They also record the speed you're travelling, so if you crept over at 5mph for example they'd assume you were in the process of stopping and probably let it pass. If you're doing 40... you're hosed.
And if you were running a red light _and_ speeding at the same time, you're doubly hosed. Serves you right, too.;)
Oh, and if you were running a red light, speeding, talking on your cellphone and didn't have your seatbelt on...
What is up with Slashdot readers? Do they not live in a redlight camera area?
I do.
These cameras are scam machines. They go in and the law turns to a for-profit situation.
Not where I live. If you get nailed by one of these things, you deserve it.
I tried to fight the ticket saying it wasn't me but the picture was so bad it was really hard to tell. The officer who showed up said that obviously the grainy black and white photograph was me and the judge said the officer was a trained observer and that was more believable. So I got ticketed for something my wife did. Is that justice? The whole trial was a sham too.
In that case, you have problems that are way, way worse than red light cameras. Your justice system is messed up. Fix that, and your worries with the cameras will disappear as well.
It's my understanding that most states do have sensible yellow light minimums. Including the ones where towns were lowering yellow light times to increase camera revenue. They just aren't enforced.
Since the red light camera needs to be connected to the red light in some fashion, it could easily log the lights timing as well. Of course, the camera could be hacked or tricked, but since it produces something that has the status of an official document, such tampering could be punished more severely (since it's actual fraud) than just messing with the timing of the red light.
The red light camera will give you a ticket if you obey the law in that case.
Which you can easily contest, since there should be records of when an ambulance went where. Any judge with at least two functioning neurons will throw that ticket out.
Assuming a driver slams the breaks and the car decelerates at 3/4 G,
If you _slam_ the brakes and your car only decelerates at 0.75G, then get some new brakes and/or tires ASAP, unless you're driving a loaded truck or something.
it takes a car traveling at 35MPH a full 4.2 seconds to stop and that doesn't even count driver reaction time.
About 1.6 seconds. You may want to check those calculations, too.
That's definitely the best idea I've heard. Regulate the timings on traffic lights, specifically the minimum time a light stays yellow based on the maximum speed of the road.
It's not going to happen. Just because those backwoods Europeans have been doing just the same for decades, and everyone knows that they can't get anything right.
You enter the intersection under a green or yellow. Traffic stops ahead of you. Yer stuck in the middle of the intersection. Photo taken of you in intersection. No indication of velocity. Fair cop? Reasonable doubt?
That's why red-light cameras set up by anyone who's not a totally incompetent moron take two or more consecutive pictures. Duh.
... laying down sensible rules for using these things (minimum yellow light duration, camera is only armed 1 second after red light comes on, _no sharing revenues with the manufacturer/contractor_, etc), they're banned outright?
There's no "i" in "Gattaca". Just like there's no base in DNA that has "i" as it's first letter. Adenine, thymine, guanine, cytosine - see, none of these starts with an "i". If you put any letters other than a, t, g and c in Gattaca, then you didn't get the joke.
'Survival of the fittest' hasn't applied for at least a few hundred years when it comes to humankind,
Sorry, "survival of the fittest" is alive and well, even for the human race. You're "fit" if you can produce offspring and keep it alive until it in turn reproduces. There's really no other criterion.
Come back when you're actually willing to acknowledge that most people DON'T have huge medical bills.
Oh, and you can predict exactly who will and who won't have huge medical bills?
What, you can't?
Saving for medical bills fairly is simple statistics. You need $(mean + x*standard deviation)(*) to keep your risk of bankruptcy below a certain threshold. That number is, unfortunately, pretty large, but everyone would have to keep that much money on hand unless they like having a higher chance of going bankrupt. To put that in perspective, if you lowball that number to just $50000, you'll end up with a sum that's in the same ball park the US GDP.
(*) The exact calculations aren't quite that simple since the distribution isn't symmetric, but taking that into account complicates the calculations quite a bit without giving significantly different conclusions.
My grandmother never spend a day of her life in the hospital, except for leg surgery ($8000) and her death day ($2000). My grandfather died in his room. $0.00. My aunt did the same. $0.00. My uncle fell on his head, and then he spent a day in the intensive care ($4000).
I'm glad for you that your family is so lucky, but "try to be lucky" isn't sound advice if you're talking about more than a handful of people. And the plural of anecdote is still anecdotes, and not data, I'm afraid.
So, how about you stop hand-picking your examples that detail pretty much the best case, and try some cases that are more on the "worse" side of the scale?
Well, the logical and moral alternative to these laws would be to deny coverage to anyone involved in an accident if they were not wearing a seatbelt or helmet.
Trying to squeeze water from a rock here, are we?
Of course, you can _try_ to stick such idiots with the cost of their medical bills, but your chances of actually collecting are fairly slim. So, someone's gotta eat the costs, as usual. Possibly the hospital, which will distribute them among the patients that actually have enough money to pay their bills, which is pretty much exactly the kind of hidden, back door socialization that's to blame for a good share of todays problems with medical bills.
So, by that logic, every single nation with a police force is doomed to become a totalitarian state?
Well, there's a non-zero chance for every nation with a police force to become a totalitarian state each year, so you just have to wait long enough.
However, nations without a police force will become totalitarian even more quickly (someone forms an army of personal thugs and takes over, and voila, instant totalitarian state. Who's going to stop them, the police?).
People often exaggerate the cost of emergency or major medical care.
No, they don't. You're just ignoring the really expensive cases trying to make that point.
$8000 for my dad's pacemaker;
That's not major surgery (no opening of body cavities, etc), doesn't come with a string of followup costs or an extended hospital stay attached to it, and, most importantly, doesn't keep you from earning a living afterwards.
$12,000 for my mom's hysterectomy.
Almost the same as above. A short, routine surgical procedure, which should actually be much cheaper that $12k from a purely economic viewpoint if there are no complications.
Come back when you're actually willing to include some of the more expensive (and not really uncommon) medical cases - try things like organ transplants, leukemia, brain tumors, cancer in general, major accidents, etc, and not just plain vanilla routine surgery.
- Feedback drives natural behavioral changes. Watching your blood sugar levels and blood viscosity respond to eating an ice cream cone vs. a Big Mac vs. a banana is going to have an affect on what you decide to put in your mouth.
Unfortunately, the bodys internal feedback mechanisms usually override any external feedback. And they're the reason why people are stuffing ice cream cones and big macs in their mouths in the first place.
... where you're not going to die from a lot of causes that were common just ten years ago. The most common cause of death is now complications from implanting several pounds of electronics in your body, and while that's unfortunately enough to keep the mortality rate at just the same level, it's usually less painful.
What I mean, is that to pay with credit cards, from what I know, you only need the data that is written right on the card.
No - in order to actually get paid, the merchant must also wait a few weeks in case the customer disputes the charge (and issues a chargeback).
Hence, the person using the credit card doesn't bear much risk, but the merchant that accepts them does (if he delivers goods and services, gets "paid" by credit card, and the charge gets disputed, he's out the money and the goods and possibly gets slapped with extra fees from the credit card company). Of course, this risk needs to go into the merchants price calculation.:P
Additionally both are detached from the bank account. Unlike a credit card.)
A credit card is not attached to bank account (at least not in the US). A debit card is.
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They also record the speed you're travelling, so if you crept over at 5mph for example they'd assume you were in the process of stopping and probably let it pass. If you're doing 40... you're hosed.
And if you were running a red light _and_ speeding at the same time, you're doubly hosed. Serves you right, too. ;)
Oh, and if you were running a red light, speeding, talking on your cellphone and didn't have your seatbelt on ...
Finnland does something along those lines. And yes, that can mean five-figure tickets for some.
I do.
These cameras are scam machines. They go in and the law turns to a for-profit situation.
Not where I live. If you get nailed by one of these things, you deserve it.
I tried to fight the ticket saying it wasn't me but the picture was so bad it was really hard to tell. The officer who showed up said that obviously the grainy black and white photograph was me and the judge said the officer was a trained observer and that was more believable. So I got ticketed for something my wife did. Is that justice? The whole trial was a sham too.
In that case, you have problems that are way, way worse than red light cameras. Your justice system is messed up. Fix that, and your worries with the cameras will disappear as well.
They do lower the yellow light times.
Have the camera log the lights timing.
Since the red light camera needs to be connected to the red light in some fashion, it could easily log the lights timing as well. Of course, the camera could be hacked or tricked, but since it produces something that has the status of an official document, such tampering could be punished more severely (since it's actual fraud) than just messing with the timing of the red light.
Which you can easily contest, since there should be records of when an ambulance went where. Any judge with at least two functioning neurons will throw that ticket out.
That's why the photos snapped by the thing are considered evidence, and a cop is doing the reporting. Duh.
If you _slam_ the brakes and your car only decelerates at 0.75G, then get some new brakes and/or tires ASAP, unless you're driving a loaded truck or something. it takes a car traveling at 35MPH a full 4.2 seconds to stop and that doesn't even count driver reaction time.
About 1.6 seconds. You may want to check those calculations, too.
It's not going to happen. Just because those backwoods Europeans have been doing just the same for decades, and everyone knows that they can't get anything right.
That's why red-light cameras set up by anyone who's not a totally incompetent moron take two or more consecutive pictures. Duh.
... laying down sensible rules for using these things (minimum yellow light duration, camera is only armed 1 second after red light comes on, _no sharing revenues with the manufacturer/contractor_, etc), they're banned outright?
I smell a bit of luddism here.
Gatica here we come.
There's no "i" in "Gattaca". Just like there's no base in DNA that has "i" as it's first letter. Adenine, thymine, guanine, cytosine - see, none of these starts with an "i". If you put any letters other than a, t, g and c in Gattaca, then you didn't get the joke.
'Survival of the fittest' hasn't applied for at least a few hundred years when it comes to humankind,
Sorry, "survival of the fittest" is alive and well, even for the human race. You're "fit" if you can produce offspring and keep it alive until it in turn reproduces. There's really no other criterion.
You can compete with a corporation, not so with the government ("compete" with the police and get shot, etc).
It's called "form a party and try to get elected".
You can refuse to do business with a corporation, not with the government.
Emigrate. Ok, you'll have to deal with a different government then, but it's the same for corporations.
A corporation can be dissolved, not so with the government.
It's possible, but only rarely done.
No company is going to have information on every aspect of your life, but the government can.
You're underestimating companies here.
Oh, and you can predict exactly who will and who won't have huge medical bills?
What, you can't?
Saving for medical bills fairly is simple statistics. You need $(mean + x*standard deviation)(*) to keep your risk of bankruptcy below a certain threshold. That number is, unfortunately, pretty large, but everyone would have to keep that much money on hand unless they like having a higher chance of going bankrupt. To put that in perspective, if you lowball that number to just $50000, you'll end up with a sum that's in the same ball park the US GDP.
(*) The exact calculations aren't quite that simple since the distribution isn't symmetric, but taking that into account complicates the calculations quite a bit without giving significantly different conclusions.
My grandmother never spend a day of her life in the hospital, except for leg surgery ($8000) and her death day ($2000). My grandfather died in his room. $0.00. My aunt did the same. $0.00. My uncle fell on his head, and then he spent a day in the intensive care ($4000).
I'm glad for you that your family is so lucky, but "try to be lucky" isn't sound advice if you're talking about more than a handful of people. And the plural of anecdote is still anecdotes, and not data, I'm afraid.
So, how about you stop hand-picking your examples that detail pretty much the best case, and try some cases that are more on the "worse" side of the scale?
Trying to squeeze water from a rock here, are we?
Of course, you can _try_ to stick such idiots with the cost of their medical bills, but your chances of actually collecting are fairly slim. So, someone's gotta eat the costs, as usual. Possibly the hospital, which will distribute them among the patients that actually have enough money to pay their bills, which is pretty much exactly the kind of hidden, back door socialization that's to blame for a good share of todays problems with medical bills.
So, by that logic, every single nation with a police force is doomed to become a totalitarian state?
Well, there's a non-zero chance for every nation with a police force to become a totalitarian state each year, so you just have to wait long enough.
However, nations without a police force will become totalitarian even more quickly (someone forms an army of personal thugs and takes over, and voila, instant totalitarian state. Who's going to stop them, the police?).
My point was that most people don't have money saved,
(in fact, if everyone had that much money saved, it wouldn't be worth anything. Inflation's a b1tch).
People often exaggerate the cost of emergency or major medical care.
No, they don't. You're just ignoring the really expensive cases trying to make that point.
$8000 for my dad's pacemaker;
That's not major surgery (no opening of body cavities, etc), doesn't come with a string of followup costs or an extended hospital stay attached to it, and, most importantly, doesn't keep you from earning a living afterwards.
$12,000 for my mom's hysterectomy.
Almost the same as above. A short, routine surgical procedure, which should actually be much cheaper that $12k from a purely economic viewpoint if there are no complications.
Come back when you're actually willing to include some of the more expensive (and not really uncommon) medical cases - try things like organ transplants, leukemia, brain tumors, cancer in general, major accidents, etc, and not just plain vanilla routine surgery.
- Feedback drives natural behavioral changes. Watching your blood sugar levels and blood viscosity respond to eating an ice cream cone vs. a Big Mac vs. a banana is going to have an affect on what you decide to put in your mouth.
Unfortunately, the bodys internal feedback mechanisms usually override any external feedback. And they're the reason why people are stuffing ice cream cones and big macs in their mouths in the first place.
Unless there's errors in the medical history that send the doctor on a wild goose chase.
Oh yes you can. Even though that will mean putting a bullet through your skull occasionally. Welcome to freedom and responsibility. Ha ha.
With implanted medical monitors, LINUX RUNS YOU!
... where you're not going to die from a lot of causes that were common just ten years ago. The most common cause of death is now complications from implanting several pounds of electronics in your body, and while that's unfortunately enough to keep the mortality rate at just the same level, it's usually less painful.
... when you pry them from my cold, dead body.
What I mean, is that to pay with credit cards, from what I know, you only need the data that is written right on the card.
No - in order to actually get paid, the merchant must also wait a few weeks in case the customer disputes the charge (and issues a chargeback).
Hence, the person using the credit card doesn't bear much risk, but the merchant that accepts them does (if he delivers goods and services, gets "paid" by credit card, and the charge gets disputed, he's out the money and the goods and possibly gets slapped with extra fees from the credit card company). Of course, this risk needs to go into the merchants price calculation. :P
Additionally both are detached from the bank account. Unlike a credit card.)
A credit card is not attached to bank account (at least not in the US). A debit card is.