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Out With the Red-Light Cameras, In With the Speeding Cameras
An anonymous reader writes: Have you enjoyed reading the constant flow of news about how red light cameras are failing? They've been installed under the shadow of corruption, they don't increase safety, and major cities are dropping them. Well, the good news is that red-light cameras are on the decline in the U.S. The bad news is that speeding cameras are on the rise. From the article: "The number of U.S. communities using red-light cameras has fallen 13 percent, to 469, since the end of 2012, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a nonprofit scientific and educational organization funded by the insurance industry. That includes the 24 towns in New Jersey that participated in a pilot program that ended this month with no pending legislation to revive it. Meanwhile, the institute estimates that 137 communities use speed cameras, up from 115 at the end of 2011."
The summery and article seems to claim there is evidence that in some cases red light cameras don't increase safety, so they are bad, and moving to speed cameras is also bad. Is there some particular reason speed cameras are bad? Sure, people don't like tickets, but from a safety perspective, are they effective?
Oh no! Bad news is that speeding cameras are increasing. Now we'll actually catch people who are breaking the law. What will they do. Those poor souls.
Yes I'm trolling but I have an honest question for you. What makes you decide it's okay to break the law and then complain about the judicial system's ability to identify that you did? If you have something against the law in question then simply breaking it is unlikely to be the way to get it changed, and at worst quite silly if you complain about subsequently getting caught.
It's one of the few 100% voluntary taxes. You chose to pay it.
to low speed limits are not safe try doing 55 on the IL toll way and you may have trucks on your ass with people in all other lanes blowing pass you.
In Massachusetts, tickets cannot be automatically issued by use of red light cameras (a cop has to issue the ticket), which means all of the cameras on light posts, installed at fair expense, are pretty much meaningless. Speeding cameras probably fall under the same law.
Not that we don't need to enforce traffic light and speeding violations, but automatic ticket issuing systems don't stop the truly dangerous drivers as they are not an immediate deterrent. And automatic tickets piss off the people who get caught in the edge cases (run the yellow a little too late). A cop can focus efforts to pull over the truly reckless drivers and can adjudicate the minor violations in a balanced manner.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
Is there some particular reason speed cameras are bad?
They are bad (or at least do no good) if they do not slow people down, even worse if they are well marked and do cause people to slow down - a rapid slowdown is often the cause of accidents (as we see with red light cameras) and even if there is not an accident it can create a huge wave of disruption for traffic behind due to a wave effect...
If it's not doing any good, may cause harm, and just exists as an extra tax on the unwary then there's no point in having it.
One other side effect that is not often thought about is that if there are a lot of speed camera around (like in the UK) there are fewer police actually patrolling and stopping people who are actually dangerous (server around other drivers, blocking the left lane, etc) or even just helping motorists with issues if the car has trouble.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
We are all guilty of three felonies a day (google it), and traffic laws (not all laws) are in place to keep us safe... when appropriate.
The problem with automated speeding tickets is that, many times (i.e. no other traffic) there is no safety issue to speeding.
Sounds like another money grab for the overpaid government employee system.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Well marked cameras placed in areas where they belong are a good thing IMO. However, I often disagree with cities on where they belong. They should go in areas with a lot of accidents resulting from excess speed and in school zones. I could also see temporary ones being put up in construction zones. Unfortunately, cities typically place them to maximize revenue rather than to improve safety.
If they are set up to maximize revenue, aren't they also in places where a lot of people are speeding? The motives might not line up, but the results do.
What?
Speed cameras are a joke. I drive past 5 of them on a daily basis along with 2 red light cameras. Speed cameras produce a safety bubble. People slow down way under the speed limit when they pass them and speed back up as soon as they are out of the line of sight. It is $75 if you get pinged going 12mph over.
My town had a big controversy over one camera where the road went from 40 to 25. It was making a lot of money on this major thru road from one county to the other. They moved it a block down so people could slow down, still gets a lot of people.
Best one was when they installed one right off I-95 and 90% of my co-workers got multiple tickets within the first week of it being active.
Mobile speed cameras are also fun. I got good at spotting the white SUVs randomly parked in the construction zones on the side of the road that could take a photo of any lane.
OH and my town also has FAKE speed cameras! Yes they randomly move a fake camera box around and place it in locations that real ones are not allowed to slow down traffic.
If they are set up to maximize revenue, aren't they also in places where a lot of people are speeding?
That means they are set were the speed most people feel comfortable driving is faster than the posted limit - in other words in places where the limit is wrong, as on average drivers pick a reasonable speed. If you have a lot of people speeding in an area, the limit needs to change - not the people.
The exceptions are places like school zones where there are good reasons why people should be traveling slower than the road allows for.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Places where speed causes accidents is a very small subset of places where people speed. If the cameras cause all places where people speed to become places where they break suddenly and cause accidents, then they hurt far more than they help.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
We tried this just over a decade ago - and then quickly legislated against it
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/4751508/Brakes-are-on-speed-cameras.html
Some of those construction zones are there for months on end and with no workers for days at a time. I know I don't always have the patience to deal with ridiculous impositions, but at least with self-driving cars on the horizon, it won't matter for long.
We have a few speed cameras in school zones. Supposedly, when the kids are walking to/from school, they drop the school zone speed to 20 MPH from 35, indicate the reduction with flashing amber lights and enable the speed camera.
Except that they turn the damned 20 MPH zone on at random times during the day. No school starting/ending. No recess. But then, when preschool gets out at noon and all the mothers are walking the little kids home, its 35 with no cameras enabled. Its a scam. It has nothing to do with safety and everything to do with catching drivers who see no kids (but miss the warning light) and figure the 35 MPH limit is in effect.
Have gnu, will travel.
Should have been: http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2014/02/18/speed-camera-controversy-spreads-throughout-maryland
Ontario had vans with speed cameras in them, and I'd estimate that they knocked about 10km/h off the average speed of highway drivers, reducing speeds to about 2-5 km/h over the limit.
When a new government eliminated them, speeds went back up to the 12-15km/h over the limit over the next month or so. As expected, accident and mortality rates went up as well. Faster cars = less reaction time.
However, nobody was willing to seriously ask the real question. Is freeing up 5-10 minutes of a large number of people's day worth a few lives lost?
I actually don't mind if there were fewer speed cameras - I don't speed more than 5-7 mph over the speed limit, but I can see that mild speeding on highways rarely cause problems. But red lights? I wish every crossing had them.
Ok, I might be biased because I was hit by a car once (a broken arm but nothing more serious) when crossing a road (on 'walk' sign).
"...a nonprofit scientific and educational organization funded by the insurance industry."
Sounds legit.
When I was a high school kid, there was a neighborhood that had a speed camera. It swiftly became a sport, and the a rite of passage, to paint the speed camera. I don't think the thing stayed working for any 3 consecutive days in the years it was installed.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
There was a stretch of road that I occasionally travelled in the UK, where it had an average speed check (with a low limit) because of road work for, I think, over a year, while just next to this public road is a nice, mostly empty, private toll road. I never saw any work taking place on this public road. I wonder how much the "road work" increased revenue for the toll road.
Years later, after the work has been finished, the speed limit on the public road is 10 mph below that of comparable roads.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
If they are set up to maximize revenue, aren't they also in places where a lot of people are speeding?
"Places where a lot of people are speeding" != "places with lots of accidents".
Big Brother is watching you doing wrong at all times.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Most studies show that red light cameras work, in that they reduce the overall number of injuries and fatalities (but increase the overall number of accidents), which seems like a pretty desirable benefit to me. People are more important than cars. As someone who is primarily a pedestrian, too many times have I narrowly avoided being hit by a driver who ran a red light, or who turned on a green forward arrow before the light changed to a green circle. I'd be quite satisfied if the people who did that had to pay a fine.
Don't want cities to try gaming the system? Fine, just have the government set rules that remove the incentive. For example, the provincial government could require that the revenue from red light cameras installed by the city goes to the province instead of the municipality, or goes to some sort of charity, or goes into the caisse de depot or CPPIB or something. Cities can install the cameras for safety if they want, but would see no financial benefit.
The big question with speed cameras is whether speeds are properly set for these roads.
There are 3 speeds a road can have:
1.The speed limit set on the road signs
2.The speed that it is safe to drive the road at (which may vary with weather conditions, traffic conditions etc)
and 3.The speed that the majority of the traffic is actually driving at.
Limit #1 (the posted speed limit) should be set at no lower than limit #3 (the limit people actually drive) unless that value is higher than limit #2 (the limit its safe to drive at).
If everyone is driving faster than its safe to drive at, the governments and authorities need to ask why. And possibly introduce safety improvements to the road to make it safer to drive at the speed people are actually driving at.
Places like the bottom of hills where most people are going in access of the speed limit at the bottom but coast back to the speed limit fairly quickly.
There's a bad one I drive regularly, 4 lane divided highway with overpasses, basically a bypass that goes up and down a big hill and when going down the speed limit goes from 80 to 50 km/h about a mile and a half before the light at the end of the road. Everyone slows down at the bottom of the hill on the approach to the light as it is a very safe stretch of road.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Holy crap. Tickets for speed cameras in Baltimore/Maryland are in the $40-50 range?
If Los Angeles ever starts using them, I'm looking at nearly 10x that amount. Red light camera tickets were $490, and a typical speeding ticket (15 over) is about $240. The fine itself is just $35 ($70 in a construction zone), the other $205 are "fees". If a 3rd party company is operating them, the city just increases the cost of the ticket to cover the operator's share.
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
Not really, take open freeway types of places. a great example of this is the Atlanta Beltway where you have a road built for much higher speeds limited to 55 mph.
a great video to see what happens when someone actually makes people follow that speed limit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
And trust me that there are plenty of examples of this. Personally I've driven in many states on the same conditions of roadways with varying speed limits from 55 (GA) -> 75 (TX) and honestly people don't want to go slow so traffic is generally better in on the faster roads.. BUT that being said i fully agree with limiting speeds in residential areas, side streets, school zones, and any place that has potential for pedestrian traffic.
Also on a random note, bike lanes do not belong on freeways/interstates.. That is just asking for someone to be killed.
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
The problem with the school zone ones are, they obnoxiously are active well outside of school hours, weekends, and holidays. Some are reasonable with allowing 5mph before they go into alert status. Some in the area go to "high alert" with even 1mph over the speed limit -- speed numbers in red with strobing red and white blinking lights around it. Even at 2am. On a Saturday.
You are right, no reason for people to get angry for me going on a murder spree.
There is NEVER a case for ZERO TOLERANCE
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
And they are crap.
a simple Fresnel lens defeats the cameras because they smear the plate on any off axis. My $1.00 solution outperforms your overpriced plate.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
This is why I am quite looking forward to fully automated self driving cars. Never again will I get a ticket - or if I do, I can sue the car manufacturer. Of course the game will be up when city politicians realize what these cars mean to their "lost ticket revenues". Isn't entitlement grand?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Cameras can't pick who they apply the law to
The main issue that is well known in France, is that speed cameras, or whatever automated systems that detects car infractions, are almost never placed in notorious dangerous and killer spots.
These are placed in spots where many infractions happen, long and secure straight highways with a small slope, for instance. So while it probably does no direct harm (other than making people inject less money themselves into the economy), it could do much more good it the states or the cities building those chose the dangerous spots instead... but well, saving lives does not makes as much money.
Speed doesn't just cause accidents, it exacerbates them. Speed limits aren't there just to prevent accidents, but to make them less serious. Speed limits on highways without a divider are commonly 55 while divided is 65 because a collision at 55 is far more survivable than 65. Obviously, in a full-speed head-on, you die either way, but since it would require dropping the speed limit to something that would cause the road to clog due to lack of throughput, they don't account for that.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Oh there's the bullshit again. Red light camera's do increase safety. They may not decrease the number accidents but typically DO decrease casualties. But much more important, they reduce innocent victims. Instead of innocent people dying because some idiot slammed into the side of their car, we now mostly have 50% victims that either crashed into another car because they were tailgating and we have 50% victims that were incompetent drivers that failed to appreciate their surroundings, especially the idiot tailgating, and slammed the brakes in a panic.
Even if red light cameras would't increase safety, they would distribute casualties in a much fairer way, lowering the number of innocent victims and increasing the number of not-so-innocent victims. Red-light camera's increase effective self-determination.
0x or or snor perron?!
I think you could make an argument for speed enforcement cameras provided that the logic of where to place them was safety data driven -- ie, you have solid numbers that show that a specific stretch of road has a high number of speed-related accidents.
I don't think that's how it works, though, I think like squad-car based speed traps they tend to get placed in locations where a higher number of people may get cited because people naturally tend to drive over the speed limit due to the nature of the roadway (good pavement, wide lanes, good sightlines, perhaps even a downhill grade).
Even where the data may show they are of safety value, they only cover a tiny stretch of road. I would tend to think that speed-induced accident zones are likely much larger than the small space a camera system could cover. I'd guess that unless they were portable and moved frequently to saturate the true target area, you might just end up with traffic that gets "camera smart" and merely slows in the camera's footprint (unsafely, even) and then resumes speeding.
I also think the public's appetite for speed cameras would improve if there was more leniency to them -- your first and maybe even second citation from a specific camera is a warning and all subsequent citations from the same camera are fines. Provide an educational motivation first before becoming purely punitive.
I'm curious what law enforcement's opinion of them is -- I can see where the brass involved with budgets and income and safety PR may be in favor of them, but I would think many cops would be opposed, since stopping speeders isn't just about traffic citations, it's an opportunity to question citizens under color of law.
and the correct response to either camera is to write a law stating
"At no time shall any device or material obscure the license plate with the exception of parts of the vehicle as designed by the Manufacturer. The penalty for this shall be considering the vehicle to be without tags thus subject to full penalties thereof as listed in %local law cite%."
im sure an actual law will be a lot longer but you get the point.
The state also has struggled with a ticketing system that requires people who ignore mailed violations to be personally served if the case is to proceed.
Why is ANY system allowed to bypass the service requirements long established in common law and from the Constitution? Postal mail is not service, and never has been, but somehow since there is a camera we throw out due process as too inconvenient? How asinine.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
That we haven't done in the U.S. what seems common in Europe - destruction of speed and red light cameras. There are sites on the web showing the carnage.
That said - the cameras do offer prime hacking targets too.
..., even worse if they are well marked and do cause people to slow down - a rapid slowdown is often the cause of accidents (as we see with red light cameras) and even if there is not an accident it can create a huge wave of disruption for traffic behind due to a wave effect...
I would disagree with this point. I would ask, why would you be speeding in the first place? I could understand that there are certain road that all the sudden drops speed limit (i.e. from 50 to 35 but many people still drive above 50), and those who are out of town wouldn't know. However, driving faster than speed limit in the first place is not an excuse to invalidate the speed limit drop. Also, the huge wave of disruption is another thing. I understand that people would try to keep up with the car in front. So why would the first car in the traffic drive so fast then? Or if you are following someone, you could easily reduce the speed to speed limit anyway. You will get to the destination and will not need to worry about breaking the law. If one argues that the one is in hurry, then blame oneself of not timing one's schedule right. There is no excuse of being caught red handed and as a result causes a disruption/accident from speeding.
Texas has speed limits? Couldn't tell from all the times I've driven there. Even with all the construction that was happening in Dallas, no one went at or under the "speed limit"...no matter if it was sunny, raining, snowing...
I guess I'm just lucky. Almost every school zone in my city also has flashing lights on the signs that only flash during certain times, and the signs all say "when lights are flashing". Personally, I think high schools shouldn't have speed zones. By the time your in high school if you don't comprehend how roads work then maybe you should be removed from the gene pool.
Proved that you can beat these things by driving insanely fast.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
you mean like on freeways where most people go over the limit and accidents are caused more by jackasses that drive erratically rather than people going with the flow of the traffic speed.
I don't have a problem with properly implemented speeding cameras if the speed limits are reasonable, there are posted warnings and the enforcement level only catches the egregious violators, e.g., 20mph over the speed limit, not 5 over. It also needs to be safety-based not revenue-based and any net-profit should go to state coffers, not directly reward the local police departments. If it's really about safety and not revenue, they won't have a problem with this.
Competition Good, Monopoly Bad.
A lack of speed also causes accidents. When the speed limit is below what most people are comfortable driving at, then the person obeying the speed limit suddenly becomes a road hazard.
Necklacing a camera sounds waaay better than what usually ends up wearing a burning tyre
a rapid slowdown is often the cause of accidents "
No, tailgating causes those accidents.
Anyway, if they are well labeled, and don't move, it won't be much of a surprise, will it.
Really, there is no comparison between the two and data from one in no way be used to infer an outcome of the other.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Not really. Just get one of those cheesy LED-light license plate borders and put decent infrared LEDs in it. Invisible to the human eye, it will "blind" any cameras looking at it. They will get a picture of your car with a huge fuzzy white spot where the license plates would be.
This is why we need tailgating cameras.
In other words, it isn't the rapid slowdown that causes the collision, it's the excessively close following distance ("driving on a road too close to a frontward vehicle, at a distance which does not guarantee that stopping to avoid collision is possible"). That's why hard braking is legal while tailgating is not.
People know they aren't supposed to speed, so it's really a tax on bad driving. Then people will drive more safely, and those who don't will pay more in taxes so you don't need to. That's two benefits for the price of one, and who doesn't like two-for-one deals?
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Sorry, but no cookie.
These are armored quite well.
I saw one dissassembled once when they were doing maintenance on it. The casing is 1/2 in steel. The glass porthole for the lens is 1/2 inch laminated glass; ie; two panes of glass sandwitching a pane of clear acrylic; similar to your windshield. The radar port (radome) is 1/2 inch plastic. It's transparent to the radar frequencies (I believe these guys use 2.5 ghz), but it cannot be broken. Just for the fun of it, I later found a piece of the same plastic but, just 1/4 inch thick. in a scrap pile at a community workshop that I belong to. I put that piece in a vice and tried to smash it with a hammer. No go.
No, I think a bullet; shotgun pellits; or especially a bat, would do nothing to these devices.
Most Respectfully Yours Mark Allyn Bellingham, Washington
And don't forged the security surveillence camera that will record someone doing such an act.
Most Respectfully Yours Mark Allyn Bellingham, Washington
I also support razing any town that relies on finning non-residents to fund their government. That's literally taxation without representation.
That red light cameras increase accidents is due only to the fact that too many drivers are trying to run lights, and expecting the person in front of them to do the same. If every light had a camera, and everyone knew it, those rear-end collisions would end rather quickly.
I wish I had mod points for you. That's wicked informative.
When the speed limit is below what most people are comfortable driving at, then the person obeying the speed limit suddenly becomes a road hazard.
Nope. When people outdrive their vision and/or tailgate, then they become a road hazard. All else being in order, the person obeying the speed limit is doing nothing hazardous, unless the speed limit is so low that it causes traffic to back up. It's up to you to decide how to react when someone obeys the law. You can see them as a pragmatist, or you can get steaming mad, but it won't change the outcome either way.
Now, I firmly believe that people should get the fuck out of the way and let traffic come through, and I put my driving where my mouth is and if I'm in the way, I do the same. I will pull over into a turnout or onto the shoulder at the drop of a hat — any hat — because I don't personally want people behind me, I don't want people holding me up, and I don't want to be the asshole that people are upset with, while simultaneously (and positively) wanting to make the world a better place by acting like a better person. And, since I am not perfect, I often get angry with people who don't get out of the way when I would like to drive faster. But I don't kid myself that it's their fault that I'm angry. I don't imagine that the road is my personal playground, except in those moments of amazing self-entitlement.
The only time I get really angry any more is when people come into my lane head-on. That makes me quite cross. I consider it a deadly attack on my life, and it's all the more offensive when it is the result of carelessness. Usually, however, it is simple self-absorption: people outdriving their skill level, and not giving two shits about anyone including themselves.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
In PA, ours say "when children are present" as it should be-- because I should not be ticketed for some moron having the lights flash at the wrong time, on weekends, in the summer, or on holidays.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Oh good, a new sport!
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
We need something more effective than tickets. I suggest spikes that pop up in front of a speeding car. $600 worth of new tires should be a good deterrent.