Slashdot Mirror
Driverless Cars Could Cripple Law Enforcement Budgets
colinneagle writes "Google's driverless cars have now combined to drive more than 700,000 miles on public roads without receiving one citation, The Atlantic reported this week. While this raises a lot of questions about who is responsible to pay for a ticket issued to a speeding autonomous car – current California law would have the person in the driver's seat responsible, while Google has said the company that designed the car should pay the fine – it also hints at a future where local and state governments will have to operate without a substantial source of revenue.
Approximately 41 million people receive speeding tickets in the U.S. every year, paying out more than $6.2 billion per year, according to statistics from the U.S. Highway Patrol published at StatisticBrain.com. That translates to an estimated $300,000 in speeding ticket revenue per U.S. police officer every year. State and local governments often lean on this source of income when they hit financial trouble. A study released in 2009 examined data over a 13-year period in North Carolina, finding a 'statistically significant correlation between a drop in local government revenue one year, and more traffic tickets the next year,' Popular Science reported. So, just as drug cops in Colorado and Washington are cutting budgets after losing revenue from asset and property seizures from marijuana arrests, state and local governments will need to account for a drastic reduction in fines from traffic violations as autonomous cars stick to the speed limit."
Approximately 41 million people receive speeding tickets in the U.S. every year, paying out more than $6.2 billion per year, according to statistics from the U.S. Highway Patrol published at StatisticBrain.com. That translates to an estimated $300,000 in speeding ticket revenue per U.S. police officer every year. State and local governments often lean on this source of income when they hit financial trouble. A study released in 2009 examined data over a 13-year period in North Carolina, finding a 'statistically significant correlation between a drop in local government revenue one year, and more traffic tickets the next year,' Popular Science reported. So, just as drug cops in Colorado and Washington are cutting budgets after losing revenue from asset and property seizures from marijuana arrests, state and local governments will need to account for a drastic reduction in fines from traffic violations as autonomous cars stick to the speed limit."
So what's the next shakedown target in this game of "citizens vs government"?
Good /GrumpyCat
"Gee Officer, I don't know why this thing is speeding"
Saving the common people several billions a year would send nothing but good vibrations up the economic chain. Yeah, some cops may lose their jobs, but the billions extra that people would have every year means other jobs get created elsewhere.
The Internet King? I wonder if he could provide faster nudity.
The justice system and the police are primarily a revenue tool, to be unleashed as required, and controlled by factors other than the law.
And people wonder why the police are largely treated with mistrust and disdain.
If speeding tickets are just a shake down to pad out budgets, then the police are just flunkies, crooks and toll collectors.
Fuck the police.
There's no money lost here. Writing tickets didn't generate anything for the economy, other than perhaps the reduction in destruction of property. Clearly if driverless cars aren't breaking the laws, then that reduction is occurring in a much more efficient manner. Thus driverless cars are a net GAIN to the total economy, not a drain.
But, but what about our conflict of interest? How are we supposed to operate a law enforcement and public safety organization without making revenue collection part of enforcement? How are we going to make the system unfair if we start eliminating inherent conflicts of interest? It's totally unfair to the government, we must punish those people for not breaking the law by making them pay a fine. I mean that's what we already do in some states (like mine) to punish people who try to help the environment by driving green vehicles.
Seems to me that if enforcement actions are no longer necessary, then you won't need as big of a police force so the loss of revenue will be offset by not having to pay the salaries of all of those traffic cops. This is a non-issue.
I read the internet for the articles.
Allow the local governments to charge more for faster lanes.
Oh, wait, they already do that in some localities.
So law enforcement budgets will be lower, but the need for law enforcement will also be lower because you won't have to pay as many cops to run around patrolling the roads and writing tickets. Plus there will be fewer injuries and less property damage due to reckless driving, which means less economic waste.
If law enforcement legitimately needs more money, then raise taxes and pay for it. People keep talking like it's bad for the economy to permanently address problems because we'll have fewer jobs consisting of temporarily patching those problems. It's just another variation on the "broken window fallacy".
The car is either driverless, or it isn't. Either the car maker is responsible, or the owner is.
But, really, who the hell is going to take liability for a device which says "I'm in charge of driving, you just sit there" right up until it goes into panic mode half a second before you impact with something and says "bummer dude, you're now in charge, evade quickly, liability transferred to passenger".
Sorry, but if I'm sitting there reading my newspaper or whatever, I'm not controlling the vehicle. If I'm responsible for controlling the vehicle, then I will actually be controlling the vehicle.
There's simply no room for a sudden shift in blame to the person in the drivers seat ... that makes no sense whatsoever.
And if the car suddenly loses its marbles and mows down a bunch of schoolkids, you think the cargo/passengers suddenly own responsibility for that?
This to me has always been the point at which driverless cars kind of fall apart, determining who is really in charge, and defining what that means.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
... but have they tested it with a black dude in the driver's seat?
You know through taxes.
While you're at it how about properly funding schools through taxes rather than bake sales. Actually there are a lot of things that could benefit just by being properly funded by taxes.
More and more departments are buying more and more stuff they simply don't need. More and more departments are starting up SWAT teams they don't need. I'm sorry, a town of 5,000 simply doesn't need a special weapons and tactics unit. They just don't. Studies have shown that when departments start up special units, guess what? They want to use those units. These units get paid more. Police salaries are already too high in many places. Police administration salaries are ridiculously high, some over $250,000. Admin salaries should be capped below 100k. Police salaries should be capped at well under 100k. Public servants should never be getting rich. All public service jobs should be capped.
For too long, police and cities have begun to rely on the "revenue" from tickets and parking citations. Parking I can see somewhat. But too many places have quotas that police have to meet with giving out citations rather than actually policing. All cities should require police to walk their beats for the first few years like they used to. Police have gotten away from this and as a result, the streets are worse, no one knows anyone else, and the police don't have a vested interest like they once did.
Enough of this nonsense.
So no more end-of-the-month speed traps by police departments to balance their budgets? Whatever will our police departments do for money?
Wait, I've gotten speeding tickets before and I've always had to write the check to the city/county courthouse, not the police department.
Taxing EVs makes perfect sense. They still need roads to be built and maintained.
Adding an enforcement fee for a car that doesn't need enforcement is just absurd. If the number of tickets being written drops because there are no more speeding cars and reckless drivers, then just reduce the size of the police force. You don't need patrol cops any more and that's a good thing. Instead of employing people as patrol cops, they can instead work as artists or scientists or something that makes the world better instead of being a necessary evil.
Would it pull over if it sees the blinking lights / siren behind it?
Could you spoof it with a bunch of blinking xmas lights on the side of the road?
$6.2 gigabucks/year is $300K/officer? That means 20,667 officers for the whole country. Methinks one or more numbers here is fudge.
Why should a car that won't be committing traffic infractions pay a fee for traffic infractions? That doesn't even come close to making sense. That's like saying everyone who puts on a seat belt should pay an extra fee to make up for "lost revenue" from fewer tickets for not wearing a seat belt.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
The problem is "law enforcement" agencies using enforcement as revenue streams for cities and states.
This puts law enforcement against the very people they are supposed to serve and protect.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
The vast majority of road wear is from heavy trucks, mostly bringing stuff like groceries that we all need. The only reason we have a gas tax is because it's taxable. That's the only government process for deciding what to tax: is it reasonably practical to tax X? Yes? Then we're just arguing about the rate.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Adding an enforcement fee for a car that doesn't need enforcement is just absurd.
The way I read it, is its not an enforcement fee for a car that doesn't need enforcement. Its a $1000 tax on (I think) all cars to support local police municipal revenues so they can continue to pursue criminals where there isn't a net payoff at the end... like nearly all of them.
Right now, it appears some of the revenue from traffic fines pays for the detectives investigating theft, arson, fraud, missing persons, murder, hunting with out a license, public urination, vandalism, and so on.
Take away the traffic fines, and sure, you don't need nearly as much traffic enforcement, but they would also face a budget crisis within the rest of the department even if they let go of all the excess 'traffic enforcement' officers. Clearly that money to pay for regular police work is still going to have to come from somewhere. Raising local taxes is the obvious solution, whether its a tax-per-vehicle, or it gets added into property taxes, or whatever... its going to have to happen.
That's actually a good point: since the occupants would have zero control over their vehicle, it would be trivial for LEOs to set up drive-through nudie scanners, redirect all traffic through them, then single out the cars that "appear to be carrying contraband" and put them on a separate track for an "enhanced" search.
The fact that such a thing would be mind-bendingly unconstitutional will probably never even cross their minds, so long as the practice remains profitable.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Driverless car pulled over by driverless cop car and given a ticket.
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
The figures are nonsense. There are 18,000 law enforcement agencies in the U.S.
Whoever did the sums appears to have confused agencies with police officers, since that gives $344,444 per agency.
There are about 461,000 sworn officers in local police departments, giving a revenue per officer of $13,449. Local police officers only make up 2/3 of the total number of officers in the US, so the actual revenue per officer is even lower.
If we dropped human drivers, speed limits could be increased in many cases (sometimes the design of the road itself is the limiting factor, and new roads would assume driverless conditions).
is 20,773 cops NATIONWIDE, or 415 cops per state....
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Which have nothing to do with cars. So why tax cars? Why not a general tax or a property tax or such?
Putting a $1,000 fee for transportation will really hurt a lot of poor people.
The car is either autonomous, or it isn't. If it isn't autonomous, I'll drive it myself and be in control the whole time.
Semi-autonomous means we'll give you the illusion you're not in control, but we might randomly shift blame to you.
Either the car is 100% in control, or the driver is 100% in control. There is no gray area in which both are in control. There is no transition from "car in charge" to "human in charge".
It has to be all or nothing. Semi-autonomous is a huge bit of weaseling to say "we're mostly in control, but you're responsible". It can't be a fluid thing where once you've dozed off or started doing something related to not driving the car where all of a sudden you are in control and must react.
If you really think liability is going to be determined by what firmware the car is running, and who is responsible for updating it ... then I will tell you right now, driverless cars will forever be in the domain of a gimmick, but for which the actual laws aren't inadequate. And, if the laws aren't adequate, you either need to fix all of the laws, or basically say you can't have driverless cars.
Me, I'd refuse to take any responsibility for the vehicle, and wouldn't sit in an operators seat. Either the car has it and can handle it, or it bloody well can't.
And, until someone settles the legal questions of "what happens when I'm sleeping in my backseat with nobody to interact with the car", being in a legal gray area more or less nullifies anything supposedly useful about a "semi autonomous car".
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Which usually goes back to local law enforcement, or at least a portion of that, but not in all states. There are cities here in Missouri where the local governments made up most of the revenue from traffic violations. A couple cities were famous for this until the state passed some laws prohibiting them from doing this.
Nebraska, I believe, collects all traffic fines revenue and then doles that money out to the schools instead of police departments. Doesn't matter if it's a local cop or a state trooper who pulls you over and issues you the citation, the money goes to the state to prevent what occurred in Missouri.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Two other reasons for a gas tax are because it's less regressive than a sales tax, and because it provides the proper incentive not to consume more fuel than necessary (i.e., drive less or drive a more fuel-efficient vehicle). Driving less reduces the need for fewer lane-miles of road, and that saves us all even more money.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
The wear from driving on roads is non-linear with vehicle weight. It really is the trucks that matter.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Wait just a moment here... Where does all our current funding go?
I pay roughly 45% of my annual income in Taxes (split between state and federal), this is not including sales tax, fuel tax, property tax, and registration. With all of that added in (some via estimate) it is pretty easy to get that number to between 50 and 55%. I will never agree to a tax increase, ever. What we have here is a very poorly run situation, one where police are required to "tax" people from breaking silly laws and distracting the police from doing what they should be doing, stopping real crime.
In a world where it takes an hour or more for police to come to my home after it has been robbed, yet you can drive around and see 10 speed traps, there is something wrong. Tickets should not be used as a source of income for the police departments, there should be no incentive for them to harass what are otherwise law abiding, tax paying citizens. "There is a person across town who is being murdered, and here is the officer writing a citation to someone who has never committed a real crime."
42 69 6C 6C 20 47 61 74 65 73 20 69 73 20 61 20 77 68 6F 72 65 21
While I can't quite say tailpipe emissions are a complete non-issue, there are only a handful of cities in the US where they even matter a little. ULEV and better cars really don't matter unless the air above your city never circulates with the outside world (which does actually happen in a couple of places).
But that's all a dodge. Forcing other people to drive less has been core to leftwing philosophy for decades now. It all about tribal identification, not about anything practical. (Which is why the Tesla throws the right for a spin: it's a really nice American car, but then it's a hippie electric car that might as well come with a "Coexist" bumpersticker, such cognitive dissonance!)
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
That $300k number is just absurd. $6.2 billion in fines, divided by $300k per police officer, would imply only 21,000 police officers. There are 34,500 officers in New York City ALONE. Wikipedia puts the total at around 930k sworn officers with arrest powers (765k state/local, plus 44k part-time, plus 120k federal).
Even using only fulltime, and ignoring the Federal officers, would get you to about $8k, not $300k.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...