No one thing makes 1984 and each piece can be justified.
When drones become autonomous we will just say 'I don't see what the big deal is, if you're breaking the law it's no different than a person catching you'. That's already the argument for traffic enforcement via cameras.
It's a hard argument to say any one thing equals 1984.
Beavis and Butthead controlling drones: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExFXDFtt_zY
...after being tasered in an earlier incident on their land for allegedly resisting arrest, they brandished weapons at the officers who came to seize the cows.
So sounds like a tazer-happy "occifer" barged on their land first.
Here is the problem that I haven't seen anyone else mention yet:
The problem is that it is military personnel and equipment that are helping local law enforcement. If law enforcement wants to get their own drones, that's a different matter. But the military has absolutely no place getting involved in civilian law enforcement affairs, even to offer "innocent" help.
If there was ever something that could be called a genuine slippery slope, this is it.
Here is a problem that I haven't seen anyone else mention yet:
The problem is that it is military personnel and equipment that are helping local law enforcement. If law enforcement wants to get their own drones, that's a different matter. But the military has absolutely no place getting involved in civilian law enforcement affairs, even to offer "innocent" help.
If there was ever something that could be called a genuine slippery slope, this is it.
[Added later:] I read a bit further and saw that others have in fact brought the subject up, but not quite in the same way.
If William Gibson had imagined anything like "The Kardashians" in Count Zero? It would have seemed over-the-top.
Try this instead.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
"Give me a home, where predator drones roam..."
What would they have done if they were armed? Call in an air strike?
No, they'd simply have waited a while. As they did, by the way. Indeed, the first time they were spotted they were armed. So police waited until the next day when they appeared unarmed.
The FBI and DEA have used drones, but they are not the drones.
So "These are not the drones you're looking for" ?
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
I think this is a mistake anon. We need widespread voting to prove that the system is corrupt. Look at what's happening in Russia for an example. The only hope is to vote them out and then make them officially depose the constitution and civil rights. Otherwise we're essentially allowing them to have their cake an eat it too. They can pretend we're a democracy while oppressing us.
I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. - Hunter S. Thompson
We should not consider control of crime as "control of everything". We want cops to catch all criminals in all instances of crime. If a law is poorly worded so that it can be misapplied then the sheer numbers of those held in jails and prisons will force us to write more reasonable laws. But catching criminals, cheats and liars will always make it a better world. Freedom does not include deciding what laws you can break and when you can break them.
SWAT teams don't sit idle. In bigger cities, they train regularly, and in smaller cities, as in the case that I mentioned, they make up part of the regular police force and are called in from those duties when their skills are needed.
Drones are another question, and their use is highly disconcerting to me. Law enforcement should have to put forth a reasonable effort, and automated techniques like drones and license plate readers make it too easy to find stupid, trivial things to punish.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
People grumble about automated traffic law enforcement, but poorly-driven cars do manage to kill a steady 30,000 people per year in crashes (3000 of those, pedestrians). A war on terrible driving would save far more lives than all this other nonsense.
A few years ago, you would have been right that numbers were basically flat, but at around the 43,000 mark, which held from around 1985 through 2005. After that, they started declining.
The CDC's numbers go through 2009 and cite a higher number of 33,800 for that year, but it's been trending downward consistently for decades. Deaths decreased about 9.7% from the prior year's 37,400, which itself was a decline of 9.3% from 2007. In fact, the last time deaths went up was in 2005 when they reached 43,500. By 2009, annual traffic deaths had dropped by nearly 29%. That's a pretty good rate for four years.
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s1103.xls
The most common automated traffic law enforcement is the red light camera, but several studies have said that it either does not change the accident rate or increases the accident rate at intersections where one is installed. The accident types change from T-bones to rear-end, but they still occur. A more effective and less-costly method of reducing intersection collisions due to red light runners is to extend yellow lights by a second or so and/or set the lights to all be red for a second or two between cycles. The same law is in effect and can be enforced when police see it, and costs to the municipality are lowered. So is revenue, but that's not what law enforcement is supposed to be about.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
I think I'd rather be rear-ended than T-boned -- note that I used a dead-body statistic, not a bent-metal statistic.
Are you sure, if all the yellow lights aren't lengthened, that people wouldn't just fudge the yellow that much longer?
Or are we relying on a statistical effect, that if half the drivers are vigilant in stopping for yellows, that eventually the way is blocked.
I suspect, however, that if we were to deploy automatic enforcement with an eye towards reducing deaths, it would be different from red-light cameras.
Generally speaking, yes, the one accident is preferable to the other, but an increased collision rate is still a strong possibility, and I brought it up in a general sense. Still, they're not perfect, and don't always reduce fatalities. A study released earlier this year showed that most large cities that use them saw a decrease in fatal crashes credited with saving about 159 lives over a five-year period, but a few saw an increase. Bakersfield, CA, had a 35% increase in such crashes. But it's a complex question, as the city of Anaheim, CA, saw a 29% decrease despite no cameras. (Anaheim voters also recently approved a law banning red light cameras from the city.)
The extended yellow and all-red light solutions have been studied and found to decrease the overall collision rate at intersections more than red light cameras, use of which as I have mentioned can result in an increase in collisions. Yes, there will be those who push the limits more on longer yellow lights, but most people will not do so. A longer yellow gives a greater warning time for the upcoming red, causing people to react further back of the collision. Combine it with an all-red pause and you get an even greater margin of safety. You can't completely account for people doing things like racing or being distracted by phone, radio, children, lady in red, or whatever else might catch their attention and end up in them barreling through a red light that's been red for the last 30 seconds.
Law enforcement should have to put forth a reasonable effort in their enforcement activities. Ideas like mandatory GPS tracking speeds and high-resolution traffic cameras looking for offenders start with good intentions, but it risks causing drivers to walk on eggshells all the time, and that kind of permanent stress and distraction can cause more problems than it solves.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Law enforcement should have to put forth a reasonable effort in their enforcement activities
Why? And why shouldn't drivers walk on eggshells if they're breaking traffic laws? Or rather, how hard is it to obey the stupid law? Just this afternoon/evening, I've seen drivers roll right through stop signs (in a residential neighborhood), fail to stop for a pedestrian in a crosswalk, and (of course) speed in a residential area. Speeding in a residential area is really bad news -- the pedestrian death rate in 20mph crashes is far lower than the rate from 30mph crashes.
3000 pedestrian deaths per year is a big deal, never mind car-to-car crashes. Given all the crazy, pointless laws that we enforce (and trample all over the constitution in the process), why shouldn't we merely make it easy to enforce traffic laws? I'd trade that for warrantless wiretaps, home-invasion-style drug busts, and federal fondling at the airport.
Making it too easy to punish someone for a meaningless transgression invites abuse. Most of the basic rules of the road are well-known, but what about those that aren't? For example, say you and some friends are heading out on a road trip in three cars. What's the minimum distance you must maintain between the vehicles while in motion? The answer is 100 feet, but that's according to California Vehicle Code 21705 covering caravans. Some states don't have such laws, and some have different numbers. Automated enforcement removes the discretion that a ticketing officer would have when seeing that an out-of-state driver has broken some minor law like that. The officer would have the option of warning the driver to not repeat the action in the future. An automated system could have a warning mechanism, but the out-of-state driver might not see it for days or even weeks and continue breaking that law.
Automated speed sensors present problems, too. Suppose the speed limit is 65. Do you get a citation for going 66?
Even cameras with staff that watch traffic remotely could be a problem. A cop having a bad day and hitting everyone he sees for minor infractions might be able to cite about four people an hour. Someone filling out a quick computer form at a central location and using a good camera system could probably hit 20 people an hour, just because he can. Subjectivity can come into play, too. What constitutes an unsafe lane change? What's a safe following distance? Neither of these are strictly encoded in California law, leaving it up to the observing officer.
I know that you didn't look at the link I provided, or at least didn't look at it closely, because your numbers are still low. The number of pedestrians killed stood at about 4100 in 2009, but that's still decreased from the 4900 in 2005, a 16% drop and a hell of a lot better than the 8100 killed in 1980. If you did and simply have more recent numbers, then they prove my point even more strongly because that would be a decrease of nearly 40% since 2005.
I'm not trying to minimize the deaths, but you can't get perfect safety. You can improve safety, but you grow ever more controlling when you do. This is good to an extent, but every additional power provides another opportunity for abuse. That would seem to be something that would ring true to you, given your closing sentence in the last post.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
I was low-balling the numbers because I did not care to endure complaints about using numbers that are too large. I know that they're down. The number that I actually recall is 3100. Perfect safety is probably unattainable, but I'm pretty sure we can do better. I've seen a pedestrian run into, in one of those team-effort sort of collisions, where the driver did in fact break a law (stopped well past stop line, made it difficult to see jaywalking pedestrian approaching), but was not cited it for it. WTF?
If I were king of automated traffic enforcement, I would direct it at violations that were actually correlated with harm. That is, however, assuming something that is not true, so things might not turn out that way.
There is another approach to reducing harm from driving, given that we both agree that perfect safety is unattainable, and that is simple to avoid unnecessary driving. We drive a lot in this country; it's not all necessary.
He was probably not cited because the pedestrian was jaywalking and shouldn't have been in the street in the first place. Police will often skip a citation for an otherwise minor offense if a situation was truly accidental and it looks like the driver has learned a lesson from it. They reason that there's little point of tacking a $150 citation on top of the stress of seeing someone getting hit if one knows one was partially at fault.
I'm not unaware of the issues of pedestrians getting hit. The son of a close family friend spent a month in the hospital and almost a year in physical therapy after he was hit by a car. But I don't let the emotional impact of that get to me. It's better to ask what has been done that is working so well to reduce the death rates and see if it can be reasonably expanded. It may be that cars better designed to handle pedestrian impacts are a prime reason, and the natural growth of them as a percentage of the national fleet will result in fewer deaths. It may be that people are simply becoming more aware of the presence of pedestrians, in which case, education efforts can be expanded. But the key is reasonableness; turning traffic enforcement into oppression is not the answer.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
It's actually the Border Patrol and not the military. We don't have a militrized border on either side but especially on the Canadian border. These are not military Predators.
www.joshferguson.org
I guess I have a different attitude than the police. The driver's offense was stopping well forward of the stop line (and obstructing the crosswalk -- two offenses, actually). It's a relatively common offense here near Boston. The pedestrian was mostly at fault, but without the driver's contribution it would not have happened -- she, like me, would have been able to see the jaywalking ped.
I ride a bicycle a lot (I also drive). We hear lots about how important it is to Obey The Law, and what Bad People we are for running stop lights and stop signs (because always, judge the group by the actions of a few). If you don't ticket offenses when the bad outcome actually occurs, what's the point?
I don't think that the reduction in pedestrian deaths is necessarily caused by better car design (as of 2007, deployed in some EU cars and some concept cars). There haven't been that many changes in this country, and at the SUV/minivan level, none that I can perceive at all. On the other hand, we have tightened up licensing restrictions for new drivers (in some states), we've had years of MADD-inspired ratcheting down of tolerance for drunk driving, and we're also in a recession (which cuts driving by a bit). It is apparently the case (at least in some studies in NYC) that adding bicycle lanes in urban areas tends to increase pedestrian safety (and driver safety), and we've been doing a fair amount of that in recent years. It appears to be a matter of reduced speeding (i.e., "traffic calming").
Well, the story said Air Force. Or at least from an Air Force Base. So it strongly implied that it was military.