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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.
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?
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
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.
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).
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".
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.
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
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.'"
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.