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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.'"
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.
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.
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'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.
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.
What if to brake safely you come to a stop over the line? (large truck behind you or someone riding your ass, speeding etc?)
" '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.
It doesn't work like that. Quite often the red lights with cameras are calibrated so the yellow/amber light is shorter than others on the same stretch. Drivers get caught out and either have to slam on the breaks and be rear-ended by the pickup sitting a few feet from their bumper, or risk running the red. If the light were genuinely about safety, all yellow lights would be set to hold for the same time, and they would also show a countdown. This move alone would cut out the vast majority of crashed at signals. Alas, it's not about safety, it's all about revenue for the local city/county and company running the cameras.
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
So Greece should just stop trying to collect taxes?
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.
Costs to be picked up by the loser
Your optimism is showing. Doesn't work that way in real life.
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
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.
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.
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.
Which means that you have to take a day off of work to go to court for the initial hearing where you plead not guilty to the infraction. Then you have to take another day off to go back to court the day when they actually hear your case. Finally (if you are lucky and it is not dragged on longer) you have to return a third time when the experts present their findings to the court. You have now taken three days off of work and spent them in court. What are the odds that it would have cost you (a lot) less to just pay the fine? I don't know about you, but I make more than $105 in a day of work and challenging one of these tickets would cost, at least, three days of work. In addition, there is the added inconvenience of travelling to the courthouse where the hearings are held.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
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.
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.
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....
Better yet, spend the income from fines on road safety related items.
The city that collects the fines sets the length of the yellow light. Now do you see the problem?
The city that collects the fines sets the length of the yellow light. Do you see the problem now?
The exotic situation is ice or snow on the street.
Or water or sand or anything else other than street.
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
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.
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 $105?
And that, right there, is just off the top of my head all the unconstitutional issues with these cameras. No, it's really not about safety, it's about money.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
We have this here - a steep downhill slope rated at 40MPH with a light at the bottom and a yellow of about 4.5 seconds. There's no way to do it properly, and semi trucks always run the red, because, y'know, physics. Locals know not to trust the opposite green but out-of-towners can be caught unawares.
The thing is, red light and speeding cameras are illegal by statute in NH, so there's no revenue incentive - they could park a cop at the bottom of the hill but they rarely do. It's more of a safety problem than anything, but the City won't do anything about it.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
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.
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
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
+ in bad weather conditions don't drive so fast
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
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?
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"
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.
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.
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!
"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.
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.
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?
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.
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'
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
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"
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 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?
> 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
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.
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?
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.
... 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.
I guess those countries never understood the concept of the yellow light then. They certainly donot do that in my European country.
I even know the lights on my way to work are timed for 30mph despite the posted limit being 35.
That sounds annoying, but not as bad as where I live. Here, the lights are timed for 40 despite the posted limit being 35. Talk about perverse incentives.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
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......
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.
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
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.
Nothing! The issue with speed cameras is that we don't know that's what's happening, and there's reason to suspect that it's not.
We hear cases where the owner of a car gets mailed a ticket, regardless of who was driving. Or we hear of cases where one side alleges speeding didn't happen, but weren't given a chance to oppose it in court.
Sometimes we even hear that speeding was accurately detected, but the cops failed to confront the speeder, so they were allowed them to continue speeding.
What's wrong with having cops pull people over, check ids, the courts getting guilty pleas from most of them, having the borderline cases adjudicated, having the falsely-accused get acquitted, etc? This approach worked for a century, and then we threw it away.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
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.'"
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.
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.
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.