Slashdot Mirror
Speed Cameras In Chicago Earn $50M Less Than Expected
countach44 writes that (in the words of the below-linked article) "Chicagoans are costing the city tens of millions of dollars — through good behavior." The City of Chicago recently installed speed cameras near parks and schools as part of the "Children's Safety Zone Program," claiming a desire to decrease traffic-related incidents in those area. The city originally budgeted (with the help of the company providing the system) to have $90M worth of income from the cameras — of which only $40M is now expected. Furthermore, the city has not presented data on whether or not those areas have become safer.
Yes:
http://www.realclearscience.co...
http://www.nbc-2.com/story/122...
http://www.youngcons.com/texas...
All 3 of those were beaten with MATH as in, irrefutable proof that the camera was wrong and setup to intentionally give tickets to people that did not break the law. (unless the software itself is hopelessly flawed)
biatch
Some states have laws against small communities enforcing speed laws on state or interstate highways, so that the town doesn't become a revenue-generating speed trap.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
>>>You're not even supposed to run the amber, never mind the red.
Incorrect. When you see light turning yellow, you are suppose to stop when it is safe to do so, otherwise proceed through the intersection. If you are a municipality concerned about safety - increase timer on yellow light.
Instead, exact opposite happens - municipality concerned with a budget shortfalls decreases yellow light timer to generate additional red light ticket revenue. As a result, many people slam on the brakes increasing instances of rear-end collisions.
Yep, I remember years back when some of these companies and cities were getting sued by the insurance companies for making the accident rate go up at these intersections.
I've only had one cop ever give me crap for running the yellow, in Chicago of course. He must have not felt like doing any paperwork that day because he dropped it when I made it clear that I'd take it to court if he wrote a ticket over such a spurious thing.
If you are a municipality concerned about safety - increase timer on yellow light.
It's not quite that simple. This has to do with how people learn a system and react to it.
You have a population that expects a warning a certain time before a condition applies. If you fiddle with the timing of when the warning comes up, the population will eventually learn the new timing and adjust to it. In the meantime they will either be surprised at a change in either direction. But shortening the light is more like "HOLY FUCK it's already red BRAKE SLAM" as opposed to "huh, I could have made it through this light".
But it's not quite that simple. You also have people from out of town that have learned their own light timing system and have an expectation when they visit you. You can essentially treat these people as people who haven't learned the new timing yet. And this is a bad thing because whenever you have two actors working on different systems they have different expectations and they both expect the other guy to do something different. We all expect to drive on the right side of the road in the USA, and we all have a general idea of how long a yellow light is supposed to last. It should be a rock-solid standard.
But it's not quite that simple. Even though there's a system and people learn it eventually, once it becomes a note-worthy thing and people start talking about it or worse, it becomes news, then you have the added factor of people preemptively stopping sooner or later. The benefit of having longer yellow lights is annulled if people know they're given a longer yellow light. Now you have people that haven't learned the new system, people who have learned the new system, and people who are trying to game the new system based on what they've heard.
Welcome to sociology where the factors are endless, the system is beyond our ken, and the points are billions of dollars and literal corpses.
I'd prefer if they didn't change the timing.
How about use it to fund public defenders? Those guys are always getting a raw deal (as are their clients), and it would create a bit of a stabilizing feedback loop. More fines means you need more defense lawyers, a win-win. Or have we given up on having a fair legal system?
You're missing the important aspect of the point. Increased yellow light timer, means increase span of time to determine whether it's safe to proceed through the intersection. Whether that means people figure they have more time to get through the intersection is moot. They have more time to decide on a safe course of action before one HAS to be made. So yes, it is that simple, and you've over thought the issue.