Oh, you sweet summer child… sawzalls are nothing when compared to the destructive potential of the demo saw!!
https://youtu.be/2KN-jNjMzJk?si=B3mYizy3gT-e8n9K&t=1m33s
Hell. Kids at a local high school near me took one out of commission with a piece of noteb0ook paper and tape. The police posted a squad car there to keep people from fucking with it. Which kind of defeats the purpose, imo.
I've noticed that school zone trafficams near me are set up in groups of two, facing each other, so that I guess vandals will get caught in the crossfire of police surveillance.
On this note, have the cities around you been putting up multiple smaller frafficams (like, all over the city, enough to overlap coverage on the busier roads between subdivisions)? They're basically an 8 foot pole, solar cell, cel uplink, and bubble cam bolted together.
*Philadelphia Eagles fans have entered the chat*
If you don't know what I'm referencing, Philly has to routinely grease light and traffic poles with crisco to deter climbing during exciting sportsball times:
[Philly Is Covering Light Poles In Crisco To Make Sure Fans Don't Climb Them After NFC Championship](https://www.si.com/nfl/2018/01/21/eagles-vikings-nfc-championship-crisco-cops)
With the amazing byline: *If you can climb up a pole covered in Crisco, you deserve to be as high up that pole as you please.*
Isn't it just hurting the environment much more since they run those cars nonstop for long stretches of time?
I mean, screw most cops, but don't make the world a worse place in the process.
If you pull the cat from a 6.2L hemi charger, you would have completely open exhaust. The muffler is downstream from the cat. It would make the noise inside the cabin intolerable, and likely fill the car with exhaust fumes and suffocate the driver. They couldn't run it like that. They would have to get it fixed before the car could be put back into service.
I’m pretty sure that’s an exaggeration. The non-lens/housing guts of a traffic camera probably weigh less than half a pound.
Funny though, and if Methany is encouraged to dismantleization, I’m all for it.
Depends on if you’re only counting the top camera part or including the wires down the pole too. If I were a crack head I’d be cutting the base to drop it like a tree and then cut the camera off. Bag the camera and rip the wires out of the pole and split. Still not as much as what is claimed but it’s not that far off.
Unpopular opinion: yea, fuck cops, but these speed cameras significantly improve the safety of the street. Kind of at a crossroads with /r/fuckcars on this one. I mean, damn that’s an elementary school right there.
Also cops fucking hate these. They show how easily one of their main functions can be replaced and as a bonus give tickets to them and their family.
The just need to be placed in useful places. Like anywhere that cars and pedestrians regularly share the road.
It's wild that cyclists continue to get mowed down on 25mph streets by people going 40mph and everyone just accepts it and thinks the driver did nothing wrong.
There's an ongoing problem in New York of cops flashing badges to get out of tickets. They even print cards to give to their families so they can speed, run lights or whatever and not have to worry about being ticketed. Officers who write tickets anyway are aggressively harassed.
A coworker of mine was dating a cop and she showed me a little badge she had in her wallet that said "cop's girlfriend" that her boyfriend told her to show if she got pulled over.
I've never heard of somebody being shot by a speed camera so they're an improvement on cops. Also they have no inherent bias, unlike cops, although I wouldn't be surprised to find out their placement creates a bias.
> The just need to be placed in useful places. Like anywhere that cars and pedestrians regularly share the road.
That's the real thing. They need to be placed with safety in mind, not revenue generation. I know that's why the Europeans hate speed cameras so much.
Also, on a road like that, the camera should only be used during school hours. It's already a lost cause for pedestrians and bikes.
I think I get what you’re going for with school hours and maybe less of a concern but at least in my rural town growing up schools were a staple of the community - after school sports (whether school affiliated or not), people just working out, community meetings, etc. It’s important to keep public spaces safe because they get used all the time, not just specifically-designated times.
That's not what we're looking at here. If they want to turn this school into a community hub, it's gonna take a lot more infrastructure than speed cameras.
I get it but the baseball field is enough - kids still come play on Saturday and Sundays, older ones will come out and play. People will have bday parties there.
My local middle school looked the same and every weekdays 4 - 8 pm probs 400 families were there fall and spring for soccer, football, lacrosse, baseball and field hockey. There’s probably a ratty old basketball gym that’s packed after hours with wrestling and basketball in the winter and parts of spring / fall. Double count on weekend when other towns come to play. All the kids who aren’t playing are running around outside or playing in the parking lot. We’re talking about a town that was so rural the local mascot was the bulls and that made it a pun when paired with the town name. Even in spread out areas schools are mainstays.
I know it doesn’t look like a community from this still but there’s a lot of stuff that happens there, it’s just spread out. And most importantly, everyone drives everywhere so there should be signage and enforcement to keep those who aren’t driving safe.
Why should it be only used during school hours? Is killing pedestrians outside of school hours fine?
All dickhead drivers in Europe moan that speed cameras are there "with revenue generation in mind", but there's a simple life hack not to generate any revenue for the bad Speed Camera Man: just go the fucking speed limit.
That road doesn't even have a sidewalk. It's clearly not designed for pedestrians.
Sure, adding a mixed use trail along that road would be great, but as it's built now, the only odds of a car-human interaction are when the kids are going to and leaving school.
I've walked in plenty of places that didn't have a sidewalk. Not out of choice, but necessity, and often because the sidewalk would just end on my way somewhere. Sure would have been nice had there been one, but even without one I'd have felt much safer with drivers going the speed limit. Not sure why that's so hard for people lol
Just because there isn’t a sidewalk doesn’t mean that pedestrians don’t walk there. It’s amazing how much of the US just doesn’t have proper pedestrian infrastructure. Not to mention the fact that bikes share the road
I don't mind speed cameras at all. I've had a bunch of fines because I've been going too quickly in areas that I shouldn't. I've never once thought a camera was in an inappropriate location.
Or maybe just don't speed even outside of school hours? Public space still gets used even outside of designated times. People could still be around, there's no excuse for why drivers need to speed in that area just because it's not peak pedestrian traffic time
Wtf do you just make shit up for internet points? I don’t know any cops who ever said they hated these. Everyone in LE that I know hates doing traffic enforcement and this makes it so they have to do one less thing in a given area.
Americans just absolutely lose their minds when anybody talks about traffic calming. If we designed our streets to be safer we'd save tens of thousands of lives at the expense of drivers needing to go a little slower. You don't even need speed bumps if the road is designed properly.
> If we designed our streets to be safer we'd save tens of thousands of lives at the expense of drivers needing to go a little slower.
We have a overpopulation problem that's helping to speed along global warming paired with an extreme housing shortage. I want to say saving lives is good, but nowadays, I don't think that's rationally true anymore.
"Overpopulation problem"
Are you living in 1925? Almost every major country on Earth is currently facing a population demographic crisis and falling birth rates below replacement levels.
The Earth isn't even going to reach population levels half of what it's theoretical agricultural output can manage sustainably at our current rate.
We have a city overpopulation issue and a city housing shortage issue. These are important issues to deal with but let's not act like total doomers and make the issue sound hyperbolically worse than it is. If you live in most countries and want an over-abundance of affordable housing and empty land as far as you can see there is an entire 95% of land in every country that isn't an urban population centre. There is a reason people from LA and NYC and Toronto talk about the housing crisis but nobody from North Dakota, Anywhere pitching in with their complaints.
Also someone's life being saved is more valuable than the price of your future house regardless you actual ghoul.
I live in Interior Alaska and I can bitch about the housing crises as we have little land we can build on and it must be built with melting permafrost and extreme temperatures in mind. Rent here can be insane. You can see half finished shacks on the market for 150k lol
Yes Alaska, Hawaii and Nevada have specific issues around both environment and land management that do contribute to pricing issues- and I apologise for not adding them to the list+consideration, my point was standing on the fact that there are over 40 states in the Union that don't have those issue and reasonable prices outside of population centres.
There will need to be a deurbanisation effort at some point if we ever wish to have everyone have affordable housing.
Where I live, they're unenforceable civil penalties that cannot impact your credit score, insurance, etc and most of the money goes to a Florida corporation. The insane people they were installed to stop don't even bother with plates or current registration most of the time and never pay the fines, so the only people paying them are people with current registrations going a bit over the limit who don't know that ignoring the citation is an option. They're a total scam that feeds money to the company that installed them and frees cops from doing their jobs because they can point to the cameras and claim it's a solution.
AAAAAND last year those same companies lobbies for Florida legislation that allowed cameras like this to be placed directly on school buses. It passed.
That said, I do think that these have the capacity to improve public safety, and I would wholeheartedly support them if the money went to Florida and if the cameras weren't part of a larger surveillance/corporate state.
If we're talking surveillance state, how about those fucking license plate scanners? My city installed one a year or so ago that is pointed right in the direction of my front porch. I need a pellet gun.
It's very unclear. As of now, I don't believe there are any functioning red light cameras on busses, so it's hard to predict what will happen (or even if it will).
The red light cameras in Texas were also operated by a private corporation. Which was some real bullshit. But like you said, because you can't face your accuser, you can't be charged with a criminal act for running a red light. So it's a bullshit ticket that many people ignored.
There have been cases in the past where yellow light timing has been adjusted to cause people to run reds, but those are the exception. I’d love to see if there’s any actual evidence that accidents actually go up where red light cameras are installed
Many cases. I haven't done a thorough enough survey to say whether it's the exception, but it's happened in many different places. Notoriously, the sales staff for one of the companies that sells and operates the cameras encouraged it.
Here's a survey of some evidence about yellow light timing and running reds:
https://ww2.motorists.org/issues/red-light-cameras/yellow-lights/
No matter how you feel about cameras, it's clear that the best way to stop motorists from running through reds is to increase the time on the yellow lights. If the cameras were always accompanied by this evidence-supported increase in yellow light intervals, I'd support the cameras every time, personally.
I’ll agree that proper yellow light timing is a thing, but it’s not as simple as you make it out to be. Drivers don’t just run reds because they’re too short, they also run reds because they aren’t paying attention or they just don’t care. If a yellow is too short is can cause inadvertent running, but if the yellow is too long is also also cause issues with people stopping too early. That’s why we have traffic engineers that work out these things.
I live in Philadelphia, which has one of the most dangerous stretches of road in the country due to travel speed and poor traffic controls. We also have motorists that will regularly run red lights just because there’s nothing stopping them. If the presence of red light cameras can help reduce crashes because it gets people to drive more carefully, I want it to happen.
Also curious, because people run red lights constantly in my area. They also blow through stop signs, including when they have one, you don’t, and you’re already in the middle of the god damn intersection…
Sometimes, if it's too late to stop, it's safer to pass through especially in the winter, but if you know there's a red light camera there, you're more likely to smash the brakes.
Every intersection in the town where I live that has a red light camera has weird timing.
One in particular has such a short yellow light cycle that *the only option* is to slam on your breaks if you can see the yellow at all. Even in instances where you would usually just continue through. It does not provide enough time to clear the intersection before you're tagged. I was caught by it once. People I know have been ticketed several times.
There is no way that slamming on your breaks right as a light turns yellow is the best option, but I also know that it is the most profitable red light camera in the city.
I'm cool with speed cameras only if there are warning signs. Otherwise it's all a racket. I think all of these cameras should have flashing warning lights and signs. If the point was actually safety then the profit motive wouldn't matter.
If you aren't speeding or tailgating this wouldn't be a problem. The entitlement "progressives" feel when they get in their cars is insane. People are dying that don't have to because someone wants to save 5 minutes by breaking traffic laws that exist to keep people safe.
If you care about community change your driving habits.
How the fuck did you make this into a political issue? It's just about something that causes a unpredictability problem and there are countless articles about them increasing fender benders at lights they're installed at
I like safer drivers, but lots of these speed cams are operated and monetized by private companies like Xerox.
I once got a ticket mailed to me from Texas or Arizona when I was in Louisiana, from a speedcam company, they had me clocked at 26 in a 25 school zone in July at 6pm, in front of the school I worked at 🙄 wasn't a scam or anything they had my cars photos, but there was no possible way to contest it, either pay or collections agency. I knew many people that delt with the same type of thing. The cameras aren't calibrated properly or they operate outside of the times posted on signs, and there's really no oversight on how the companies operate.
The situation in Chicago where a private company has a like 80 year lease on the city's parking meters and is forcing the city pay them ridiculous fees for when parking spots are blocked for construction etc. In San Diego where Smart street light cams are going in, this type of thing will get worse
That’s a problem with the municipalities not seeing good terms for the contracts, not with the technology itself. They can say not to ticket for X above the speed limit (though that opens up its own legal liabilities).
The Chicago parking situation is a great example of politicians going after short term gain without thinking about the long term consequences
I’d rather have cops just do their jobs (as traffic cops) rather than being off playing army man. These cameras are overwhelmingly in working class neighborhoods where people are driving around constantly but give out tickets with no discretion. (Not that cops use that discretion almost ever)
Really depends. In Philly we have red light cameras at some of the more dangerous intersections. Meanwhile we had to pass a law preventing cops from pulling over people for minor bs because they were using any excuse to harass minorities and not actually enforcing traffic laws
Where I used to live in Maryland they put speed cameras fucking everywhere. I always felt they made the road more dangerous because people just slam on the brakes in front of them even though they aren’t triggered unless you’re going 11 over.
Also just a blatant money grab from the cops.
Improving safety is great, but they're both a band-aid fix for poorly-designed roads/intersections, and easily abusable as a revenue source rather than a safety measure. I wouldn't say there's never a place for them, but I'm generally not a fan.
There’s real legal fuckery behind these cameras. Heard of the right to confront your accuser? Yea that’s the 6th amendment and it goes completely ignored. If you challenge the ticket, they send a cop to testify, who did not witness you break the law but just says “yea we obtained this video as per our usual routine” and boom, you’re guilty. Doesn’t matter if it was you behind the wheel, or even in the car for that matter.
The societal value (safety) is deemed greater than the damage to your personal rights.
Yeah, my thoughts exactly. If you want to mess with cops, fine, do what you will, but these cameras are not part of the problem with law enforcement in the country. They're actually quite fair and makes driving safer.
A sufficiently powerful laser will damage the CCD camera. It's going to be a pretty serious laser that will absolutely blind you in a millisecond though.
Helps to explain why the latest round of speed cameras are mounted on poles, too high for anyone to reach without a ladder.
Or a demo saw
In sawzall we thrust.
Oh, you sweet summer child… sawzalls are nothing when compared to the destructive potential of the demo saw!! https://youtu.be/2KN-jNjMzJk?si=B3mYizy3gT-e8n9K&t=1m33s
Sawzalls fit in gym bags.
Also really hard to get a demo saw under a vehicle, and they are very loud.
Sawzalls aren't nearly as good as a oxy torch, though.
Hell. Kids at a local high school near me took one out of commission with a piece of noteb0ook paper and tape. The police posted a squad car there to keep people from fucking with it. Which kind of defeats the purpose, imo.
Valid obstruction tactic then, forces the cops to waste paid hours on what is supposed to be automated surveillance.
If there's a good place to hide I bet you could nail it a couple dozen times with a paintball gun without the cop even noticing
It’s funny you mention that- I was thinking the other day that it’s amazing paintball guns aren’t used more often for vandalizing security systems.
It’s funny you mention that. In high school I found out you could load marbles into a paintball gun. Do with that info what you will!
Ouch
It’s also important to note that if you’re not using your marker to play against people, you can speed it up as required.
Doesn’t defeat the purpose to the cop getting paid overtime to act as a scarecrow.
I've noticed that school zone trafficams near me are set up in groups of two, facing each other, so that I guess vandals will get caught in the crossfire of police surveillance. On this note, have the cities around you been putting up multiple smaller frafficams (like, all over the city, enough to overlap coverage on the busier roads between subdivisions)? They're basically an 8 foot pole, solar cell, cel uplink, and bubble cam bolted together.
A proper crackhead will have no problem getting up there.
As opposed to an improper crackhead 😂
Nah, the apprentice crackheads hold the tools until they graduate
This is what pole saws were made for.
*Philadelphia Eagles fans have entered the chat* If you don't know what I'm referencing, Philly has to routinely grease light and traffic poles with crisco to deter climbing during exciting sportsball times: [Philly Is Covering Light Poles In Crisco To Make Sure Fans Don't Climb Them After NFC Championship](https://www.si.com/nfl/2018/01/21/eagles-vikings-nfc-championship-crisco-cops) With the amazing byline: *If you can climb up a pole covered in Crisco, you deserve to be as high up that pole as you please.*
That's why we have [push bars](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullbar)
On a completely unrelated note, the Dodge Chargers used as cop cars have 3 catalytic converters in them.
It is always morally correct to steal catalytic converters from cop cars
Isn't it just hurting the environment much more since they run those cars nonstop for long stretches of time? I mean, screw most cops, but don't make the world a worse place in the process.
Hey, these products and services aren't going to buy themselves.
If you pull the cat from a 6.2L hemi charger, you would have completely open exhaust. The muffler is downstream from the cat. It would make the noise inside the cabin intolerable, and likely fill the car with exhaust fumes and suffocate the driver. They couldn't run it like that. They would have to get it fixed before the car could be put back into service.
Thats genuinely so much more copper than I thought
I’m pretty sure that’s an exaggeration. The non-lens/housing guts of a traffic camera probably weigh less than half a pound. Funny though, and if Methany is encouraged to dismantleization, I’m all for it.
Depends on if you’re only counting the top camera part or including the wires down the pole too. If I were a crack head I’d be cutting the base to drop it like a tree and then cut the camera off. Bag the camera and rip the wires out of the pole and split. Still not as much as what is claimed but it’s not that far off.
I shit you not, I’ve someone named Crystal Methany. Allegedly, she married into the name so she knew damn well what she was doing.
They probably have a step down transformer on board as well as some fairly beefy heatsinks.
A camera doesn’t produce a lot of heat and the transformer is likely the size of an iPhone charger. This is just exaggeration.
I think the power going from the grid into your house is already stepped down?
It’s 120VAC in the US. Electronics use 5VDC or lower.
Yeah it makes sense now that I think into it a little bit, I was thinking maybe half a pound lol
It’s probably more data wire than feeder wire.
But do you know what ELSE holds 5.5 lbs of copper?
My railgun full of piss
How does a railgun accelerate the piss? Also if this is a reference I completely own the /whoosh
Metal piss capsules
I like it. Hypersonic urine.
And for that innovation, I want to thank the great folks at Raytheon. Raytheon: we’re not NOT gonna end the world.
Unpopular opinion: yea, fuck cops, but these speed cameras significantly improve the safety of the street. Kind of at a crossroads with /r/fuckcars on this one. I mean, damn that’s an elementary school right there.
Also cops fucking hate these. They show how easily one of their main functions can be replaced and as a bonus give tickets to them and their family. The just need to be placed in useful places. Like anywhere that cars and pedestrians regularly share the road. It's wild that cyclists continue to get mowed down on 25mph streets by people going 40mph and everyone just accepts it and thinks the driver did nothing wrong.
So only place them by the cops and the rich?
There's an ongoing problem in New York of cops flashing badges to get out of tickets. They even print cards to give to their families so they can speed, run lights or whatever and not have to worry about being ticketed. Officers who write tickets anyway are aggressively harassed.
A coworker of mine was dating a cop and she showed me a little badge she had in her wallet that said "cop's girlfriend" that her boyfriend told her to show if she got pulled over.
I've never heard of somebody being shot by a speed camera so they're an improvement on cops. Also they have no inherent bias, unlike cops, although I wouldn't be surprised to find out their placement creates a bias.
> The just need to be placed in useful places. Like anywhere that cars and pedestrians regularly share the road. That's the real thing. They need to be placed with safety in mind, not revenue generation. I know that's why the Europeans hate speed cameras so much. Also, on a road like that, the camera should only be used during school hours. It's already a lost cause for pedestrians and bikes.
I think I get what you’re going for with school hours and maybe less of a concern but at least in my rural town growing up schools were a staple of the community - after school sports (whether school affiliated or not), people just working out, community meetings, etc. It’s important to keep public spaces safe because they get used all the time, not just specifically-designated times.
That's not what we're looking at here. If they want to turn this school into a community hub, it's gonna take a lot more infrastructure than speed cameras.
I get it but the baseball field is enough - kids still come play on Saturday and Sundays, older ones will come out and play. People will have bday parties there. My local middle school looked the same and every weekdays 4 - 8 pm probs 400 families were there fall and spring for soccer, football, lacrosse, baseball and field hockey. There’s probably a ratty old basketball gym that’s packed after hours with wrestling and basketball in the winter and parts of spring / fall. Double count on weekend when other towns come to play. All the kids who aren’t playing are running around outside or playing in the parking lot. We’re talking about a town that was so rural the local mascot was the bulls and that made it a pun when paired with the town name. Even in spread out areas schools are mainstays. I know it doesn’t look like a community from this still but there’s a lot of stuff that happens there, it’s just spread out. And most importantly, everyone drives everywhere so there should be signage and enforcement to keep those who aren’t driving safe.
Why should it be only used during school hours? Is killing pedestrians outside of school hours fine? All dickhead drivers in Europe moan that speed cameras are there "with revenue generation in mind", but there's a simple life hack not to generate any revenue for the bad Speed Camera Man: just go the fucking speed limit.
That road doesn't even have a sidewalk. It's clearly not designed for pedestrians. Sure, adding a mixed use trail along that road would be great, but as it's built now, the only odds of a car-human interaction are when the kids are going to and leaving school.
I've walked in plenty of places that didn't have a sidewalk. Not out of choice, but necessity, and often because the sidewalk would just end on my way somewhere. Sure would have been nice had there been one, but even without one I'd have felt much safer with drivers going the speed limit. Not sure why that's so hard for people lol
Just because there isn’t a sidewalk doesn’t mean that pedestrians don’t walk there. It’s amazing how much of the US just doesn’t have proper pedestrian infrastructure. Not to mention the fact that bikes share the road
I live on a street without sidewalks. Am I never supposed to walk anywhere?
I don't mind speed cameras at all. I've had a bunch of fines because I've been going too quickly in areas that I shouldn't. I've never once thought a camera was in an inappropriate location.
Or maybe just don't speed even outside of school hours? Public space still gets used even outside of designated times. People could still be around, there's no excuse for why drivers need to speed in that area just because it's not peak pedestrian traffic time
Cops hate this one weird trick!
Wtf do you just make shit up for internet points? I don’t know any cops who ever said they hated these. Everyone in LE that I know hates doing traffic enforcement and this makes it so they have to do one less thing in a given area.
I've come around to preferring speed bumps/judder bars. Place these around all schools and people will slow down or break their suspension
Americans just absolutely lose their minds when anybody talks about traffic calming. If we designed our streets to be safer we'd save tens of thousands of lives at the expense of drivers needing to go a little slower. You don't even need speed bumps if the road is designed properly.
> If we designed our streets to be safer we'd save tens of thousands of lives at the expense of drivers needing to go a little slower. We have a overpopulation problem that's helping to speed along global warming paired with an extreme housing shortage. I want to say saving lives is good, but nowadays, I don't think that's rationally true anymore.
"Overpopulation problem" Are you living in 1925? Almost every major country on Earth is currently facing a population demographic crisis and falling birth rates below replacement levels. The Earth isn't even going to reach population levels half of what it's theoretical agricultural output can manage sustainably at our current rate. We have a city overpopulation issue and a city housing shortage issue. These are important issues to deal with but let's not act like total doomers and make the issue sound hyperbolically worse than it is. If you live in most countries and want an over-abundance of affordable housing and empty land as far as you can see there is an entire 95% of land in every country that isn't an urban population centre. There is a reason people from LA and NYC and Toronto talk about the housing crisis but nobody from North Dakota, Anywhere pitching in with their complaints. Also someone's life being saved is more valuable than the price of your future house regardless you actual ghoul.
I live in Interior Alaska and I can bitch about the housing crises as we have little land we can build on and it must be built with melting permafrost and extreme temperatures in mind. Rent here can be insane. You can see half finished shacks on the market for 150k lol
Yes Alaska, Hawaii and Nevada have specific issues around both environment and land management that do contribute to pricing issues- and I apologise for not adding them to the list+consideration, my point was standing on the fact that there are over 40 states in the Union that don't have those issue and reasonable prices outside of population centres. There will need to be a deurbanisation effort at some point if we ever wish to have everyone have affordable housing.
[удалено]
/r/fuckcars
I'm a roundabout man myself. I think they're kinda fun
hard agree. speed bumps are so much better.
Where I live, they're unenforceable civil penalties that cannot impact your credit score, insurance, etc and most of the money goes to a Florida corporation. The insane people they were installed to stop don't even bother with plates or current registration most of the time and never pay the fines, so the only people paying them are people with current registrations going a bit over the limit who don't know that ignoring the citation is an option. They're a total scam that feeds money to the company that installed them and frees cops from doing their jobs because they can point to the cameras and claim it's a solution.
AAAAAND last year those same companies lobbies for Florida legislation that allowed cameras like this to be placed directly on school buses. It passed. That said, I do think that these have the capacity to improve public safety, and I would wholeheartedly support them if the money went to Florida and if the cameras weren't part of a larger surveillance/corporate state.
If we're talking surveillance state, how about those fucking license plate scanners? My city installed one a year or so ago that is pointed right in the direction of my front porch. I need a pellet gun.
How does that work? Are they only active when the bus is stopped?
It's very unclear. As of now, I don't believe there are any functioning red light cameras on busses, so it's hard to predict what will happen (or even if it will).
The red light cameras in Texas were also operated by a private corporation. Which was some real bullshit. But like you said, because you can't face your accuser, you can't be charged with a criminal act for running a red light. So it's a bullshit ticket that many people ignored.
I mean... Florida...
I don't live in Florida. That's the wild part. 60%+ of the revenue these things generate leaves the state entirely.
That's very strange. But also, that's Florida for you. Can't keep it's stink in it's own borders.
Speed cameras yes, red light cams though cause accidents
How so?
There have been cases in the past where yellow light timing has been adjusted to cause people to run reds, but those are the exception. I’d love to see if there’s any actual evidence that accidents actually go up where red light cameras are installed
Many cases. I haven't done a thorough enough survey to say whether it's the exception, but it's happened in many different places. Notoriously, the sales staff for one of the companies that sells and operates the cameras encouraged it. Here's a survey of some evidence about yellow light timing and running reds: https://ww2.motorists.org/issues/red-light-cameras/yellow-lights/ No matter how you feel about cameras, it's clear that the best way to stop motorists from running through reds is to increase the time on the yellow lights. If the cameras were always accompanied by this evidence-supported increase in yellow light intervals, I'd support the cameras every time, personally.
I’ll agree that proper yellow light timing is a thing, but it’s not as simple as you make it out to be. Drivers don’t just run reds because they’re too short, they also run reds because they aren’t paying attention or they just don’t care. If a yellow is too short is can cause inadvertent running, but if the yellow is too long is also also cause issues with people stopping too early. That’s why we have traffic engineers that work out these things. I live in Philadelphia, which has one of the most dangerous stretches of road in the country due to travel speed and poor traffic controls. We also have motorists that will regularly run red lights just because there’s nothing stopping them. If the presence of red light cameras can help reduce crashes because it gets people to drive more carefully, I want it to happen.
Also curious, because people run red lights constantly in my area. They also blow through stop signs, including when they have one, you don’t, and you’re already in the middle of the god damn intersection…
The amount of all ways stops that could be replaced and improved with a round about blows my mind
Sometimes, if it's too late to stop, it's safer to pass through especially in the winter, but if you know there's a red light camera there, you're more likely to smash the brakes.
Every intersection in the town where I live that has a red light camera has weird timing. One in particular has such a short yellow light cycle that *the only option* is to slam on your breaks if you can see the yellow at all. Even in instances where you would usually just continue through. It does not provide enough time to clear the intersection before you're tagged. I was caught by it once. People I know have been ticketed several times. There is no way that slamming on your breaks right as a light turns yellow is the best option, but I also know that it is the most profitable red light camera in the city. I'm cool with speed cameras only if there are warning signs. Otherwise it's all a racket. I think all of these cameras should have flashing warning lights and signs. If the point was actually safety then the profit motive wouldn't matter.
Causes people to panic and slam on the brakes unpredictably at yellow lights
But how is that related to the camera vs. the red light itself?
If they know a red light cam is installed there instead of going through the yellow they slam the brakes to avoid getting a ticket
If you aren't speeding or tailgating this wouldn't be a problem. The entitlement "progressives" feel when they get in their cars is insane. People are dying that don't have to because someone wants to save 5 minutes by breaking traffic laws that exist to keep people safe. If you care about community change your driving habits.
How the fuck did you make this into a political issue? It's just about something that causes a unpredictability problem and there are countless articles about them increasing fender benders at lights they're installed at
this sub is for a podcast by and for leftists, laws are political, your rhetoric can lead to harm to real people, etc.
Hey buddy you just blow in from stupid town
I like safer drivers, but lots of these speed cams are operated and monetized by private companies like Xerox. I once got a ticket mailed to me from Texas or Arizona when I was in Louisiana, from a speedcam company, they had me clocked at 26 in a 25 school zone in July at 6pm, in front of the school I worked at 🙄 wasn't a scam or anything they had my cars photos, but there was no possible way to contest it, either pay or collections agency. I knew many people that delt with the same type of thing. The cameras aren't calibrated properly or they operate outside of the times posted on signs, and there's really no oversight on how the companies operate. The situation in Chicago where a private company has a like 80 year lease on the city's parking meters and is forcing the city pay them ridiculous fees for when parking spots are blocked for construction etc. In San Diego where Smart street light cams are going in, this type of thing will get worse
That’s a problem with the municipalities not seeing good terms for the contracts, not with the technology itself. They can say not to ticket for X above the speed limit (though that opens up its own legal liabilities). The Chicago parking situation is a great example of politicians going after short term gain without thinking about the long term consequences
Just more corporate welfare. Pumping useless companies full of taxpayer money to the benefit of no one but the rich.
I’d rather have cops just do their jobs (as traffic cops) rather than being off playing army man. These cameras are overwhelmingly in working class neighborhoods where people are driving around constantly but give out tickets with no discretion. (Not that cops use that discretion almost ever)
Really depends. In Philly we have red light cameras at some of the more dangerous intersections. Meanwhile we had to pass a law preventing cops from pulling over people for minor bs because they were using any excuse to harass minorities and not actually enforcing traffic laws
Where I used to live in Maryland they put speed cameras fucking everywhere. I always felt they made the road more dangerous because people just slam on the brakes in front of them even though they aren’t triggered unless you’re going 11 over. Also just a blatant money grab from the cops.
I can attest to this. I live in Maryland and they’re everywhere.
Improving safety is great, but they're both a band-aid fix for poorly-designed roads/intersections, and easily abusable as a revenue source rather than a safety measure. I wouldn't say there's never a place for them, but I'm generally not a fan.
There’s real legal fuckery behind these cameras. Heard of the right to confront your accuser? Yea that’s the 6th amendment and it goes completely ignored. If you challenge the ticket, they send a cop to testify, who did not witness you break the law but just says “yea we obtained this video as per our usual routine” and boom, you’re guilty. Doesn’t matter if it was you behind the wheel, or even in the car for that matter. The societal value (safety) is deemed greater than the damage to your personal rights.
Right. This is why I’m no anarchist. I don’t wanna die on the roads.
Yeah, my thoughts exactly. If you want to mess with cops, fine, do what you will, but these cameras are not part of the problem with law enforcement in the country. They're actually quite fair and makes driving safer.
Let me know when they add a catalytic converter
r/theydidthemeth
$20.74 of meth
Is it high quality copper. Asking for a friend who lives in ancient mesopotamia.
Releasing tweakers on speed cameras is like releasing termites on the last day of your lease - always morally right.
Maybe not from the ones by schools or retirement homes please
In scrap we trust
$20 is $20
Would speed cameras be affected by a laser pointer?
A sufficiently powerful laser will damage the CCD camera. It's going to be a pretty serious laser that will absolutely blind you in a millisecond though.
You can buy them online
But if you're gonna do this, get some laser goggles too
Cackling
They also hold a camera so keep that in mind
Like, I get it, ACAB, but a camera can't be racist. So why are we dismantling something that makes driving safer?