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State Legislators Want Surveillance Cameras To Catch Uninsured Drivers (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Ars Technica:
A Rhode Island legislative committee has approved a bill that would greatly expand the surveillance state through the deployment of license plate readers. For the first time in the US, these devices would be attached along Rhode Island highways and roads for the stated purpose of catching uninsured motorists from any state... The legislation spells out that the contractor for the project would get 50 percent of the fines paid by uninsured motorists ensnared under the program. The state and the contractor would each earn an estimated $15 million annually. Fines are as high as $120.
Many police departments nationwide are using surveillance cameras tacked onto traffic poles and police vehicles to catch traffic violators and criminal suspects. The proceeds from traffic fines usually are divvied up with contractors. But according to the Rhode Island lawmaker sponsoring this legislation, it's time to put surveillance cameras to a new purpose -- fining uninsured motorists.
Many police departments nationwide are using surveillance cameras tacked onto traffic poles and police vehicles to catch traffic violators and criminal suspects. The proceeds from traffic fines usually are divvied up with contractors. But according to the Rhode Island lawmaker sponsoring this legislation, it's time to put surveillance cameras to a new purpose -- fining uninsured motorists.
since it puts too big of a burden on illegals. We tried something like this here in CA, but it was racist in effect so the people running it should have been put in prison.
Okay, unless I'm missing something here.... what's the point? I don't have to show proof of insurance in my home state to the DMV. The only time I have to show proof is when requested by law enforcement. So, my question is, what are they going to do about states like this? Is everyone going to be marked uninsured and harassed?
and has nothing to do with making a bunch of money
Rhode Island is a Rust Belt state that still hasn't transitioned to a post-manufacturing economy.
They don't have a robust tax base, but they insist on generous benefits. This is the latest hare brained scheme from RI politicians to rob people (preferably out of staters who live in a state with jobs, like Massachusetts) to bring in the money so the politicians can keep their constituents on the gravy train.
It is all about the money.
Here in Florida, many of the patrol cars have the license plate reading cameras and they are active all the time soaking up plates that the car passes and running them. That is a much wider surveillance effort than a few fixed cameras. The reason for the few fixed cameras approach is to get a kickback instead of keeping the funds fully in the state's hands. I'm sure the company's lobbyist approached somebody, not vice versa.
The financial incentive for contractors has to end. If the state is fining uninsured drivers, I have far less of a problem with it. But when law enforcement becomes a corporate profit center, it gives corporations power they shouldn't have. The same goes for for-profit prisons. If any state wants to put someone in jail, the taxpayers should have to shoulder that entire burden.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
We demolish Rhode Island.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Rhode Island can bite me
Have gnu, will travel.
If you don't provide the DMV proof of insurance you cannot renew your vehicle's registration. Then you must either file a PNO (planned non-operation) or transfer your vehicle. If you do not pay the fines, your license is suspended. If you drive with expired registration, there are some fines and you are usually caught pretty quickly. If you drive without insurance and are caught, there are some fines. If you drive without a license, you can be arrested.
None of this required camears. It's all about having the proper chain of paperwork in place, and the enforcement is handled by a combination of DMV notices and police officers. It becomes pretty obvious that you have troubles with the DMV when your drivers license and plates are expired.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Drivers are insured, not motor vehicles. How will they know from a photo of a plate whether that particular driver has current insurance?
Have gnu, will travel.
Are out-of-state uninsured motorists causing a problem of any real significance for Rhode Island?
I suspect the answer is no. And if it is no, then this sounds like somebody trying to create business for camera operators. Probably because the red-light camera scam has started drying up.
This is dystopia dressed up as a means to catch insurance-dodging crooks.
In order for the proposal to work, it will of course be necessary for the camera network to be backed by computer systems that have the ability to recognise a license plate on a passing vehicle. The location of the camera and the time of the capture event will be recorded, along with the details of the plate.
But already we hit our first problem. I'm guessing, but let's say that 99.9% of road users have insurance. Only 0.1% do not. Except to catch the 0.1%, the authorities want to subject all 100% of road users to an examination, "on suspicion of driving without insurance". Now, if the police were to pull over *every single vehicle on the road* and check insurance, it wouldn't take long for either the road blocks to bring the nation to a halt, or the uproar to force the police to stop the practice. Yet with cameras this is exactly what will happen.
100% of road users will be deemed "guilty until proven innocent" - on the basis that their vehicle details will be scanned and checked, even if they have done nothing to arouse suspicion. Unless of course you believe that driving down the road whilst conducting your lawful business is a suspicious act.
Don't get me wrong. Today, law enforcement has a very tough time of things, trying to respond to ever-greater demands from political masters, all the while having budgets and manpower cut. We all have a civic duty to support our law enforcement officers when they are trying their best to keep us safe.
It's just that indiscriminate surveillance of innocent people is not what our forebears had in mind when they introduced policing.
OK, someone is going to be reading this and thinking, "OK, genius: if you don't want them to use roadside cameras, what do you propose?" My answer is actually not that expensive and not that complicated:-
Keep a computer database of every single vehicle on the road that has it's current insurance and vehicle safety paperwork up to date. Then, each time either the insurance or the safety paperwork expires, have a small but focused unit of law enforcement follow up: check the vehicle at the last registered address and determine why the paperwork has lapsed. This approach is much more efficient because it targets vehicles that fit a high risk profile. It is also an approach that *doesn't* treat every road user as a potential criminal.
Getting uninsured vehicles and uninsured drivers off our roads is a worthy goal - and we should be supportive of valid attempts to do so. However, blanket surveillance is not appropriate - not when there are other ways.
with a private company. This is just shaking down the poor so they don't have to raise taxes, just like red light cameras (which you won't find in well to do neighborhoods or on freeways those same well to do use).
Give us single payer health care and you take away 90% of the justification of mandatory car insurance. Trotting out kids who got hit by a car and couldn't pay medical bills is how they got it through. But again, the point isn't fairness, it's shaking down the poor.
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and what state legislators brother owns this contract company?
Using cameras like this, and to find stolen cars is A Good Thing (TM) IMHO. But only if the data isn't retained. Read a plate, go/no go, if no-go the data is thrown away.
Any plan where a no-go means they still keep the data for however long though, drill a hole in their skull and fuck them through it.
The cameras, the connections, and the back-end storage and processing are relatively inexpensive now.
The cops should be running their own camera systems from a COTS solution, put a tech on the police payroll, and then keep 100% of the revenue rather than paying an ongoing percentage to an outside company to do something that it now essentially technically trivial.
And it's not a surveillance state if you can keep the cops to merely scanning wanted plates instead of tracking everyone. If you're breaking the law, they should be looking for you. (The problem is stopping them from looking for you when you're NOT breaking the law... data is always used against you)
It probably varies state to state but in AZ, your car is listed on your insurance. While the liability insurance is for you operating a vehicle, and applies even if you drive another car, your car is still listed on your insurance paperwork. It also helps determine the rate. If you have a high performance car, you are going to pay higher liability insurance than someone with an econobox.
So if you found a car driving around, and couldn't find a record for its insurance, good chance the owner is uninsured. It is possible that they are and just neglected to add this particular car (though that could mean the policy wouldn't cover them, which would make them effectively uninsured) but more likely they don't have insurance.
Not saying I support this spy cam crap (particularly since a private company is running and as with speed cameras they'll try to game it) but it would be something where if you run a car's plate and it comes back as not in the system 99%+ of the time it is being driven by an uninsured driver.
... by connecting the insurance database to the registration database, and the vehicle VIN database and the stolen vehicle database and the Amber Alert database ...
"The information's out there, all you have to do is let it in." ~ Suitcase (Jesse Stone)
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
But the local govt needs to invest in the public transportation system too. If the uninsured drivers can't get to work, not only is it bad for them it is bad for the businesses they work for.
That's what worries me most about this: the personal information in the database that would of course immediately be stolen. If literally ANY traffic cam can access it, how long will it take the identity thieves?
If the license plate readers retain the info they collect even after they've made their assessment of insurance, then the system becomes one big movement tracker. Anyone in government will have a handy record of where you went and when. We've already got something like that on a limited scale in my city, but a system like this would kick that into overdrive.
Only $120? Up here in Ontario, Canada it's minimum $5000 and max $25000 on first conviction, and $10,000-$50,000 on second conviction. Oh, and they can suspend your license for a year.
Plus a 25% victim surtax on those fines too.
If it's the cops, there might be some safeguards against improper use of the data. There might even be rules about how long until it has to be purged. ... if the contractor is allowed to record every time they see a license plate, they could sell it to anyone who was interested in it. Repo men, PIs, stalkers, etc. Going through a divorce? Good news, your spouse's lawyer can get a map of every place you've been in the state for the last 5 years (or whatever their retention is).
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
I see a big problem here: just like with red light cameras, license plates don't tell you who is driving. That plate can tell you if the owner of the vehicle is insured, but liability insurance attaches to drivers, not to vehicles. That means you can lend someone your uninsured car, if they have a liability policy of their own. You won't have any property coverage if they bring it back broken or crashed though.
In the case of a red light camera, they expect the owner to know who was driving, and someone ran the light (presuming the camera isn't rigged to fire early). In the case of insurance, you can't even be sure an infraction is taking place -- unless the state thinks it can recognize drivers too, in realtime, which is a more frightening thought.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
Set them up for people driving without a front license plate.
- it's an equipment violation, so it attatches to the registered owner; doesn't matter who is driving
- trivially easy to prove with two photographs; one of front, one of rear
- huge number of people to target
- doesn't pick on any minority, ethnic group, or economic class: everyone is issued two plates
A lot of speed cameras in the UK are out up purely to make money and are almost universally unpopular. Uninsured drivers are scum though, they are the assholes who run off after hitting you and drive shitty unsafe cars.
what happens if youre from Virginia or New Hampshire where insurance isnt mandatory????
Looks like the market is agreeing
Not the first time the US (or a particular state) has looked abroad for revenue ideas in the wake of higher expenses for State responsibilities. This is just one that is less politically toxic, unlike say forcing parents to pay for their State sponsored education...
In Australia, or Queensland to be specific, we have "Traffic Behaviour Monitoring Cameras" which are really just registration and insurance scanners. We don't have labels on the windscreen anymore, it's all digital, and the robots are the ones scanning the cars every day for compliance.
FWIW, the same practice is in place in several of the other States of Australia, in one form or another. Some states are deploying "red light/speed/registration" all-in one cameras at busy intersections. Victoria as one example of the far end, booked about $1bn in revenue from their camera operations last year. That's some serious 'road use tax'
Dan. -- So what if it's spelt wrong, nobody's perfect