Slashdot Mirror
Ohio Judge Rules Speed Cameras Are a Scam
Hugh Pickens writes "The Columbus Dispatch reports that southwestern Ohio Judge Robert Ruehlman has ordered a halt to a speeding-ticket blitz in a village that installed traffic cameras saying it's 'a scam' against motorists and blasting the cameras and the thousands of $105 citations that resulted. 'Elmwood Place is engaged in nothing more than a high-tech game of 3-Card Monty,' Ruehlman wrote. 'It is a scam that motorists can't win.' The village began using the cameras in September, resulting in 6,600 speeding citations in the first month, triple the population of the village of 2,188. Optotraffic installed the Elmwood Place cameras and administered their use, in return for 40 percent of ticket revenue — which quickly topped $1 million. But business owners and motorists struck back, charging in a lawsuit that the cameras hurt the village's image and said they were put into use without following Ohio law for public notice on new ordinances. 'This is the first time that a judge has said, "Enough is enough,"' said plaintiffs' attorney, Mike Allen, who called the ruling a victory for the common people. 'I think this nationally is a turning point.'"
This sounds like New Rome all over again:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Rome,_Ohio#New_Rome_speed_trap
I don't know what's happening recently, but it's a pleasant surprise to see these kinds of article cropping up more frequently on /.
Now if only we had the same kind of possibilities here in Europe, where there are more and more cameras everywhere, and the margin before you get a ticket is in some places ridiculosly low. I'm all for enforcing safer driving, but many camera emplacements are obviously for revenue-generating rather than safety.
They don't do anything to discourage the single-biggest cause of road deaths either, drunk driving.
It would be interesting to see a breakdown of the speeds that people were going when they received a citation. If it's within 10% of the speed limit, then yeah it's probably a scam. Yet my experience is that speeders tend to go over 20% faster than the posted speed limit. In that case, it's not a scam. You break the law, you pay the price. As long as people are receiving notification of a speeding ticking before receiving their next speeding ticket, the police are perfectly within their rights to use highly efficient technology to catch those law breakers.
Just because one judge finally got his head out of his ass long enough to breath in the fresh air does not mean it is a turning point. Corruption is massive across the country and this is but one example.
If the courts do not put an end to it quickly, I will not be surprised to see civil war break out in the next few years.
People learned to avoid this town and its $105 speeding tickets ($25 to appeal, you lose anyway), and business owners began to complain they were losing business due to the get rich quick scheme. Judge sounds like a good man.
Virginia Courts threw those things out long ago.
IIRC, they ruled that they clearly did not affect public safety, they were just a disguised revenue generation plan. And since only the General Assembly had the constitutional right to institute new revenue, the cameras were illegal.
6 teens killed in Ohio SUV crash is the next article on the same site. Quite consistent, both articles show that reckless driving is high priority for the people in Ohio.
The judge understood it is fascism. No one wants to be regulated in every step, every word, and eventually every thought. Are you offended because you are a Fascist?
Uh, depends on how this thing is calibrated. Is it set to go off if you are over the white line at a red? Then if I stopped 3-5ft long at a light, I'm getting a ticket for running it? Seems like a scam to me.
The speed cameras correctly measure speed transgressions, the drivers have sued the city, and the judge calls the speed cameras a scam? Provided that the cameras work correctly, what's wrong with making these asshole drivers pay?
Between automatic cameras, GPS, and OBD we could completely eliminate speeding. Or, at the very lease, insure than anyone who speeds _even a little_ is instantly ticketed. If speeding really is dangerous, maybe we should take these steps to eliminate it. If speed limits are too low, maybe we should raise them. But we seem to prefer these strange cat and mouse games.
you sound exactly like the "public officials" of New Rome, Ohio defending their utterly corrupt "village". As a native and lifelong citizen of Ohio I am ashamed of this too-common "tradition" of my state with $$$$$$-inspired enforcement of traffic laws.
You're not really wrong here, but there's something awful about being watched all the time and being busted for every minor and often harmless infraction. There's also something awful about being fined and then told you have to pay to contest the fine.
The mere fact that they issued 3 times as many tickets as there are people in the town is an indication that something is wrong here. That the company gets 40% of every ticket they issue is a massive conflict of interest. It's been proven before that some municipalities do fun things like shorten yellow lights so they can ticket more people. If these cameras are to be used at all, it should be for public safety, not making the roads less safe (yellows lasting 0.9 seconds in some cases I recall) so some company can rake in more money.
If only this would hold up in The Netherlands, where speeding camera's are everywhere.
Nowadays, we even have systems in several places that measure average speed over a certain distance, meaning braking for the camera won't work.
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell
Optotraffic installed the Elmwood Place cameras and administered their use, in return for 40 percent of ticket revenue
So 40% of all fines aren't actually fines, but revenue for the camera company. Holy shit, that's flawed.
This sort of setup doesn't exactly persuade the camera company to ensure the correct margins to adjust for measurement errors are used either. Who checks if the camera's comply with the spec? The company who receives 40% of the revenue or the government who receive 60%?
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
You missed the part where the judge said it was unconstitutionally difficult to challenge the fine. You're basically at the mercy of the enforcement agency and you have to rely on the accuracy of a company which profits massively from fining you.
I'm not totally against speed cameras, but I believe in one important thing about parking and traffic enforcement; nobody should ever profit from issuing fines, because the incentives to be arseholes are just too big.
Parking and traffic enforcement on public property and public roads should always be performed by public employees and the fines should go to a random, approved charity. The costs of running the operation should come out of tax income and no bonuses or "performance related pay" should ever be given. At least this way you take away the very real profit incentive for fining as many as possible. The sole purpose of parking and traffic enforcement should be to improve safety and flow of traffic.
The issue is that the cams issue the ticket to the CAR, not the driver. Months ago I got a warning in the mail saying my car ran a red light. There was a nice picture of my car with a blow up box around the license place. Sure enough, it was my car. However, I was at work and someone else was driving. See, they didn't have a picture of the DRIVER. If it hadn't been a warning the ticket would have been around $150.
Interestingly enough, I called the city where the cam had taken the picture of my car and asked how they determined who to ticket when two peoples' names are on the registration. For some reason they were reluctant to answer.
I remember a stand-up comedian once saying that he'd received a ticket in the mail for $140 and a picture of himself speeding, so he took a photo of $140 and sent it back to them.
Is it set to go off if you are over the white line at a red? Then if I stopped 3-5ft long at a light, I'm getting a ticket for running it? Seems like a scam to me.
How? The law says don't cross the white line if the light is red. You cross it when the light is red, you've broken the rules. It's not exactly a massive safety violation but the number of times I've seen people stop with their back wheels on the line and their nose peeking out into the junction so that it blocks pedestrian crossings is infuriating. You break the rules, you get a fine. Simple. It's not like the rules are obscure or hard to remember, there are signs and lines everywhere they apply.
TFA makes it sound like they're all speed cameras anyway, not line cameras, and points out that of the two cameras which were operating one was in a school zone where you really do want these things enforced. The plaintiff's attorney said "people who were unemployed, working poor and single mothers were hit with $105 citations they couldn’t afford". Well, boo-hoo. Don't speed in the school zone and you won't get fined, simple.
Don't speed or run red lights. You'll put these guys out of business and make the streets safer. Everybody wins.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
"It is a scam that motorists can't win."
- so the judge got caught speeding in the cameras and is unhappy? :-)
Reading the article, it looks like the argument is that not enough notice was given before putting the cameras up.
Were the cameras correctly indicated according to the laws?
Are speed restriction signs correctly posted on the roads?
If so, surely you can "win" as a motorist by just *obeying the speed limits*?
If you've been caught speeding and fined, isn't your argument "previously I ignored the speed limits which were correctly marked, but now I got caught and fined without due notice they would actually enforce the speed limit"?
Can anybody comment on whether the cameras were signed correctly and the speed restrictions correctly flagged on the roads? Just trying to understand the dispute here.
I'd definitely agree that a company getting paid a percentage of fines has an incentive to collect fines and that seems very suspect, I wouldn't like that, but hey, it's the USA, you guys prefer payment-by-results model rather than payment-for-a-public-service model so I guess we have to ride with that.
If you are unhappy with being fined for speeding, and the cameras and signs are legitimate, then is the argument not with the cameras but with the speed limit?
Do people object to slowing down to 25mph near a school where children are walking? or is the argument about being fined when you choose to go at a higher speed there?
On some level, I agree with the "just don't speed" people. The real problem is the traffic laws themselves. They are far too rigid. Rigid laws can lead to rigid enforcement, which I don't think is generally what people want to see. Unfortunately, it is easier to write a ticket for "56 in a 55" and demonstrate that "my laser gun measured it" than it is to write a ticket for something like "driving at a dangerous speed for the conditions". I guess. I don't know.
I think the difference is that there is social acceptance for the fact that almost everyone exceeds the speed limit occasionally, if only to keep up with traffic. I have no idea how many people cheat on their income taxes but it's not socially acceptable.
If a law is broken by a significant fraction of people on a regular basis, then it is a poorly-written law. See: Prohibition, DMCA.
"what if the camera loses its calibration? how do you fight that without knowing?
- you appeal on the grounds that you believe the camera wasn't correctly calibrated and demand a calibration test by an independent tester? Costs to be picked up by the loser in the court case?
I am assuming this is unlikely to be an intermittent fault, what do you think? (not my area). There are millions of speed cameras around the world, there must be some evidence on how often/likely "losing calibration" is and what forms it takes.
What if to brake safely you come to a stop over the line? (large truck behind you or someone riding your ass, speeding etc?)
You're basically at the mercy of the enforcement agency and you have to rely on the accuracy of a company which profits massively from fining you.
I wonder if the judge stopped to think that this is no different than without the cameras. Tickets are a major revenue source for police departments, to the extent that it is not uncommon to hear of stations which have ticket quotas.
I'm not totally against speed cameras, but I believe in one important thing about parking and traffic enforcement; nobody should ever profit from issuing fines, because the incentives to be arseholes are just too big.
Parking and traffic enforcement on public property and public roads should always be performed by public employees and the fines should go to a random, approved charity. The costs of running the operation should come out of tax income and no bonuses or "performance related pay" should ever be given. At least this way you take away the very real profit incentive for fining as many as possible. The sole purpose of parking and traffic enforcement should be to improve safety and flow of traffic.
I can agree on taking the incentive out of ticketing for the sake of ticketing, but unfortunately, it would never happen. There's way too much money to be made.
The real tragedy here isn't that the cameras were installed. On general principle, if we could trust authorities, red light cameras are a really good idea. It's rare that I see a light change without at least one person running the red, and speeding is so common that you actually have to drive 5-10 mph over just to keep with the flow of traffic. The problem is the money.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
It doesnt make a mention of why the cameras are ineffective.
The people are aware there are cameras.
They know the speed to go.
They are getting caught.
PANIC?
http://www.awfullybigmoustache.com
" 'It is a scam that motorists can't win.'"
I'm sure they are also against the IRS using computers to catch revenue cheaters, because it gives them an unfair advantage.
Sure they can win, just don't speed. The motorists are just used to breaking the law and not getting caught most of the time.
Did somebody check how many tickets the judge got?
I think the issue is not that people are getting caught, but that there is a lack of due process when they are; which inevitably leads to some innocent people being wrongly convicted.
I don't know how things work in the US, but in the UK it works thusly:
- You get somehow "caught" alledgedly committing a traffic offence. This may be that a speed camera photographed you speeding, or a traffic warden decided that you were parked illegally or whatever.
- You get notified by post (note: if a member of the general public needs to send legal documents to someone they are required to employ a process server to ensure they got there. On the other hand the police are allowed to just pop them in the post and retain proof of posting (*NOT* proof of delivery) so its entirely possibly that you will never even get the notification and still a court will deem that it has been served and that you were responsible for responding to the notice you never received.
- You will be offered a choice: Accept a fixed penalty notice (a fixed fine (probably £30 - 60) and possibly a fixed number of points on your licence); you *may* be offered a "training course" instead of a fine and points; or you can decline the "fixed penalty" notice and have an automatic criminal conviction, £1000 fine.
- If you want to appeal, you are required to decline the fixed penalty notice and training course; therefore you voluntarily agree to be convicted and be fined £1000. Once you have been convicted, you may take the case to the appeals court and appeal the conviction.
The upshot of this is that if you believe you were wrongly accused, you have to be *absolutely* sure you would win in court before you can risk appealing, because if there's even the slightest chance that the court will side with the police then you're risking an enormous fine. I know a good few people who have just accepted the fixed notice, even though they believe they were not in the wrong, because they simply can't risk the possability that they would be hit with a £1000 fine if they lost the case.
In order for things to be just, the cards should not be so heavily stacked against the accused that they can't risk defending themselves when they believe the accuser (the police or traffic warden) is wrong.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
And if you get a ticket from a police officer in the US? At least in some states, the officer doesn't need to present any evidence other than their own testimony and you'll be fined. Unless you can present some evidence that you were not speeding, did not run the light, did not fail to completely stop for a stop sign, then you're getting a ticket.
Here they have some red light cameras. If you get a ticket for running them you also get a link to a website where you can view a video of the offense. That may be very different from the Ohio system, but it's certainly a whole lot easier to challenge than a similar ticket issued by a police officer.
Like when you make a legal right turn on red, and stop again to make sure it's clear...You missed the part where the judge said it was unconstitutionally difficult to challenge the fine. You're basically at the mercy of the enforcement agency and you have to rely on the accuracy of a company which profits massively from fining you.
The answer is that they ticket the first person on the registration list. My wife, bless her beautiful self, went to college out of state and internalized the idea that parking tickets need not be paid. I almost got my driver's license revoked because she ignored a parking ticket in the city where we live, and while the car is registered in both our names, mine is first.
I thought they were speed cameras, not red light cameras. The question is not about lines, it's if they are set to go off when you are going 56 in a 55 zone, and so forth. If they do not allow for imperfections in speedometer readings, they will overticket the population. There is also a question of how many are mounted and where; if you drive down a main thoroughfare going 60 in a 55 zone and get three tickets for it in one day, that's an issue.
Reading the first linked article, it sounds like they one had two cameras total, one where you enter the city and the limit drops from 35 to 25, and the other in a school zone. The town is a small town on an interstate that has a lot of through traffic to get from larger towns to major centres of employment. The city officials are confident this will hold up in appeals court, and I suspect they may be correct.
- W. Blaine Dowler
http://www.bureau42.com
"I wonder if the judge stopped to think that this is no different than without the cameras. Tickets are a major revenue source for police departments, to the extent that it is not uncommon to hear of stations which have ticket quotas."
This is in principle just as bad. It is just difficult for the police to be as ruthlessly efficient in person as it is with cameras. And at the very least you get to see the person that issues you a ticket and can ask for the officer's name and number. But mainly just because you are losing one battle doesn't mean you can't go for another.
You're not really wrong here, but there's something awful about being watched all the time and being busted for every minor and often harmless infraction.
I understand the sentiment but speeding is not an "often harmless" infraction. It endagers yourself and those around you. (Semantics about whether the speed limits are set at the right level or not are here as well, but still).
Given the tolerances most radar based speed cameras operate at and the fact that 2 cars travelling side by side can totally screw the results anyway. I'm surprised most speeding tickets don't get laughed out of court anyway. Especially given that most of them are simply employed as a revenue stream for local authorities.
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
So Greece should just stop trying to collect taxes?
"And if you get a ticket from a police officer in the US? At least in some states, the officer doesn't need to present any evidence other than their own testimony and you'll be fined."
As I've stated in a reply to someone else, this is in principle just as bad, but simply another battle which may prove more difficult to win. My principle about "no profits in fining" applies to all situations a fine is issued for whatever purpose. There should never be a profit motive involved. That doesn't mean there are no other sinister motives (like a policeman or parking warden with a personal vendetta against you), but I'm willing to bet the profit motive is more common and hurts more people.
I'd like to know how incidences of rear-end collisions are affected in areas where red-light cameras are installed, and how many of those who are involved in rear-end collisions (the collisionee, if that is a word) have been subject to fine by one of these cameras, especially if the ticket was later contested because the amber phase was shortened to increase revenue.
Back of the napkin math here; Breaking distance from 30MPH (14m/s) is 23m including a thinking distance of 9m in ideal conditions. Therefore, you require 23m to stop your car from 30mph, but are only given 12.6m to do it in (14m[distance travelled in 1s] * 0.9[length of amber phase]) and 3/4 of that is going "Yellow light... I had betOHSHITITSREDNOW." It's demontrably impossible.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
I hate those towns. They are built as speed traps. If they took the money and used it to build a raised road with on/off ramps and under the road crossings or even bridges to cross then fine away but they don't. They put their citizens at risk and pocket the money or use it for unrelated improvements so they can keep the money rolling in.
If you can't survive as a town without ripping people off who just want to get to work, you should just board up and move.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
The exotic situation is ice or snow on the street.
Change the penalty for moving violations from a monetary fine to a mandatory community service.
The incentive for police to write frivolous tickets will disappear, and people who are caught will be made to spend real time helping their community in some way, benefitting them, and costing them time, which is more valuable than money.
Zing!
Start braking a bit earlier.
You mean when the light is still green?
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
The point is that if you receive one of these tickets, it often costs you more to fight it, even if you were not speeding, than it does to just pay it and go on with your life, especially if you are not a resident of the town. This is always true, but when the municipality must pay someone to actually stop a motorist and write the ticket it costs the municipality enough that writing bogus speeding tickets is not profitable.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Here in lower Michigan, Ohio has kind of gotten a reputation for this kind of thing. We used to drive through a small town on our way to Toledo, after about the third or fourth ticket for a few MPH over the speed limit everyone in our family was warned to avoid it at all costs. The one officer in a town of at most a hundred seemed to focus his full attention on a single blind corner just before the town where the speed limit dropped from 55 (before the corner) to 35 (Just after the corner). I've also heard of stories where officers actions were tantamount to extortion, pulling individuals over for minor infractions and offering them a choice 1: Going down to the courthouse, waiting for a judge for a couple hours, having your license taken and held after court officers record your full information OR 2: (officer pulls out device) We can take your credit card, debit card, check or cash right here to pay off your ticket.
And the exotic answer is "No, REALLY start braking a bit earlier"
- You get somehow "caught" alledgedly committing a traffic offence. This may be that a speed camera photographed you speeding, or a traffic warden decided that you were parked illegally or whatever.
You are conflating speeding tickets with parking tickets and, hence, deliberately mis-representing the issue in the UK.
Obviously, for parking tickets you can appeal to the local council after they have been issued and have them cancelled. If your appeal fails, then no harm done - just pay the £30. I've done this and it relies on you collecting evidence to show you were not at fault (lines not painted correctly / visible etc...). Also, there are no points on your licence for parking tickets - stop lying about this. And there are no "courses" for parking offences.
Much of what you wrote only applies to speeding tickets which are entirely different. You either don't drive or aren't from the UK.
If they do not allow for imperfections in speedometer readings, they will overticket the population.
I can't say for sure about the US, but over this side of the pond speedos cannot read less than the actual speed i.e. if you're doing 30mph the speedo must read at least 30mph. I would think it safe to assume the US has similar requirements.
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
Parking and traffic enforcement on public property and public roads should always be performed by public employees and the fines should go to a random, approved charity.
There's an argument to be made that fine revenue should be used to defray the costs of parking and traffic enforcement. The problem, of course, is that if the actual crime goes down, the meter maids and policemen are motivated to keep their jobs by making up crimes or issuing dubious but legally justifiable tickets.
A community adjacent to mine, notorious for funding almost their entire city government on traffic tickets, had to cool it, but for the worst possible reason: They pulled over a state legislator who threatened to take away their power to pull over anyone on the highway, which was their cash cow.
I am officially gone from
No, that means it is poorly enforced.
Actually, in many places with red light cameras, the city has decreased the length of the yellow light below that recommended by national safety guidelines in order to get more ticket revenue.
Let me say that again: they've shortened the length of the yellow lights, not for safety, but in spite of safety, so they get to write more tickets.
At many of these places, it's possible to be driving along at a safe speed and see the light turn yellow, and be put in a situation where you have to absolutely slam on your brakes in order to stop behind the line -- and this is me driving a small passenger car with brakes limited only by the coefficient of friction. Drivers of large trucks which can't brake as hard complain even harder about this.
What GP's truism would actually say is 'Greece has a poorly written tax code.' With a little generalization to 'Greece has poor way of handling economics' this becomes shockingly accurate.
From the article:
"Police say up to 18,000 vehicles a day drive through the village, which links some big employers with I-75."
The population of the town is somewhat immaterial. Also as someone noted earlier they are speed cameras, not red light cameras. To be honest, the article does not mention why they are considered a scam, although it gives some (in my opinion weak) arguments against them. I think their biggest concern is the impact on the local businesses from the people who drive through.
I read in one place where the company that did a similar deal over red light cameras recommended to the city to shorten the yellow light time thus increasing the chances you would get burned having proceeded on a green and still been in the intersection when it turned red. The result apparently was that people would massively slam on their brakes if the light turned yellow just as they were about to pass through.
The key problem here is simple; when you have a company that can make profits backed by laws they will make sure that there are as many law breakers as possible. Since you can't sell people on breaking the law the next best step is to basically set them up to fail. In my shitty city Halifax they switched to a private company doing parking tickets. They are relentless. If your meter runs out they will get you. Plus the parasites know where the best meters are such as those near the emergency rooms of Hospitals where people are not thinking about things such as putting change in the meters.
No private company should have almost anything to do with the legal system. Running prisons, enforcing laws, scanning our emails, Nothing. Not only will they not use common sense but they will use the worse common sense possible and that is to make as much money as possible and at any cost.
"Poorly-written" does not equate to "needs to be abolished in its entirety". Believe it or not, it is possible to write laws that serve the public interest without criminalizing and punishing the majority of the population.
Should I brake when the light is green - anticipating the split-second yellow to red transition or just slide and hope I stop before the bar and ruin my tires?
A government that becomes too efficient will cause problems. In this case, they infractions are detected too efficiently. Catching major infringers is good, but when every slight infraction is punished, citizens will become unhappy.
We want government to have constant hurdles to overcome, because we have expectations regarding the persistence of overseers. Even though we may not be able to have the default anonymity we enjoyed pre-21st century, we can still regulate government to have stumbling blocks so that it doesn't become an efficient Orwellian machine.
Yes. If you are going fast enough that if the light changed you wouldn't be able to go through it before it turns red, and you wouldn't be able to stop before the line then you are driving too fast for the current conditions.
If you are driving too fast for the current conditions then you should slow down. That may involve braking.
I used to work for the parent company. Their cameras are inaccurate, and the company knows this. While I never worked for Optotraffic directly, their operations are fairly tightly woven into the parent. I heard many a conversation in the halls about this issue.
Setting speed limits below the maximum safe speed under ideal conditions is also "overticketing". Setting speed limits and designing a traffic enforcement program with revenue, rather than public safety, in mind is a subversion of the purpose of law enforcement and ought to land the folks doing it in prison for a very long time -- it's just as bad as bribery, as far as undermining the legitimacy of the rule of law.
Honestly, I'd like to see statewide referenda passed wherever possible saying that all revenue from traffic and parking tickets goes not to any particular government body but gets donated to the "offender"'s choice of charity. Taking the profit out of claims of "but it's for your saaaaafety!" ought to nip this nonsense in the bud.
...if I can't break whatever laws I like, regardless of the consequences to others.
You're not really wrong here, but there's something awful about being watched all the time and being busted for every minor and often harmless infraction.
I understand the sentiment but speeding is not an "often harmless" infraction. It endagers yourself and those around you. (Semantics about whether the speed limits are set at the right level or not are here as well, but still).
Well now that depends. First of all, for any road less than 55MPH, the speedlimit is supposed to be set at the speed at which 80% of traffic travels down that road. If there are unknown risk or hazards that warrant a lower speed limit, then it may be lower. Otherwise, it is supposed to be based on the speed at which traffic flows. This is a federal issue, and the state governments do not like it when municipalities trample on the federal guidelines for this because the entire state will lose its National Highway Fund budget for failing to follow that guideline. There are definitely small towns with artificially low speed limits to increase ticket revenue. Speeding in those towns is usually only dangerous to your pocketbook.
Finally, going significantly slower than the rest of the traffic flow is dangerous to you and all of the other cars on the road. This is why many states also have a minimum speed limit that must be followed. In fact, various counties in Florida have announced that they are going to step up enforcement of people driving too slow because that is considered to be far more dangerous than a reasonably safe speeder (someone who is not weaving in and out of traffic recklessly, slows down when the circumstances dictate, etc). Of course, Florida has a problem with a certain segment of its population that will drive 40MPH in the left hand lane of a 70MPH zone with their hazard lights on....
" they do not allow for imperfections in speedometer readings, they will overticket the population"
Actually no. You need to allow for imperfections in your speedometer. The speed limit is a maximum speed, not a target. If you are uncertain of your speedometer, slow down.
One, is that it looks like this could serve as clear precedent to help stem the flow of the obvious scam that is the US traffic court system. Everyone knows about the money-making scam that it is. How many here have gotten pulled over for speeding, then ticketed for a fancy license plate frame, or something that didn't result in "points", but still made revenue for the township? It's one of humanity's lesser but very prominent failures. The second thing is that, if you're ever around Cincinnati, learn where Elmwood Place is, and avoid it! Google Map of Elmwood Place: http://goo.gl/maps/rnbN0
Better yet, spend the income from fines on road safety related items.
Where I live, there is a cafe that has a red light camera by it. While eating lunch, I notice that there are red light cameras that will at a random time have zero yellow lights. Yes, green, directly to red, and when that happens, and it is almost unpredictable, the flash of death goes off. Even the crosswalk symbol which might give you something to judge by goes from white to red, no flashing "don't walk" in between.
With that shit going on, yes, there is photographic proof that someone ran the red, but that red was green just 1 milliseconds ago.
Of course, even without the direct changes, the yellow light is 2 seconds long... enough time to either slam on the brakes and have someone rear-end you.
Unless the cameras come with full-frame video 10 seconds before and after, they are just a money-maker for some private firm.
The city that collects the fines sets the length of the yellow light. Now do you see the problem?
Driver's heaven - Nevada. I drove that road once - 70 mph for 30 minutes before seeing another vehicle. Too bad I don't own a Lotus...
If the IRS started tapping everyone's phone lines to get tax info, then yeah, people would consider having gone way too far. If the IRS started tailing your kids, to see what they spent their lunch money on, the money which you gave them, and then proceeded to ding you for failing to disclose certain taxable items on your tax returns that your kids bought (you said $10 that day for lunch, a food item...your son bought some pencils and a yoyo without your knowledge...as such, the IRS considers your return fraudulent...), then people would consider that beyond creepy.
And that's where these cameras are. 1.) The law behind them is flawed (it is; sit down, and shut up), 2.) the implementation is flawed (seriously, how much money was the city giving away?), 3.) instead of having an officer there to actually chase the person down, and prevent a recurrence, they receive a ticket in the mail; cue the 'what if the car is stolen?' scenarios, the 'what if someone else is driving' scenarios, the 'what if this person was running through several red lights, high on crystal meth, and hit someone, killing them, if only an officer had stopped them / been there, instead of an idiotic revenue generating machine' scenarios, etc. And once again, the law is flawed -> the goal is not eliminate speeding, it's to tax it! That's what a ticket is, a tax on speeding! Take a look at your city / town's cash flow statement sometime, and you'll see that it depends on revenue from a variety of nefarious activities to fund other 'feel good' public works projects. It's not a small amount either. Nor is it easily replaced. The fact remains that if speeding stopped, your town would hold an emergency meeting to highlight budget shortfalls, and try to find a new source of income so it could maintain its array of works. So some other social vice would have to be invented / taxed, and it takes forever to get people to agree to a 'sin' tax. They have to be taught to hate the sin from a young age, and never question that it is evil, or the whole enterprise will fall apart. Sure, short term, they might be able to increase the taxation of other 'vices,' but that doesn't always work.
I am John Hurt.
The city that collects the fines sets the length of the yellow light. Do you see the problem now?
I think it's probably because the company asks you to settle out of court. (just pay us and avoid going to court).
There's no cheap legal recourse. And no way to determine who was driving.
They're using their grammar skills there.
Now that I have read this, I can't stop reading in an Irish accent.
The real issue is the fact that the company who placed the cameras got 40% of the revenues, which means that the primary incentive is to catch as many people as possible, not to make the roads safer.
You can place as many street signs and cameras as you like - and it is true that the motorists must (by law) follow all those signs and rules - but it won't make the roads safer.
The exotic situation is ice or snow on the street.
Or water or sand or anything else other than street.
The US allows a margin of inaccuracy of 10%, plus or minus. That only applies to factory cars. Once someone has made a DIY modification (for instance changing the rim size) all bets are off.
Cool art gallery, if you're into that sort of thing.
that's not the law.
The law says you can't enter a crosswalk if the light is already red.
It's perfectly legal to proceed through a red light if you're already past the crosswalk.
They're using their grammar skills there.
Likely the town was there before the highway that drove up their traffic volume was built. If people are not paying attention and speeding through the city just to get somewhere else, fuck 'em, write 'em tickets so they learn to slow down or find a different route. Perhaps I am jaded by all the people speeding down my street rushing to the highway on ramps. 35MPH and not many are doing it. I've taken to tossing gravel at them as they race by while waiting to put my kindergartener on her school bus. People live on these streets and their lives are just as important as the one you have living in your mcmansion on a cul-de-sac.
Perhaps they ought to leave a little earlier for work in the morning
So what you're saying is that you weren't driving to conditions and haven't allowed yourself any safety margin for stopping distance?
I understand the sentiment but speeding is not an "often harmless" infraction. It endagers yourself and those around you. (Semantics about whether the speed limits are set at the right level or not are here as well, but still).
I'd say that driving at a different speed than those around you is what causes accidents, not speed in itself.
Left to their own devices, most drivers will drive at a speed which makes sense for the road conditions, etc.
It's the other few that cause the problems. The fines should be for "going 20% faster than everybody else"
No sig today...
It's not uncommon to hear about ticket quotas but as I understand it it's rare the quotas are for revenue reasons.
As an example, in this part of Florida, it's well known that the local law enforcement groups have a much larger quota in October. Why? Because we're expecting an influx of snowbirds (older people who live in Florida for the winter only) that starts late October, early November, and local authorities want to discourage aggressive driving given the pending sudden change to the driving profile. Driving past numerous people who've been pulled to the side of the road by a white crown vic with flashing blue lights has a "calming" affect.
The police themselves try to avoid giving out the more expensive tickets. If you want to avoid a traffic violation, the best way, for example, is to "forget" some piece of paperwork, like your insurance card. The cop will then give you a "ticket" that requires you show your proof of insurance within a couple of days at the court house. You pay a small (like, $20) charge, and nothing goes on your record.
Given the relatively low amounts of money involved, it's difficult to make the case that traffic stops are making a lot of money for local authorities. It's easier to make the case that it's a control system, a way to discourage certain types of traffic violation both directly and by making a presence known.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
There is a difference between driving 100mph, weaving in and out of traffic, on a crowded road where the traffic pattern is going 65mph... and driving at a safe speed that just happens to be higher than the one on the sign. I've gotten plenty of speeding tickets doing the latter (and none doing the former, but that's probably because I don't do it).
It's worse than that, because in many places everyone acknowledges that the speed on the sign is unrealistic and drives faster than that. So it becomes this sadly hilarious guessing game, where people have to guess how fast they should really drive, and what speed the cops will actually object to. In places it's 15 or even 20 mph over (the stretch of I-83 through Baltimore where the speed limit is 45mph comes to mind, as does the whole Beltway). None of these folks are driving particularly unsafely, though.
In most of the criminal code, we've asked ourselves "What things are actually harmful to others and worth criminalizing?" You can tell that there's been a lot of thought given to this in places. Yet with the speed limits there seems to have been no such care taken.
The problem is the speed cameras are installed to make recvenue and not to decrease speeding. Their owners actually encourage speeding by decreasing the length of the yellow light.
That actually happened in Alabama, which passed a law prohibiting municipalities from issuing tickets on interstates unless the town had at least one exit within its borders. (Prior to that, they were annexing segments of the interstate and issuing tickets on them.)
And if you get a ticket from a police officer in the US? At least in some states, the officer doesn't need to present any evidence other than their own testimony and you'll be fined.
At least it's a person accusing you, and at least the service of the summons is within the law (you have to sign the summons). Then you get your day in court and it's your word against the officer's (and whatever equipment he may have been using), and the judge can, you know, make a judgement call.
So instead they come up with a system where many days later you receive a letter in the mail demanding money. Put aside for a moment that USPS mail is not considered legal "service", and that you are not given a day in court - you have to show up in person to petition for that. So a machine declared you guilty and the system works on a presumption of guilt. If you do demand a day in court, it's going to cost you an extra $60.
So you get this letter. Some have the picture of your license plate, other places you have to request it. Were you really speeding that day at whatever place that is? Do you remember? How much did you look at your speedometer at that specific time. Some of these cameras are notorious for going off when a bird flies by. Others are notoriously inaccurate. Can you do the research to determine all of this? Will anyone do it for $105?
And that, right there, is just off the top of my head all the unconstitutional issues with these cameras. No, it's really not about safety, it's about money.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
I've argued for this for a while -- and the penalty for violating this should be the same as the penalty for robbing someone at gunpoint on the highway plus the penalty for abusing your authority as a peace officer, since it amounts to essentially the same thing.
Law enforcement and revenue collection are not the same thing.
We have this here - a steep downhill slope rated at 40MPH with a light at the bottom and a yellow of about 4.5 seconds. There's no way to do it properly, and semi trucks always run the red, because, y'know, physics. Locals know not to trust the opposite green but out-of-towners can be caught unawares.
The thing is, red light and speeding cameras are illegal by statute in NH, so there's no revenue incentive - they could park a cop at the bottom of the hill but they rarely do. It's more of a safety problem than anything, but the City won't do anything about it.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
In the US, that would be a state-by state issue. I've never lived in a state that calibrated the speedometer but tire (or tyre) inflation will affect it...
That said, around 20 states have statutory tolerances enshrined in law (usually ~5-10 mph) since your speedometer isn't 100% accurate and the cop's radar gun isn't 100% accurate either.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
I can agree on taking the incentive out of ticketing for the sake of ticketing, but unfortunately, it would never happen. There's way too much money to be made.
I can agree on taking the incentive out of robbing people for the sake of profit, but unfortunately, it would never happen. There's way too much money to be made.
Well to be more accurate I like speed cameras in places where speeding is a definite danger or problem like school zones, "rat runs" through residential areas, accident black spots, etc.
What really annoys me is the trend to use speed bumps in these areas instead of cameras. You end up in a situation where someone in a large 4wd SUV drives through at 50mph but someone with a compact car has to slow to 20. I know people who have actually switched to a larger vehicle because of speed bumps.
So take away the speed bumps and give me cameras any day!
TFA makes it sound like they're all speed cameras anyway, not line cameras, and points out that of the two cameras which were operating one was in a school zone where you really do want these things enforced.
While I am not taking issue with your arguments, are you aware that this last one essentially boils down to a plea to "think of the children"? As every politician knows, this bit of rhetoric is a useful appeal to emotion that is difficult to refute without making your opponent appear heartless, even when there are logical counter-arguments that can be made. You made your case well enough, I think, without resorting to such tactics.
Or the yellow is too short.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
They don't teach slowing down for "stale" greens anymore? Damn, even I remember that from almost 40 years ago! Look, something sometime is going to make you stop, plan for it. Still I agree with the judge, automation is just turning people into automatons. Sure it makes sense to leave to machines things that don't require human judgement, but for those things that they do they have no place.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
I imagine you're the type to be found sitting on a rocker on your front porch yelling 'get off my lawn!' at the local kids.
The mere fact that they issued 3 times as many tickets as there are people in the town is an indication that something is wrong here.
Yep. It's proven that small towns typically breed a culture of breaking the law.
We had something similar on our main motorway where I live. There was a 6 km section without a shoulder on the road and no turning lanes, i.e. no place for a cop to park with a speed trap. Some bright spark installed a fixed speed camera hidden behind the bridge. First of it's kind since the rules changed. I.e. the camera was concealed from immediate view, there was only one sign warning people of the camera instead of the usual 3, the sign was more than 1km up the highway and there were no markings on the ground where the camera was pointed.
End result that in 2010 the police issued 10351 fines for that stretch of the highway. In 2011 that number rose to 131829. It's a voluntary tax people seem willing to pay.
People will break the law when they think they can get away with it.
Interesting. My 2005 Toyota Camry - at least at lower speeds - always reads less than radar. When the police put up those signs showing "your speed" in our neighborhood, my speedometer always shows I am going 25 and the police sign says 20. At work we have one of those things too with a 20 MPH limit in the lot. When my speedometer says 20, the sign says 16 to 17.
Keep in mind that one purpose of traffic laws to to get bad drivers off of the roads. Too many points and the license goes out the window and insurance fees get to be a serious punishment in themselves.
Apparently what the town has done is put up cams that catch a lot of non residents passing through on their way to work. Speeding, running lights and all kinds of dangerous behavior become easy to catch and record. It does become a source of income for towns and that is not what it is all about. Also some areas have very large fines compared to others.
I do think we should insist that towns directly operate these cams and not hire private firms to do the work and we do need to be certain that everything is calibrated correctly. But I have little sympathy for a guy that gets a bit of rage going and drives along at ten miles over the speed limit and gets so many points in a fifteen minute period that he has his license pulled for a year or two. My town does use sort of a terror tactic in hiding speed traps in places you would never suspect such as out of the way side streets. Most fines run several hundred dollars here. But people who are chronic speeders really have little chance of avoiding tickets as they move the traps around a lot.
.
No, it could also indicate the town is located on a major commute (or other cause of travel) route, or is a tourist or working destination, etc.
The company isn't the municipality and so can't shorten yellow lights, hence there is no conflict of interest there. In fact it lowers the conflict of interest since the town that can do those fun things sees less of the revenue for doing so. Of course the actual contract made with the company might create some conflicts (if it has minimum revenue requirements or they'll pull the cameras, for example), but the existence of a percentage of revenue instead of a fixed fee itself doesn't create one.
Unless the company configuring the cameras incorrectly to report non-offenses as offenses is an option of course...
There is a light at an intersection in the middle of nowhere along my morning drive that has a 5 second green light, if you don't start going as soon as it turns green you won't make it through. That is without ice and snow, both of which make it harder to get going. It is quite possible at such a light to sit at it while it's red, have trouble getting started, and 'run the red' because you haven't cleared the intersection. God forbid you have people behind you who actually think they can make it.
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
If you're driving so fast towards a traffic light that you can't stop in twenty yards without screeching the tires, you're doing it wrong, yes.
You just said nobody should ever drive over 15 MPH. Yellow lights are supposed to be calibrated for the required braking distance, at the posted speed limit, for the worst of the typical range of common road conditions.
Trouble is, they often aren't - either for revenue enhancement or due to a lack of competence. Both are at the expense of safety.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
You've never driven a horse trailer loaded with two large horses. When I come up on a traffic light that is green I cannot really slow down trying to anticipate if/when it goes to yellow for I still need to maintain traffic speed. When that light goes yellow I have an instant to make a decision, because I cannot hit the brakes hard and throw 3000 lbs of horse forward. I can only either ease then add more firm brakes or continue on, hoping the yellow is long enough for me to get through or hold opposing traffic enough to see I cannot stop.
Stop thinking everyone drives high performance cars. If a town was really interested in traffic safety they would install count down timers on traffic light intersections so an approaching driver can best gauge whether to brake in a reasonable time frame, brake firmly, or continue on. My stopping distance is minimum two times that of a passenger car so knowing how much time I got would really take the stress of of every light I come too when hauling horses.
Life is a great ride, the vehicle doesn't matter
So the law should be changed then to make sure nobody who is in a crosswalk life is placed at risk. How would right that law?
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
"I think nationally this is a turning point"
Errr... a single ruling by a single county non-appeals judge in Ohio isn't any kind of "turning point", even for Ohio, much less nationally.
I think somebody has delusions of grandeur.
+ in bad weather conditions don't drive so fast
it often costs you more to fight it
It's something of a Prisoner's Dilemma. For each individual this may be true, but load up the court with 6,000 traffic cases, each calling a representative from the traffic company to come and swear to the calibration of the cameras, and things would change very quickly. People have power in numbers.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
If you expect people to notice how long the light has been green and to slow down if it has been too long, then your problem is that your yellows are too short. Period. Drivers should pay attention to the road and the traffic around them, not the duration of lights in the distance.
"I've taken to tossing gravel at them"
Here in the UK, you'd be arrested in short order for that, anywhere. You may be correct about traffic coming through the town too fast, but you seem to have a lot to learn about justice and proportionality. I hope a semi comes through and drops his load of gravel on your driveway. Maybe then you'd learn something about proportionality, but knowing people like that over here ("my car and my daughter are more important than everybody else, screw you") you'd probably be happy for the donation of ammo to throw at passing vehicles.
This tagline was transcoded to result in at least one smirk. If you experience failure to smirk, please consult your Gen
Isn't there a regulation on how long a yellow light is? There must be or else you could set the yellow light to 1s.
I wonder if the police from New Rome found a new place to live after his previous community was dissolved by the court for being nothing more than an excuse for the cops to ticket passing motorists.
It does seem similar; just a blip of a town along a major highway. I doubt they are issuing that many tickets to locals.
Hopefully this ruling can be used as precedent for future rulings against these cameras.
"- You get notified by post (note: if a member of the general public needs to send legal documents to someone they are required to employ a process server to ensure they got there. On the other hand the police are allowed to just pop them in the post and retain proof of posting (*NOT* proof of delivery) so its entirely possibly that you will never even get the notification and still a court will deem that it has been served and that you were responsible for responding to the notice you never received"
Now, I've been "summoned" in the past for driving offenses. No arrest, no charge, voluntary statement, etc, etc.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) sent the summons to my old adress and I was wrongly convicted in my absence.
I ended up stood in front of the magistrate, in his office, where I read some legal mumbo-jumbo.
Conviction quashed. The CPS then had 12 months to summon me again, which they failed to do.
The above is standard practice when you've been summoned incorrectly.
And for you 'mericans: I did not seek legal advice (you only do that if you're guilty). Common sense led the way.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
In some states, perhaps. But not in all. Just because having a law say something like that would be the logical, reasonable thing to do doesn't mean that the law actually says that logical, reasonable thing.
With those new fangled speed cameras, they like to put 2 second yellow lights on 45mph roads. Tell me again about breaking sooner with a log hauler up your ass?
See, in the US, we like to have this whole "Innocent until PROVEN guilty." We like it so much, it's actually in our constitution!
The idea behind that is the government can't extract any revenue from you unless they have proven (beyond a reasonable doubt, no less) that you have committed the offense. Before you pay for a speeding ticket, you can get in front of a judge and state your case. Heck, you can even say you were speeding, but you have a really good reason for doing so.
Our system isn't perfect; a lot of traffic courts are little more than kangaroo courts, but there's at least an illusion of a chance. If you have to pay a fine up front to challenge the accusation, it isn't fair. Granted, if you are legitimately convicted, you can be made to pay the cost of the court's time, but you take that chance when you challenge .. it's just like a plea bargain vs. going to trial; you have to weigh the risk vs. reward.
In summary, asking for a fine or "administrative charge" before a conviction is unconstitutional.
Here in Switzerland when they build highways they actually think about on ramps, and off ramps. Heck they do so in Germany, and France and so on. They realize that if you create a highway with an on ramp and off ramp there will be quite a bit of traffic that will go through the town.
Oh wait, this is the United States, the land of the free, small government and where we can't invest in infrastructure! Seriously, these days when I travel to Canada and the States what I see is how urban sprawl is killing the countries. No planning, no thought, just greed, and the thought that private money is always right. I am no socialist, nor a commie. BUT sometimes government has a role and sometimes people need to accept that.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
If civil engineers designed traffic lights like this, it would _ruin_ automobile transportation. Have you ever driven a car/truck/bicycle in America?
It seems like you're encouraging a race to see who can approach the light at the slowest possible pace to ensure they can stop before it turns red for fear of being punished? That is the wrong paradigm.
If you didn't see the light turn green, plan for it to go red at anytime and slow down accordingly.
That's bullshit and would seriously screw up the flow of traffic. We already have a system in place to warn of impending red lights: yellow lights. How about we keep using that system?
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
In Germany the TÜV ensures that the speedometer is up to 5% accurate. Then the speed cameras have accuracy of 5%. The result is that they give you a 10% bonus; but that is rarely more than the average speeder.
I hate those towns too.
My wife and I are from a large rural area in our province, referred to as the Valley. Normally we'd take highway 101 to get there from where we live, but in the summer when it's nice and we want a more scenic drive we use to take the old #1 highway. The 100 series highways are 110 Km/h, the older single digit highways are 80 Km/h.
So it's a nice day and we're driving along at 75 Km/h enjoying the weather, then hidden behind some tree or other type foliage, blink and you miss it, there's a speed sign and all the sudden you're in a 50 Km/h zone surrounded by cattle and corn fields, 30 km/h if you're entering a school zone (speed fines doubled between 30 and 50 Km/h, triple if you're over 50 Km/h). Lately it seems schools have been popping up all over the place... well at least the signs for school zones have been, which seems odd since I keep reading about the rural schools closing and the students merged into schools in other counties.
We don't dare take the #1 highway anymore, something we've been doing for nearly 15 years, because all the little stick friggn' nowhere towns along the way started using the #1 as a money maker with hidden or poorly maintained speed signs.
The problem is that the systems are not accurate 100% of the time and there is no accountability for failures (or "reasonable doubt" in court) you are expected to STFU and pay.
I remember an article not too long ago about someone getting caught "speeding" while obviously stopped at a red light (and he wasn't the only one). Articles abound of people getting tickets at red light cameras only being given one picture (two are usually required) because the city is deliberately defrauding them (demand to question why an actual officer signed an obviously false citation (perjury) and the city will respond "Oh sorry, that signature is not readable").
The whole idea is set up for revenue collection instead of safety or law enforcement, THATS what makes it a scam. Cities have become notorious for shortening the yellow light well below Federal minimums in order to increase revenue. I have not read much about speed cameras (except the incident described above), but there have been too many "failures" of red light enforcement cameras in the news and that tells me the whole idea is flawed.
I drive a lot in Germany, it is a joy to drive there because there are no speed traps, as a consequence people obey the law _more_ because the traffic signs mean something, you see a sign for 100kph then you go 100 because the road or conditions will not allow that speed (god help you if you get a ticket because you really fucked up). In the US most speed signs fall in the "overticket" category, the interstate highways were designed for 75MPH cruising not 55 or 65, an lots of little towns get a large amount to money from tickets from speed traps - the town should just tax approriately to support themselves instead of creating speed traps which, if anything, discourage safety and erode respect for the law.
Surveillance of a public road is one thing but a citizen has a right to "face their accuser". In the case of the IRS the data was analyzed by a person prior to bringing accusation. The speeding camera...probably not. If I challenge the accusation who will I be facing in court? Many cities categorize speeding camera tickets as a civil instead of a moving violation skirting the Constitution in the process. In these cities my right to face my accuser has been removed. How is a speeding ticket not a moving violation? I'm not disagreeing with your premise just showing you one of the ways the government is manipulating the outcome.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Stop modding this down, guys. "Troll" and "incorrect" are not synonyms. He is expressing a commonly held viewpoint, and we are better off if both his comment and my on-point reply above are visible.
What I really would like to see in the US is the introduction of flashing green. In xUSSR countries and in lots of European countries, green traffic light starts flashing about 5-10 seconds before the yellow light.
I'm so used to it that I'm still shocked by the sudden switches to yellow in the US - you have a split second to decide whether to stop immediately or continue driving and risk running the red light.
We have essentially two problems here.
1) Letting someone else fining people for breaking law is very bad. It creates mistrust. And if you really want to make people to obey the common sense law they really like to break (speeding is one of them, I *won't* get into details why psychologically so many want to justify it), you have to fine them yourself, not by some commercial entity; Otherwise it just make people angry. It's bad policy, period;
2) People will like to speed more than allowed and no matter of common sense will appeal to them. So other half of arguments - scam, can't win, etc. - sorry, been there, done that. People love to violate speeding limits. Yeah, some places those limits aren't really thought trough, but they are not that many.
So while I agree it's a really bad way of controlling speed limits, judge jumped a shark here and made more of political statement. But as Judges in US are part of political system - not very big surprise.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
Exactly this. It's not the driver getting the ticket, it's the vehicle. Locally, they first came in as red light cameras. Then they put speed cameras on the interstate. The interstate cameras brought in $3 million last year to the local constabulary. The red light cameras do virtually nothing.
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
You think the towns want a by pass built??? No they don't, They really like have people come through town because maybe they'll buy something or make a small mistake and get fined for it. In Switzerland, this was major complaint of many small towns located on the roads up to skiing destinations when larger faster roads where planned around them. So in most cases it is the local towns not wanting to left behind...
Exactly.
I think this is partly a consequence of American federalism (which has a lot of upsides, but some downsides too): as I understand it in most of Europe, tax rates aren't set locally, but for large sections of the country at a time. But these little towns would have to tax themselves appropriately, and nobody living there wants that: they want to "tax" other people.
These are speeding tickets, not light-running tickets.
It is unwise to ascribe motive
"for I still need to maintain traffic speed" Well there is your fallacy. If you can't stop safely at red lights, slow down. I recently spent a bunch of time pulling a trailer when I was moving and I was driving about 10 below the speed limit so I could maintain safe distance for stopping.
The funny thing about that, is that since the ticket is going to the car and not the driver, it is not really a traffic offense and has no points.
When they went in locally, it was brought up that if you didn't pay a ticket, it would go on your credit record, but there was no real legal standing to the ticket as it was not for a person, but a vehicle.
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
If your speedometer is under-reading, it is defective. They are designed to over-read by somewhere between 5% and 10%.
I've taken to tossing gravel at them as they race by while waiting to put my kindergartener on her school bus. People live on these streets and their lives are just as important as the one you have living in your mcmansion on a cul-de-sac.
Perhaps they ought to leave a little earlier for work in the morning
You're an idiot. Way to go - promote "saftey" by throwing stones at cars. Fuck you.
I hope the next car you throw gravel at is an undercover cop and they throw the book at you resulting in a felony conviction which you absolutley deserve.
In Soviet Russia, the television watches YOU!
Irrelevant
If the yellow light was 1 minute you would still have asshats that would speed up to get through it rather than slowing down even if they were 20 yards away.
Is it set to go off if you are over the white line at a red? Then if I stopped 3-5ft long at a light, I'm getting a ticket for running it? Seems like a scam to me.
How? The law says don't cross the white line if the light is red.
Just want to point out that something being "the law" doesn't make it not a scam, or at least stupid. Running a red light to me doesn't mean "over the line," it means, to me, driving through the intersection when the light is red. This isn't a sport, there's no reason the line should be regarded as magical just because the law says so. Most motorists stop where they think is reasonable, and that is safe. Accidents usually don't seem to be caused by people stopping three feet into the crosswalk, they're caused by people driving through.
If a town was really interested in traffic safety they would install count down timers on traffic light intersections so an approaching driver can best gauge whether to brake in a reasonable time frame, brake firmly, or continue on.
This is exactly correct. On the mornings when I drive my children to school I use the crosswalk timers to gauge when I can or cannot make it through a light. Traffic cameras have nothing to do with keeping people safe, they are all about lazily collecting fines from unfortunate drivers.
I got here through a series of tubes
So they adjust the timing on the lights crossing the junction, so it gives the red jumpers time to clear the junction before allowing the cross traffic over the junction.
Its not exactly rocket science to adjust the timing of the OTHER signals rather than the one people are jumping.
Lights ARE part of the road and the traffic around of them.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
No, these cameras can certainly be a scam motorists can't win.
In smaller towns, you'll often see confusing signage where the speed limit drops very quickly and with no other warning. School zones, crosswalks and other devices are used to increase the number of potential violators.
These cameras are nothing more than high-tech versions of the old-fashioned speed traps where every out-of-town vehicle passing through certain towns were pulled over for some infraction.
If the only purpose of a traffic cam is to increase municipal revenue, then there's a problem. If the law was passed without sufficient public notice (something that is more and more frequent recently) then there is a bigger problem on top of that.
Next door in Michigan, you had a Republican legislature pass a "Right to Work" law while all the democrats were at the President's inauguration. And did it on a Weekend when there is usually no legislative session. Then, they just say, "So sue me" and implement the law. By the time it gets to a higher court, the law is in place and there is an inherent unwillingness by judges (especially those from the same party as the legislators that passed the bill) to overturn a law that's been in place. They even use "Well, businesses have been relying on the new law!" as a defense.
It's why citizens have to keep a very sharp eye on their local governments first. Any government is capable of making life bad, but local governments can do it faster than any other.
You are welcome on my lawn.
And people wonder why I always like it when visiting Switzerland :)
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Why not just put both names from the registration on the ticket?
I see no problem with ticketing the owner of the car, if he is not driving let him collect the fine from the person he lent the car to.
Only if you labor under the mistaken notion that nobody traverses a road unless they're a local resident. The first main road I come to when leaving my house carries almost as many cars per day as reside in my town - which should come as no surprise since it's a major commuter route for a nearby city *and* the major access route for the county's largest employer *and* a significant shopping destination. (The road that covers the other half of the city carries even more...)
A lot of lights don't have a long enough yellow for you to stop braking soon enough to come to a safe stop in time in icy conditions - should we start braking for green just in case? or should we speed through to make sure we get through before it turns red instead?
Where I live red light cameras are legal (but speed cameras are not). Studies in my area have proven that when an intersection has a red light camera added to it, collisions at the intersection increase dramatically. In some (but not all) cases, the yellow was shortened to produce more revenue, resulting in more accidents. In other cases, it's just a matter of people braking early and hard in anticipation of a ticket if they try to make a yellow, and getting rear-ended. In all cases, these cameras are -reducing- safety in the interest of profit, so it's not hard to see where the conflict of interest lies.
Those people should be ticketed, but that doesn't tell you anything about the average driver. Most people are not habitual criminals, and if the law is so screwed up that it makes criminals of most people, it's the law that's the problem, not the people.
The real trick here is that these speed traps issue "civil citations", not tickets. As such you don't go before a judge, with all the guaranteed rights of due process, but before an administrative hearing officer. In my town, they even tried to institutes a mandatory, non-refundable $50 "service fee" to even be allowed to challenge the citation, even in obvious cases ("my car is a red GM, this is a blue Ford"). That got shot down in court, but they continued by making the hearings "we have to listen to you, but we don't have to do anything else". It only got shot down when the state started to make noise they want their 80% revenue share on traffic fines mandated by state law (something else the "civil citation" was aiming to get around). That made the operation not profitable under the contract, and they went away after the contract expired.
I'm aging rapidly, I bought a new game and had no idea if my machine was good for it.
You don't necessarily have to actively slow down for a stale green light, but you *should* be prepared to stop. Which at the very least means taking your foot off of the gas pedal.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
" 'It is a scam that motorists can't win.'"
I'm sure they are also against the IRS using computers to catch revenue cheaters, because it gives them an unfair advantage.
Sure they can win, just don't speed. The motorists are just used to breaking the law and not getting caught most of the time.
Did somebody check how many tickets the judge got?
The speed cameras are calibrated once a year by the company that owns the cameras, not by a employee of the state and too infrequently to be considered evidence. The tickets are sent to the vehicle owner irregardless of whether they were driving or not, the owner can only contest the ticket if they can name who was driving the vehicle at the time of the incident which is typically 4 to 6 weeks after the incident making it tough to remember who was driving on that day.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
No need to brake, just lift off the accelerator as you approach the lights, when you get closer to the lights than your stopping distance then you accelerate through the lights as you won't be able to stop safely, remembering to stay below the posted maximum permitted speed. Remember - its a maximum (at optimum conditions), not a requirement.
You can see through the snow and know exactly where the line is?
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
What part of "don't stop across or past the line" is so hard to understand? If you're not sure it's clear then don't pull out in the first place. That's the whole point of the lines - so you stop a safe distance back, and when you start moving the people behind you can reasonably expect you to keep moving.
Given some people's need to drive the biggest fucking vehicle they can find some times it is necessary to pull farther forward to see the oncoming traffic before making a turn because of the person with the H2 they are using to haul their groceries home in. This also happens because of people who drive giant trucks, mini vans, and SUVs, where someone who is driving a sedan only ends up seeing body panel out their window when looking for oncoming traffic.
Time to offend someone
The question is not about lines, it's if they are set to go off when you are going 56 in a 55 zone, and so forth. If they do not allow for imperfections in speedometer readings, they will overticket the population. There is also a question of how many are mounted and where; if you drive down a main thoroughfare going 60 in a 55 zone and get three tickets for it in one day, that's an issue.
Maybe they should be that sensitive. I lived in Melbourne for a while a few years ago. It seemed the police regularly ticketed people for going 4kph over the limit on the highway (that's less than 4% leeway). Guess what? Everybody drove the speed limit or slower. When the limit changed, everybody changed speed at that point. Car speedometers are accurate enough these days that there is no need for any tolerance. People need to drive better and pay more attention.
Yes. If you are going fast enough that if the light changed you wouldn't be able to go through it before it turns red, and you wouldn't be able to stop before the line then you are driving too fast for the current conditions.
If you are driving too fast for the current conditions then you should slow down. That may involve braking.
That's only the case if the time between changing to yellow and red is long enough. If the time is so short that someone going at correct speed for the conditions who cannot stop at the line will pass through red, then the time is too short and the whole thing is a scam.
Normally I wouldn't comment on this stuff but a 4.5 second yellow? Are there no crosswalks at these lights? Am I the only person who hovers over the brake pedal once the crosswalks start blinking? When the crosswalk lights start blinking, you know the light is going to change within 10 seconds or so.
Besides, 4.5 seconds, if you are traveling at normal speeds should be plenty of time to cover the break and start slowing down.
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
The cop's radar gun is much more accurate than any speedometer, usually -- after all, it's either a heterodyne measuring relative to a 100ppm oscillator (at worst), or a pulse timer measuring to similar oscillator's time base. The problem is that it is not measuring the average speed of the car. It measures the relative instantaneous speed of whatever the microwaves or laser beam happened to bounce off. The guns I've seen are not designed to average those instantaneous readings long enough to give you what would pass for average speed. The problem is that vehicles are 'rickety' -- there are various pieces that vibrate back and forth, sometimes with significant instantaneous velocities even if the deflection is almost too small to see. Those add up to the slowly changing speed of the vehicle as a whole. This stuff is not insignificant.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
What part of "don't stop across or past the line" is so hard to understand? If you're not sure it's clear then don't pull out in the first place. That's the whole point of the lines - so you stop a safe distance back, and when you start moving the people behind you can reasonably expect you to keep moving.
The part I don't understand is when people forget the spirit of the law in favor of exactly adhering to the letter of the law. Sometimes there's a large truck to your left, and you can't see if you're clear unless you go over the line a bit. You're not endangering anyone, so regardless of what the rules concerning what the line is for, you've obeyed the spirit of the law and shouldn't be faulted for it.
That's true, but irrelevant to the issue of following the law. Don't break the law, and you'll never need to challenge a ticket or worry about whose mercy you are at.
The world isn't black and white, and I wouldn't want it to be black and white. Every situation is different and needs to be treated according to what actually happened, not according to what was written to try to catch what's was predicted to be the most likely thing to happen. Especially when the laws are often written such that legislators think, "oh well, no one is going to apply it in that case, even if it is written to technically allow it."
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
Especially when the yellow is too short because the traffic camera company severely reduced their duration shortly after installing the cameras. That's what they did around here. 4 second yellows became 1 second yellows and suddenly people doing what they had always been doing were getting tickets. The worst part is that it made the roads less safe, because people slam on their brakes when they see the light go yellow when they're just about to enter the intersection and cause more rear-end collisions.
I read the internet for the articles.
You know the timing of every light in the United States, apparently?
You should always be prepared to stop, but that's why we have yellow lights - to allow people to know when they should stop rather than proceed. I know the duration of lights in my home town, but when traveling there's no way I could know when to take my "foot off of the gas pedal", because I've never seen that light before. Are you seriously arguing that people should observe every signaled intersection for a full cycle before attempting to pass through it?
Actually no. You need to allow for imperfections in your speedometer. The speed limit is a maximum speed, not a target. If you are uncertain of your speedometer, slow down.
actually, no, that speed limit IS A TARGET... traffic management (light cycle times, traffic grid management, light synchronization, and so on) is supposed to be optimized for that speed.
And you can actually get TICKETED for driving TOO SLOW (usually because your slowness is impeding traffic).
Sure they can win, just don't speed. The motorists are just used to breaking the law and not getting caught most of the time.
What you are apparently missing is that the posted speed limit is not an absolute rule. There are other rules and situations which can preempt the posted speed limit, or any other traffic rule for that matter. Cameras are not able to take outside factors into account. In addition, there are technical problems with how they identify vehicles which are speeding which can often result in an automatic citation being issued against the wrong vehicle.
But fundamentally the problem with speed cameras is that they are only capable of citing the vehicle, which puts the onus of proving innocence on the registered owner of the vehicle. But the law doesn't assign blame to the vehicle's owner, it assigns blame to the person actually operating the vehicle... something the cameras are simply not capable of doing. This requires law enforcement to waste taxpayer money conducting an investigation into each citation, and does nothing to actually prevent speeding. For the cost of a single camera, you can park an empty marked police cruiser along the street and have a far greater effect on traffic flow.
So if the goal is to enforce the speed limit, put some cops on the street. If the goal is to try and make money, use a camera.
" 'Sure they can win, just don't speed.
You're a good little fascist, aren't you, you sorry punkass piece of shit ?
Not everyone is an idiot like you and some of us
understand that speeding is far from the worst
traffic infraction that happens.
The real world doesn't involve everyone obeying every rule
all the time.
What if to brake safely you come to a stop over the line? (large truck behind you or someone riding your ass, speeding etc?)
If someone rear-ends you, then that's their fault. 100% of the time. They were following you too close or not paying attention. You can only control one thing when you are driving--yourself. Stop staring in your rearview mirror when you are driving. You only need to look into it when you are going to make a lane change, or if you hear sirens. I rearended someone myself--going 50mph--because I was looking in my rearview mirror too long while doing a lane change, and they were stopped dead on the highway.
On the other hand, stop lights should have the timing set correctly--that is, they should stay yellow long enough for someone going the speed limit to either make it through the intersection, or to stop prior to the intersection. But the article is not about red light cameras, it's about speed cameras.
Battlemaster--Game with friends in medival realms
Just want to point out that something being "the law" doesn't make it not a scam, or at least stupid.
Sure then. Change it so that if you cross the line, any pedistraian wanting to cross is allowed to key your car to punish you for being a douche bag. Crossing red lines (which often means going int the pedestrian crossing) is a douchebag move and certainly should be illegal.
Accidents usually don't seem to be caused by people stopping three feet into the crosswalk, they're caused by people driving through.
I'd love to see your reaction if a driver stopped in the middle of a junction, causing you to have to carefully weave past him.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Just curious, do you support automated legal fines like this for other things? Why don't we start with people that ride bicycles and often break the law, how do you think that would go over? We could extend this to jay-walking and littering too. These things could all be picked up with the same types of cameras and automatically generated tickets sent out. For some of these things the technology to implement them (face recognition) is only a matter of time.
Do you really want precedent for automating big brother and fining everyone as they go about their life? Once a precedent is set it can be just as easily applied to other things. Which laws get to be automatically enforced for big brother and who gets to choose?
The article was about speeding, not running red lights.
> They don't teach slowing down for "stale" greens anymore? Damn, even I remember that from almost 40 years ago!
No. I think you're just making that up so you can take pleasure in being a sanctimonious jackass.
People like you are why we rebelled against England and why people continued going west afterwards.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
If you're driving so fast towards a traffic light that you can't stop in twenty yards without screeching the tires, you're doing it wrong, yes.
You do know there are are stoplights on rural roads and highways, going from 60 to 0 in twenty yards is impossible about 2gs , the top speed that most cars can handle that fast of a stop without screeching the tires is 35mph it doesn't seen that safe to me to be driving 35 in a 60.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
Sorry this is slightly off topic, but I am genuinely curious. What physics do large lorries use if they are not limited only by the coefficient of friction?
It wouldn't be shocking to see an appeals court hold this up and I could see it going all the way to the state Supreme Court, if not higher. The problem for the proponents of this case is that they are strongly outnumbered, and not just by speeders. Today a group of area lawmakers are unveiling their legislation to make the cameras illegal in Ohio. But I could see judges siding with the cameras on this, especially if the company that operates the cameras gives decides to give a nice donation to the judges re-election campaign. Welcome to our new democracy, that is much more like an auction than ever before.
The law in Utah is that you may legally go through an intersection if at least your front two wheels cross the line before the light turns red. This leads to many people speeding up on yellow instead of stopping. If people know the yellow light will last longer, more people will try to make it through. Motorists are in a hurry.
We don't dare take the #1 highway anymore, something we've been doing for nearly 15 years, because all the little stick friggn' nowhere towns along the way started using the #1 as a money maker with hidden or poorly maintained speed signs.
I have a Garmin GPS. It shows the current speed limit in the bottom right corner. As long as you keep your maps up to date, it should be able to keep you legal. Of course, this is assuming that the local police are not sitting on top of the speed sign.
25 mph is painfully slow to maintain; if they give tickets at 26 mph, they will have a bonanza of fines.
Most school zones around here are 20 mph, but only apply "on school days when children are present". How would the speed cameras know whether school children are present?
How? The law says don't cross the white line if the light is red.
You mean the one that is completely worn away, or the one you can't see because it's sitting under an inch of packed snow and ice?
You cross it when the light is red, you've broken the rules.
Unless I'm making a legal right on red (or left on red from a one-way onto a one-way) after stopping. Or moving my vehicle out of the way of an emergency vehicle. Or complying with a law enforcement request to move my car. Or taking the more legally correct action of running the light to avoid a worse traffic hazard.
the number of times I've seen people stop with their back wheels on the line and their nose peeking out into the junction so that it blocks pedestrian crossings is infuriating.
I've spent a lot of time walking in every city I've ever lived in. It's a completely ridiculous thing to get upset about as it's trivial to step around the car... behind it if they're too far out. The majority of the time when drivers do this it's because the intersection is poorly setup and has horrible sight distance. If you fixed the problem with the intersection instead of installing a camera it would actually solve the problem, as opposed to using a camera to try and milk some cash out of motorists.
Meanwhile, the dickheads riding bicycles are running stop signs and red lights left and right, causing major traffic safety issues, and never get a citation because there's no plate to photograph.
In principle, I agree -- But in practice it's exactly the opposite of our law-enforcement structure and culture. I've been told directly by an NYPD acquaintance that ticket-writing is referred to as "paying the rent" (i.e., you've gotta pay the rent for your fancy uniform, boots, car, motorcycle, etc., that you're using). And the current growth area is "asset seizure" to fund police departments, for which the victims don't have any right to appear in court as defendants, and the legal status is outside of any locality's ability to control.
Changing that culture would be so radical, I can't imagine it happening in my lifetime. Depressingly.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
It's easier to follow the letter of the law than to think for yourself. It makes it easier for the mindless. It allows them an excuse to feel superior when they really not terribly thoughtful.
Compliance becomes a substitute for performance.
It's much like "attendance" being a substitute for performance.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I'd like to know how incidences of rear-end collisions are affected in areas where red-light cameras are installed...
They go up, way up in some cases. But they're not counted because they do not occur in the intersection.
If the vehicle in front of you at that intersections decides it can safely stop do you just plow through the vehicle? If you are hauling cargo that is valuable and fragile then you should be driving more cautiously; which would include driving slower than the stated speed limit.
A speed limit is the maximum safe speed under optimal conditions for a passenger vehicle not the mandatory speed for all conditions and for all types of vehicles. Hauling horses to me indicates that you are not operating an optimal conditions vehicle, therefore you must reduce the speed limit for your vehicle. If the posted limit is 40mph maybe your limit should be 30mph.
What part of "don't stop across or past the line" is so hard to understand? If you're not sure it's clear then don't pull out in the first place. That's the whole point of the lines - so you stop a safe distance back, and when you start moving the people behind you can reasonably expect you to keep moving.
So if you stop before the line then creep forward and make a right turn and are ticked what is your recourse, you have done nothing illegal. But since the video doesn't show you stopping then creeping forward just creeping forward you are fucked.
That's true, but irrelevant to the issue of following the law. Don't break the law, and you'll never need to challenge a ticket or worry about whose mercy you are at.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
You make your decision way too late. You make the decision way before you are at the traffic light, when it is still green: "at that point if not turned yellow yet I move on, if turn yellow before that point I stop." Especially when you're driving such heavy loads, because as you say yourself you need time to stop.
And if you have an excessively long time to break, then you should not be trying to drive at maximum speed anyway. The speed limit is just that, a limit, not a requirement to go at that speed. It may irritate other road users if you go under the limit, but that's not your problem. Your problem is to drive safely. And if you can not do so when going at the speed limit, you have to slow down, like when approaching intersections. Or do you also take your corners at the same speed a passenger car does?
This is basically equivalent to the U.S. criminal system, in which the accused are routinely threatened with decades of jail time so as to coerce them into making a guilty plea for a few months or a year, without having any trial.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
So you slow down until you hit your chosen "point of no return" at which you accelerate again. If it turns yellow before your chosen point you stop.
Here in Belgium yellow is for emergencies, you can get fined if you just drive through it.
And the exotic answer is "No, REALLY start braking a bit earlier"
And the actual response is "that's often not possible". And before you say "slow down" that can often create an even worse traffic hazard. Cops can use some common sense and choose to not issue a citation when the motorist is obviously already taking precautions and not driving too fast, but the camera cannot.
But if you need a better example- Right on Red after Stop. 100% legal, but the camera will issue a ticket every time. Another example? Moving your vehicle to make room for for an emergency vehicle.
When you get a ticket because your bumper went 2 inches over the white line that is siting under a couple inches of snowpack it's a waste of everybody's time and isn't making anything safer. Traffic laws are meant to ensure one thing- safety. They are NOT there to make money.
I don't know about where you live, but in my area it seems that there is a significant number of roads that seem to have a low speed limit only for the purpose of generating revenue via speed traps - I can think of two stretches of road within a mile of my home that are wide, straight, have excellent visibility, no significant foot traffic, no housing or businesses with entrances leading directly onto the road, where it is illegal to turn across the road, and yet still with a speed limit of 60 KPH (36 Miles per hour to Americans!). When the cops are out, they catch driver after driver after driver because the limit makes no sense. (For the record I have never had a speeding ticket, but find it very annoying nonetheless.)
If you're driving so fast towards a traffic light that you can't stop in twenty yards without screeching the tires, you're doing it wrong, yes.
Really? The road in front of my house has a speed limit of 50mph. Explain to me how I can stop from the posted speed limit of 50mph in my truck within anything close to twenty yards. Even a Corvette ZR1 with huge brakes and tires can only do 60-0 in about 31 yards. For a lot of driving conditions and situations what you are suggesting is physically impossible. And no, driving like my grandmother is not a reasonable solution.
2) In general, the easiest way to beat a speeding ticket is to not have the cop show up and claim he tested it. He doesn't have to actually test it - or give any film or other electronic records of him testing. He just has to show up and claim he tested it.
3) Studies show that cops lie about how much work they have done exactly as much as any other civil servant. Ever been to to Motor Vehicle department? Cops do as much work as they do.
4) P.S. This is not an insult to cops. It is just a recognition that cops are human too.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Oh really. My wife got a ticket when someone else was driving her car. How can she avoid being brought into court by simply "not speeding"? Oops. Your statement doesn't actually cover all situations. YOu seem to think if a camera photographs your car, that you are guilty of speeding. I hope I've illustrated how shortsighted your tautological conclusion is.
Don't know where you are but there are no blinking crosswalks here that I'm aware of.
[John]
Shit better not happen!
That's true, but irrelevant to the issue of following the law. Don't break the law, and you'll never need to challenge a ticket or worry about whose mercy you are at.
The fact that you CAN challenge tickets implies that the ticketing system is not infallible. Speeding tickets have been given to the wrong car (e.g. it was the one taking over that should get it).
As far as I know, these were ruled unconstitutional in Minnesota several years ago, and the arguments basically boiled down to: the cameras aren't very good at identifying the driver, who is should be issued the ticket (not the car owner), and that they sort of obviate due process issues. It's not really about being watched all the time.
will get thrown out of court. http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/22/2269.asp
Were you elected to make laws? Oh, so you're NOT part of the legislative branch. So then wtf are you doing with this ruling? If you have a problem with what the legislatures have done, you need a better reason than "it's a scam". Oh, I don't know, like say, it's something that conflicts with current law or the state's constitution. Well, I see that you've made that claim. So the legislators and/or police would have to appeal, which would cost quite a bit of money and risk their own jobs next election season. And since you're from a state where your job depends on you being elected as well, it's no surprise you do something that resonates with the popular vote. Yea, sounds like you're the scam to me.
If this is true and you have received a fine for running that camera. Then record the periodicity of the yellow light and present it as evidence in court along with the national safety guideline report that you have not cited. After you win your case, follow up with a civil suit against the city for endangering the lives of the populace with it's altered signal timings. I'm sure the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety would provide you with all the information you need as you seek a judgement against your city.
Yes, I do expect people to notice how long the light has been green. It's called paying attention to your driving. ("Huh. That green has been on for a long time... it should be going yellow soon."). Be aware of where your point of no return is. Once you pass it, then you don't need to change your speed. Same with the other person who talked about the pedestrian walk signs. If they've gone to the blinking hand, you know that the yellow light is coming soon as well. And the part that seems to be confusing to some: you're supposed to stop for the yellow light, not the red. Yellow doesn't mean "If I gun it, I can still make it". Hmm.. checking my driving record. No tickets for running a red, no accidents.
... or one can't see the line, which is pretty damn common around here in wet/dirty/winter road conditions, especially since the city gets pretty lazy about repainting the damn things.
Further to that, if the sensor trips when you're 1" over the line, is it detecting your tires, bumper, what?
Regardless, traffic laws are supposed to be about safety, not a source of revenue. That 1" over the line isn't meant to pump out $100k worth of tickets. When things are that sensitive, you end up with *more* accidents as people freak out about crossing the line and drive stupidly as a result.
TFA makes it sound like they're all speed cameras anyway, not line cameras, and points out that of the two cameras which were operating one was in a school zone where you really do want these things enforced.
A school zone would be even worse for automated enforcement. If the zone has a blinkenlight, does the camera start issuing citations EXACTLY when the light starts, or are they mis-timed? What about people already in the zone when the light comes on? If it doesn't have a blinkenlight, and just a sign that lists the active times, what about people whose clocks are out by a few minutes (IOW, EVERYONE), or if the camera's clock is off (possibly intentionally).
Automated enforcement of a school zone has the potential for issuing hundreds of bogus citations at the start/end of every active cycle that would be nearly impossible to prove/disprove, and way too easy for an unscrupulous company or city to milk for extra cash.
Srsly, who mods this crap up? Do you expect everyone to be psychic? If you have to estimate how long a light has been green and apply that knowledge to determine when it might turn yellow, the yellow is too short. Do you not have cars entering from side streets where you live?
Unless this is totally anecdotal they're counted somewhere, because you state that they increase. If it's recorded, where can the figures be found?
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Humans are not machines. No one can follow the exact letter of every law all the time. This is why we have humans enforcing laws and not computers. Because humans can make a determination whether or not the spirit of the law was broken.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
I guess those countries never understood the concept of the yellow light then. They certainly donot do that in my European country.
Hogwash, they never shorten the yellows when they install the cameras ... oh, wait.
"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
What if I stop at the line and the car behind me hits me so hard that it pushes me over the white line?
In many states of the US, there are codes that govern the operation of traffic signals.
If Ohio isn't smart enough to do that, maybe they should. It's not hard to set a minimum standard for signal length.
Now you should also look at the difference in quality of driving schools.
Many Americans find it scary to drive in Europe because we drive so fast (your 100 km/h speed limit, which in Germany is for most secondary roads, is higher than the US speed limit on motorways!) and on so narrow roads (their roads are wider). Or so close to the water edge, or doing 70-80 km/hr on a single lane road on top of a dyke.
Yet the accident rate (on a per km basis) in Europe is far lower. I think it really helps that you must take lessons from a qualified instructor until you pass your driving exam, which is typically at least 40 hours of lessons, instead of just a few introductory lessons after which you can get a learner's license and hit the road just with someone with a license to "supervise" you.
Normally I wouldn't comment on this stuff but a 4.5 second yellow? Are there no crosswalks at these lights?
I am not familiar with the GP's locality, but where I live the overwhelming majority of traffic lights do not have crosswalks. Most of the US is not very pedestrian-friendly.
Besides, 4.5 seconds, if you are traveling at normal speeds should be plenty of time to cover the break and start slowing down.
a steep downhill slope (...) because, y'know, physics.
So up until now we had a situation, where speeding is a violation, but rarely enforced. This situation has gone on for years and years. Now suddenly enforcement changes, and everyone is getting hit...and you blame.... the people.
Its enforcement that changed, not the people. To what benefit? None that I see. Why is technical rules enforcement so importent? Is it really a safety concern if someone stops over a line or goes a few miles over some arbitrary limit?
No, its just money grubbing. Some company found a way to step up cash extraction and convinced politicians to enact it, and now, the truth about how lazy and poorly written...and divorced from the purpose of safety the laws are is coming out.
when your rule makes the majority of people violators....its the rule thats wrong.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
You sir, are a moron. Please set up a public transportation fund for yourself that I may donate to.
At least in Netherlands towns have local taxes. Not as percentage of income or an extra VAT or whatever, but they charge taxes for sewage, waste disposal, real estate, etc. Those taxes form a large part of the income of the local government.
No. I don't see how the city both collecting the fine and setting the length of yellow changes the fact that you may have drive below the speed limit in order to be able to safely stop at the intersection in question.
Umm, how is there life placed at risk? You shouldn't enter the crosswalk until your light is green, which means the opposing light has already turned red, and it's illegal for a driver to enter the crosswalk. If the driver is already in the crosswalk when the light turns, then you want them to get out of the way, and forward is the only reliable direction for them to go. Now sure, that means you should be checking to make sure somebody wasn't caught in the intersection before you start walking, but then you should really be checking all four directions for potential danger anyway - that legal right-of-way won't do you a damn bit of good when somebody doesn't notice you while making an otherwise perfectly legal turn through the space you were just occupying.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
When they entered in a revenue sharing scheme, they throw away any semblance of justice to the use of these devices. There is an strong incentive to miscalibrate the cameras and fine people that didn't did anything wrong. On principle I'm in favor of the use of technology in public security and transportation, but they need to be in an environment in that they are not considered a direct source of revenue, for the State or for a subcontracted private entity. The "revenue" from increased safety comes in a better standard of living for a given community, and the increase in common welfare by having less people hurt or killed in traffic accidents. The greedy bastards that signed this contract from both parties deserve to never hold again a public office or provide a service to the State for the rest of their lives.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
You are a safety hazard by going slower than traffic. And it is proven that you are a safety hazard; I am not making crap up.
Just WTF language was that written in?
Normally I wouldn't comment on this stuff but a 4.5 second yellow? Are there no crosswalks at these lights? Am I the only person who hovers over the brake pedal once the crosswalks start blinking?
Let me guess, you live in a city. The OP says this is in New Hampshire, which is mostly suburban / rural. You might be surprised that lots of suburban and rural places don't have crosswalk signals, or even sidewalks!
This. Is. Brilliant.
I don't remember that being the case in Germany. However, they did have a nice yellow before a green. It was like I was at a race track.
Funny you should mention donating to a charity. Charlotte, NC threw the speed cameras out because they could not operate them at a profit. The State law required 90% of fines to go to schools, not to the city or the company operating the cameras (which is, as usual where most of the profits were ending up).
Not the same as "choice of charity", but it at least removes the incentive to try and use these things to line city coffers.
I put on my robe and wizard hat..
put speed bumps every 50 feet and at intersections. that should take care of quite a few speeders.
"I've taken to tossing gravel at them"
Here in the UK, you'd be arrested in short order for that, anywhere.
It is extremely illegal in all US jurisdictions that I know of as well.
But then fewer people would be running the red lights, which would reduce the revenue to the city and the camera operators.
How do you know that?
One of the main features of all the speed camera programs (at least the ones I have heard of, anyone who knows of an exception please speak up!) is they're designed to circumvent the usual judicial process where the state has to supply proof against the accused.
These use civil citations, whereas most of us grew up in a world where cops would use criminal citations that you could either plead guilty to, or go to court for, where the whole issue of "evidence" would come up. Naturally this radical new approach will be seen by many, as a scam.
OTOH, if the states can keep pushing these and not cave in, people could eventually be reconditioned. Maybe in 20 years people will think of these as less scammy, and then they'll be prepared to move additional parts of the justice system to civil punishment rather than criminal. "You're suspected of rape. $100 fine." Neat idea for a fun Idiocracy-type movie. :-)
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Ok. Hypothetically, you are on a road that has a speed limit of 55 and a min speed of 40. And the yellow light lasts 0.5 secs. What do you do?
I know this is an extreme example, but it shows how important the length of the yellow light really is. The point is that you can't safely or legally go slow enough to account for some yellow lights. Now, if I knew a yellow light was 0.5 secs, I would drive 15 mph....but 15 mph is breaking the law and EXTREMELY dangerous.
Your simple answers don't work.
Some have already mentioned how you can beat speeding cameras by not speeding past them, so I won't reiterate. Other commenters complain about how silly speed limits are. I agree, but let's be practical.
For the time being, we're going to have speed enforcement. The public sea change necessary to eliminate that isn't going to happen any time soon. If we must have nannies running around, wasting time and money, who are making sure all the little kiddies are following playground rules, we might as well have machines doing it. Machines that can't prove our identities in court, and don't doll out points that adversely affect our license status and help insurance companies jack up our premiums.
We've got countermeasures (pick your favorite: Waze and Trapster) against these cameras that are legal in all states (unlike radar detectors), and, if you happen to get caught by one you've missed, your driving privileges aren't put in jeopardy.
tl;dr: less cops, more cameras.
Irrelevant.
1st, at least over here, trigger lines are well behind the marked lines, so if you're triggering the camera, you're definitly far beyond the point where any sane person would put the white line.
2nd, these are CAMERAS. Conditions like this are visible on the photo and therefor you automatically have a proof that the white line wasn't visible.
3rd. i don't know about Ohio, but at least here even this case is well regulated. If the mark on the road is not visible for any reason, the stopping position is where crossing traffic comes into your line of sight.
bickerdyke
You don't have to see a line.
From the Ohio revised traffic laws (because this was in Ohio):
"(a) Vehicular traffic, streetcars, and trackless trolleys facing a steady circular red signal indication, unless entering the intersection to make another movement permitted by another signal indication, shall stop at a clearly marked stop line; but if there is no stop line, traffic shall stop before entering the crosswalk on the near side of the intersection; or if there is no crosswalk, then before entering the intersection; and shall remain stopped until a signal indication to proceed is displayed except as provided in divisions (C)(1), (2), and (3) of this section."
In my opinion, what's wrong with the whole camera ticketing is outsourcing the job to a 3rd party company. Their interest is to get as many 40% ticket payments as at all possible, not to increase safety or work in the interest of the people. Local governments being allowed to outsource public functions is the primary cause of corruption in our country, and seldom if ever serves the public.
If people are not paying attention and speeding through the city just to get somewhere else, fuck 'em, write 'em tickets so they learn to slow down or find a different route.
These speed cameras are there to gather revenue, not slow down traffic. The city has a conflict of interest built in. If they really want to control the speed of traffic there are many more effective means of doing so. Police presence, speed bumps, road design, stop signs, etc. Speed cameras are just a cash grab. Furthermore there is no opportunity to face your accuser, the speed camera cannot make allowances for unusual conditions or circumstances and frankly speed limits are not really supposed to be hard upper limits and NEVER have been treated that way by societal convention or enforcement.
Perhaps I am jaded by all the people speeding down my street rushing to the highway on ramps. 35MPH and not many are doing it.
Then either lobby your governement for additional speed control measures or change the speed limit to something more reasonable. If everyone is ignoring the speed limit, there is a strong chance that it is set unreasonably low. Happens all the time, sometimes on purpose. There is a road near our local airport that has a 45 mph speed limit and by all reasonable measures it should be 55 or 60mph at that location. Instead the town uses it as a well known speed trap and collects a lot of revenue. I've also seen roads that had their speed limit set by local statute but where the actual reasonable speed was somewhat different. There is a road on my way to work where the speed limit is 50mph but unless you are in a high performance car on a dry day, good luck going that fast and remaining on the road in the turns. Conversely I've seen plenty of roads where the speed limit was set to 35 or 45 mph but should have been 5-10mph higher.
I've taken to tossing gravel at them as they race by while waiting to put my kindergartener on her school bus.
Then you are an asshole. You think you have the right to damage property just because you dislike how someone else is behaving? I think the phrase about people in glass houses not throwing stones is particularly apt in this case. If I saw you doing that I'd call the police on you and probably try to get you doing it on film.
Sorry, but the appropriate speed for the road depends on how the road is built, not whether a kindergartner happens to live alongside it.
People automatically tend to drive at a reasonable speed for the road, not the limit. With this in mind, the MUTCD (Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Design, or the big book put out by the Federal Highway Administration that defines the majority the things we see as part of the road system) states that speed limits should be set to an 85th percentile average of how fast people drive anyways. Not all states use the federal MUTCD officially outside of interstate highways, but in general those states' own variant quotes the feds on the main bits. Basically what this means is that by the guidelines that should be used in most areas if the majority of people are speeding on your road it doesn't mean they're in the wrong, it means the speed limit is wrong and needs to be raised.
Just because someone is going fast doesn't mean they're putting others' lives at risk either, get off your high horse.
If you really want people to slow down, look in to traffic calming measures and try to get your responsible government entities interested. The idea is that you rework the road to make it seem less suitable for speed. Narrowing lanes, median islands, tricks with the lines, etc. They cost money, but they're the only way to do it right since they'll actually result in a slowdown 24/7 rather than only when cops are around.
I used to get high on life, but I developed a tolerance. Now I need something stronger.
How is anyone supposed to see stoplights blocks away? Around a curve? Over a hill? In a complicated intersection with turn arrows? You're speaking nonsense that has nothing to do with traffic law or safety and just sounds like old wives' tales being handed down. You should be keeping your eyes on the conditions around you, not on stoplights 2/10 of a mile away.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
School Speed Zones are absurd. I worked as a delivery driver for several years, passing by a number of school zones on a regular basis. Not once can I ever remember seeing a child any where near the road.
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
Maybe 40 years ago lights still worked on a timer dial, these days they are highly automated, and will extend or shorten the length of a green dynamically based on traffic conditions. So there is no such thing as a 'stale' green.
When my mother was learning to drive in England, the instructor told her the first rule of the road was this:
"Everybody else on the road is a bloody idiot."
The problem with your logic is, if somebody rear ends me, it still cost me 500 dollars deductible, trip to the hospital, time off work, etc.etc.
Not to mention, a friend of mine, who's an ex-police officer, has seen people die in rear end accident that were so light they didn't even scratch the paint on the car.
Just because "it's the other guy's fault" is no valid reason to not try to avoid an accident.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
Thanks for your considered response. I think you make a good point indeed, I think there will always be a problem when speed camera companies earnings are related to income, perhaps another metric would help make sure cameras improve public safety rather than generate income. Perhaps a before and after comparison of traffic accidents/ pedestrian fatalities in the areas covered?
I'd agree with you, I'd hope to see revenue declining as more people obeyed the speed limit going past a school where children are walking. And if it doesn't? Does this say that people refuse to slow down when travelling past a school? (would be possibly indicated by repeat offenders) or that there's a lot of passing traffic (single time offenders) and the warning notices aren't well posted (e.g. you come down a fast slope and immediately round a corner there's the school, and there's no distance between the school and the slow down notices?) Have to go and think about the implications of this!
Does that give you x-ray power to see the line through the snow?
Then perhaps fix that by giving those cities mandatory guidelines on how long yellow has to be?
Like 3 sec for a 50 km/h speed limit, 4sec for 60 km/h and so on?
bickerdyke
For example, this is prominently done in Austria (but not in Germany, yes)
What's the concept of yellow light, then? To shock drivers? Wiki says that flashing green is used in Turkey, Austria, Serbia, Croatia, Lithuania and Latvia amongst European countries.
Slippery slope.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
If someone rear-ends you, then that's their fault. 100% of the time.
If someone rearends you while driving it may legally be their fault, but that doesn't change the fact that you get to live with whatever injuries you or your family get out of the deal. If you can't stop safely then it is actually in EVERYONE's best interest that you don't stop... unless of course keeping going is even more dangerous for others. Then you have to make a choice. The only way you can know that and to make good choices is to have a circle of awareness that includes what is going on behind you, to your sides, and in front of you. A sphere of awareness is even better, but most of the time, on the road, a circle will suffice.
I rearended someone myself--going 50mph--because I was looking in my rearview mirror too long while doing a lane change, and they were stopped dead on the highway.
You're obviously speaking from a personal experience here, and I hope everyone was okay, but it sounds like you learned the wrong lesson. The lesson you learned should NOT be that you don't need to know what's going on all around you and that you don't need to use your mirrors other than when changing lanes - rather it should be that you shouldn't focus on any ONE area sufficiently long that you fail to notice important things in another area. Who is "legally" at fault only helps you in the courtroom - not in the morgue and not in the operating room... those are where it counts. And yes, you might end up having to defend yourself from a fine (line/red lights) in order to keep yourself out of the morgue.
My present is the activity I am currently engaged in with the purpose of turning the future into a better past.
In my opinion, the fact that you're using traffic signs designated for pedestrian use supports the statement that there is a problem. Green/Yellow/Red should be enough, but you've noticed that the yellow duration is sometimes not long enough and searched for other stimulus to help you tell when the light was going to change. Over time (or perhaps immediately if your area has crosswalks with countdown timers), you figured out that the crosswalk light has a correlation to the light changing. You're right, of course, but you shouldn't need to do that.
That said, 4.5 seconds is pretty long for a 40mph road. It was probably already lengthened specifically to combat people running the light coming down the hill. Typically 5.5 seconds is the upper bound on the yellow light duration. They may have also lengthened the clear duration in which no lights are green in order to prevent people from getting t-boned by people who can't stop in time.
In any case, he specifically mentioned the case that's the problem. Semi trucks coming down the hill can't stop in time. Bringing a loaded semi down from even 40mph takes a nice chunk of time, and if the light is at the bottom of the hill that distance is increased dramatically.
The traffic light is part of the conditions. If you are going fast enough that if the light changed yellow you would have no safe option but to run the red then you are driving too fast for the conditions.
And yes, some places have yellows so short that they make the conditions equivalent to driving on ice at all times. They are making a decision to decrease safety in order to raise revenue - but the cause of bad conditions is irrelevant to having to drive to suit those conditions.
And yes, you can't know the timings of every traffic light you might drive through, just like you can't know what is on the other side of the blind corner or just over a blind crest. You either drive so that you can safely handle a stopped car just over the hill or a fast changing traffic light, or you sacrifice some safety to get somewhere faster.
Oh come on!
You see the light going to yellow.
At that moment you also know the speed of your vehicle and you can estimate the distance to the intersection. If you can safely break to a halt at the intersection, you brake.
Yellow means "break immedeatly if possible" and not "rush and try to make it before red"
bickerdyke
Likely the town was there before the highway that drove up their traffic volume was built.
Point the first: the town can influence where the highway runs. They generally choose to have the thing run right through the middle of town. Point the second: it's called progress. Your town will change. When it changes to the point that you don't want to be in the part that changed, you move, and let someone who wants to be there move in. Don't complain because civilization reached you, that's what it does.
If people are not paying attention and speeding through the city just to get somewhere else, fuck 'em, write 'em tickets so they learn to slow down or find a different route.
If you don't want to be part of civilization, move into the wilderness and don your hair shirt. Enjoy the shitty internet access you will get there.
Perhaps I am jaded by all the people speeding down my street rushing to the highway on ramps. 35MPH and not many are doing it. I've taken to tossing gravel at them as they race by while waiting to put my kindergartener on her school bus.
Are you a troll, or just a piece of shit? Do your job, and keep your child out of the street. Personally, even as a child I could keep myself out of the street — yes, from kindergarten age. Perhaps you should step up the parenting.
People live on these streets and their lives are just as important as the one you have living in your mcmansion on a cul-de-sac.
Let's say 200 people live on the street. How many drivers can that street carry in a day? If you didn't want through traffic, you should have lived on a cul-de-sac. By moving onto a through street you have signified that you want to eventually live on a major thoroughfare. You want the rest of the world to slow down to accomodate your bad decisions.
Perhaps they ought to leave a little earlier for work in the morning
Perhaps you ought to live in a cave.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Flashing Green doesn't mean what you say in Canada. Here if the green is flashing it means that your direction of travel is allowed to go, while oncoming trafic is still stopped. It is often used before a full green at an intersection to clear out people making Left hand turns where they would cross the lane of oncoming traffic. So if I saw a flashing green in europe and the rules are like you say, then I would probably cause a helluva an accident.
The rock, the vulture, and the chain
What I really would like to see in the US is the introduction of flashing green. In xUSSR countries and in lots of European countries, green traffic light starts flashing about 5-10 seconds before the yellow light.
We do.
But in North America the meaning of flashing green is that you can go (as if you have a green light), but oncoming traffic still has a red light, so you can turn left knowing that oncoming traffic must stop.
I have seen some green lights here with a countdown indicating how long before the green changes color.
Further, most people need to be reminded that at a yellow light, you are supposed to STOP unless you can't stop safely.
Generally speaking speedometers are accurate to +/-10%. In the US they can have a variation of +/- 5mph at 50mph. This means that at 60mph you could be as much as 3mph high or low. Factors such as tread depth, tire pressure and other variations cannot be controlled by the manufacturer and can cause a variation of 1-2% easily. Interestingly lower priced cars tend to have more accurate speedometers than higher priced cars and speedometers are usually wrong by a bit over 1mph. By international agreement the indicated speed should never be lower than the actual speed. This makes sense since going slower than you think you are is generally a safer situation for most people most times.
Speed Traps are common everywhere; cameras arfe just a low-cost way to implement them with hadly any fuss...
http://www.speedtrap.org/
What part of "don't stop across or past the line" is so hard to understand? If you're not sure it's clear then don't pull out in the first place. That's the whole point of the lines - so you stop a safe distance back, and when you start moving the people behind you can reasonably expect you to keep moving.
That's not how it works. When there is a limit line, you are required to stop behind it. But when a right on red is permitted, you not only may but indeed are required to pull up as far as you need in order to see, with the proviso that you are not permitted to create a hazardous condition. Where this would cause a hazard, generally right on red is prohibited and the driven given notice via a sign. This is why some states simply don't permit it at all; they assume their citizens are incapable of making intelligent decisions about right on red in their environment. Whether or not they are correct is a separate discussion.
Don't break the law, and you'll never need to challenge a ticket or worry about whose mercy you are at.
That is either ignorance or prevarication of the highest order.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
So you think overweight vehicles should all drive proportionally slower? Let's do that with tractor trailers going 30 MPH on an interstate. Let me know how you like it.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
I don't know of any states that regulate the yellow light duration. Most areas set the yellow light duration based on the speed limit on the street. Some places that are a little more concerned with safety will set it based on the actual average speed of traffic on the road. Some places that are more concerned with revenue than safety will set up red light cameras and dramatically reduce the yellow light duration (usually to the 1s you mentioned, or less), actually causing more people to run the red light.
Exactly. My drivers training included not just looking at the green light but also glancing at the "walk/don't walk sign" once it came into view. If you still had the solid white walk sign you knew the green would stay long enough for you. If "don't walk" was already flashing, the light was a 'stale green' meaning it was just about to turn yellow and you should prepare to stop... NOT GUN THE ENGINE through the forthcoming yellow.
Weight transfer of their loads.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
This isn't a sport, there's no reason the line should be regarded as magical just because the law says so.
While I will freely admit that there are numerous laws which were created specifically to seek revenue, laws about limit lines and lane marker lines are not "magical" or created "just because". They are created because as drivers we must be able to depend on other drivers behaving according to some convention, because it takes time to cause vehicles to gain or lose velocity and they cannot make abrupt changes of direction. (Well, I have owned some that can, but there are always physics-based limits...)
It is a simple fact that the laws which prohibit driving over certain lines under certain conditions enable us to share the road with a minimum of undesirable interaction. There are all kinds of parallels to be drawn (pun intended) but since we're actually talking about the roads, there is no need to construct an automotive simile.
With that said, if you can clearly see both that there is no problem and that there are no cops around at the same time, then you should be considered qualified to make intelligent decisions, and I am against cameras issuing tickets. There must always be a human making an educated decision involved, or I am not interested.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
What I really would like to see in the US is the introduction of flashing green. In xUSSR countries and in lots of European countries, green traffic light starts flashing about 5-10 seconds before the yellow light.
That's a lot of notice, and that seems like it would increase accidents as people spend the time between when it begins flashing and when it changes either rushing to beat it, or looking for an exit.
I'm so used to it that I'm still shocked by the sudden switches to yellow in the US - you have a split second to decide whether to stop immediately or continue driving and risk running the red light.
If you're not speeding, it's only a problem in cases where the yellow time has been illegally decreased in order to produce traffic camera revenues.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Except for the fact, that circumstances means it is safer for you to speed then to go under the limit, as well it is difficult to drive exactly at the limit. If you go too slow you anger the people behind you, then they will tailgate you. Yes, if they hit you they are responsible, but I would prefer not to get hit at all. So I would normally up my speed past the limit to keep a safe distance away from them.
You cannot make a policy and assume that everyone will play by the rules. And a strict ticket system where there isn't a person as a witness to determine if there was a good reason to break the rule, then it isn't justice, it is just tax collection.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The mere fact that they issued 3 times as many tickets as there are people in the town is an indication that something is wrong here
Not really. Most of the vehicles were likely people from out of town. 18,000 vehicles go through it every day - it's in between two highly populated areas.
Beetle B.
Yay ..More Red light and speeding cameras with all that new money, which creates more money, which we will then use for more Red light and speeding cameras ....And it keeps going on!
~~"Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong." ~~Dennis Miller
They don't teach slowing down for "stale" greens anymore?
Most drivers in the USA never receive any formal education whatsoever. They get some training from a friend or relative, they get a paper booklet which is very lame and tells you very little, they take a very pathetic driving test and an even more pathetic multiple-guess written test, and they are issued a driver's license.
With that said, you don't slow down for green lights. That's an asshole move. People who do that take a gigantic shit on traffic patterns, not least by interfering with the expectations of the other drivers.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You break the rules, you get a fine. Simple. It's not like the rules are obscure or hard to remember, there are signs and lines everywhere they apply.
If you have 8000 fines per month in a town of 2500, that's taxation and graft, not law enforcement.
I wonder why they don't just use the camera to make the light stay yellow longer when someone is still in the intersection. That would reduce collisions from both directions. That is a better use of the technology than arbitrarily handing out fines.
In my opinion, what's wrong with the whole camera ticketing is outsourcing the job to a 3rd party company. Their interest is to get as many 40% ticket payments as at all possible, not to increase safety or work in the interest of the people. Local governments being allowed to outsource public functions is the primary cause of corruption in our country, and seldom if ever serves the public.
THIS is the key here. Although the whole "surveillance state" is a close second...
Whenever Ive gotten a cam ticket, they put what appears to be sufficient information to deduce from the image whether you were actually speeding-- the lines on the road appear in both images, the images are timestamped, and the distance between lines is given.
Of course it is possible that the clock resolution is off in the cameras, but im going to go out on a limb and say that its more likely that there were 6000 instances of speeding, and that the reality is that people dont like the current speed limits but cant be bothered to change the law.
I do think the judge is right that there are some fundamental problems with a machine enforcing the law and acting as a de facto judge / jury. Sure, you can appeal, but the system is heavily weighted against you.
Sounds to me like a problem with the city calibrates the light, not the city's obligation to enforce traffic safety rules. If this is truly the case, the judge should order the lights to be recalibrated.
The point is moot regardless. TFA makes it sound like these are speeding cams, not red light cams. If there is some extenuating circumstance that causes you to speed, you just keep on speeding without getting pulled over, apparently it is urgent. But later on, you need to march yourself down to the court house and explain it to the court. Sounds like a win-win.
That would be great and all, but with the "presumption of innocence" the Application of this principle is a legal right in a criminal trial. These are all considered civil cases..Not criminal..Does not apply
~~"Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong." ~~Dennis Miller
You say drivers heaven but link to what seems to be a very long, straight, road.
Why would you need a Lotus for this?
Red one direction doesn't automatically mean green in another.
At the this intersection, sounds like a red both ways for a few seconds after the yellow-to-red switchover is in order.
If someone rear-ends you, then that's their fault. 100% of the time.
A mediocre driver avoids accidents that aren't their fault.
A good driver avoids accidents.
flashing green in Canada is an advanced turn. Synonymous with a left green arrow.
Let me get this straight, you are able to figure out how fast to go / when to break so as to avoid sliding into the intersection, but somehow you cant figure out how to break early enough so as not to cross that line?
Just so you know, cops can and will ticket you for crossing that white line; its not just cameras. And just so you know, most cameras (at least around here) are set so as to avoid false positives -- red light cameras wont trigger till you really enter the intersection, speed cameras wont trigger till 11mph over, etc. If youre getting caught by them, you werent just "kind of" breaking the rules.
Funny, I remember it and I got my license less than 10 years ago. It was one of those safety things that most people tried to ignore. Like keeping your hands at 9 & 3 and that you should stop if you can safely when the light is yellow instead of speeding through it.
In CA, state law defines minimum times for yellow based on the speed limit in force. Some cities have fallen foul of this and had to refund tickets when it was discovered that the length of the yellow light was too short.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Yeah, because I'm sure that we don't have highway planners here in the USA. And I'm sure that proper planning requires a huge, overreaching monolithic government. It must be due to the republican form of government that when these older highways were designed that not every considering was made for safety and growth. Protip: local, state, AND federal government are responsible for roads here. It's not "private money".
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
You're the only one. The rest of us romp on the gas when we see the crosswalk start to blink.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Last week I had mod points, where was this topic then? +1000 Insightful.
I agree with you that the solution, as a citizen, is to simply not break the law. But there is, of course, the larger question: at what point do we, as a society, say, "enough is enough" with the surveillance?
This space intentionally left blank.
That is still a problem, in an intersection with no sidewalks the stop line is typically before the intersection with no context as to where to stop the correct position would be just before the intersection but the stop lines could be behind that, and the person ticked for running the light.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
I think someone got hit by the whaaaaaaaaaabulance with too many speeding tickets. Lighten up jerkoff.
If someone rear-ends you, then that's their fault. 100% of the time.
This may have held true at some point, but it doesn't any more, and the most common exception is in cases of panic braking. The most common case of this is when the lead car slams on the brakes as soon as a light changes yellow instead of proceeding safely through the intersection. In many states, Ohio included, you're required by law to proceed through a yellow light if stopping would create an unsafe condition for the car behind you. The lead car is also commonly found at fault in cases where they slam on the brakes to shake a tailgater, instigating an accident (the trailing car is cited for tailgating).
Your suggestion regarding the rearview mirror is exactly the opposite of what any driving agency will tell you. You need to be aware of your surroundings, and that involves constantly checking your mirrors. Not staring at them, but checking them. I understand where you're coming from because staring in your mirror made you cause a major accident, but suggesting people never check their mirrors is just bad advice. If you're periodically checking your mirrors and know where the cars around you are, while you'll still need to check them you won't need to stare at them to be sure it's safe to change lanes.
How? The law says don't cross the white line if the light is red
Have you ever actually driven a car? How many times have you pulled up to an intersection and had the white line so far back and obstructions such as hedges and other crap blocking your view from the corner so that in order to effectively see around the corner in order to proceed with a turn, you can not possibly be behind the line?
In a perfect world, getting a ticket for 1 inch over would be okay. But this isn't a perfect world and your retarded point utterly fails because of that fact.
In the real world, stopping 'before the white line' means you're likely never going to trigger the light's sensor so that it changes and doing so is unsafe from a practical perspective.
The next problem is that the camera's are usually fining people that weren't actually breaking the law.
LOOK AT THE NUMBERS, they got 3 times as many tickets as they have people that live there ... You REALLY think EVERYONE IN THE TOWN GOT 3 TICKETS EACH LEGITIMATELY?
Are you stupid?
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" - Emerson
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
That may indeed be a problem, but people not planning to stop + no safety margin is ALSO a problem. In the real world, it is possible that both the drivers AND the city need to improve, but from what I've seen the far bigger need is on the driver's side.
The simple fact is that all constitutional issues aside, drivers want to do what they want to do, and they dont want a ticket for it. Sometimes that involves thinking they have the right to continue going thru a red left turn signal 3-4 cars after it has gone red, simply because they think its too short (it is, but still). Sometimes that involves metrobusses blocking an intersection because theyve determined that its the only way they're getting thru rush hour. Millions of excuses can be made, but at the end of the day if people werent so susceptible to awful driving that breaks the law and causes traffic jams, the traffic cameras wouldnt be worth installing and we wouldnt be having this discussion.
I live in Cincinnati and Elmwood Place is a neighborhood that is geographically encompassed by Cincinnati. It is a relatively old "neighborhood" that operates its own police and fire services and has not been annexed by the city. The two biggest gripes by those caught are on the speed trap is 1) The owner of the car is getting issued a fine and points on their license when they weren't the ones driving the car, i.e. a family member (even friend) was driving the car. 2) Not adequate enough notice and time was given to let drivers know that speed cameras were going up in the first place 3) The cameras are catching people going less than 5 miles an hour over the speed limit, and in some cases only 1 mile over (essentially there is not enough leeway). What isn't helping this case that I think reporters are failing to mention is something that happened in another nearby town called Arlington Heights. This village has a small population and was a notorious speed trap on the interstate (I-75). At one point, a driver was killed as a result of a wreck that occurred while an officer was issuing a ticket. Furthermore, it has been discovered that the mayor and other officials of this village will pocketing money from the tickets issued. When the police chief said there was something fishy going on, he was given the run-around and eventually resigned his position. I think folks around here are concerned something similar might be happening.
as amusing as this thread is, none of you have even read the summary.
it's about Speeding Ticket Camera, not Stoplight Cameras.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
You take your foot off of the gas as you approach an intersection and start deciding ahead of time whether you will stop or proceed if the light changes. Bonus points, it allows you to be prepared if someone does something really stupid like trying to run the light crossways to you.
Problem solved.
I have driven heavy trucks with dificult loads and your are full of a lot of the stuff I used to haul. You can manage your speed.
"... I still need to maintain traffic speed." You are obviously not competent to drive a loaded horse trailer. YOU have to slow down and drive more carefully. You are an accident (horrible accident waiting to happen.
Won't someone think of the horses!
No, the problem is you were going too fast for conditions.
The light doesn't change, the weather and your driving do. You're trying to argue that your inability to cope with driving conditions WHILE knowingly running lights that you are aware of their illegal yellow length (I'm assuming its illegal, I don't know anywhere in the US that doesn't mandate by law, 5 second yellows, anything else is probably not actually legal in and of itself by your own local and state laws.
Why don't you argue that its okay to speed if someone is tailgating you while you're at it.
Yes, even if it was a 2 second yell, if you know it, and don't adjust accordingly, YOU are the problem.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Then you have nothing to worry about because your license plate will be buried in someone's radiator and not visible to the camera ;)
What part of "don't stop across or past the line" is so hard to understand? If you're not sure it's clear then don't pull out in the first place. That's the whole point of the lines - so you stop a safe distance back, and when you start moving the people behind you can reasonably expect you to keep moving.
Actually, most states that allow right turns on red require you to initially stop behind the white line. The law then allows you to pull over the line and stop again in order to see into the intersection and determine if it's safe to turn. When it's safe, you may proceed with your turn. Red light cameras even check for this behavior.
It sounds like you should stop expecting that once people start moving that they will continue to do so.
The RULE says and GODDAMMIT if you broke the RULE you deserved to be fined, no matter if there's a victim or not! The inherent authoritarianism of leftist-progressives always comes out as soon as they are handed the reigns.
These "speed cameras" have nothing at all to do with safety. They don't even have that much to do with speeding. 5 MPH over is enough to get a citation where as most PO will let you keep on keeping on.
I received one of these "tickets" roughly a month ago with a scary looking letter in the mail addressed to the address where the vehicle was registered. The stated fine is less than the fine for speeding if one were to actually be pulled over. The fine is right at the point where it's easier to pay, and cheaper than contesting it to avoid the hassle. In addition, the requirement is that you have to pay the fine to the city before you're allowed to contest it which then means you have to appear (which means a day off of work essentially doubling the fine).
The letter states in the most obfuscated way possible that it's a civil thing, it won't be reported to your insurance, it won't add points to your license, in fact, you don't even have to pay it. However, if you don't pay it, the city reserves the right to tow the vehicle at owner expense until payment is made.
So, if I'm driving someone elses car, they could get this ticket in the mail and be expected to pay unless they can prove it was not them driving. They then are at risk of having their car towed for my negligence as a driver.
On top of all that, a certain percentage of the fine gets diverted from the city to the company that maintains the camera system itself and the city ends up getting a very miniscule amount of the overall fine.
tl;dr Assumption that driver is registered owner of car. Assumption is guilty. Assumption that driver will pay reduced "speed camera" fine to avoid missing work. Camera company gets most of the money, not the city. Scam indeed.
Just a note, in Ohio, the school zone speed limit is only during certain hours and when activity is present outside of those hours unless the speed limit is marked with a normal speed limit sign. The law actually says "during school recess and while children are going to or leaving school during the opening or closing hours"
The problem here is that if you are not familiar with the specific school in question, those times can vary from district to district and on certain cases day to day (delays in opening school because of weather, half days, recess times, and so on). Sometimes you will not know you are in one of those restricted times until you have already entered the school zone and are capable of observing the activities associated with them. You also have the question of whether these cams were in place and ticketing people outside of those hours without the proper speed limit signs indicating that the speed is 20 mph all the time. I can easily see entrapment- or a scam happening here.
Then the guy behind you would get a ticket for the accident he just caused more than likely, and they wouldn't likely be able to read the license plate on your car from behind his as he's pushing you.
Seriously, you fail at making up theoretical situations to justify your shitty driving.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
100% False.
The traffic engineer who designed the intersection (or in charge of updating the light timing) sets the length of all the light colors based on traffic flow data and minimum safety standards as set by AASHTO (the revelent governing body).
Anyone who set the length based on a cities desire for revenue would lose his engineering license.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Maybe you should go back to driving school. You're supposed to adapt your driving style to road conditions! If you can't break for a red light, you're doing something wrong, either by speeding or by not paying attention.
one could make the argument is the driver's responsibilty to ensure his speedo is accurate.
much like it's his responsibilty to ensure the other devices and safety features of the car are in working order.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Christ on a crutch, what a bunch of wimpy responses; and the higher the UUIDs get, the more namby-pamby the reasoning seems to get.
"If you're not speeding then ...."
"Speed kills...."
"Cops have every right to use available tech to catch the bad guys..."
Oh, just FOAD already!.
You're not even addressing the bigger issue, which is not public safety; but numbers concocted to justify greater surveliance and enforcement powers.
Speeding alone does not kill; repeat speed does not kill. Loss of control kills. Bad windshield wipers, old age, being under some influence or other, bad tempers, texting. Being distracted and not paying attention, that's what causes injury or death.
Speed limits are also arbitrary, a posted limit in New England is for 'winter' safe speeds, the lowest possible rate. And 25mph at 3PM is totally different than 25mph at 3AM. Speed limits are meaningless for anyone with an ounce of common sense; they are at best recommendations and would be better heeded if they just said 'please'
You sissies! You want a nanny state that 'thinks of the children' because you are crappy parents; to protect your right to graze in front of the tube. Succumbing to cry-babies like you who never considered the blowback of your desires vreating a State that treats everyone like children.
Protect your own F'in selves! Be present! Be aware of what's around you; Try defensive driving. Bec if you are in ANY kind of accident, it's partially your fault. You'd have seen it comming if you were more alert and attentive to what's around you. Probably spare yourself getting hit, or mugged, or worse.
I'm seriously sick of talking this shit that gives LEA ever more power just to cover your lazy, ignorant, asses. When the better approach is focusing on enforcing outcomes only! If you cause an accident - you lose your license, period. You hurt somebody, you pay for their loss and serve some time. Make the punishment force you to think twice before getting behind the wheel or whipping our your cell.
You know, being held accountable for your actions that actually cause harm.
My 20yr old (240K miles) 300z has not a dent or scratch on it. But i have plenty of speeding tickets. Its the cost of driving, being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Passing the troop in wait behing some sign when my headlites were the only ones on the highway.
Or and landing in the speed trap where Cops get to show they're "on the job" and filling their quotas. They could have pulled the car in front of or behind me over, no difference.
A few more 'points' in a 'no-fault' insurance racket, plea-bargaining, paying fines while denying guilt; this does not serve society. It serves PHB's, bureaucrats and their masters. Left to their own devices, we're getting cars that control us on streets that control cars in cities whose machines control the streets.
No doubt, you will call this 'living'. A civilization of idiots, a parliment of crows.
Thought-crime and skynet and drones, oh my.
Welcome to the future, we got what we deserved.
P.S. Get off my lawn
resist propaganda
While of course they do.
Its also retardedly easy to show that the yellow light is not the standard 5 seconds if this is actually a problem. You could also easily report it to so ... your local news channel who would have the problem cleared up in a day or two.
Instead you choose to pretend its an unresolvable issue that you can use as an excuse to violate the law.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
You're talking about corner cases. There are lights where it may literally be impossible to get thru in under an hour without breaking some law because of gridlock or ridiculously short lights. I have seen that once im my time in the DC metro area. I have seen two other lights which have sufficiently short greens that you need to floor it as soon as the light goes green, as it is literally a 10 second green and will go yellow when you are halfway across the intersection.
The rest of the thousands of lights I've seen are varying degrees of good / bad, but have not seen any of these lights where its not possible to know what to do. If it turns yellow, you stop as quick as possible. If you cant do that because you will skid, then you were going too fast. Yes, in ice this may mean that you approach the intersection @ 25 mph, and leave a few feet to start accelerating before the light turns green. Yes, its a little more work than simply trying to play the jackrabbit at every intersection.
Car speedometers are accurate enough these days that there is no need for any tolerance.
They demonstrably are not that accurate. Your speedometer can vary by up to 2% simply due to tire pressure and tread depth variations. Most are fairly close but if the difference between getting a ticket or not is whether I was 3kph or 4kph over the limit then they are not accurate enough to be certain.
If you're driving so fast towards a traffic light that you can't stop in twenty yards without screeching the tires, you're doing it wrong, yes.
It takes the average person about 70 feet to notice a light change and stop from 30 MPH. I don't really consider that to be very fast.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
The company who installed and managed the camers was receiving 40% of the ticket revenue (according to TFA). Surely they had no interest in the cameras being overzlealous...
Nope. When we had federal speed limits, the limit was 55 EVERYWHERE.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
I'd rather people watched the road than have their eyes locked on the speedo in case they went a few inconsequential ticks over.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Yellow light length is almost universally defined BY LAW as 5 seconds.
Cities shortening the time are probably breaking other state laws by doing so.
There is a solution to the actual problem you're referencing that should be used regardless of how you get the ticket, camera or officer.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
I hate those towns. They are built as speed traps
I had always understood speed trap to mean changing the speed limit drastically with no warning / at the bottom of the hill in an attempt to generate revenue.
Theres no mention that the speed limit even changes here. "The speed limit is lower than I want to drive" does not constitute a speed trap. Maybe you should stop speeding.
What's that have to do with it? 55 was simply a maximum speed limit; municipalities were free to set limits below that.
These little towns have always set limits lower than 55 on the state/federal highways going through them, so the 55 federal limit doesn't really affect them at all.
Then sue them for that. Don't blame a technical system for organizational and legislational failure. You know, like /. always (rightly) tells us to do whenever there is a story about copyright infringement and nuclear disasters?
No, they are still trying to focus on teaching them not to fucking text while driving.
You think they've worked their way up to 'paying attention to the world outside the car'? Hahahaha.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
My favorites are the "walk" signs that count down, with the light turning yellow when they reach zero. These are becoming more common in urban areas around here. Unfortunately, the safety mavens can't resist making the count reach zero a few seconds before the yellow in some places, which totally negates the advantage of the counter.
Have you read my blog lately?
Here in Soviet California, we pay $446 for stop light camera violations.
In Texas, an officer has to review red light (and I presume speed cameras as well) before the civil fine is sent.
So what exactly are 'people like him'?
They taught that shit in my drivers ed class in the early 90s ... and I went to school in freaking central Florida, one of the worst.
What fucking shit hole did you live in that didn't think far enough ahead to teach defensive driving habits out of the box? Please tell me so I can avoid that place.
You know you live in a shit hole when central Florida does things better than you do.
Pay attention to the world around, maybe you wouldn't come off as such an arrogant prick.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Parking enforcement does the same thing, and it can be ridiculously difficult to appeal even blatantly false tickets-- if the cop claims you were parked in front of a hydrant, how can you possibly disprove him?
Most drivers know that you should start stopping when the green light starts flashing. Even with all the crazy Russian driving (see Youtube) I've only seen people running red lights there maybe one or two times a _year_. In US I'm seeing people running red lights every week or so.
Come to think about it, US traffic lights have delays before the green signal for cross traffic lights on exactly because of this. In Russia the cross-traffic green signal turns on immediately, saving at least a few seconds.
It IS a problem. BTW, I'm not insisting on using flashing green - any other type of indication is fine.
In Paraguay (South America), some time ago, cameras were installed to monitor traffic light violations, but shortly afterwards their use for this purpose was declared unconstitutional. The cameras are still there, and are sometimes used to collect evidence of other incidents like street violence and so on, but nobody will ever get billed for crossing a red light because of them.
I drive a lot in Germany, it is a joy to drive there because there are no speed traps, as a consequence people obey the law _more_ because the traffic signs mean something, you see a sign for 100kph then you go 100 because the road or conditions will not allow that speed (god help you if you get a ticket because you really fucked up).
I've never been in a car in Germany where the (German) driver drove 100kph in the 100kph zone. Ever. Typically, "100kph" means "120kph" at a minimum, unless there's a speed camera nearby, in which case they slow down just to pass the camera, then speed back up.
One thing I will say is that they NEVER, EVER speed through a residential area. When the 50 or 30kph signs show up, they WILL honor them (within 10% at any rate), and I do find that a refreshing change from the US where people by and large just don't give a fuck.. I used to live across the street from a school, and the road ended in a T-intersection (a concrete wall, to be precise) and it never ceased to amaze me how fast people would drive past my house. I lived on one corner, the T-intersection was at the other corner, the block was about 200 yards long, and tires would SCREECH at both ends.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
Generally speaking, calibration must be done by someone using certified calibrated equipment. If there's any break in the chain, say if the company can't produce records that the calibration equipment wasn't calibrated at the proper interval, then they have no proof of an actual violation. You can require that the company show proof of calibration in court.
I've never gotten one of these tickets or been in a wreck related to them, but I would -- and it ought to be a doozy of a suit, too. Folks ought to get a class action together, etc.
Bicycles and pedestrians usually don't have license plates, prominently displayed, for the cameras.
Here in Switzerland when they build highways they actually think about on ramps, and off ramps. Heck they do so in Germany, and France and so on. They realize that if you create a highway with an on ramp and off ramp there will be quite a bit of traffic that will go through the town.
Oh wait, this is the United States, the land of the free, small government and where we can't invest in infrastructure! Seriously, these days when I travel to Canada and the States what I see is how urban sprawl is killing the countries.
Nothing better than a "we do things better over here" comment. Your entire nation is about the size of Tennessee; which is 34th in land area here. You have the population of New York City, but your major metropolitan areas were built 400 years earlier. Pretty amazing what you can do when you only have 8,000,000 people to please, 400 years of planning and no choices when it comes to where to build; compared to 300,000,000 people, years of explosive growth, and seemingly endless land options.
Switzerland and the United States are hardly comparable in this regard. If you want to brag about your awesome transportation infrastructure, be proud. Brag. Tell us how awesome it is. But don't say shit you know nothing about, like how things are planned, or supposedly not planned, here.
You're driving 35-40mph and you're 30-50 meters away from intersection. Then the yellow light turns on and you have to decide immediately - your travel path is about 2 seconds which MIGHT cause you to run the red light. But you also must brake pretty hard to stop at this distance.
A lot of people I know in this cases put the pedal to the metal. I'm personally more cautious and I almost always prefer to brake. So I was rear-ended once _already_ (a minor fender-bender, but still).
I wonder if the judge stopped to think that this is no different than without the cameras. Tickets are a major revenue source for police departments, to the extent that it is not uncommon to hear of stations which have ticket quotas.
There are some very important differences. First is that the accuser in this case is a human who I have a right to face in court should I feel the need. I cannot do that with a camera and a faceless management company. Second, the police officer can make allowances for a situation outside of normal parameters. Sometimes weird things happen. Third, the effectiveness of speed cameras as a safety measure is very much in doubt. Their effectiveness as a revenue generation tool is not in any doubt. Speed cameras are almost always used primarily as a revenue source and have no other purpose than to fine speeders. If no one speeds then they make no economic sense. Police officers have numerous other functions and make sense whether or not people speed.
Finally, and probably most important, I have a HUGE problem with governments depending on people breaking the law as a means of funding regardless of the means used. Any revenue gathered from fining speeders should not be accessible to fund government operations. There should be NO direct financial incentive for governments to benefit from people breaking the law. If it is about safety then it should only be about safety and revenue should not need to play into it.
On general principle, if we could trust authorities, red light cameras are a really good idea.
Our government is premised on the idea that our trust in authorities should be strongly limited. That is why we require warrants, have separation of powers, etc. And I disagree that they are a really good idea. They demonstrably cause more of certain types of accidents (rear end collisions), it is very unclear that they improve public safety, and their primary purpose is to raise revenue for local governments.
If someone rear-ends you, then that's their fault. 100% of the time.
What about an oil patch on the road, a sudden puncture, brake failure, a heart attack - is it still 100% their fault? Sometimes an accident can be nobody's fault.
What is true 100% of the time is that purposely not preventing an accident you could easily prevent, is definitely your fault.
Example: Some idiot overtakes where he shouldn't, doesn't see a car coming the other direction. Driver who's being overtaken DOES see the oncoming car, but chooses not to slow down to let the overtaking car back in to safety - because "it's the other guys own fault". Yes, the guy overtaking is an asshole for risking his and other people's lives, but the guy being overtaken is also an asshole, and in my opinion culpable, for not taking action to prevent another asshole (and innocent others) getting hurt/killed.
You're leaving the city out of the blame and that's wrong.
The traffic camera company doesn't set the duration of the yellow lights. The city does that. The traffic camera company provides the financial incentive to encourage that encourages the practice, but it's the city's decision to place revenue over driver safety that ends up shortening the yellow lights.
Got a toll ticket image from Florida, for a car that has NEVER been south of Georgia.
They also scam the databases and swap them state to state.
It was dropped when I raised a big stink.
Florida State Atty General never responded...
Who's the criminals ?
jr
I seen those in New Jersey near college campuses. When pedestrians break an electronic beam on the side of the cross walk, flashing lights in the road and on signs go off for a few seconds while they cross. Ohio has some similar things with nothing embedded in the roads that I know of but I've seen them around some larger cities where there isn't a traffic light.
The first time you drive up on one of the flashing cross walks in NJ, you will think you are entering a crash scene or something, they are all over the road and freak you out until you notice what is going on.
There's an argument to be made that fine revenue should be used to defray the costs of parking and traffic enforcement.
I already pay taxes to do that. I have a HUGE problem with the idea of government depending on people breaking laws to fund their operations. It is essentially an indirect form of graft.
How is this insightful? These people obvious have never dealt with snow and ice. It's easy to be going 15MPH and stepping on the brake (/w anti-lock brakes) 75ft from a stop sign, and still slide out into the intersection is you are on an un-treated road, and there is a invisible thin layer of ice forming on the road.
It's also been proved that red light cameras cause more accidents since people freak out over them and drive like idiots around them.
You don't see a problem with the city saying drive this fast, "trust us it is safe to do" by posting the speed limits, then rigging the intersection to where you have to drive slower else pay them a large fine?
And if the yellow has been shortened to one second long on a 45 MPH road, and I end up running a red light because I could not stop safely in one second despite traveling at the posted speed limit, I deserve a ticket?
It's perfectly safe to slam on your brakes if you aren't being tailgated, which is he practice of driving on a road too close to the vehicle in front, at a distance which does not guarantee that stopping to avoid collision is possible. Therefore, slamming on your brakes doesn't cause rear-end collisions--tailgating does.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
You act as though all yellows are set so that human reaction times and the posted speed limit are properly accounted for. This is not always true.
...that this is the reason that these cameras generally take at least two pictures: one of the car after the light has turned red before it has entered the intersection and another of the car in the intersection with the red light still on. Tickets have been successfully appealed and designs changed over red-light cameras that only took a single picture.
The city that collects the fines sets the length of the yellow light. Do you see the problem now?
Yeah, I do see the problem. Greedy city administrators not following the guidelines of the NTSB that should be fined heavily.
They should also be the first ones standing on trial to answer an accidental manslaughter charge due to their recklessness screwing with yellow light times which are based on posted speed limits, not revenue streams.
The only problem I see here is that this is not being addressed legally and normally without some sort of fucking grass roots effort. Seems they only want to be black and white about the law when it's not affecting their revenue.
How long was the light green before you could see it? Or perhaps you were unaware that there are many places where it is not possible to see the light for more than 4 or 5 seconds before passing through it? There are lights which I pass through on a regular basis which cannot be seen for more than 2 or 3 seconds before passing through them I always approach these lights with caution, but I never know how long they have been green. Generally, if the light is green when I first see it, it will be green when I pass through it. If it is yellow, I prepare to stop (usually I will stop, but there are special cases). If it is red when I first see it, I almost always stop (although occasionally it will turn green before I come to a stop).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Drivers should pay attention to the road and the traffic around them, not the duration of lights in the distance.
Traffic lights in the distance are the road. The whole notion of defensive driving is to pay attention to more than just the car immediately in front of you so you can anticipate its behavior, thus preventing problems or the need to respond with lightning reflexes. Keeping track of how long the next light has been green, whether the pedestrian signs and flashing, counting down, or have switched from flashing to steady are part of responsible driving.
Traffic planners arranging for those cues, and for yellow lights of appropriate duration, are are also responsible behaviors, but an irresponsible government does not absolve you of your personal responsibility.
That's what we get when we allow our infrastructure to be "privatized". If something is "private" well then *duh* that means that it's owned by some-one rather than every-one. Big difference.
There is too little information in the links to make an informed opinion.
The only "fact" in the article is that the # of tickets is triple the population. But that is a useless statement for reasoning: it assumes the borders are sealed and begs the question that speeders can't possibly speed more than once.
IMHO: I think speeding cameras are fine, there just needs to be regulation making sure they are routinely calibrated, and there needs to be a clear and FREE path to contesting the ticket. I've received rightly deserved tickets from speedvans; there's no argument (short of life-threatening emergency) for illegal speeding.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Now I finally know why I'm always stuck behind a Camry doing under the speed limit.
Ramps and turns rate their speed limits based upon what it takes to skid the car 10 mph faster than the sign indicates. Now, sure if you have a fancy car with fancy tires... but you still should be informed what the limit is for a lousy car and besides, when your tires are worn out you slide easier.
The other problem is that at least in the USA, drivers are fools and I think if we raised the bar to a reasonable level we'd lose half the drivers on the road. Not that I'm against that but there is no decent mass transportation in the USA so even fools need to drive. The driving exam was a joke. I can't wait until computers can drive, I'll be lobbying my reps to force them into every situation... 3 tickets? you lose the right to drive, the computer takes over! Billions should be put into solving this-- more people die yearly from cars than by terrorism or most diseases and we put money into "solving" those.
Cops don't have quotas, haven't you heard the official statement EVERY time the issue is brought up? (yes, of course they do, but that is off the record.) Having quotas for police tickets is arbitrary... and is a poor indicator of them working; as are the arrest statistics etc.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Or that conditions were not immediately apparent. Black ice especially is poignant here.
The issue with tailgaters is also important, especially in some of the more notorious areas of the country. In some places, NOT doing 20 over the speed limit makes you into a dangerous obstruction to mainstream traffic, and people WILL push your bumper.
Unless you want the US to follow Russia's example with dashboard and bumper cameras to prove innocence for traffic disputes, you shouldn't produce draconian enforcement guidelines established with "Fair weather" and "Ideal conditions" as the standard.
Bicycles can have license plates and in some countries they already do. With more and more people taking bicycles on public roads it's likely only a matter of time until they do. As for people, facial recognition technology is only going to get better and better. There is no reason a system like this could not be used for other street 'crimes' with the same level of efficiency.
No planning, no thought, just greed, and the thought that private money is always right. I am no socialist, nor a commie. BUT sometimes government has a role and sometimes people need to accept that.
And also absolutely no idea what actually happens in a modern road project in the US.
Also, judging small towns in today's world for roads built many years ago before that level of traffic or spral existed is foolish. Might as well judge Japan or Spain or similar poorly for the tiny rat warren's they call streets in the ancient senctions of their cities; it's the same concept.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
actually it should go to the highway fund.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
How? The law says don't cross the white line if the light is red. You cross it when the light is red, you've broken the rules. It's not exactly a massive safety violation but the number of times I've seen people stop with their back wheels on the line and their nose peeking out into the junction so that it blocks pedestrian crossings is infuriating.
If there's no safety issue, and you aren't massively inconvenienced, then it's a money grab, plain and simple. I'm not sure why it's "infuriating" when a car occasionally goes past the line, even if you're a pedestrian. Just go around them (on the non-traffic side). It doesn't even slow you down. I think people are way too prone to indignation when there's the slightest infraction of the rules.
You break the rules, you get a fine. Simple. It's not like the rules are obscure or hard to remember, there are signs and lines everywhere they apply.
TFA makes it sound like they're all speed cameras anyway, not line cameras, and points out that of the two cameras which were operating one was in a school zone where you really do want these things enforced.
What bothers me about the camera in a school zone is that I have no way of knowing if it's enforcing the speed correctly. If it gives me a ticket for going over 25 at, say, 6pm, then it's clearly in the wrong. However, the signs say (at least in my area), "When children are present."* What if it's 3pm, and no kids are around (say it's a holiday)? I just don't trust the camera people to be diligent on the matter, as it's against their interests.
*I hate this wording, incidentally. High school students aren't exactly children, so it causes me some cognitive dissonance when I go past a high school and am forced to go 25.
If you can't convince them, convict them.
Hi from Arizona here. A word on crosswalks, we now have timers or a countdown on a lot of the crosswalk indicators, and many of them are timed at 12, or 24 seconds before going full on. This gives you a good indicator of how long you have before getting the yellow. We also suffered from the yellow lights being shortened from the 3 or 4 seconds to 1 or 1.5.
Now on a side note, we have had most of our cameras removed because of whole causing more trouble then they are worth. Also a citation has to be served to you by a duly appointed officer of the court, i.e a peace officer, or a court bailiff. Now they did try to get around this by sending the citation by certified mail, but those are easy enough to refuse.
At least where I live, red-light cameras are placed on the opposite side of the intersection, meaning they take a picture of your front license.
If you can't convince them, convict them.
Where I live, the crosswalks have lights and also countdown timers, which is really nice for motorists, pedestrians, and bicyclists alike. With that said, this seems to be a sadly uncommon situation.
If you can't convince them, convict them.
Most people do the opposite - when the crosswalk light blinks they increase their speed to get through the intersection so they don't have to stop.
Unless this is totally anecdotal they're counted somewhere, because you state that they increase. If it's recorded, where can the figures be found?
It's never reported when cities talk about the results from red light cameras. Of course the information is recorded, however it has been up to 3rd-party advocacy groups to compile it and try to publicize it.
You are conflating speeding tickets with parking tickets and, hence, deliberately mis-representing the issue in the UK.
They are handled in similar ways (albeit by different departments) - in both cases you are offered a "reduced fine" and are required to decline that offer and accept the full fine if you want to appeal to court.
Obviously, for parking tickets you can appeal to the local council after they have been issued and have them cancelled.
When you receive a parking ticket from the local council, you are given a "reduced fine" offer if you pay within a certain number of days. You can appeal to the council and the council will almost invariably decline the appeal. Your choice now is to either pay the reduced fine, or accept the full fine and make a court appeal. If the court rules against you, you pay the full fine - once you decide to make a court appeal there is no going back to the reduced fine that you were originally offered.
I've done this and it relies on you collecting evidence to show you were not at fault (lines not painted correctly / visible etc...).
This may sound like a silly question, but why is the motorist required to show evidence proving no fault, but the council is not required to show similarly good evidence showing fault? The evidence offered by the councils these days tends to be a photo of the car, rather than a photo of the car _obviously in contravention of the traffic laws_
Also, there are no points on your licence for parking tickets - stop lying about this.
Correct - I never said there were. I was talking about the general case of all traffic offences (which are all handled in a similar "reduced fine unless you make a court appeal" way) and said "possible points", not that you would get points for all offences.
And there are no "courses" for parking offences.
Correct again - you'll not that as above I said "possible" in the general case of traffic offences, not relating to a specific offence.
Much of what you wrote only applies to speeding tickets which are entirely different. You either don't drive or aren't from the UK.
I do drive and am in the UK. I have been sent on a course for doing 33mph in a 30 zone in a line of traffic where everyone was doing the same speed (boy they must've handed out a lot of tickets that day and I almost ended up in court over the fact that I didn't respond to the NIP which the royal mail never delivered); similarly I've had to swallow a parking fine because it just wasn't worth the risk of proving that a council's signage was extremely ambigous. I also know a number of people who have similarly swallowed both speeding and parking fines because it just wasn't worth the risk of going to court, even though they believed they were in the right. If the playing field was levelled and your innocence didn't have to be *absolutely clear cut* for it to be worth going to court then it would be a lot better, but that would of course annoy the enforcers since they would have to actually prove someone's guilt instead of their word being law.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
Perhaps you shouldn't be throwing things at other peoples vehicles. Might spook someone and cause an accident. I'd never hear a small pebble, you'd have to throw some pretty big pebbles, and that just makes it dangerous. Way to be a great role model. Throwing things at other peoples vehicles, especially while in motion is JUST what I want your brats doing.
Maybe you should go back to driving school. You're supposed to adapt your driving style to road conditions! If you can't break for a red light, you're doing something wrong, either by speeding or by not paying attention.
Maybe you should get a grip on reality. People are not perfect, nor are most of them professional drivers. In short, they make mistakes. Even professional drivers make mistakes. In most cases a mistake like this would not be a big deal.
In Canada, a flashing arrow means you can go as opposite traffic is stopped. I've been driving for 20 years across three provinces and have never seen otherwise. Maybe that's a Quebec thing? They seem to do odd stuff there.
A normal flashing green light is pedestrian controlled and can change when a button is pressed by a pedestrian.
It's pretty bad that opposite ends of the country do different things with traffic lights.
Let me say that again: they've shortened the length of the yellow lights, not for safety, but in spite of safety, so they get to write more tickets.
Citation needed
Not trolling, genuinely curious as to where this was discovered, was someone held responsible and what the public fallout was.
"95% of all Slashdot
If someone rear-ends you, then that's their fault. 100% of the time.
Patently false. In most jurisdictions, there are many exceptions to this rule.
In my home state, it's possible for the person in front to be held accountable for 100% of the damages - in other words, it's the fault of the person in front. In a great many cases, the person in front is held partially liable, and is responsible for paying some of the damages. Slamming on your brakes for no reason will result in the driver in front being fined for reckless driving, public endangerment, and even criminal mischief.
Courts (and law) aren't so naive as to think that "being in front" absolves one from all responsibility in an accident.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
There are rules for how long yellow should be depending on the speed limit. If that's not true in Ohio, they should fix that first.
by the way. Was that just an unrelated "but what if" from the "but what if"-universe, or was that the actual reason why the judge ruled it as a scam? If that was the case here, that's no reason to call all traffic surveillance a scam, when misconfiguring the traffic lights was the actual scam.
bickerdyke
Given the tolerances most radar based speed cameras operate at and the fact that 2 cars travelling side by side can totally screw the results anyway. I'm surprised most speeding tickets don't get laughed out of court anyway. Especially given that most of them are simply employed as a revenue stream for local authorities.
This is why in the UK, speeding cameras take 2 photos a know time apart and they are manually checked to ensure you've exceeded the maximum distance between the 2 photos... Of course none of this proves that the speed camera's clock is calibrated correctly.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
Whether I do or not is irrelevant to the statement about possibly having to slow down even though the light is green.
we have a few of those at the hick town I grew up in. A lot of the magnetic sensors are broken as well.
The effect on business is real. Areas with those cameras are areas I intentionaly avoid. I avoid the business in the area too. I make it clear when new cameras go in, that I let the business know I won't be going there anymore as it is motorist unfriiendly.. I won't be back until a welcome mat replaces the driver snares out front.
I got stung by one of the white roadside vans.. Haven't done business there (was a gas stop) in over a decade. I leave it to the merchants to decide if that was a good idea.
The truth shall set you free!
The "we even" makes it sound like you think it's a bad thing, when in reality this is a good thing.
Most of the opponents of speed cameras cite as reasons:
'Trajectcontroles' - speed checks based on average speed over distance - do away with all of these concerns.
However, they do nothing about the quintessential "I was only going 5km/h over!" complaint, which disregards standard margins, overly cautious error corrections, etc. that eventually lead up to actually having gone more than 10km/h over - nor anything about the "but that road should really be 160km/h anyway!" excuse - nor the "$#@&*(@! they caught me!" frustration, which tend to be the underlying reasons for not wanting speed cameras in the first place.
Given the number of speeding/parking tickets I've seen where they can't even read the licence plate (as in miss read and sent ticket to wrong driver) and have issued a ticket with a photo where the description of the vehicle in no way matches that on the photo despite them being printed together (Confising a HGV & a Motor Bike???). I suspect the manual intervention is kind of minimal.
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
Actually, in most states, traffic violations are considered "infractions," which still falls under the criminal court system. However, since the punishment is typically less than six months in jail, you do not usually have the right to a jury trial. The standards of evidence on the other hand still rise to "beyond a reasonable doubt."
That said, it's typically not hard to get to "beyond a reasonable doubt," because officers are trained on how to answer the prosecution's questions in traffic court, because they have to do it so often. A typical example could be:
Prosecutor: How did you know the defendant was speeding?
Officer: I visually esitimated his speed at X, then used my RADAR/LIDAR equipment to get a speed reading of Y (close to X).
Defendant: Are you sure? I wasn't looking at my speedometer, but I know I wasn't speeding!
Officer: I was certified in the use of the equipment on [DATE], and it was last calibrated on [DATE]. Yeah, you were speeding
Judge: Guilty! Next!
Just because it's routine, doesn't mean you don't have rights. Keep in mind that less than 5% of criminal trials actually make it to trial, and those that do nearly always result in conviction.
I know a bit about trucks from a roommate, my current girlfriend (a former bus driver) and an uncle. The problem with slowing a truck down is the enormous weight you are dealing with; if the vehicle is moving fast enough, friction braking is insufficient and in the worst case can fail entirely. Engine braking is important in trucks, and truckers will shift to a lower gear when going downhill or when they need to slow down or stop.
If you ever hear a truck that sounds like a jackhammer, that is a truck that is using a kind of braking system called compression-release braking or a "Jake brake." Basically, this system works by using a piston to compress air as it moves upward, then releasing the compressed air through the exhaust; the energy needed to compress the air comes from the turning crankshaft, and ultimately from the vehicle's forward motion (hence slowing it down). Some places have banned the use of these systems because of the noise pollution, but that is equivalent to telling truckers they cannot use a safety feature of their vehicle.
Palm trees and 8
Ah, the old "Brake to the green then punch through the yellow leaving the driver behind you (usually me) the red." maneuver. Perfect for road-trolls and guaranteed to make blood boil.
How is anyone supposed to see stoplights blocks away?
They're usually mounted up some 10-20' in the air. Makes them much easier to see from a distance.
Around a curve?
Around here, there's slower speed limits, a sign warning about a streetlight around the corner, an earlier blinking sign that turns on when that light goes yellow, or some combination of the three.
Over a hill?
Same as above.
In a complicated intersection with turn arrows?
What about them? You look at the lights.
You're speaking nonsense that has nothing to do with traffic law or safety and just sounds like old wives' tales being handed down. You should be keeping your eyes on the conditions around you, not on stoplights 2/10 of a mile away.
And you sound like you're attempting to justify your own inattention to the road. (oh look, I can throw around ad hominem attacks that do nothing for the argument too.) You should be keeping your eyes on the conditions around you, which _includes_ the next steet lights coming up (which may include: "Yep, next street lights are 2 miles away. They won't affect me for a while, I'll pay attention to them again when I'm closer."), the signage, the traffic around you, the potential for pedestrians to emerge from between parked cars, the fact that it just started raining, and all of the million other things that could go wrong. Don't develop tunnel vision where you can only see 30' in front of you.
Ah, where I live we don't have front license plates, so the cameras are (obviously) all on the entry-side of the intersection.
Sensor lights?
I always love it how slashdotters will spend endless amounts of time debating the practicality of something over exceptions to a perfectly reasonable rule of thumb just because it can't be practiced without having to, oh... I don't know, apply a little bit of common sense?
But of course... this is slashdot.
The city that collects the fines sets the length of the yellow light. Now do you see the problem?
This problem is inherent in every aspect of government, so it's not an argument against automated traffic law enforcement. It's an argument for better governance which is maintained by voting for efficient and honest representatives and by the court system when they get too far out of line (as seems to be the case here).
sounds good - but sometimes people don't see ice. Sometimes traffic backs up in front of you and you end up further in the intersection then you'd like to be. Sometimes there are utility workers working at an intersection temporarily and they flag you to stop when you are already crossing the white line. Sometimes there are lousy road markings and you can't always tell where the white line is.
I guess those are all exotic reasons for getting a ticket when maybe you shouldn't... But the biggest thing I can think of is people often just cross the white line a little, and even if there is a Cop right there, they aren't getting a ticket for human error. There are instances where human error needs to be punished - but this is a fucking annoyance and a scam as the judge said. People sometimes go slightly over the speed limit --- cops wouldn't necessarily just pull you over for that either (unless they were really looking for a reason to pull you over). There are times when human judgment is necessitated so the rules of society (and in this case traffic) isn't overbearing to the point it hinders the public rather then help it. In this case, technology is taking over that judgment and it is overbearing. People can end up with a ticket or two to remind them to follow the rules closer. They can afford to pay for a few mistakes... But if the system becomes rigged to the point were every mistake is now instantly a fine this will go from just being an annoyance to financially burdening the public.. Kudos to the Judge for calling bullshit on this and stopping it - it will get out of hand, and before you know it, something put in with maybe some iota of good intentions will eventually become a norm and there is already enough of government micro managing peoples lives.
Generally speaking, calibration must be done by someone using certified calibrated equipment. If there's any break in the chain, say if the company can't produce records that the calibration equipment wasn't calibrated at the proper interval, then they have no proof of an actual violation. You can require that the company show proof of calibration in court.
And pay the court costs to fight the bogus ticket.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
I have actually gotten a ticket while performing a right turn on red thanks to one of these cameras. Came to a full stop while the light was yellow, after turning red I made my turn. About a month later, ticket in the mail. I wasn't able to contest it. The camera had no idea I turned right, it just assumed I went straight through the light.
Argument or road conditions?
It would still cost any individual more to fight it than to pay it. The Prisoner's Dilemma does not apply, because even if everybody fought every ticket, it would still cost each individual more to fight the ticket than to challenge it. The only difference would be that it would also cost the municipality more than it gained from the tickets.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
The summary above shows that this is a revenue stream for the town outsourced to a company whose revenues depend on how many tickets are given out. No thought of safety involved.
If speed were truly a safety issue then it would make more sense to set governors on cars to limit speed to the ones posted. We will have that with robot cars anyway and starting now would make the transition smoother.
Towns with sudden drops to from 75 to 25 for three blocks would out of luck because slamming on the brakes would not be safe. Towns with limit signs obscured from view could not be upheld either.
Makes more sense to me for small towns to build large loops around rather than ramps/bridges over.
A good driver can pay attention to the traffic around them AND start paying attention to the light that is a few hundred feet in front of them. It shouldn't be a requirement, the yellow should still be long enough for a minimally competent driver, but please don't claim that it is impossible or unsafe to have some feel for the timing of the upcoming light. If you are completely unaware of a light until it turns yellow then you are not even that minimally competent driver.
This is true. Yet often slower traffic needs to use the road. Though it's sometimes annoying, we should all be able to accept this. What stinks is when people drive slow and allow traffic to pile up behind them. Here, if you're doing 10mph or more less than the speed limit and you have three or more vehicles behind you, you are supposed to pull over/off the road. (Almost) No one ever does though.
4.5 second yellow - FHWA recommendation.
Per their formula, 4.5 second yellow would be for a level red light at ~35 mph. Assuming 40 mph, level slope, that the intersection is 40 feet wide(2 vehicle lengths of 20 feet), and using the 'usual' figure everywhere else, you get a recommended yellow of 5.2 seconds. Assuming a 10% slope(pretty steep), it increases to 6.8 seconds. I'll note that even 25 mph gives you a yellow recommendation of about 4 seconds, depending on the width of the intersection.
The formula gives people 1 second to decide whether to stop or continue through, and enough time to either stop at a comfortable speed or clear the intersection. Even if you go with the more aggressive ASHTO handbook 11.2 ft/s stopping speed vs the ITE 10 ft/s only drops the recommended change time to 5.5 seconds. Though if you use the more aggressive stopping speed AND ignore slope you do get 4.5 seconds for the change. Going by how common semis are quoted as being, I tried adding another 10 feet to vehicle length, but that was only .1 seconds additional time.
Playing with the formula, given what's been stated they need to add a second to the change interval.
Just as a note - it's a recommendation for 'change interval', not 'yellow period'. If they implement a 'all red' period, it counts in the formula towards the duration. So they could have a 4.5 second yellow, 1 second all red, totaling 5.5 seconds for a safe intersection. Though it might be unkind to give somebody a red light running ticket if the ass end of their car was still in the intersection when it went all red.
Crosswalks - Don't you have button types in your area? What cross walks there are in my area are all sensor based - they remain red unless somebody hit the button, in which case it'll give a longer green to give the person extra time to cross. So normally no help there.
I don't read AC A human right
I'd love to see your reaction if a driver stopped in the middle of a junction, causing you to have to carefully weave past him.
How is that relevant to what I was saying exactly? Plowing through a light is dangerous. Stopping in a crosswalk or intersection are rude and annoying, but aren't going to kill anyone and shouldn't have the same penalty.
They don't adjust the light timings appropriately for inclement weather.
Quite closely associated to speed traps for profit are prisons for profit. Prison corporations get 'law-and-order' politicians elected through massive donations that are recouped through ever-more laws passed (always based on moral arguments and crafted to target non-whites)... Profit!!
The USA having more of its population percentage-wise locked up than any other country (except Best Korea?) is not an accident; it is a business plan.
Infractions are not automatically criminal. In fact in most states you have to be doing 15 mph over speed limit before it becomes criminal (negligence)
When all the lights are timed the same way, I'll agree with you. Currently, the duration of the yellow light is not standardized, so you'll frequently get people slamming on the breads to avoid completely running the light. So, should they still get a ticked for running it, or being over the line?...I think that's debatable, and shouldn't be judged by a camera. That said, I'm not disagreeing with your point about those who just roll over the line when they could have easily stopped before it.
Just another day in Paradise
I've been doing this for some time now and I'm thinking about a light way before most people do. I have my eye not just on the light, but on opposing traffic as well. I cannot drive too slow for then I become a hazard to others on the road. The answer is not in speed, but in having a system that informs drivers, not punishes them,
There is an intersection along a route I drive with my horses. It is a blind light meaning that be the time I get to see it I do not have the time to react safely if it changing. In this instance I always am slowing down to a point where I can either continue a safe stop (in the case of green to yellow, yellow to red) or accelerate if it seemed a long enough green. I use the term "seems" for when I make the turn and its green I have no clue how long it may have been green. Once, I saw the green started to accelerate, light went to yellow and almost within 5 secs went to red as I just got to the intersection. I had no choice to stop safely so I rolled through praying the whole time opposing traffic would not jump off the line.
Had their been a camera I would has gotten a ticket, but my only other option would have been to try and slam on the brakes, possibly injuring horses. Traffic systems are meant to provide safe flow of traffic through an intersection, not be a means for collecting dollars for a local government. Not all intersections provide that nice long approach and sadly it seems to take accidents to change the mind of city or county planners.
Life is a great ride, the vehicle doesn't matter
It doesn't work that way. A car stops in a way that resembles a constant accelerated mass, so if you are going at 14m/s and stops in 0.9s, you must accelerate at 15.56m/s^2 (about 1.5g!), moving just at^2/2 = 6.3m while everybody without a safety belt is throwed out of the car.
Now, of course, your car won't do that unless the red light also erects a brick wall over the line. (By the way, just hittin an already stopped car won't be enough.)
You can't always see how long they've been green....curves, trees, large vehicles in front of you. This can't be made a requirement.
Just another day in Paradise
We have trigger signals here where that green could theoretically age for 10 minutes or more. Stale green doesn't mean much except on the busy intersections these days.
People like you are why we rebelled against England and why people continued going west afterwards.
Didn't you know? We got rid of the low-level criminals *and* the sanctimonious jackasses in one go. Win win!.... er, not for you though, sorry. (^_^)
When you don't live in the town in question, exactly how are you supposed to influence its governance?
Not to mention, a friend of mine, who's an ex-police officer, has seen people die in rear end accident that were so light they didn't even scratch the paint on the car.
How exactly does that happen? It almost sounds like a police urban legend.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
In most places, there is no requirement, and that's part of the problem with red light cameras.
Just another day in Paradise
I know it's very common to roll a little bit into the intersection, and usually you can without creating any real problem; what you're doing is dispensing with a certain margin of safety you feel you don't need. You're aiming to stop in a safe zone beyond the line, but if for some reason you need a few more feet then you'd end up out of that safe zone. This might happen if someone is tailgating you, or if you are somehow impaired or distracted. Being distracted is a lot more common than people realize because *you usually don't notice you're distracted*.
Responsible driving is largely a matter of acquiring conservative habits; habits that give you a margin of error or a way out in an unexpected situation. In responsible driving you also have to account for the limitations of *other* people using the road, such as the distracted pedestrian who steps out into the intersection because he has the lights in his direction, or the many, many people who don't seem to be able to make a left turn without cutting through the oncoming traffic lane.
Personally, I always aim to stop at the stop line, then I proceed slowly into the intersection until I can see the cross traffic, stopping again if necessary. Still, it's absolutely true that many if not most people have fallen into the habit of aiming five feet or so beyond the stop line, and probably most of them never come to any grief over it. But I think it's worth asking what they actually gain by it. You don't get where you're going significantly faster by cutting off about two seconds (one Mississippi, two Mississippi) per intersection.
Unsafe driving pretty much amounts to developing habits that cut off our options in an unexpected situation, but feel safe; especially habits which when which examined turn out not to do much for us.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Seriously? If it takes you more than five seconds to enter the intersection after the light changes to green then perhaps you should let someone else drive. Either that or your car is unsafe to drive in the conditions you're citing.
Perhaps you are confused that you must completely leave the intersection before the light turns red, but this is not what it means to "run a red light" and you won't get ticketed for the situation here by any reasonable officer or legal red light camera. Even then you would have had 5 seconds of green, plus several seconds of yellow to get through the intersection, which is more than reasonable.
Yes, you should slow down on urban intersections even if the light is green. Do americans learn anything during driving lessons?
Your summary of the situation situation is close. However, in the U.S. when you get a ticket you have two choices. You can plead guilty and pay the fine. Or, you can plead "not guilty" and pay the fine plus and administrative cost. If you do the latter, chances are that when you show up for the court date you will be offered a reduced fine. The biggest thing that gets you is that most traffic violations come with "points" on your license. Accumulate enough points and you lose your license for a period of time. If you challenge the ticket, they will usually offer you a deal which gets rid of those points (unless you were driving outrageously). In most cases if you do not accept the "plea bargain" they offer you, they will schedule another hearing on another date.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
The only difference would be that it would also cost the municipality more than it gained from the tickets.
And so it would stop, so the costs would be short term.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Maybe where you live. Not everywhere.
In some places in the US they have installed countdown timers for the pedestrians. Sometimes this is visible from the road and you can use it to guess green time. It's extremely unlikely that you will lose your green while a parallel crosswalk counter is counting down. It's possible, but not guaranteed that you will lose your green when it hits zero.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Most yellow lights aren't the problem, but then most cities don't use light cams as a revenue source.
did you even read the wiki you linked to? You only need to get to the second sentence to find out that tailgating is only a factor in 1/3rd of rear-end collisions. I'm not saying that all of the other 2/3rds are caused by bad drivers slamming on their brakes and being an unpredictable danger on the road, but certainly some of them are.
Driving a horse trailer is the safety hazard.
You apparently need to decide whether you are going to drive slower than regular traffic so you can stop in a reasonable time and distance - which might cause a hazard for those driving recklessly around you. Or you drive at the speed of other traffic and pray that you can stop before crashing into someone else.
Between those two, I think the reasonable driver would take option of not being the immediate cause of the accident, i.e. the first option.
If you've gotten plenty of speeding tickets, you are NOT driving at a safe speed. Slow down.
Yes. The length of the yellow is only one component of safety. The length between one red light and the other side's green is the other.
Yes, they have more weight transfer due to heavier loads, but the eventual maximum braking force is still reliant on the coefficient of friction...
So this and this, to name a couple, are 100% false? You're confusing what should be with what is.
Yes, and they really help (in NYC, for example). But they are not universally available or visible, it actually takes some time and concentration to find them. Besides, some places now actually try to _conceal_ them from drivers (because of one bullshitt study that suggested that they might increase the rate of accidents).
Yes. If you are going fast enough that if the light changed you wouldn't be able to go through it before it turns red, and you wouldn't be able to stop before the line then you are driving too fast for the current conditions.
Good advice. Unfortunately, I don't know the precise timing of all the 25,000+ traffic lights in my country.
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
Americans (and Canadians) could learn something from the Brits.
The original site seems to be down, but this mirror gets the idea across.......
http://www.redditmirror.cc/cache/websites/www.speedcam.co.uk_adyvb/www.speedcam.co.uk/gatso2.htm
If the yellow is not long enough for a person traveling at the speed limit to stop safely or clear the intersection before it turns red, then the yellow is too short. Are people bad drivers? Sure. But that doesn't change the fact that yellows are often too short.
They don't teach slowing down for "stale" greens anymore?
No. They've found it increases accidents and reduces traffic capacity. The objective is that you continue at full speed until the light changes color and you decide you have enough room to stop, maximizing the throughput.
I don't read AC A human right
Then the folks who run the highways will go to the folks who run the speed traps and say "Moar!"
What's a "front license"?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
>And if you have an excessively long time to break, then you should not be trying to drive at maximum speed anyway
And here's the rub.
In some places in North America there are minimum speed limits. Drive slower than that and you may not use the road at all. In most places in North America slow traffic must pull off the road to let faster traffic pass. If you think it's a great idea for him to drive at 20 mph through the city on 35 mph roads, pulling over every 100 feet to let a car pass, then pulling into traffic, slowly gaining speed to 20 mph, then pulling off the road again, and so on, you've got a way to create gridlock faster than it took you to read this paragraph.
It sounds like you wouldn't mind taking longer to cross the city in your car than a pedestrian would be able to run it, though. The rest of us prefer this person to simply do his best to keep everyone happy and safe and would rather have intelligent intersections and policemen patrolling them that can make intelligent decisions. Lucky for us, you're the only one with your batshit opinion, so we're all still safe from it.
It's from the this and this universe. Didn't read TFA, but it's a problem that has been noted before in numerous places.
No idea, as I'm British. And funnily enough, slowing for a green is considered bad form. You'd be marked down for it during a test.
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
"Plenty" here means about four, and I'm 31. I was driving at a safe speed for all four of those.
Fuck your moralizing -- go sodomize yourself with a cactus coated in habanero sauce, AC.
Great idea. Until the state takes action, though, what can you do? And if they're caught, as they often are, shaving time off the yellows, what are the penalties for the officials who change the timing?
Stop modding this down, guys. "Troll" and "incorrect" are not synonyms. He is expressing a commonly held viewpoint, and we are better off if both his comment and my on-point reply above are visible.
Sorry, but that's what quote tags are for. Visibility of the parent depends on both the type and number of mods, and user settings. Even the order of the discussion depends entirely on user settings, mobile/classic, old/new, oldest/newest/threaded, etc.
There is a 'parent' link (in some views anyway :/ ) that works regardless of moderation level, that's what people have to resort to if you don't quote enough context.
Why are my comments on /. being deleted, whether anonymous or signed? I made one of the first comments on this story, mentioning New Rome and Ohio (my home state) and now it is gone. None of my comments have been defamatory or obscene, and this one wasn't even politically incorrect. Previous comments were, and they were gone real fast.
The owner has no leverage to collect.
Yes. If you are going fast enough that if the light changed you wouldn't be able to go through it before it turns red, and you wouldn't be able to stop before the line then you are driving too fast for the current conditions.
If you are driving too fast for the current conditions then you should slow down. That may involve braking.
Except the timing on stop lights is different in every city, state, block, etc. How can you anticipate this if two blocks down the road the yellow light is 1 second shorter?
>I've taken to tossing gravel at them as they race by while waiting to put my kindergartener on her school bus.
You are a terrible parent and your child should be removed from your care. You realize doing that could cause the driver to end up with a broken windshield, and thus impaired vision, and thus the car will KILL your child?
I'm sure the newspaper will have a field day with the headline "Parent says 'They're speeding' after killing their son/daughter". You might think you'll feel better at night, telling yourself it's their fault that your child is dead. But you will still want to commit suicide. And the rest of the town won't be doing anything to make you feel any differently, because the rest of the town will know you're an idiot that killed their own child and doesn't even realize it, even after the police investigation finds you at fault for the accident and you spend a few weeks in jail for vehicular homicide.
I hope you take my comment seriously and stop endangering your children. Who is right in the courtroom doesn't resurrect your dead child in the morgue.
The 55mph limit was meant to save gas, not lives. It was enacted in the 1970s when OPEC first flexed their muscles and caused an oil crisis. People actually did mostly obey out of a sense of patriotism and a desire to strike back against OPEC. Later, people noticed that highway fatalities had fallen, because apart from all other factors, slower really is safer. Safety proponents embraced the national speed limit, and the primary argument in favor of it changed from economy to safety. Since then of course, cars have become much safer. Handling is better. Also cars are better at muffling road and engine noise. We have decent radial tires that don't fail after only a few miles like the infamous Firestone 500 was apt to do, and we've learned a few things about safer road design. Slower is always safer, but we accept a little more risk for faster speeds.
Tolls of any kind lower road usage. A strictly enforced artificially low speed limit is just a backhanded way of raising tolls, with safety as the excuse. Same deal with red light cameras, especially when they use yellow lights that are too short.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
I've taken to tossing gravel at them as they race by while waiting to put my kindergartener on her school bus.
And while we are on the subject of disproportionate response... I hope one of those cars you throw gravel at loses control and kills your kindergartener.
They did the same thing here. Put in a new roundabout, accidents skyrocketed (poorly designed roundabout). Then stopped counting those accidents because they did not actually occur IN it. I guess 5 feet away doesnt really count now does it. They are now trumpeting their great success and planning an ELEVATED roundabout at another intersection. I cant wait. /sarc
In all honesty, I'd be quite happy to see cyclists being given fines around where I am. In Oxford (apparently one of the great centres of learning, where they can't pronounce Magdalene properly) a huge percentage of the cyclists don't bother with lights, cycle abreast in traffic (I've even seen a few cycling the on the wrong down a cycle lane). Anyhow, I'd get hauled over the coals driving without lights or on the wrong side of the road, but cycling in a manner that can very easily cause an accident is apparently ok.
My solution is that the police should simply confiscate the front wheel of the bike - the owner can then pay for a new one, or pay a fine to recover it. Funnily enough, my sister who cycles in Dublin came up with the exact same idea.
And yes, I agree with the GP - if you don't want to get done for speeding, don't do it. It's not hard, I've managed for 10 years in the UK without a fine (driving a couple of stupid cars where it was altogether too easy). That's not to say I'm perfect, but the majority of people I know who've been done for speeding have been caught in residential areas or by average speed cameras in road works, and those are the places I'm bloody careful.
Even school zones can be abusive. A small city close to me kept its speed limit at 15mph many years after all others had gone to 25mph for downtown areas, and when they finally had to conform to state standards they defined two gigantic school zones that made most of the city main streets 20mph much of the day. At the same time, Hubbard (Ohio again) became infamous for its zero-tolerance (long before that term was coined and presented as a good thing) police force and its mayor's kangaroo court. I smell astroturf when I read defenses of this sort of official oppression.
I see another symptom of this all the time. Careless drivers will merge in front of a large vehicle (Tractor-Trailer, bus, someone pulling livestock) and leave no room for braking. We have a ton of people that assume that because _they_ can slam their brakes on and stop in a short distance, everybody else can. I don't envy you.
It sounds like you're very nearly breaking the Basic Speed Law. Yes, you can be technically speeding even when you're driving below the posted speed limit. Other examples include driving in fog or on icy roads.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
As you approach a stale green, you should be thinking about where that line is between stopping and running the yellow. That way, in the event the light does change, you already know what you plan to do (and if you decide to stop you can ease into your braking to better warn the driver behind you).
My webcomic
+100. They are absurd. Just put some part-time lights in and be done with it FFS.
The Judge struck down the ordinance on Ohio Constitution grounds based on
1. It is possible to enter the village and a camera enforced area, without encountering a sign warning of the camera (as required by Revised Code 4511.094)
2. State & Federal Constitution require "due process of law", meaning the ability to contest the fine. However the contest procedure involves only hearsay evidence from the Village (They just read the company's report... no witness). Furthermore, if you claim you're not the driver, you have to prove you're not the driver by coughing up the actual driver. If the driver was your spouse, you're then required to testify against your spouse, in violation of the Spousal Immunity statute 2917.02(d).
I think the real LOL is in the Bond decision. In case the injunction is determined to not be valid, the plaintiffs (you and me) are required to post a bond to cover any damages in the meantime. But since the city has flatly declared the ordinance is not about the money, the Bond to cover the potential millions of dollars of loss is... $1.
I like this judge.
IANAL. This is just my own layman's interpretation of the ruling.
It's the planning that causes the sprawl. Areas are zoned commercial, residential etc so everyone has to commute from one to the other. Consider alternatively old European cities where expansion was ad-hoc, work/home had to be within walking distance for most people and places are much more interspersed.
In my Jurisdiction if you rear end someone it is your fault, 100%, no exceptions. The law says you must give enough space between you and the car in front of you that they can slam on their brakes at random at any time and you will be able to safely stop and not hit them.
So, when is it not the fault of the person doing the rear ending?
Anarchists never rule
It is a speed camera, it is set up at place where there are no lights, to check if you speed, and usually they are set up so that if you are above 5% of the limit they blitz you. Frankly they are not a scam, and force people to slow to the speed the road is set at. We have 3 at our town and the number of accident and near accident reduced significantly, people were going into the town at high speed, thinking the high speed road was continuing despite all the warning signs on lower speed in the city.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
And the point of blinking green is that you don't need to _guess_. The tagline on Slashdot is very appropriate: "Remember folks. Street lights timed for 35 mph are also timed for 70 mph. -- Jim Samuels" - I've actually seen people accelerating to pass through 'stale' pedestrian crossings (button-operated).
That sentence is wrong. The source it links to says most rear-end collisions are caused by tailgating.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Betas are trained to highly approve of things like speed cameras. The logic goes "break a rule and you must pay a penalty". Alphas (the non-evil ones) look upon all forms of 'zero tolerance' with horror. Alphas are a tiny minority, but their insight is supposed to protect the world against the worst ideas promoted by leading betas (and evil alphas that exploit them).
The movie 'Demolition Man' satirically explored a futuristic beta dominated world, where every social rule was a 'crime' when disobeyed (just as betas are taught at school). Swearing produced an automatic fine, and voice recognition machines were placed wherever possible to ensure maximum enforcement. The 'conceit' of the film was that this 'future' was sold as a 'utopia' to the citizens, reinforced by birth-to-death propaganda conditioning people to this POV.
A beta will always say (when properly trained) "why shouldn't a speeding driver always be punished". To a beta, it just seems 'obvious' and at school betas get gold stars for mindlessly 'thinking of society' in this way. Betas are current taught (under the concept of 'zero tolerance') to believe in as MUCH enforcement as possible, driven by pro-active investigation. Betas experience, for instance, the entire student body being put into 'lockdown' while police dogs sniff all their bags, lockers and coats.
Betas are told that that authorities do NOT need a specific reason to target people for investigation. The concept of assumed innocence is irrelevant. All that matters is that 'crime' exists and that 'crime' must be prevented or detected. When a person (or ten thousand people) gets a speeding ticket, all the beta will ask is "was the person 'guilty').
It gets worse. Betas are taught that the purpose of enforcement is to PREVENT crime. Beta logic is that if current penalties are NOT discouraging the offense (no matter what the offense may be), the penalties must be increased. Betas are taught to have no concept of proportionality, because after all, no-one HAS to commit an offense. They are even trained to support the LOWERING of the age of criminal responsibility, by ensuring that classrooms of young betas are encouraged to think of themselves as having an adult 'outlook' when discussing ways to make society 'better'.
Concepts like 'anarchy' (we should be our OWN authorities), individuality, tolerance, proportionality, minimum-policing, freedom of expression (including appearance), decency, etc can most certainly be appreciated by most betas as well. The problem lies in the defense of 'higher' and more sophisticated forms of society. Betas can trivially justify the police-state after moderate training. Betas, by-and-large, CANNOT properly justify better forms of society, because the arguments in favour of them are so much more sophisticated and esoteric.
Traditionally, betas wanted kings etc to exist, and do the higher societal thinking for them. When betas are encouraged, en masse, to allow their collective 'imagination' be their ruler (what do you think the system that produced Obama and Blair actually represents?), I promise you, behind the scenes profoundly evil alphas are rubbing their hands with glee.
It depends on if they shorten the yellows or not.
If they shorten the yellows then rear ending goes up. If they leave them alone it doesn't affect rear ending.
We have red-light cameras at "hot spots", intersections with lots of red running mainly due to congestion. The red light cameras make these intersections safer. But we left the yellow length alone, and you have to drive through the light to get a ticket. You don't get a ticket for stopping a couple of feet late.
The city doesn't get the money, it goes into the Provinces general revenue.
Anarchists never rule
Perhaps, but I have never been ticketed often enough by any municipality for me to ever see any savings from following your plan.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Dear Submitters,
"Ohio Judge Rules Speed Cameras Are a Scam" -> This is a typical headline that you'd find in a tabloid, to hook readers in, only for the readers to find a different context. Please stop doing that.
Thank you,
One /. reader
And we actually KNOW, based on evidence, that removing speed limits and unnecessary signage actually increases safety.
With a speed limit, and especially ones that are loosely enforced in places such as US, drivers spend most of their time trying to guess what speed they can get away with and looking out for cops lying in wait for speeders (or speed cameras).
Without speed limits, the driver is forced to ask himself "Is this safe?" They don't need to worry about seeing a parked police car, because it doesn't matter whether the cop's personal threshold for speeding is 5, 10, or 15 over the speed limit, just whether the car is driving dangerously or not.
Also, getting rid of speed limits where they aren't necessary (a straight section of divided highway) makes people actually pay attention when they are necessary. As it is, when I see a speed limit that seems extremely low compared to what speed I would feel safe, I immediately start looking for police. It would be safer if I actually knew the reason for that speed limit, rather than me thinking that it's just a speed trap used to increase revenue.
so you can be convicted of a crime without being given the chance to defend yourself? also, speeding is a *criminal offense* in the uk?
none of that sounds right. as in, accurate. are you sure those are your laws?
One would think the timing could be set... oh you know. to a standard....
Karnal
Yes. This is why I went to court and plead not guilty for my last ticket even though I knew I had no case. They should be made to sing for their supper.
There's a site out there you can join where if you go to court and plead not guilty, they'll pay your ticket. $15/year I think. I'm not a member but it's interesting.
The "law" describes common sense which is funny in its self. That a government needed to explicitly write down what should be apparent reeks of not only a cya mentality, but a way to use a law against someone as a catch all.
In my examples I've already stated that in some circumstances the light is not seen, in that case I am already slowing down, and in a situation where I have a long approach I am wary of a green but maintain a safe traffic speed to a point where I may start to slow. However, I cannot come to a stop at each light, I cannot slow to an unsafe speed (by which I mean one that causes others to act in an irrational manner) to far out, so it is a balancing act of time. That could be assisted if there were indicators showing me how long I got before a light goes green to yellow or yellow to red.
Until you drive a heavy tow or livestock you cannot appreciate the focus needed the moment you start to the moment you stop. My point is that a government seems more inclined to use tools to extort...I mean extract...money from people in the name of safety when they could use different tools to actually create a safe driving environment. For example, adding reflective markers on lanes so in bad weather or dark curvy roads it is easier to actually see the road (or lanes). Instead of red light camera's put the count down timers like I mentioned. How about the police pulling over slow drivers with warnings and my favorite, stop hiding for speed traps. The number times I've been in situations where coming over a rise there is a huge traffic snarl from so many people braking, even if their doing the speed limit. As I remember the motto on cop cars it was "To Protect and Serve" not "To Hassle and Fleece".
Life is a great ride, the vehicle doesn't matter
Which is why you need to check up on the local driving laws.
Details here:
http://www.jointhenma.com/speed-limits/
Too bad that it's not, and that there are no penalties in place for the officials who violate those standards, eh?
"In most of the criminal code, we've asked ourselves "What things are actually harmful to others and worth criminalizing?" You can tell that there's been a lot of thought given to this in places. Yet with the speed limits there seems to have been no such care taken."
Who the FUCK is we? WHO THE FUCK IS WE?
Anything men might like to do is outlawed.
Fuck you and your modern religion.
I believe there have been court cases in the us in the past where cameras were installed and the yellow light was shortened at the same time so that even if you were driving within the speed limit it would be physically impossible to stop before the light turned red. You seem to be implying that all drivers should always assume this to be the case and drive 10mph even on a 55mph road just in case there's no yellow. That argument makes no sense.
Setting speed limits below the maximum safe speed under ideal conditions is also "overticketing". Setting speed limits and designing a traffic enforcement program with revenue, rather than public safety, in mind is a subversion of the purpose of law enforcement and ought to land the folks doing it in prison for a very long time -- it's just as bad as bribery, as far as undermining the legitimacy of the rule of law.
Honestly, I'd like to see statewide referenda passed wherever possible saying that all revenue from traffic and parking tickets goes not to any particular government body but gets donated to the "offender"'s choice of charity. Taking the profit out of claims of "but it's for your saaaaafety!" ought to nip this nonsense in the bud.
Texas has a law limiting total "revenue" from any traffic policy to less than 25% of the police department budget.
Either the part of the country you live in is drastically different than where I live (Metro DC), or else you are grossly exagerating how big of a problem this is. Yes, some lights have very short yellows. Yes, sometimes you dont know ahead of time. No, it doesnt substantially change my point; you still prepare as you approach an intersection.
If youre getting caught because the light went yellow in that very brief moment when you go from "I can still stop" to " I should proceed", and you get ticketed, then you can address it with that defense. The vast vast majority of cases are not that, theyre people who are truly running the light, and a lot of the time its because they just dont care.
We have the countdowns on just about every crosswalk now so you have a timer that tell syou when the yellow is going to come. Best of both worlds.
Yea, all it takes is a call to the local news. That's why if you do a quick Google you'll find dozens of reports about class action lawsuits being filed over cities shortening the yellow light when installing traffic cameras....
If it was so easy to fix, people wouldn't be suing over this exact practice _all the time_!
If someone rear-ends you, then that's their fault. 100% of the time.
Not true at all. If someone "brake checks", it is their fault. It is fined as unsafely braking, and purposely causing an accident.
About 5-6 years ago I came up with a nice two step solution to the issue of traffic citations, especially getting rid of the revenue generation angle most police departments have.
1) "Robin Hood" the citation money, similar to how Texas and other states redistribute education taxes to poorer districts. In this case, since most traffic violations are a matter of state law, collect all of the money centrally to the state and redistribute to each municipality based on a straight per capita basis. Automatically every small town trying to use that 2 mile stretch of freeway they think is their local replacement for normal taxation is done with.
2) Require statewide referendums in order to change enforcement methods.
Further, a camera is never a constitutionally permissible accuser, but others have already gone nicely into the constitutional and legal service requirements not met by current attempts at new revenue sources.
In Ontario we have flashing greens that indicate an advanced green for left turns. These have almost all been converted to green arrows but I see them once in a while.
How often do people not get elected based on poor city planning? It does seem a bit absurd to sit in traffic year after year when a few simple things could be done to alleviate the congestion: :)
Dedicated express lanes which prevent the same morons from trying to exit across X lanes of traffic at the last minute every day and stopping the entire freeway
more trains and bus lines
As for the automated tickets, a good investigation of the kickback trail could do much to alleviate the above problems as well. In Htown we were slammed with large contract even after the lights were voted down.
Hello Cruel World
I actually live in Cincinnati, where Elmwood Place is located. A friend at work lives in Elmwood proper. He managed to get hit with 6 of these tickets within a week, not one of which was more than 5 mph above the posted limit. 2 separate tickets each for going 26 in a 25 zone. What a joke.
Maybe a calibration issue is at hand even, as no actual officer is going to issue a citation for going 1 mph over the limit.
Anyway, good riddance.
I have a Garmin GPS. It shows the current speed limit in the bottom right corner.
And how do they come by this information? I would consider it stale at best.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
My good sir, we're talking about municipal government and common sense. Ne'er the twain shall meet. But your idea is a brilliant one as well.
I got here through a series of tubes
If you can't do both, then you shouldn't be driving.
How? The law says don't cross the white line if the light is red. You cross it when the light is red, you've broken the rules. It's not exactly a massive safety violation but the number of times I've seen people stop with their back wheels on the line and their nose peeking out into the junction so that it blocks pedestrian crossings is infuriating. You break the rules, you get a fine. Simple.
Isn't the point of the law to improve public safety?
There is no correlation betweeen improvements in public safety and the location of the line within a variation of a few feet.
Then why enforce an arbitray line of demarcation that is created from inflexible rules unless maximizing violations and revenue generation is your goal?
And there's the problem.
Actually *this* is not true.
Although I've never had a speed-camera-related-speeding-ticket I have been to court and fought 10 traffic related incidents over the course of my lifetime.
I have a 10 out of 10 win ratio, and if you win you obviously you don't pay the ticket, and you can get the related charges (court costs etc) thrown out.
I've actually even been 'deficient' in my summons - one for failure to provide details of insurance (I had it, just not on me. Daz papier!!! ). One for a rear side indicator which wasn't functioning ( it was wet and shorted out ). Ironically the cop pulled me over for 'failure to indicate' - a charge which carried points, even after I showed him how the front one turned on, and the back didn't, which he could clearly see when he pulled me over. That got thrown out because the cop insisted on continuing with the charge that I didn't *attempt* to indicate, rather than the lesser (no-point) $fine for broken. Judge agreed with me...
I always... *always* turn up to court for my tickets, regardless of wether I'm in the wrong or not. I suppose that could 'cost me' - but only in time, and here in NJ they're very nice and hold traffic court after work hours - just bring a book / comfy cushion / iThing to play with while the 60 odd other people get their speak-time too!
> They don't teach slowing down for "stale" greens anymore? Damn, even I remember that from almost 40 years ago!
No. I think you're just making that up so you can take pleasure in being a sanctimonious jackass.
People like you are why we rebelled against England and why people continued going west afterwards.
No, he's right. They used to teach that. The problem is that as driving has become more complex, there is less time to evaluate the situation to determine if the green is "stale". If you drive as if every green is "stale" you seriously compromise the capcity of the road and safety goes to Hell and pollution and waste and travel times go up significantly.
True, but should I pay attention to what's around me, or the colour of that light that's a mile away, and attempt to estimate how long between it's changings?
And while I'm at it, how exactly does a set of lights become "stale" when it doesn't change unless it senses a vehicle waiting to cross the interesection? If there's trees, signs, snowbanks, houses, or any number of other things that stop you from seeing if there's a waiting car, that light could be green for an hour and a half.
If only we had another light... perhaps yellow or amber in colour... that would give us ample time to determine when a light is no longer going to be green.
Accidents usually don't seem to be caused by people stopping three feet into the crosswalk, they're caused by people driving through.
Which just goes to show you it's a revenue scam since it does nothing to improve safety.
Hm. Think here (Ontario, Canada) a flashing green indicates you have an advanced green, and so can make left turns with impunity, as the oncoming traffic is still at a red. The light flashes green for a few seconds, then goes solid as it's now green for both directions.
Like a green left-arrow, but with permission to go straight through as well.
Just make yellow lights have a mandatory length of time that's not too short.. say 7 seconds in towns and 11 or so on highways, and allow them to be adjusted LONGER for conditions, but never shorter.
Crossing red lines (which often means going int the pedestrian crossing) is a douchebag move and certainly should be illegal.
Perhaps, but should it be of equal weight to running a red light? If running the red is $100 and 3 points to your license, should 'interfering with a cross walk' be $25 and 1 point?
I'd love to see your reaction if a driver stopped in the middle of a junction, causing you to have to carefully weave past him.
Slippery slope. Cars are faster and less maneuverable than pedestrians(on average). In addition, I hate to say this, but at this point I have to dodge more pedestrians in the middle of the road than I see even near crosswalks.
I don't read AC A human right
There have been a number of recent instances where it's been shown that the driver in the front was at fault because the driver in front acted in ways that were reckless and negligent. The state has taken the reasonable position that there is nothing about the position of a car in traffic that absolves its driver from responsibility if that driver's actions resulted in a collision.
Actively creating a public hazard by slamming on your breaks is in fact illegal, and you have no more right to slam on the brakes for no reason in traffic than you have a right to wildly swing an axe around in a public park; the police will cite you for being a public nuisance at a minimum. In both cases operator is wielding a potentially lethal device in a manner that is unsafe and entirely unnecessary while in a public place. If it is determined that the only reason the collision took place was because of the actions of the driver in front, then the fault is that of the one who created the dangerous situation.
Juries are not only empowered but required to assign a "blame percentage" to all parties involved in a collision. It's still often the case that the rearmost driver is responsible for the collision, however this is not universal. I've had a family member who was on a jury that ruled that a woman who was seriously injured in a rear-end collision was largely at fault - and she was in front; the jury found her 90% responsible, with the person behind her 10% responsible. The reason? She slammed on her brakes suddenly, and with no reason. There were corroborating witnesses who testified to that effect.
The driver in front had willfully caused a collision where none would have otherwise occurred. Sociopathic behavior on the roads is not tolerated by the police, nor the juries that judge the cases brought before them.
Far less controversial is that the driver in front is also at fault whenever they merge lanes with insufficient room between themselves and the car behind them - ie. cutting somebody off, and slowing down suddenly - this happened to my parents, and the car in front was assigned 100% of the blame.
And before anyone goes off on a rant about the state being some sort of liberal hippie heaven - it's not. It's often considered one of the reddest of red states... where teachers are allowed to openly carry firearms in class, and there were hundreds of teachers attended free (for teachers) gun courses after the tragedy in Newtown, CT.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
Not to charity. The money should go into the state's general fund, with no allocations to the court, the county/parish/city, or the police department.
NO, you SPEED UP for stale GREENS. Otherwise you get to catch the next several stoplights.
I remember seeing in the news a couple years ago where some major city like Chicago or something was having an issue with right on reds causing cameras to issue tickets incorrectly. Only the reason was that when the city plowed the snow from the main thourough fares it was piling up in the right hand turn lanes. Which meant that they were buried in 4 feet or more of snow. So instead people were turning right from the right most lane which otherwise would be a straight only. The cameras weren't smart enough to know the difference and apparently the cop who was supposed to be reviewing every infraction's photo wasn't either. So the city was issueing thousands of citations a day. And when it all came out in the public the City refused to relent and stop issuing the citations, instead they said each person needed to individually show up and contest their citations.
Our government is anything but small.
Sprawl is not urban.
If you are taking a child to a government school, you are already putting your child at terrible risk.
Speed traps on highways mostly end up being a tax on out-of-towners, which is why they are so popular compared to appropriate local taxes.
Well, I have never had a traffic court case (the only kind of court case I have ever been involved in) held outside of working hours. You are the first person to mention that your locality has them outside of working hours. If I have to take time off of work to go to the hearing, it is going to cost me more than the ticket for every ticket I have ever had in my life. Even if it is not held during working hours, my time is worth something to me.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
You're assuming a lot then. In my experience when a town wants speeding ticket revenue, right behind the sign is indeed where they put the officer.
Though if the sign isn't maintained per standards you 'might' be able to fight the ticket in court - traffic standards actually require that the sign be easily visible from the road - but they depend on the idea that you don't want to drive to the local court that's who knows how many miles away from you to contest it, with a locally sympathetic/hostile to you judge.
I don't read AC A human right
I don't buy it that radar guns are that accurate. There's a reason they have to be calibrated frequently on a regular basis. I've driven through a construction zone before that had two those "your speed is" radar-equipped signs; one at the start, one at the end. One of the two said my speedometer was too low by about 5mph. The other one said it was too high by about 5mph. One or the other of those radars had to be off, and not just by a small amount.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
Perhaps, but I have never been ticketed often enough by any municipality for me to ever see any savings from following your plan.
Right, but the town we're talking about has over 6000 tickets for ~2000 residents.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The State law required 90% of fines to go to schools, not to the city or the company operating the cameras (which is, as usual where most of the profits were ending up).
90% to somewhere, anywhere, other than the operating company is what kills them. Otherwise you simply have the 'displacement' effect. IE I set up my traffic camera that I expect to clear $500k/year. 90% needs to go to the school, so I cut the school budget by $450k/year and put that money to my pet causes, while school funding is kept stable by the traffic camera.
Of course, if anybody suggests removing said camera or doing anything to reduce fines, we're suddenly at 'WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN!!!'.
I don't read AC A human right
I don't think that the your-speed-is signs use anything fancy, there's either a frequency-to-voltage converter involved that has a bad temperature coefficient, or the microprocessor that measures the doppler frequency runs off some piss-poor oscillator. That happens. The modern hand-held guns aren't really calibrated, they are merely checked for being in calibration. If their calibration is off, there's nothing to adjust, they have to be serviced. Again, the problem is not with their accuracy, but in the fact that they don't measure what they advertise to measure. High-bandwidth (kHz and up) instantaneous velocity cannot be reasonably used as a stand-in for speedometer speed with its orders-of-magnitude lower bandwidth (20Hz tops). Yet it's used just that way. That's where the problem is.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Why are you driving so fast in icy conditions?
Most of the highways in the United States were laid out a very long time ago. Many have much higher traffic numbers today than was ever imagined possible, at speeds much higher than ever expected. This is especially true in the Northeast states. If you've ever driven in northern New Jersey, you'll see some of the worst of it for yourself. Low bridges, insane traffic flow, one-way toll roads, etc. With the current economic conditions, few of these roads are being updated, as to actually make sense of them would be insanely expensive and disruptive.
"Many places"? or is it really "one place that everyone seems to know the story and the town got slapped down by the state for doing it"?
That depends on how you define "speeding". If your definition is doing 100mph in a 50mph zone, then you would be correct. If, however, you define it as "going over the speed limit" you are absolutely incorrect. Going 50.1 mph in a 50mph zone is going over the speed limit, but the "added risk" over going 50mph is so insignificant as to be absolutely immeasurable. Thus it is, in fact, a harmless infraction. The same is generally true for any speeding that's 10% or less over the speed limit in the US, due to speed limits being set overly low; in most areas you can safely do even 20-30% over the limit without significantly increasing the danger to yourself or those around you.
What's a lot more dangerous is things like changing lanes without signals and not paying attention to the road or other drivers.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
Isn't part of getting your licence a explanation about driving to the conditions?
If its icy then you shouldn't be anywhere near the speed limit. Yes its legal to go the speed limit in icy conditions but that is incredibly stupid and if you get a ticket for skidding over the white line then too bad.
Did it ever occur to you that most of those tickets were given to people who did not live in the town? I know several towns near me where several multiples (by a factor of 100) of the town's population drive through the town each day.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Timers come in handy. Of course, retrofitting timers across a state can be very costly even for our well-to-do states. However, knowing how long it will be before the light changes can be very helpful in decision-making. Timers are very common in urban spots and cities, but are by no means pervasive, especially in the areas where they would be most useful.
The bottom line is that drivers should be given a fair shot at avoiding tickets and fines, it really should be all about safety now shouldn't it?
Here in the US, several "State Highways" are single lane roads that travel through a small town's center. They're also usually are preceded by a huge dip in speed (from 55/45 to 35/25) by a small discrete sign on the side of the road, almost always with police sitting in a car right next to the sign. It's obviously a sham used to catch unsuspecting drives from out of town just traveling across the state.
I don't know why they're complaining about some camera that's automating tickets, and instead of the speed dips at the locations where the speed limit is reduced to a crawl from a decent pace.
I've seen websites dedicated to what people do to traffic cameras in England. Those cameras would be grateful for a little gravel ... or anything else non-flammable, for that matter.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
Oh, wait. You're not talking about cameras, you're talking about other people. My bad.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
Yeah, I call BS on that. By far, most of the times I've gotten a ticket for speeding, it was on a nice smooth straight stretch of road with good visibility, virtually no traffic, and perfectly clear weather, while doing 12-15mph over the limit. I couldn't possibly have been endangering anyone else because there was no one else around, and I was nowhere near in danger of losing control of my vehicle. The only "risk" was the risk of being caught and fined. There was zero concern for saftey on the side of the law enforcement. Then there was the time the dumbass had the gall to imply it's better to watch the speedometer than watch traffic.
There's a reason the average American has low respect for law enforcement, and it's not because of movies or TV.
If the yellow is too short for the speed limit you have to go much slower than that limit and can be ticketed for obstructing traffic.
There is a minimum stopping distance for any given set of speeds and conditions (including the vehicles capability), if the yellow is to short for the speed limit there becomes and increasing zone where you can be traveling safely and within the speed limit and not have time to safely stop from the time green goes to yellow then red.
I live near a state highway where the minimum speed is 40 MPH and the max is 60. It's simple math to show durations of yellow that create zones where those obeying the speed min/max must run a red, or try and panic stop and perhaps still wind up running the red or even stopping in the middle of the intersection.
I'm unaware of the laws of other states, but in Missouri the first section of the law pretty specifically says nothing in any other section can be seen as reason to be unsafe. Also the rules for intersections are such that even if the light has just turned green you have to wait till it's safe to enter. Therefore the correct response to an unsafely short yellow to continue through rather than skid to a stop causing an accident.
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
Fuck you.
I hope a piece of gravel ricochets off a passing vehicle and tears through your child's eye.
Also, if there's unauthorized vehicles traveling down your street, you should have the drivers prosecuted for trespassing, or at the very least install some access-control measures (maybe a gate).
I completely agree with you: if you're measuring by results then it should indeed be reduction of road traffic accidents that is the measure.
Haven't you READ this thread?
Dont get hit from behind!
This sig is not paradoxical or ironic.
In theory that's exactly right, and in many states if your front end hits their back end it's your fault by default, providing incentive to follow at a safer distance in the driver in front does have good reason to panic stop. Yet on most roads it will never happen, because the moment there is enough room to physically fit a car (or almost enough in many cases) someone will fill the gap. I don't like it but the practical reality is you must be prepared to be tailgated and gauge your stopping distances appropriately or risk an accident, possibly fatal.
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
My mother told it to me as a slightly more pessimistic version: "Assume the other driver is an idiot or a LIAR". That right turn signal? He forgot about it, or will change his mind. It's saved my bacon several times, and the only side effect is that I drive like a timid mouse. :)
You don't need to know the precise timings. You can make a low ball estimate until you know better and prioritize not having to run the light ahead of travel time, or a more reasonable estimate and prioritize not having people run into you from behind over not running a red light.
And unless you are planning on driving through every single traffic light in your country in one trip you don't need to know them all anyway.
Apply the shortest time to any you don't have better knowledge for? Risk i and potentially be driving too fast? Avoid all traffic lights except for the ones you have been able to park at the side of the road and observe for at least 7426 light changes in order to get a good estimate?
While there are recomendations, each state sets it's own rules, sometimes leaving it up to counties, sometimes having no specific regulation on the timing of red lights.
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
And how would that work with lights I come to for the first time?
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
I don't think that any agency that determines who receives a fine or how much a fine will be should directly benefit from said fine. It should usually go to the next higher levels' coffers. e.g., the Police department shouldn't directly receive the money from a fine, it should go into the city's general fund. Seizures and forfeitures especially should never go to the issuing agency. This practice is plagued with abuse.
Competition Good, Monopoly Bad.
Build in a longer delay before the cross-traffic gets a green after the red goes on. Justification: Do they want to be known as the City that let someone die because they didn't account for physics when timing the light? I've noticed that some places do leave a little bit more 'buffer' for that reason. Make sure its in the meeting notes that Jim, Joe and Bob were against looking into adding the time, and someone's comment about it being their fault if something happens. (Or talk to the engineering/maintenance department involved; talk about a theoretical or real close-call that would've been a non-issue by a 1-2 second delay)
Yes because getting a ticket for going under the minimum, cause accidents as people try to pass the you doing 30 in a 60 (45 min), ect, is such a better option,
Try thinking things through a bit better. If the light is to short for a stopping in time when traveling at an otherwise safe speed for the conditions and within the post speed minimums and maxims, then it should be changed, and in the meantime tickets should not be issued for doing the safest thing.
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
IIRC here it is six cars if you're traveling below a safe speed for conditions.
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
Selective memory makes it seem like that happens much more often than it actually does. But when it does happen, it's very easy to fix. Simply lift your foot off the gas for a few seconds.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Not here, yellow is a caution indicator, usually meaning a red will follow soon(flashing is just a general caution). Only red means stop. If you try and stop for a yellow when you clearly have time to safely clear the intersection you are obstructing traffic. Don't slam on your breaks at the first sign of yellow, if you can't clearly make the intersection then slow to a safe stop.
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
55 was set by President Nixon in 1974 on advice of Lee Iaccoca. Nixon's original idea was a 50 mph federal speed limit, or more accurately federal extortion of the states to individually impose that limit. Supposedly that would partly solve the Arab oil embargo of the time. It was much later that "safety" became a nanny-state excuse for what had become the most defied law in the USA since alcohol prohibition.
If you slow down for a green, some of the locals may recognize what your doing, but everyone else is going to be ticked, and probably tailgating even closer meaning you now have to break even slower to avoid an accident, a vicious downward spiral that ends with YOU getting a ticket for obstructing traffic . If the yellow is to short for safe stopping before red by almost all vehicles that are traveling at the speed limit in good weather conditions then it is the unsafe factor.
This is all basic math + understanding how people drive. Your proposal may decrease safety.
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
If you don't live in that town, you vote for state representatives who set standards for traffic speed, lights and signage. Again, this has nothing to do with automated enforcement, it is equally true for your good old fashioned style speed trap too.
If you don't live in the state, then you look to the federal government to set reasonable state standards. In the worst case you avoid such a corrupt, backwater state altogether.
What is your solution? Complain about it on the internet?
I see no problem with ticketing the owner of the car, if he is not driving let him collect the fine from the person he lent the car to.
Uh, what? The driver should be responsible for his actions, not the car owner. Should I be responsible for what another person does just because I happen to own the car? I could see that I might have some responsibility if for instance it was obvious that the person would drive while drunk, but normally not. I would also have a serious issue with acting as collector for the police.
Are you a grammar Nazi? I'm trying to improve my English; please correct my errors!
What you do I catch them in a lie about some material fact in your case.
"Officer, at any point after taking your speed measurement did you lose visual contact with the speeding vehicle?"
"No, I did not"
"So, you did not, on beginning pursuit, check for oncoming traffic before entering the road surface?"
"Of course I did"
"But you just said that you did not lose visual contact with the speeding vehicle. WHAT WILL IT BE SIR!?!?!"
Try it some time, its fun!
This sig is not paradoxical or ironic.
No, as we approach a "stale green" (lol, never heard that) we decide on a point-of-no-stop based on speed, road conditions, and the distance of the car behind you from your bumper. Then when/if it turns yellow, we've already decided what we are going to do and are not surprised.
I recently got a ticket for running a red light, not from a camera but a real cop. It had snowed the night before and the roads were still quite slippery. The light went yellow literally right at the tripping point, the moment where it could go either way and you have to make a split-second decision. I honestly felt that given the slick conditions there might be problems if I tried to stop, so I kept going - after all, I felt sure there was plenty of time to make it through. I did not speed up, I was absolutely not trying to run the light, I was just trying to do the right thing. Of course, the light went red so fast I couldn’t believe it, when I was almost but not quite directly underneath. The damn cop was right there and immediately pulled me over, it was all so suspiciously convenient, but what can you do? I explained to the cop I wasn’t trying to run the light, I wasn’t even in a hurry, I honestly felt it was safer to keep going and thought I had time to do so. His response was to inform me that the lights are timed to give drivers plenty of room to stop before they go red, and if I couldn’t stop safely then I must have been speeding. He actually started to write out another ticket for speeding! Or perhaps he just pretended to, I don’t know. Either way, it was obvious I would get no sympathy at all from him, so I just said “Yes sir, officer, whatever you say“ and meekly accepted the single $120 ticket he eventually gave me. I sent it in Not Guilty, which was probably overly optimistic and will cost me a day at court, but what the hell, I was honestly just trying to do the right thing, we'll see what happens with the prosecutor.
But it's the point about the light being calibrated to the speed limit that interests me. Is this a common practice, or a legally mandated thing? If so, what exactly is the perfect amount of yellow time for a stoplight on a 25 mph city street? Is there a table or formula somewhere that will give me this information? Is there even a universally accepted way to derive that time, or do different States have different ideas about what constitutes a safe stopping time? If there are in fact known safety durations, then I would imagine any light with a yellow time below that safety threshold should be challengeable in court. I would also bet that a lot of these for-profit camera operations are either setting the lights right at, or even below those safety thresholds. Does anyone know what the accepted standards really are in these situations? That info just might be of help to me when I go to court.
http://bit.ly/13Q3JUq
a lot of intersections have a crosswalk with a countdown. often (but not always) if the countdown is approaching zero, that's when the light will change. some lights with dynamic/traffic driven cycles will keep a light green another pass if no opposing traffic comes. still, you have a good idea when it may change.
You've never driven a horse trailer loaded with two large horses
I have. And the solution is simple. Drive slightly below the posted speed limit; or in many cases, simply driving at the posted limit instead 'with traffic' somewhat above it.
if/when it goes to yellow for I still need to maintain traffic speed.
No. You don't. You can drive slower if necessary. If a tractor trailer with a GVW of 80,000 lbs can meet the regulations for stopping times and stopping distances then so can you.
If you can't then your vehicle / trailer / cargo weight combination is unsafe to drive at the speeds you are driving. Get a new truck, and/or new trailer with better brakes.
If only sports cars are able to stop at a particular light raise it with the city engineering department. They do get it wrong from time to time. But more often then not, you are simply driving too fast for the conditions or your vehicle isn't safe to operate at that speed.
But of course ;)
Most drivers in the USA never receive any formal education whatsoever.
Citation Needed. I'd argue that most drivers do receive formal education.
If you've entered the intersection when the light was green or yellow, you have the right to continue through the intersection, even if it is red. The only time you are "running" a red light, is when you enter the intersection when the light is red.
If I'm on a Jury, I'll lay a blame percentage of 0% in the guy in front EVERY SINGLE time. Even if the guy said, "yeah I slammed on my brakes because the guy behind me was too close." Why? Because the guy behind him was too close. You never know why the guy in front may slam on his brakes, maybe because he is a dog lover and doesn't want to hit the dog running out in the street.
Running a red light to me doesn't mean "over the line," it means, to me, driving through the intersection when the light is red.
Bu the thing is, it doesn't matter what it means to you.
Wow. Do you have a point, or are you just bigoted towards Americans? One of the last times I got a speeding ticket, was from Zurich, doing 16 KPH in a 15KPH zone. So who is being greedy?
And what does driving through a small village to go to the freeway have to do with planning or not planning?
ruling is upheld on appeal.
Last time I checked, speed cameras only took your picture if you were speeding. So, where's the 'scam'? Unless speed limits no longer apply of course.
You never know why the guy in front may slam on his brakes, maybe because he is a dog lover and doesn't want to hit the dog running out in the street.
Or it could be the guy in front of you is a sociopath who deserves to be penalized for his reckless and dangerous behavior.
As a juror you can vote however you want; but you only get one vote out of many possible jurors, and you can be outvoted by the other jurors.
The assumption of innocence by virtue of a car's position in traffic is a poor assumption; every collision should be evaluated on a case by case basis, and this is the law in many jurisdictions.
I don't care what you think or feel about the matter, and neither will the courts. It is the law in the corner of the USA I call home.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
I have. And the solution is simple. Drive slightly below the posted speed limit; or in many cases, simply driving at the posted limit instead 'with traffic' somewhat above it.
I'm doubting that. When it come to horses it is not about GVW, it is more about balance and about the movement of the horses. If you haul horses then you should know you just don't slam on the brakes unless there is no other choice and by then you're fucked anyway. 3000 lbs of horse moves around, front to back, side to side and as a driver I am not only trying to ensure a safe ride, but a ride that will get horses back on the trailer. My brakes are fine, my truck is rated for the weight and I drive at safe speeds that actually tend to be either at or below the limit. I've been saying all along that traffic lights/intersections are not configured for heavy vehicles, and when municipalities begin to alter a system, game it, to make money, not safety, then it does not matter how fast or slow I drive, at some moment I can lose if I don't drive defensively. That is a lousy way to manage traffic and transportation. Give me a timer display and I can much better manage that intersection and not be an impediment to traffic.
Out of curiosity, do you haul horses for competition? What kind of horses and what style of riding do you perform?
Life is a great ride, the vehicle doesn't matter
With 1.5T of horses, .8T of trailer and 2T of tow vehicle, you're talking about making that vehicle a rolling roadblock at ~10mph in a 30 zone or 15mph in a 50 zone. That's possibly one of the stupidest things I've heard. Not that I should expect any less from an AC.
The law says don't cross the white line if the light is red.
Humans aren't robots.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Start braking a bit earlier.
You mean when the light is still green?
Yes, all defensive drivers will prepare to stop when approaching a set of traffic lights. This means I'll lift my foot off of the accelerator.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
A giant myth about Germany, one of many really. They do have speed cameras, they also take random shots of drivers to look for other infractions. http://www.toytowngermany.com/lofi/index.php/t33224.html
Actually no,
Germans obey the law because they're German. Germans are methodical and very strict.
They also have far better driver training programs and dont believe stupid things like "10 over is perfectly safe".
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
You live in Southern California.
It's great to know somewhere in the world, people don't take it up the ass from the beaurcrats, like we do in Australia here.
It would never happen here that thousands of people would protest against the speed & red light cameras here.
Start braking a bit earlier.
You mean when the light is still green?
Yes, all defensive drivers will prepare to stop when approaching a set of traffic lights. This means I'll lift my foot off of the accelerator.
So you slow down with warning, even when it's safer to maintain constant speed. Well done on making the roads just a little more dangerous for all.
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
Those points weren't in the article that I saw, and they do make a difference. I have no problem with our local speed cameras, but they've decided here (Alberta, Canada) that demerits cannot be awarded for photographically documented offenses, and instead must be caught in person with the driver behind the wheel. They also give about 10% grace on the speed (up to 110 in a 100km/h zone, etc.) and we were informed through the local news media six months before they went live.
- W. Blaine Dowler
http://www.bureau42.com
Many states and counties have laws requiring drivers keep up with the flow of traffic. This isn't something pulled out of thin air, and it's definitely not a fallacy. Some governments articulate this with minimum as well as maximum speed limits (which creates a whole new set of issues - what if your safe speed for conditions is below the minimum?), while others leave what constitutes an unsafe driving speed to the officer.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
People would abuse that like crazy.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
There are a number of studies that suggest the rates of serious traffic accidents significantly increase after installing traffic cameras.
So the only possible incentive for traffic cameras is revenue. I imagine if all traffic camera revenues were required by law to be sent to non-profit charities (as an Arizona state senator is attempting to do, just in case his outright ban fails) that you wouldn't see a single camera installed.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
I've driven a lot in Germany. Not only do they have speed traps, the speed limit doesn't always reflect the road conditions.
The mere fact that they issued 3 times as many tickets as there are people in the town is an indication that ...
they are comparing apples to oranges.
Assume for the sake of augment, there are NO visitors to this town. Are you suggesting people can only speed once, in their lifetime?
it doesn't matter how many people live in the town, it matters how many people use that road.
I'm trying to follow your math... what does m stand for? Miles, meters, minutes? I realize you are in the UK and you guys like to use BOTH systems (and people think Americans are messed up for sticking with Imperial) but really, do you have to switch between Miles Per Hour and meters, AND use the same lower case "m" to indicate both?
One of the cameras is installed at the boundary, where the speed limit changes. Legally speaking where exactly are you supposed to be travelling at the new speed? And where is the camera situated?
Uh, depends on how this thing is calibrated. Is it set to go off if you are over the white line at a red? Then if I stopped 3-5ft long at a light, I'm getting a ticket for running it? Seems like a scam to me.
no, you are an asshole who only thinks of yourself. What about people needing to cross the street? They now have to walk into the street to get passed your car, because you don't give a fuck about anyone else but yourself.
Be seeing you...
The biggest problem is that allowing these is basically saying that it's okay for the government to place surveillance equipment everywhere. Anyone who knows their history should know that giving governments too much power (and the power to have eyes everywhere is definitely too much power) is a very bad idea.
I also think that's bad and should be changed.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
AND that is the BIGGEST traffic law that people break now days. Every where I go people are running at 70 mph with bumper to bumper traffic. I believe the distance is supposed to be 1 car length for ever ten miles per hour. If people followed this 90 percent of the accidents that happen probably wouldn't unfortunately it seems that most people behind the wheel anymore are inconsiderate and care about nothing but themselves and shaving 20 seconds off of their time to wherever they are going.
Settle down there jerkwad. 3 feet? Where I live there's a gap between cross walks and stop lines.
I was taught about 'stale greens' when I got my license. There were a few systems. The only one I used was that you had a stale green when the pedestrian walk sign went to stop. Still not a great system, and not in place at all lights.
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
This has happened before in Ohio requiring higher authorities to step in. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Rome,_Ohio
Here at high-speed intersections you have a set of caution lights on the side of the road 200-300 feet before the intersection. (They convey no legal commands, they merely provide recomendations and information) IF you see them flashing on your approach, there is a good chance the light with turn before you approach. Otherewise longer yellow and a few seconds of all reds it the recommended way to configure an intersection.
NO. You are dead wrong.
This case is about due process. It is about being able to face your accusers in court. It is about having a chance for cross examination. It is about having the right to stand up and say, "I don't have to just take this. You have to prove that I broke the law. You have to prove that your equipment was calibrated properly, was used properly and was not malfunctioning. You have to prove that you are not incompetent."
My God, if you can't get your day in court for a trivial speeding ticket, then what is next?
Urban Sprawl tends to happen because of planning, not in spite of it. Seriously private interests aren't the ones building the primary roads. They want the traffic to go through because they want more suburbs. A combination of freeways, inane and asanine zoning regulations lead to urban sprawl.
Or, I read the summary, and saw that this particular conversation had diverted, and responded to the conversation at hand.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Not selective memory, often observed and tested. What you propose would leave no extra space, and drop average speed to where the cars behind you would get ticked and some would start doing stupid things and making it worse. I leave as much room as I can, and quite often have idiots pull in between me and the car in front.
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
Sadly not all jurisdictions have any law about the duration of yellows, so it's not always against the law to shorten what should be a 5 second light to 1 second. Unsafe yes, illegal no.
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
Actually that's not exactly what a yellow means, it means the light will turn red soon and evaluate whether stopping or continuing is safer, I've seen people panic stop at yellow and nearly cause pile ups from their unexpected behavior. In Missouri it's considered a warning of impending red (unless flashing, in which case it indicates the intersection requires extra caution and awareness). And as long as any part of your vehicle is past the line when it turns red you've not run the light and other traffic must yield right away to a vehicle already in the intersection.
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
In further news a group of motorists worked out how to avoid getting fined for speeding: they always drove through the village under the posted speed limit. One driver, wishing to remain anonymous, commented "this will show city hall that they can not get money out of me without a fight".
Stop modding this down, guys. "Troll" and "incorrect" are not synonyms. He is expressing a commonly held viewpoint, and we are better off if both his comment and my on-point reply above are visible.
Then quote his reply, numbnuts.
- You get notified by post (note: if a member of the general public needs to send legal documents to someone they are required to employ a process server to ensure they got there. On the other hand the police are allowed to just pop them in the post and retain proof of posting (*NOT* proof of delivery) so its entirely possibly that you will never even get the notification and still a court will deem that it has been served and that you were responsible for responding to the notice you never received.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy makes a lot more sense now.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
So not telling people your trying to catch them breaking the law is a scam? Am I missing something cuz last I knew if you didn't want to get caught speeding, you kinda shouldn't be speeding.
I don't agree with speed limits either, they are only in place because some people can't frikkin' drive, but its a law and put there for a reason. Dont wanna get caught by the cams, don't break the damn law.
In a lot of cases, I've seen the same people who install red light cameras shorten the yellow interval to half what it once was. They are companies out to make a profit, after all.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
The British don't like seed cameras; Google "burnt Gatso" to see the answer.
From someone that lives near Cincinnati I can tell you people had been pissed since the beginning. It all boiled over when a guy was issued a speeding ticket from one of Elmwood Place's cameras that was for a parked car. The camera sends the picture of your car with the citation and his was parked on the curb so we all knew it wouldn't be long before these cameras were gone. Total scam from the start.
No, really, when I took driver's ed in high school (in the US), they taught us about "stale" green lights and how if it was green when you approached it (you didn't see it go green from red) that it's more likely to change to yellow on you. But don't mind me - if name-calling is how you get your jollies, then by all means, proceed.
Then you should either learn to obey traffic lights or not use that intersection. Weren't you listening to the other trolls in this thread?!
How often do you stop at green lights while there is traffic behind you?
Actually, one of the functions of our court system is to determine whether laws are constitutionally VALID or not.
A frightening trend we have seen in this country is that it's becoming harder and harder for the average person to avoid breaking the law and still maintain a free, convenient life.
We... the people?
Are you so angry because you don't have an account? They're free you know!
Wow, that was difficult.
But, doesn't America have, like, a 3489th Amendment to it's constitution that says "Speed limits apply, but not to me." It's the amendment just before or just after the one that says "Oral isn't losing your virginity unless you swallow."
Sheesh. Fucking lawyers (which definitely is losing your virginity ; all holes, at once)!
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
I disagree entirely with the notion that speeding is somehow cheating, or should be seen the same way.
A while back I had a chuckle with some co-workers ovemajr a University making a new rule: No sex in dorm rooms with anyone else present. It was funny, but, someone pointed out at the time, it was about perfect because: there was no active enforcement, and anybody who didn't care would go about their business, meaning that the only enforcement would be...when it caused enough of a problem for someone to complain.
Likewise, while its very useful to have rules of the road which inform accident liability, and there is clear benefit there...and the vast majority of motorists have every reason to avoid an accident since it means loss of life, health, or transportation, before any question of liability, so generally, it all works out.... without active enforcement.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Rare, I'll admit. They were hit from behind, a couple of teenage girls. Broke both their necks.
I don't know if headrests were adjusted properly, etc, but this wasn't a "my partner knew a cop who'd heard of this cop in another detachment....I can't remember which one...but he was at this accident where...blahblahblah"
This was an accident that my friend attended himself. I think he was the first one there.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
Your version may be more pessimistic, but I like the emphasis of mine better. They're not just an idiot...they're a BLOODY idiot.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
Maybe that's a Quebec thing?
Correct. I believe I have also seen it in Ontario (Ottawa to be exact). Out west they use the flashing green arrow for a protected turn. A flashing green light is the same as a regular green light, it just indicates that the intersection is pedestrian controlled.
Proportionality?
He is talking about throwing rocks at a car that is going fast enough to kill his child.
Dead Child > scratched car.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
I have no problem with a small town fining motorists for speeding through it, endangering the townsfolk. If the town makes a lot of money out of it, then that is fine with me too. No one is forcing drivers to speed. What I do have a huge objection to, is a private firm taking a large percentage of the revenue as a fee for providing the speed catcher service. That is privatizing the justice system, and giving public compensation revenues from crime punishments to private individuals. Oh wait! We have been doing that for many years now by forcing the inmates of our prisons to work as slaves for corporates.
Heavy is the head that wears the tinfoil hat.
Oooh! He's going fast enough to kill a child! Won't somebody please think of the children! A plane is going fast enough to kill a child, doesn't mean its likely to, which should be the measure here. On the other hand, the rock is likely to.cause an accident, which is likely to cause injury or death to people who are not likely to kill a child. That's what pavements and.crossings are for. Troll bitten.
This tagline was transcoded to result in at least one smirk. If you experience failure to smirk, please consult your Gen
Actually, they did teach us to be aware of "stale" greens. I do not recall being told to actually slow down though. They also told us to "speed" down hills when there was a corresponding hill to climb up. This was in order to save gas. I have seen judges dismiss speeding tickets because that was the training that was given back then.
OK, screw the children.
If some punk is flying through my neighborhood over the speed limit & almost hits *me*, he is getting a hand full of rocks thrown at him.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
Sorry, no reference here but I remember reading an article on /. a couple of years back where researchers had data on that the number of rear-end collissions went up.
"This message was brought to you by Sarcasm and Troll Feeders United (or STFU, for you un-hip people)."
Or, perhaps, you could make use of a signaling device to warn drivers of an impending need to stop, and thus make them aware of the time the light will turn red before it actually does so. A third light, perhaps, neither red nor green but of a different color, lit before the light turns red?
I've seen some interstates (I forget which state -- Texas? New Mexico? One of the western ones, anyway) that have periodic "speedo calibration runs" -- a five-mile run with every mile marked to the foot, so you can use a stopwatch to calibrate your speedometer.
I have never heard of a traffic light ticketing system that fines you if you go 1" over the line.
In most states of the USA they use video footage to determine if you ran the light and in some states the fine you receive will have a website link where you can watch yourself drive through. In Australia, Austria, and Canada the examples I've seen take two images in quick succession to determine if you stopped or actually drove through.
You know what would be great? If they painted an amber box on the road. Lets say you are doing 30mph, that's 14m/s. What you do is create a yellow box that's 40meters long, and you have the yellow light at 3 seconds long. If you are already in the yellow box doing the area speed limit, then you know you'll make it through the lights. If you have not entered the box, then you know you have to stop. If they change the duration of the yellow light, then they would have to redraw the box. Now people just have to have dashcams in every car, if you get a red light ticket, you can show that your car was already in the yellow box when the light changed. If they change the duration of yellow and don't redraw the box, you can sue them.
If, as a poster mentions above, the yellow light is only 1 second long, then you are fucked, as the safe stopping distance is only 23 meters, while the distance you can be from the light before it changes amber is 14 meters.
So, 2 things have to happen. The local authority has to adhere to the guidelines (which can be from 3-4 seconds depending on country) to give drivers 40+ meters of space to decide to stop. And also make a measurable cue to where you would have to stop if you are not going to make it through the junction in time. Leaving it up to guesswork is not good enough.
If they are ticketing at 10% over then they are not enforcing the law. If the limit is 55 then at 56, you get a ticket. They are avoiding public backlash by playing with the numbers.
I believe the distance is supposed to be 1 car length for ever ten miles per hour
I was taught "the three second rule." (Though sometimes it was the two second rule) It was easy, I spot a road-side marker (could be a sign, a rock, anything) and count the seconds until I pass it. If under three seconds pass, I might be a bit too close. If under two seconds pass I'm WAY too close. That's easier for me than judging "car lengths," which I just can't do.
Build in a longer delay before the cross-traffic gets a green after the red goes on. Justification: Do they want to be known as the City that let someone die because they didn't account for physics when timing the light?
Nobody on the city council thinks anyone is going to die, obviously. They know there might be a few fender benders, but yes, for many towns that's a price they're willing to pay because the town is not the one getting the bill. The more important issue for them is that they need revenues (often because the state is siphoning money from the cities) but they can't raise taxes. Crafting intersections that make it difficult to avoid ticketable situations is what brings in money. Stationing patrol cars next to places where the speed limit changes many times in a short area is another. It's not intended to increase safety, it's that they need additional revenue from their citizens, but while taxes may be politically unpopular (and might need to be approved by voters), fines are harder to rally support against and need no approval.
I'm doubting that. When it come to horses it is not about GVW, it is more about balance and about the movement of the horses.
Right, smoothness is important, and you've got to drive extra "gently". I agree here. My point about GVW is that those tractors with double trailers hauling stuff like gasoline for example have similar constraints. You can't slam on the brakes, and liquid sloshing around has a lot of momentum on its own.
I've been saying all along that traffic lights/intersections are not configured for heavy vehicles
See, I'm disputing this. Traffic signal timing is set according to guidelines for stopping time and stopping distances under normal (but not optimal conditions). So the yellow length is calibrated for a heavy truck on a wet road for example. And a horse trailer should be fine with that.
and when municipalities begin to alter a system, game it, to make money, not safety, then it does not matter how fast or slow I drive, at some moment I can lose if I don't drive defensively. That is a lousy way to manage traffic and transportation.
I agree with all this, but do not think it is the norm. Most intersections don't have cameras and there is no revenue incentive at odds with the safety incentive. There are may more cameras that are configured with safety. There certainly are cases where the city has manipulated things for revenue, but I contend those are a distinct minority, and its usually a scandal when its revealed.
Give me a timer display and I can much better manage that intersection and not be an impediment to traffic.
Tell people exactly when its going to change, and people will be more inclined to accelerate I think, if they think they can make it. I'm skeptical that it would lead to better driving.
Out of curiosity, do you haul horses for competition? What kind of horses and what style of riding do you perform?
No. I used to work (quite a long ways back) at a boarding and training stables. My horse hauling was limited to customer service activities - transportation due to sale or for breeding and things like that. We worked a bit of everything; but it was probably mostly Quarter Horses and Appaloosas. Although we boarded an Arabian stud the whole time I was there. I remember him best. He was an asshole. :)
"Tell people exactly when its going to change, and people will be more inclined to accelerate I think, if they think they can make it. I'm skeptical that it would lead to better driving."
Arabians can be jerks in general, but also wonderful horses. I understand your thoughts, but the quote above I'll differ with. Knowledge is power. What we do with it is arbitrary and independent from knowing. Some may rush, many will not, just as there are those that see a yellow still speed up, not slow down. At least is is an informed decision and less prone to equivocation.
Life is a great ride, the vehicle doesn't matter
So you think overweight vehicles should all drive proportionally slower? Let's do that with tractor trailers going 30 MPH on an interstate. Let me know how you like it.
Yeah well, usually you don't have many red lights on the interstate. And there are many, many interstates (around where I live anyway) where the speed limit for cars may be 70 mph, but the speed limit for a truck with a trailer is 55 mph.
Or it could be the guy in front of you is a sociopath who deserves to be penalized for his reckless and dangerous behavior.
Sure. But tailgating is reckless behavior as well. It was the person driving behind who willfully put him or herself into a dangerous situation. Doesn't excuse the person in front for driving recklessly and it's clear that the front person initiated the collision, but there are many, many situations where that accident would still have occurred if the person in front had to suddenly stop -- a child chases a ball into the street. Someone jaywalks without even checking for cross traffic. Etcetc. There would still have been a rear-end collision, and that means that in all cases there should be a good chunk of culpability for the person traveling behind.
Given some people's need to drive the biggest fucking vehicle they can find some times it is necessary to pull farther forward to see the oncoming traffic before making a turn because of the person with the H2 they are using to haul their groceries home in.
I drive a sedan and have to pull out all the time because someone decides to park a large van on a street corner. That usually doesn't happen on super-busy streets (no one is allowed to park on the corner in that case), but it's fairly common in my area to have to sneak over the line into streets where cross-traffic doesn't stop, just to see if there is oncoming traffic.
While I am not taking issue with your arguments, are you aware that this last one essentially boils down to a plea to "think of the children"?
There's a lot of bullshit that is passed with "think of the children," but that doesn't mean that the opposite is true, that children should be ignored and you should just pretend that they're not there. There's nothing wrong with lowering the speed limit in a school zone.
Doesn't excuse the person in front for driving recklessly and it's clear that the front person initiated the collision, but there are many, many situations where that accident would still have occurred if the person in front had to suddenly stop -- a child chases a ball into the street. Someone jaywalks without even checking for cross traffic. Etcetc.
Of course - that's why the law evaluates each collision on a case-by-case basis, instead of blindly applying faulty logic.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
I'm pretty sure that a stopped vehicle, no matter how far over the line it is, will not set off a speed camera.
Unix is user friendly, it's just selective about who its friends are.
Good to see people still have common sense and are able to see these cameras for what they truly are.
I'm not saying that all of the other 2/3rds are caused by bad drivers slamming on their brakes and being an unpredictable danger on the road, but certainly some of them are.
Not in Australia. By law, if you run into the back of someone you were driving behind, it's your fault.
Roads and traffic are considered to be inherently unpredictable and you are supposed to leave enough space, and pay enough attention, to avoid collisions even if someone slams on their brakes.
Pretty good chance of getting a dangerous driving charge, too.
And the cops do target tailgating, if you make a habit of tailgating anyone sticking to the speed limit you'll rack up the points and fines pretty fast.
Also, Wikipedia is misrepresenting those figures. If you follow the citation to the actual SA government document, it says that 1/3 of all collisions are rear-enders, most of which are caused by tailgating.
"According to crash statistics, about one third (13 400) of all crashes in South Australia are rear end crashes. Tailgating (following other vehicles too closely) causes most of these. Tailgating has not been targeted previously through an advertising campaign in South Australia. There is an opportunity through this campaign to bring about a major reduction in the number of rear end crashes through increasing awareness of the severity of the problem."
I'm guessing that wasn't on their radar screen...
So in other words I should treat every single traffic light as if it were a stop sign and slow to a near stop before getting to it? Why not just replace all the lights with stop signs? We already have a system of saying "you should plan to stop", it's called the yellow light. The problem is that cities will set the yellow light shorter than engineers deem safe specifically for the purpose of causing more tickets.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
How are you supposed to BE sure it's clear without pulling forwards a bit to make a legal turn? Where the hell did you learn to drive, or are you just clairvoyant?
Also your argument about breaking the law is absurd on its face and the very definition of tyranny: The State is always right, do not challenge the state, do not violate the states laws and you will be fine citizen.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
There is not even a rule to make the yellow interval the same for each light in a given area. Differing speed limits would make this difficult anyway. So each light is a roulette game. Randomizing the yellow intervals would certainly increase revenue!
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
This is so in New York State as well. If you hit someone from behind, it is your fault no matter what. I was rear-ended while I was stopped and pushed into the car ahead of me. It was considered my fault for hitting the car in front of me!
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
See also (sorry for the ad-laden links, but they're the top two results):
http://www.carinsurancequote.net/auto-accident-fraud.html
http://www.4autoinsurancequote.com/uncategorized/swoop-and-squat-auto-insurance-fraud/
I say we drop all speed limits to 5mph everywhere, and limit passenger vehicles to 3 horsepower rubber cars. Traffic fatalities would plummet!
Of course, you'd have to exclude "starving to death on the way home" from the actual statistics. Better exclude road-rage shootings as well, come to think of it...
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Your last statement proves you need a serious civics lesson, particularly regarding the 14th amendment.
We have due process for a reason.
Namely because the government cannot be trusted to get the facts right all the time.
You are horribly naive if you assume that the only people that need to challenge a ticket are scofflaws. Honest citizens get screwed over all the time. So no, unlike what you've stated, not breaking the law isn't enough to protect you from needing to challenge a ticket.
Anything that pays a percentage is likely to get used and abused to get bigger paychecks, especially when it comes to law enforcement! They should be paid a flat hourly rate. This is so backwards that I am so surprised I never hear this being brought up. Like the criminal prison systems that are privatized getting money from tax-payers to hold prisoners and are making huge profits... They also are given contracts to ensure a set prison population level to be maintained. So many fundamental bad designs in all these government systems, seriously needs a closer examination!
Is it set to go off if you are over the white line at a red? Then if I stopped 3-5ft long at a light, I'm getting a ticket for running it? Seems like a scam to me.
How? The law says don't cross the white line if the light is red. You cross it when the light is red, you've broken the rules. It's not exactly a massive safety violation but the number of times I've seen people stop with their back wheels on the line and their nose peeking out into the junction so that it blocks pedestrian crossings is infuriating. You break the rules, you get a fine. Simple. It's not like the rules are obscure or hard to remember, there are signs and lines everywhere they apply.
TFA makes it sound like they're all speed cameras anyway, not line cameras, and points out that of the two cameras which were operating one was in a school zone where you really do want these things enforced. The plaintiff's attorney said "people who were unemployed, working poor and single mothers were hit with $105 citations they couldn’t afford". Well, boo-hoo. Don't speed in the school zone and you won't get fined, simple.
The rules are there to prevent injury.
If there is no injury, no rule is broken.
No harm, no foul.
When you sue someone, you can only sue for damages to make you whole.
The state is supposed to only be able to fine you to cover damages.
That's the way it's supposed to work, at least.
But somebody along the way thought it would be a good idea to punish people by taking their money and to claim you were taking their money to prevent others from doing the same thing in the future. Of course fines and taxes don't limit bad behavior at all. They just serve as a way for the state and corporations to get more money out of people, and to let corporations and the state off the hook for their own crimes. When the state or a corporation is punished, they get hit with a laughably small fine instead place of jail time, and the people are the ones who ultimately pay the fine.
Gosh, how idealistic. Are you an architect? Have you ever left your house?
I nearly nuked myself because someone had stopped - dead stopped - in the middle lane of a motorway. There was a truck stopped in the slow lane, and something bad must have happened. All I knew was that I pulled out to overtake the truck, and then I was staring straight into the back of this car. I swerved into the fast lane, and realized that I'd almost clipped the driver of the car getting out!
I didn't hit anyone, but if I had, was that my fault?
I think your 100% is not really 100%. Probably close ... but perhaps you confuse the unlikely with the impossible?
South Carolina: photo enforcement prohibited with narrow exception; citations for violating traffic laws relating to speed or disregarding traffic control devices may only be used when the State declares an emergency and citations must be served in person within one hour of the violation
Why was this modded troll?
Keith D.
If you can't come to a safe stop because of icy conditions when the light turns yellow, it's because you're driving too fast for the conditions. Do they really not teach people these things before they get a driver's license anymore? It's pretty basic common sense stuff really.
Keith D.
I don't know the timings of lights outside my usual driving areas either, but I have one simple rule that I apply to all traffic lights that keeps me from running red lights anywhere I've traveled (more than a million miles so far).
Green means proceed when the intersection is clear and it's safe to do so.
Red means stop.
Yellow also means stop because yellow is never followed by green.
Keith D.
Is your state so backwards that running a red light means you haven't cleared the intersection rather than you entered the intersection after the red light? That's not been the case in any state I've lived in. If that is the case, then you ought to petition your legislature to fix the statute.
Keith D.
This is true but perhaps the law that's broken is the one that issues a license to anyone who's had a weak pulse in the past 50 years.
Keith D.
Courts (and law) aren't so naive as to think that "being in front" absolves one from all responsibility in an accident.
Courts are also not so naive as to confuse someone rear ending someone for following too closely when they're stopping at a red light for someone rear ending someone who's intentionally trying to cause an accident by slamming on their brakes on an open road or at a green light.
Keith D.
If you're impeding cross traffic, you've entered the intersection illegally. In most places, the sensor is placed so that you don't trigger the camera until you've physically entered the intersection, which is the same point where you're in the way of cross traffic and are likely to cause a collision. It doesn't matter if cross traffic is still able to swerve to avoid you, you're still blocking their right of way.
Keith D.
Please immigrate to the U.S. We need people like you here to spread genes that can think.
Keith D.
You read some old stories...
Your point is well made, but again: A yellow light that is insufficiently long for a person traveling at the speed limit to determine whether or not they can safely stop without entering the intersection and then do so is too short. Slamming the brakes for every light, which is the behavior that red light cameras encourage, causes rear-end accidents. Are the rear-ending people traveling too fast? Under American traffic law they are definitionally doing so, but as long as it is possible for people to switch lanes in front of you it is impossible to know that you have adequate empty space in front of you in all circumstances.
Also, congrats on your safe driving record, but how certain that no bit of your car has ever been in an intersection when the light turned red? I've never gotten a red light running ticket, either, but I've encountered quite a few very short yellows that were just about impossible to avoid running unless you traveled well under the speed limit.
Oh wow, I hadn't noticed the date of this post.
Your point about insufficiently timed yellow lights is perfectly valid. I have encountered several of those too. It's usually either a sign of ineptitude or corruption, the latter of which seems to be what most of the reasonable people who don't like red light cameras are complaining about the most. Obviously the stories from other comments talking about cameras where a ticket was successfully challenged due to yellow lights being timed shorter than state regulations illustrate the problem quite well, but I've not seen any comprehensive study suggesting that most cases are anything but human error or ignorance.
I'm sure there are cases of blatant corruption, it would be ignorant to think there aren't, but I know several IT people who work for one of the largest operators of red light and speed cameras, and they're very careful in the design and operation of their systems to prevent fraud and malfeasance in their application and use. The better companies at least employ several levels of checks and balances, although from the rumor mill, that isn't true for all of the companies who operate the cameras.
I just see ignorance and human error as issues separate from the cameras themselves, because it's likely to exist and affect people with or without the cameras in place. I'd prefer those issues to be addressed on their own so that enforcement options can be considered for their own merits without inappropriate baggage.
As far as my driving record goes, I have been over the line a few times in my many miles, we're all human and make mistakes sometimes. My point with the "yellow means stop" comment was that quite a few people if you ask them would say yellow means that the light will be red soon, but I know from experience that that's the worst way to think of them. I get better results from "yellow means stop just the same as red does", you just won't get a ticket for running a yellow in most cases. Unfortunately, as useful as that is, I've even attended a local police department's traffic safety school where the officers teaching the class wouldn't teach their students that because regardless of how it really works in the real world, it isn't what the law actually says, and they were only teaching the law, not driver safety.
Yeah, I was really responding to the guy a few posts up who said that people should pay attention to "stale" greens and start slowing down below the speed limit and expect to stop if the light has been green for "too long".