- cross-posted to:
- canada@lemmy.ca
- cross-posted to:
- canada@lemmy.ca
cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/44712264
These up-eds usually complain that photo radar would be fine if the radar worked properly. This one doesn’t even do that. It just complains that speed limits aren’t fair and now drivers have to change their behavior. jfc
It is true that drivers can avoid such tickets by sticking to the posted speed limits, but it is also true that drivers are hardly ever expected to strictly observe those limits.
…
It’s like the generally accepted contract between drivers and police – just drive at a reasonable speed and you’ll be fine – has been broken.
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In theory these are good for safety. In practice they are revenue generating machines for local government and a regressive tax on the poor.
Both of these can be solved with policy.
If you make it so that the institution that determines where the cameras will be placed doesn’t stand to financially benefit from them, that reduces the incentive to turn them into revenue generating machines.
And if you issue fines based on income, which is already the case in countries like Finland and Switzerland, you also solve the unfairness of the fines.
Oi, fuck off from the first one. Make them incentivised as heck to gain financially - they will then place them everywhere they sniff money, which is everywhere limits are broken.
The goal should be to improve safety, not benefit financially.
Placing speed cameras is a tool in your belt to achieve that, but it’s not the only one.
Other alternatives are narrower lanes, speed bumps, trees and objects closer to the road, etc.But if more cameras means more revenue for the institution in charge of road safety, then that pushes them to not actually fix the reason why people are speeding in the first place. Because that would lower their revenue.
Edit: Here in the Netherlands it is the public ministry who determines where the cameras are located. And the police issues other traffic fines.
However the money from fines is going into the general national budget (just like a tax). Neither the public ministry, nor the ministry of safety who runs the police, gets more money for more fines issued.
This means that their priority is to improve road safety and not maximize revenue.
We need money to vastly overhaul the dangerous design of roads. I’m not too upset if that is partially paid for by people breaking the speed limit.
I get what you mean, but it’s not quite correct.
For example, one situation I have seen in real life: You are on a road with speed limit 100km/h. There’s a bend to the right with bad visibility, and right around the bend is a speed limit 30km/h and a speed camera right next to it. This situation is propbably financially great, but from a safety aspect it’s really not.
It would be much better to gradually decrease the speed limit (e.g. 100, 70, 50, 30) over a longer distance and where there’s better visibility.
In fact, if placing the signs, placing the radars and collecting the fines are handled by the same department, it’s likely that they will purposely create dangerous situations like that to collect more fines.
That’s why it should be three separate departments with separate goals:
- One handles placing safe speed limits with the goal to increase safety.
- One handles placing the cameras with the goal to reduce the amount of people going over the speed limits.
- One handles maintaining the cameras and collecting fines.
Poloticians don’t see this as a problem to solve. They see it as the solution to holes in their budget.
Dumb oversimplification.
Call it dumb all you want, but it’s true.
Source your ass huh
I already did
If it’s worth complaining about then it’s probably worth getting involved.
A tax for what?
A tax is something you can hardly avoid without giving up an activity completely. What kind of legal activity would one have to give up to not get speeding tickets while driving?
You assume that the system is fair. It isn’t. Its rigged to generate revenue. I’ve gotten automated tickets for legally turning right on a red light. My city got busted a few years back for shortening yellow lights just so they could give more tickets. Now they are adding speed traps to any road that is vaguely close to a school or park that will ticket you even if it is the middle of the night on a Saturday where no kids should be around anyway.
Now they are adding speed traps to any road that is vaguely close to a school or park that will ticket you even if it is the middle of the night on a Saturday where no kids should be around anyway.
Oh, so you are the type of person who thinks that rules should only apply when you want them to?
A speed limit is a speed limit and it applies whenever it applies, not whenever you want it to.
You know, there’s one simple hack to never get speeding tickets: Follow the speed limits. Police men hate this one simple trick and so on.
My compassion is very limited for someone who willingly breaks the law and then goes *surprised pikachu face* when they have to pay a fine.
It’s not like the speed limit signs magically disappear at night, is it?
At least in my state school zone speed limits only apply on school days/hours. The rules should only apply when they are meant to apply.
What an absolutely bizarre take for this sub.
Speeding tickets don’t have to be a regressive tax, as others have pointed out. Many countries slide speeding tickets based on income.
Revenue generator… for whom? Policy matters. E.g. California’s AB 645 authorization for speeding cameras only allows for recovery of program costs and “any excess revenue shall be used for traffic-calming measures within three years of the end of the fiscal year in which the excess revenue was received.” California’s speeding cameras reduce speeding by improving road infrastructure and active transportation.
Citation needed, otherwise you’re just spreading carbrained misinformation.
Any ticket that is a flat cost is a regressive tax. I think we both know that income based tickets would never fly in the US.
That’s a great policy California has to limit local government from using it as revenue generation, but it far from normal. I’m in Chicago and we don’t have anything like that.
https://www.illinoispolicy.org/chicago-speed-cameras-take-90-9-million-from-drivers-in-2024/
Chicago speed cameras issued $90.9 million worth of tickets and fees to drivers in 2024, handing motorists a fine every 24 seconds for a total of 1.84 million violations.
That link title should be self-explanatory.
Any ticket that is a flat cost is a regressive tax. I think we both know that income based tickets would never fly in the US.
Income based tickets can fly in the US, but it hasn’t been normalized everywhere yet. CA AB 645 doesn’t slide upwards, even though it should, but it does slide downward. The law even requires analysis of the local population before authorizing a speed camera installation.
“a designated jurisdiction shall reduce the applicable fines and penalties by 80 percent for indigent persons, and by 50 percent for individuals up to 250 percent above the federal poverty level.”
“A speed enforcement program developed pursuant to paragraph (1) shall place the speed safety systems in locations that are geographically and socioeconomically diverse. The designated jurisdiction shall describe how it has complied with this provision in the Speed Safety System Impact Report described in subdivision (h)”
“A racial and economic equity impact analysis, developed in collaboration with local racial justice and economic equity stakeholder groups. The analysis shall include the number of notices of violations issued to indigent individuals, the number of notices of violations issued to individuals of up to 250 percent above the poverty line, and the number of violations issued to each ZIP Code.”
The issues you raise are real, but they’re not because of speed cameras. They’re issues of selective speeding enforcement and flat-rate tickets being regressive in a car dependent society. Police officers regularly issue speeding tickets against the impoverished and minority populations without checks and balance. At least speeding cameras won’t lie about where it sits or inspect the color of the driver before writing a ticket.
Illinois, do better with your speeding tickets.
Unless they base the fine on either income or insurance rate. The more expensive it is to insure the more expensive the fine should be.
A regressive tax on the poor would be increasing taxes on everyone including safe drivers and non drivers to make all the changes to the roads necessary to get the same amount of accident and fatality reduction that you get with adding speed cameras.
And an addition to the expanding police /surveillance state.
This is wrong. They only trigger when a driver exceeds the often already unsafe speed limit.
Policing through some kind of surveillance?
Weird how that makes my statement incorrect apparently.
There is no surveillance of people that do not drive like lunatics. I can’t grasp how you are not getting it.
If you HavE NoThIn tO HiDe ,whYs iT maTtEr?!
Fucking braindead take. It’s still more surveillance. They probably have the cams feeding Palantir for facial recognition for ICE and whatever else is coming with these techno fascist fucks.
It’s not “nothing to hide” but “they’re not even looking” mate. Data sharing between surveillance agencies" is a whole different and an order of magnitude more important story, no disagreement there. Photo radar is quite good in terms of data minimization since it only triggers when an infraction is detected. It can be (and in many places, is) modified to black out the passenger’s side. How else do you think speed limits should be enforced?
The opinion piece is epitome ‘fuck cars’. Authored by the prickiest of pricks:
clocked at an excessive rate of speed – in this case, 54 kilometres an hour in a 40 km/h zone, which isn’t even particularly excessive.
35% above speed limit
You were just driving along, at a normal rate of speed. And now, you’re looking at a fine of almost $100.
bc we’re all normal, amirite?
But photo radar eliminates this. Suddenly there’s no accounting for the flow of traffic, the time of day, the weather conditions, any of that. Were you speeding past the camera? Boom, here’s your ticket. It’s like the generally accepted contract between drivers and police – just drive at a reasonable speed and you’ll be fine – has been broken.
speed should be discretionary (my discretion, ofc)
Setting the car aspect aside, there really should be some element of discretion in the criminal justice system.
Mandatory minimums and AI-assisted parole hearings produce outcomes that people know are unfair when they see the end result. But it’s difficult to convince people to avoid adopting them at the start, because we have this bias towards thinking that “quantitative and rule-based” automatically means fair, without thinking of the fact that someone needs to design the metrics and the measurement systems.
The biases of the police force and judges aren’t fair either, but I don’t think the answer is to put those decisions entirely in the hands of data analysts and policy wonks who are even further removed from the communities they impact.
Adding the car aspect back in, I think the biggest concern I have is the surveillance capability these enable.
surveillance capability
Which one? That a photo is taken once a speed limit violation is detected? The one you can simply avoid by not driving like a fucking maniac?
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Hmm
Yeah, these are all narcissist arguments. The only argument that should be made is the fact they don’t actually reduce accidents, fatalities, or make the roads any safer (the fixed kinds, at least).
You are absolutely going to need some peer review or corroborating reference for an article produced and published by an organisation who’s entire success premise is based on a particular outcome to said article.
That’s “A study on how smoking does not cause lung cancer posted on the Marlboro website” levels of suspected bias.
It’s probably legit, but it looks suspicious.
How’s about you rebut it, your way, first, m’kay.
You’re prolly legit, but you’re sus.Ah, I see, weak citation then deflection.
That gives a pretty accurate understanding of what to expect from a conversation with you.
If you don’t understand that questioning the impartiality of a source is a rebuttal I’m not sure there’s much else for us to discuss.
No need to further rebut weak citations, have fun with your delusions.
Are you Bell, or Howell? Mirror salesperson?
What about peer reviewed articles showing that photo radars don’t work? Published by organization who’s entire success premise is based on a particular outcome to said article of course. That would also be interesting to see.
i’d imagine they exist and would be equally if not more suspicious because fiscal benefit tends to bring a higher likelihood of shenanigans.
By “don’t work”, do you mean the physical camera’s are unreliable and malfunction or that they don’t work as a measure to reduce speeding and increase safety? both ?
Reduce speeding and increase safety of course.
Unobvious enough that i had to ask for clarification, but that could just be me.
Here is the equivalent of the other side :
https://www.carexpert.com.au/opinion/the-latest-data-shows-speed-cameras-dont-save-lives
I’m assuming you’re looking at the title and that it’s from a website called “carexpert” and assuming that it’s not entirely unbiased.
As well you should be.
I’m not espousing centrism, i’m expecting some basic citation vetting.
In other words: “there are no facts to dispute the use of speed camera”
Agreed.
Yeah, I’m admittedly going off mainstream media talking points from 15-20 years ago, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they have been proven otherwise.
There’s a strong financial incentive to falsify the stats in their favor though, where there simply isn’t for the opposite.
Suddenly there’s no accounting for the flow of traffic, the time of day, the weather conditions, any of that.
what a fucking stupid line
The maximum is set for good weather and visibility. you are allowed to go up to that speed at any time, you already have all that excess buffer over what might actually be reasonable for the conditions you are driving in at that time.
Yes, lots of roads have inappropriately low speed limits. other ones have inappropriately high speed limits. this is nothing to do with the speed camera, and saying that it is is addressing the wrong thing. address the root cause - road design and the signed speed limit.
I don’t entirely disagree, theres tons of speed limits that don’t make sense for the area. IMO if drivers feel safe speeding in an area, thats a traffic engineering failure. Make the lanes more narrow and bendy. If the road has to be big and straight, add in speed bumps with staggered gaps.
Does that really work all that well? My street is very bendy but people still speed through it despite poor visibility of pedestrians between the parked cars.
Generally yes. How wide are the lanes?
Barely enough for one car going each direction, with some parts only wide enough for one car in a lane because someone is parking in one lane.
Huh, idk then, how often are there head-on collisions next to parked cars?
Not at all. Speeders speed regardless of road quality, safety, or visibility everywhere. I’m guessing these commenters are probably children themselves, either literally or mentally.
Suggesting roads be completely reengineered or replaced to slow drivers based on the position of schools, zoning, etc is completely batshit insane. Like, legitimately mentally ill. That’s some pants on head MAGA grade economics.
People drive faster on some roads than others, why do you think this is?
They drive a big ass truck other big ass vehicles and the higher up you are the slower you feel so the more they speed.
The term is velocitization
The same person tends to drive different speeds on different roads and conditions. I dont think that pickup is going to take that a right hand turn in a road 6 inches wider than their truck doing 70.
And why should I, someone who can read and respects speed limits the majority of the time, have to suffer narrow garbage roads? Why can’t we treat people like adults? It’s bonkers the arguments I see whenever there is an article about speed cameras.
Obey the speed limit. The end. Nothing else has to change in society. I know it’s a big ask for all the grown ass humans who apparently never matured, but I’m sick of this stupidity.
Sincerely: someone who got a mailed speeding ticket for $50 2 days ago for going 50km in a 40km zone. Did I tear up and stomp my feet like a 3 year old? No! My adult brain stepped in and I went “ah shit, I’ll have to pay more attention next time I’m in that area.”
suffer narrow garbage roads
If youre suffering because you cant let your car drift 3 feet in either direction, thats a skill issue. Narrower roads also have the benefit of leaving more room for bike lanes and sidewalks/bike parking.
Counterpoint: the road I live on is 30mph, it is 30 because houses are less than 50 feet from the road and cars going faster than 30 are really loud from wind resistance and tire noise. Cars tend to go 45+ frequently and we have requested speed mitigation. We were told because we have an EMS and fire station on our road it is considered a main road so we can’t have speed bumps or other measures. So other than enforcement by camera or officer how do you suggest they get the speeders to respect the speed limits?
And to add to that, cars we’re going so fast and we have so many accidents that during the next road resurfacing they were going to remove our on street parking and replace it with a center lane so those that are speeding or passing in the bike/parking lane can now pass on the center turn lane even though that is illegal to pass in a turn lane. They were just gonna turn a blind eye to that law.
narrow the street so drivers are more cautious and thus drive more slowly
I am not a traffic engineer, so I can’t tell you. I’ve seen signs banning cars from particular streets where residents and commercial vehicles are exempt, to prevent a little residential street connecting larger roads from being used as a thoroughfare, thats probably illegal in the US.
Is there a way you can block resurfacing? People drive slower on crummier roads, though it has to get p bad fir pickup trucks and SUVs to slow.
That was their plan but we as a neighborhood complained and they are leaving our parking and just going to install the floppy barriers at the corners to try to prevent people passing on the right when someone makes a left.
But yeah people did drive slow at the shit spots but then they just speed up on the smoother spots so they actually just speed more.
Speed bumps can be designed to accommodate emergency vehicles. We can also narrow the lanes to give drivers less room, a skilled driver for EMS would still be comfortable exceeding the limit as needed as they should be trained to do so.
Ive noticed that many roads that get that centerline end up with faster speed, they add that lane to try to reduce conflict points but overall i doubt it will significantly increase the safety of your road. If there are any public hearings for the resurfacing you should voice some opinions on how these changes may not be very effective for the cost of the rehabilitation.
This is exactly it. Enforcement isn’t the answer; that only creates excuses to pad police budgets. Fix the road design, fix the traffic flow in the city. If people think it’s safe to go past a school at 50kph, that road is built improperly, or the school is built on the wrong road.
If people think it’s safe to go past a school at 50kph, that road is built improperly, or the school is built on the wrong road.
Your using people very broadly there. Some people see a narrow street next to a school and think a reasonable speed is 30 kph. Some people see that same road, don’t notice the school and judge they can go 50kph. That second person needs some enforcement to discipline them otherwise they’ll keep using their metric for safety, which is far from what a normal person would measure, much less a traffic safety expert.
Narrowing streets and adding speed bumps is expensive, and adding curves just isn’t possible in most places. Why do that when you can put up a camera that’s cheaper and are effective at reducing speeds, and thus accidents and fatalities. By picking the more expensive solution you’re basically asking safe drivers and non-drivers to pay more in taxes so that reckless drivers don’t have to pay tickets.
The only argument against them is the one the guy laid out in the op-ed, i want to speed and don’t want to have a cost for my reckless driving.
I agree with your counterargument about cost, but also at the same time hey we somehow had the money to build the road wrong in the first place…
I am pro speed reduction measures, camera’s included.
The only argument against them is the one the guy laid out in the op-ed
but this is absolutely not true, they can and will continue to be abused for profit, sometimes to the detriment of safety.
No idea what the numbers looks like but it’s greater than zero, i suspect by quite a bit
edit : i fully understand that this link is incredibly bias, i’m posting it to show that instances do exist in general.
https://ww2.motorists.org/blog/6-cities-that-were-caught-shortening-yellow-light-times-for-profit/
These are for red lights rather than speed but the premise i’m getting at is that people will do unsafe things with traffic cameras for profit.
Those penalties are easy to avoid. Just stay inside the speed limit.
I’ve seen municipalities put up bendable bollards to create a more defined bike lane. I’ve also seen concrete barriers used on highways to create a ‘narrow lane zone’ accommodating construction.
The bollards and barriers were placed in the same fashion, directly on the outer line of the lane. Despite this placement not actually narrowing the lanes, in both cases it does slow traffic to below the posted speed.
Not being able to drive over paint as you please along with there being real and immediate consequences for straying from the lane is enough to slow people down. Having cameras issuing speed fines is a bandage solution.
The best case scenario is that they are installed as temporary measures to raise funds to redesign infrastructure to eliminate speeding as a common problem, then the cameras become obsolete and are removed. I’ve not heard of this ever happening though. Oh to dream.
I don’t know what “photo radar” is and at this point I’m too afraid to ask.
TL;DR: it’s speed cameras
Most radar guns work a bit like a flashlight. They just blast radio waves in the direction they’re pointed, and some of those waves hit things and bounce off. The frequency of the reflection can be used to calculate the speed of the object (i.e. vehicle) relative to the observer, sort of like how you can tell if a train horn is headings towards you or away from you based on the pitch.
Photo radar is a fair bit more advanced, and can pick out individual vehicles. With traditional radar, and human operator has to visually identify a speeding vehicle, and the radar gun is just meant to be a confirmation of the officer’s observations. Photo radar makes it possible to automate the process to reduce cost, even with multiple vehicles.
There literally is a machine that can ticket everyone equally. And it gets called unfair here because the poor and rich both have to pay 100$. Yeah okay, I get the sentiment, proportional fines all the way. But…
“The roads are too poorly designed, everyone speeds here!” is no excuse. If the road design tempts you to sin, you shouldn’t drive. Ignore the bigger picture, you’re moving 3 tons of steel faster than your eyes can process, take some responsibility for ensuring no one dies because of you. Drive a safe speed, which is the only speed everyone can agree on, which is the speed limit. Driving “what feels right” is not safe. You aren’t the one driver who can get away with this.
Yes, traffic engineers share the blame, and on a political level this is where you need to improve the situation. But on an individual level, like this anecdote about the authors random fine, the individual is to blame. Its not a scam by the government, you messed up.
And asking for the traffic cop back is just asinine. How on earth do you think this will be any fairer, them letting most speeders through and then fining “randomly selected” individuals?
A camera can’t be racist, can’t rip up the ticket because of some extra cleavage bouncing, can’t wave their buddies through. The camera doesn’t need a break for coffee, it can watch its road 24/7 (a good case for this would be a school/community safety zone). It tickets anything that exceeds the limit. Its also much cheaper than paying a cop and all the associated gear.
I’ve seen people argue it shouldn’t be legal for cops to do radar and that pulling people over or even jusy doing radar is more dangerous than just letting them speed. Those same people then cry unfair surveillance state when a camera is implemented. Seems to me they just want to speed without any consequences.
Speed cameras are super common here. Not sure what this is on about
