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Chicago Sends More Than 100,000 "Bogus" Camera-Based Speeding Tickets
Ars Technica, based on an in-depth report (paywalled) at the Chicago Tribune, says that the city of Chicago has been misusing traffic cameras to trigger automated speeding tickets. In particular, these cameras are placed in places where there are enhanced penalties for speeding, putatively intended to increase child safety. The automated observation system, though, has been used to send well over 100,000 tickets that the Tribune analysis deems "questionable," because they lack the evidence which is supposed to be required -- for instance, many of these tickets are unbacked by evidence of the presence of children, or were issued when the speeding rules didn't apply (next to a park when that park was closed).
Oink oink
You're welcome --
Chicago PD
These cameras are a scam in almost all cases. Speeding in-of-itself is rarely a safety concern. Speed-limits are artificially too low.
Care to cite your source on this information? I mean other than your rectum.
Remember this is in Illinois. I wonder how many of the cars ticketed didn't even go through the area they were given the ticket for?
It's in Chicago. How many of the drivers were dead?
Contrary to popular belief, whether or not something can be sourced has no bearing on whether it is actually true.
So, you're just making facts up and when someone calls you on it, you dismiss it with a pithy (and profoundly stupid) remark? Might I suggest a career with Fox News or the Daily Mail?
A couple of seconds spent on an internet search shows that speeding is, in fact, a safety concern. Apparently a big one. There are literally reams of data showing that speeding contributes to a significant number of accidents.
Not to mention the fact that for anyone who's ever driven a car, the notion that speeding is dangerous IS COMMON FUCKING SENSE.
Yeah, one of the things we've heard cities do is make the length of yellow lights shorter so they can maximize revenue at the red-light cameras.
I once got an automated ticket for running a red light.
Essentially I was doing the speed limit (it was a 4 cylinder Jeep, speeding wasn't really an option) ... when the light went yellow I was close enough to the intersection I had to decide if I would slam on my brakes and make a panic stop, or acknowledge no way in hell I can stop.
At the time I decided in the remaining 30 feet or so no way I could safely stop.
By the time I'd got 35-40 feet, the light had already changed to red. That triggered the threshold for the red-light camera ... it doesn't care, you passed the line after it went red. There was less than 3 seconds between the yellow coming up and the red coming up, and not nearly enough space to stop in.
The problem with law enforcement by automation is there is zero room to say anything about it, or point out how the light was impossibly short.
And then people are left trying to explain how it simply wasn't getting the whole idea of what happened because it's a simple binary decision.
It's actually scary to see how short some yellow lights are, especially when there is a traffic camera involved. It's like they know damned well you have no chance in hell of stopping, but since it generates more revenue they should keep doing it.
With a human police officer I could say "look, I was here, I was going this fast, stopping would have been unsafe and dangerous". Instead you have a computer which spits out something which says you're guilty, and has no context for anything else.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
While accidents at higher speeds are likely to be worse simply because more kinetic energy is involved, there's a difference between speed limits being low and speeding causing accidents. It doesn't matter what the speed limit is if they are vehicles that aren't adhering to it (either going too fast or too slow) as that's what tends to disrupt traffic and cause accidents more than the speed itself.
It could also be that if you set the speed limit artificially low, that it makes the problem worse as there are more people willing to exceed it than there would be if it were raised slightly.
They're betting on the fact that it will usually be more expensive for you to challenge the ticket than to pay it. Even if you convince the judge to throw it out, you're still out the time spent fighting it, which is the better part of a day if you're lucky (worse if not).
Furthermore, they really don't care at all about safety. Studies have shown that while this sort of thing reduces T-bone incidents (which were rare to begin with), they cause a much greater increase in rear-end accidents because people wind up slamming on the breaks to avoid the sudden red light. Studies have also shown that there's a much more effective way to increase intersection safety, such as longer yellow lights, and/or a 1 to 2 second "all red". Of course, neither of those generate tons of money for the municipal government, let alone the camera company.
AC's statement was true, so why do you call it stupid? Perhaps it is a personal observation.... you know, first-hand research? Your inability to determine the truth or untruth of the statement for yourself has no bearing on whether it is actually true or not. Making knee-jerk personal attacks over someone else's opinion is foolish and only reveals your impotent geek rage.
Chicago is the "Fuck you! Give us our money!" capital of Illinois, the "Fuck you! Give us our money!" state.
Contrary to popular belief, organized crime in Chicago wasn't stamped out in the 20's and 30's.
Nope. All the crooks went into local government because there were more (and more lucrative) opportunities to steal, legally.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!