These systems are almost always unconstitutional and corrupt as hell. I get that california has some serious issues on it's roads, but this is just going to line someone's pocket and screw poor...
These systems are almost always unconstitutional and corrupt as hell. I get that california has some serious issues on it's roads, but this is just going to line someone's pocket and screw poor people.
Maybe, but it does at least have provisions for poor people and specific uses for the revenue. I guess speeding camera companies are getting their pockets lined? My main complaint is the tickets...
Maybe, but it does at least have provisions for poor people and specific uses for the revenue. I guess speeding camera companies are getting their pockets lined?
My main complaint is the tickets don’t scale up enough with income. A billionaire should get a million dollar speeding ticket.
California's historical problems with traffic enforcement cameras have not been with how they affect different people, or even necessarily with where the bulk of the revenue goes, but with the...
California's historical problems with traffic enforcement cameras have not been with how they affect different people, or even necessarily with where the bulk of the revenue goes, but with the ways that contracts with camera companies, and revenue mechanisms, produced perverse incentives that meant that camera installation and operation became motivated by decreasing, rather than increasing, traffic safety.
The major problem, if I recall, was with red light cameras a few decades ago, where investigations in several cases found that contracts between cities and private enforcement camera companies where, rather than paying for the installation and operation directly, cities paid a percentage of the revenue to the companies, and also had minimum citation number guarantees the cities made to the companies. Camera installation, and changes to the intersections, often became motivated by trying to increase red light violations (and revenue) rather than decrease them, for example, by reducing yellow light timings beyond standard minimums, installing cameras in confusing locations, or attempting to enforce minor technicalities.
This understandably created quite a bit of public distrust, which is unfortunate, because many other countries have been able to use traffic cameras very effectively.
Fines don't scale for complex legal reasons (maybe unconstitutional), and a billionaire can still pay a million dollar speeding fine day in and out (and will seldom if ever drive themselves...
Fines don't scale for complex legal reasons (maybe unconstitutional), and a billionaire can still pay a million dollar speeding fine day in and out (and will seldom if ever drive themselves anyways. You going to start fining people by the highest income of an occupant of the car?)
In literally every other deployment of this kind of tech I'm aware of, you will constantly get people who have to argue, in court, that the camera is wrong, and they've proven over and over again that it is. And that's before you get into "well yes I accelerated to avoid..." situations or any other nuance.
Further since there's a company that stands to gain money on people speeding, they set these up not just in areas where people shouldn't speed, but in areas where speedlimits are likely wrong, or where it's dangerous not to speed.
Right now in my city we have construction on a freeway that claims you have to go from 65 to 35. Huge signs, lots of "you must slow down, heavily enforced, etc", and yet, no one does. Part of the reason for that is because if you're going 35 in a 65, you are dangerous to you and those around you.
Speed cameras are often setup in areas like this because it brings them more revenue. They don't want to stop speeding (that would mean less revenue), they want to encourage more and catch it. This is literally taxing the poor using the legal system.
It's always frustrating to compare these situations to the far less controversial average speed cameras along long stretches of normal motorways in, for example, the UK and Ireland. The potential...
It's always frustrating to compare these situations to the far less controversial average speed cameras along long stretches of normal motorways in, for example, the UK and Ireland.
The potential inaccuracies of radar-based cameras are not there, and the photograph timestamps and camera locations themselves prove a minimum speed, without any need to trust sensors. Arguments about acceleration, overtaking, safety, and so on, don't work because the cameras will not catch driving over the speed limit, even significantly over the speed limit, momentarily. At the same time, a limit on average speed means that speeding can't save you any time: you can always drive past the speed limit for a short time without being ticketed, but only if you then correspondingly drive below the speed limit to an extent that you save no time. Since cameras are pervasive, you must have an average speed that obeys the speed limit, in everyday driving, to avoid being ticketed, unlike California and many parts of the US, where traffic enforcement seems more built around rare "speed traps" that can be avoided or slowed down for.
The result is that the bulk of traffic obeys the speed limit, which then also means that, unlike California, where driving at the speed limit often means driving uncomfortably slower than traffic, driving above the speed limit feels uncomfortable and dangerous.
Maybe for the manufacturing of cars, but in terms of car usage, I'd definitely agree with the article that LA is the most synonymous. It really boomed in the car years, and it's large sprawl is a...
Maybe for the manufacturing of cars, but in terms of car usage, I'd definitely agree with the article that LA is the most synonymous. It really boomed in the car years, and it's large sprawl is a direct result of car usage increasing. Many of the "romantic" vibes around LA are centered around cars - riding around Santa Monica in a convertible and all that.
Same, I mean I guess it’s the “motor city” but Michigan wouldn’t do speed cameras, right? I do hate the red light cameras. They point them at cars turning right on red and nail you for doing a...
Same, I mean I guess it’s the “motor city” but Michigan wouldn’t do speed cameras, right?
I do hate the red light cameras. They point them at cars turning right on red and nail you for doing a rolling stop.
Well, Hollywood is the capital of illusion and it certainly has promoted imagery of the car in California. It’s certainly a place where it is easier to keep a classic car than New York where we...
Well, Hollywood is the capital of illusion and it certainly has promoted imagery of the car in California. It’s certainly a place where it is easier to keep a classic car than New York where we are always importing cars from places with no road salt and sometimes less moisture.
I had a year where I worked a lot in Los Angeles and I rarely rented a car. Between finding appropriately located accommodations, car pooling, taking the bus, the subway, and walking around I never found it hard to get where I needed to go. Settled down in the heart of Hollywood you don’t really need to go anywhere (it has the most famous ‘walk’ in the world, the walk in Wilshjre from the beach to the downtown faces no real obstacles but length) but the appeal of the car is that you could go to great restaurants in the downtown area, drive to a ski resort, enjoy the curves of US Rt 1, etc.
You hear often that “nobody takes the bus in L.A.” particularly when the subject of funding comes up but if you do ride the bus it wlll be crowded.
That is a very low fine, given that the article also says that these will only be going up in the highest risk areas (such as school zones).
Fines will be issued on a sliding scale with provisions for folks within a certain percentage of the poverty line. The maximum penalty will be $500 for going 100 mph (not a typo) over the posted speed limit, while the fine for going 11 mph over will be $50.
That is a very low fine, given that the article also says that these will only be going up in the highest risk areas (such as school zones).
The statement they link to describes those as the civil penalty amounts. If I recall correctly, in California, the majority of the actual cost of traffic violations is from additional and...
The statement they link to describes those as the civil penalty amounts. If I recall correctly, in California, the majority of the actual cost of traffic violations is from additional and administrative fees added to the penalty amount, not the penalty amount itself, which could be a small fraction of the actual amount.
Yea now that I have kids I'm 100% in favor of $1,000 fines for 10 mph over and jailtime for 20 mph over in residential and school zones. TBH I'd rather 8 hours of community service over either,...
Yea now that I have kids I'm 100% in favor of $1,000 fines for 10 mph over and jailtime for 20 mph over in residential and school zones.
TBH I'd rather 8 hours of community service over either, but for some reason that option is used a lot less than jailtime.
Why not just one hour community service for one MPH over? Hey, you can do 50 in a 30 every day and then come back and work your 100 hours over the next month flagging cars for speeding in that...
Why not just one hour community service for one MPH over? Hey, you can do 50 in a 30 every day and then come back and work your 100 hours over the next month flagging cars for speeding in that exact community!
Back in the day, if you got busted got speeding on a military installation your commander would usually make you hold up a sign with the posted speed limit for a couple hours so not only did everyone get to see that you got caught, they got reminded of the speed limit!
Unfortunately, these seem to be instantaneous, radar-based speed cameras. Average-speed cameras in parts of Europe seem to work wonders for traffic calming and enforcing reasonable speeds, while...
Unfortunately, these seem to be instantaneous, radar-based speed cameras. Average-speed cameras in parts of Europe seem to work wonders for traffic calming and enforcing reasonable speeds, while avoiding many of the complaints made against instantaneous-speed cameras. Unfortunately, average-speed cameras and enforcement methods are apparently illegal in California.
To make matters worse, it sounds like rather than being applied consistently over an area, the plan here is to place these cameras specifically in chosen 'high risk' areas. That sounds like it risks having them put in areas with traffic design problems, confusing speed changes, or other aspects that will make automated enforcement seem more like trickery and revenue generation than legitimate traffic enforcement, and generate significant public opposition. California both has some problematic history with camera-based enforcement (eg, contractual and design scandals with red light cameras), and an annoying tendency to kill off urban improvements by running poorly implemented trials and then pointing to the unsurprising failure or opposition as a reason not to proceed to more general implementation.
Simply putting average speed cameras along otherwise normal sections of the 5 and 405, or along major stroads, would, I expect, drastically change speeds in Los Angeles, without the same risks or complexities.
We've had them for several years in our city in northern Canada. They truly are bs as far as a deterrent - you get a ticket mailed out four to six weeks after the event and you're lucky if you can...
We've had them for several years in our city in northern Canada. They truly are bs as far as a deterrent - you get a ticket mailed out four to six weeks after the event and you're lucky if you can even remember driving on that road, let alone if you were speeding. The only warning is if you are eagle eyed enough to spot one mounted on the light posts beside an intersection, or you recall the last place you got the fine.
Eventually the city got tired of the backlash from citizens who clearly realized that they have very little to do with "safety" and a whole lot to do with money generation, so they changed the contract to include the actual pic of your speeding car's license plate and gave a little more leeway on the speed. That didnt work either and drivers were still highly irritated.
So what do we have now? We have speed cameras mounted in vehicles that are parked on the shoulder. They did that for a few months and still got complaints.
So the latest solution is that the vehicles now have a bright fluorescent sign, about the size of a placemat, that says something generic like "Safety" or some actually say "Speed Camera". I guess the thinking is that an alert driver at least has the chance to notice a parked vehicle with heavily tinted windows with a fluorescent sign on the back. And if you dont, thats your problem.
Whatever happened to the old fashioned way, where at least you had to face an officer and come up with a stumbling excuse why you were speeding, while your fellow citizens drove by more slowly in the motoring equivalent of the walk of shame.
These systems are almost always unconstitutional and corrupt as hell. I get that california has some serious issues on it's roads, but this is just going to line someone's pocket and screw poor people.
Maybe, but it does at least have provisions for poor people and specific uses for the revenue. I guess speeding camera companies are getting their pockets lined?
My main complaint is the tickets don’t scale up enough with income. A billionaire should get a million dollar speeding ticket.
California's historical problems with traffic enforcement cameras have not been with how they affect different people, or even necessarily with where the bulk of the revenue goes, but with the ways that contracts with camera companies, and revenue mechanisms, produced perverse incentives that meant that camera installation and operation became motivated by decreasing, rather than increasing, traffic safety.
The major problem, if I recall, was with red light cameras a few decades ago, where investigations in several cases found that contracts between cities and private enforcement camera companies where, rather than paying for the installation and operation directly, cities paid a percentage of the revenue to the companies, and also had minimum citation number guarantees the cities made to the companies. Camera installation, and changes to the intersections, often became motivated by trying to increase red light violations (and revenue) rather than decrease them, for example, by reducing yellow light timings beyond standard minimums, installing cameras in confusing locations, or attempting to enforce minor technicalities.
This understandably created quite a bit of public distrust, which is unfortunate, because many other countries have been able to use traffic cameras very effectively.
Fines don't scale for complex legal reasons (maybe unconstitutional), and a billionaire can still pay a million dollar speeding fine day in and out (and will seldom if ever drive themselves anyways. You going to start fining people by the highest income of an occupant of the car?)
In literally every other deployment of this kind of tech I'm aware of, you will constantly get people who have to argue, in court, that the camera is wrong, and they've proven over and over again that it is. And that's before you get into "well yes I accelerated to avoid..." situations or any other nuance.
Further since there's a company that stands to gain money on people speeding, they set these up not just in areas where people shouldn't speed, but in areas where speedlimits are likely wrong, or where it's dangerous not to speed.
Right now in my city we have construction on a freeway that claims you have to go from 65 to 35. Huge signs, lots of "you must slow down, heavily enforced, etc", and yet, no one does. Part of the reason for that is because if you're going 35 in a 65, you are dangerous to you and those around you.
Speed cameras are often setup in areas like this because it brings them more revenue. They don't want to stop speeding (that would mean less revenue), they want to encourage more and catch it. This is literally taxing the poor using the legal system.
It's always frustrating to compare these situations to the far less controversial average speed cameras along long stretches of normal motorways in, for example, the UK and Ireland.
The potential inaccuracies of radar-based cameras are not there, and the photograph timestamps and camera locations themselves prove a minimum speed, without any need to trust sensors. Arguments about acceleration, overtaking, safety, and so on, don't work because the cameras will not catch driving over the speed limit, even significantly over the speed limit, momentarily. At the same time, a limit on average speed means that speeding can't save you any time: you can always drive past the speed limit for a short time without being ticketed, but only if you then correspondingly drive below the speed limit to an extent that you save no time. Since cameras are pervasive, you must have an average speed that obeys the speed limit, in everyday driving, to avoid being ticketed, unlike California and many parts of the US, where traffic enforcement seems more built around rare "speed traps" that can be avoided or slowed down for.
The result is that the bulk of traffic obeys the speed limit, which then also means that, unlike California, where driving at the speed limit often means driving uncomfortably slower than traffic, driving above the speed limit feels uncomfortable and dangerous.
When I think of the car capital of America, I think Detroit not California
Maybe for the manufacturing of cars, but in terms of car usage, I'd definitely agree with the article that LA is the most synonymous. It really boomed in the car years, and it's large sprawl is a direct result of car usage increasing. Many of the "romantic" vibes around LA are centered around cars - riding around Santa Monica in a convertible and all that.
And unlike Detroit, it's still populated.
Same, I mean I guess it’s the “motor city” but Michigan wouldn’t do speed cameras, right?
I do hate the red light cameras. They point them at cars turning right on red and nail you for doing a rolling stop.
Well, Hollywood is the capital of illusion and it certainly has promoted imagery of the car in California. It’s certainly a place where it is easier to keep a classic car than New York where we are always importing cars from places with no road salt and sometimes less moisture.
I had a year where I worked a lot in Los Angeles and I rarely rented a car. Between finding appropriately located accommodations, car pooling, taking the bus, the subway, and walking around I never found it hard to get where I needed to go. Settled down in the heart of Hollywood you don’t really need to go anywhere (it has the most famous ‘walk’ in the world, the walk in Wilshjre from the beach to the downtown faces no real obstacles but length) but the appeal of the car is that you could go to great restaurants in the downtown area, drive to a ski resort, enjoy the curves of US Rt 1, etc.
You hear often that “nobody takes the bus in L.A.” particularly when the subject of funding comes up but if you do ride the bus it wlll be crowded.
That is a very low fine, given that the article also says that these will only be going up in the highest risk areas (such as school zones).
The statement they link to describes those as the civil penalty amounts. If I recall correctly, in California, the majority of the actual cost of traffic violations is from additional and administrative fees added to the penalty amount, not the penalty amount itself, which could be a small fraction of the actual amount.
This is a total tangent, but I wonder how that'll be affected by the new law against junk fees?
Yea now that I have kids I'm 100% in favor of $1,000 fines for 10 mph over and jailtime for 20 mph over in residential and school zones.
TBH I'd rather 8 hours of community service over either, but for some reason that option is used a lot less than jailtime.
Why not just one hour community service for one MPH over? Hey, you can do 50 in a 30 every day and then come back and work your 100 hours over the next month flagging cars for speeding in that exact community!
Back in the day, if you got busted got speeding on a military installation your commander would usually make you hold up a sign with the posted speed limit for a couple hours so not only did everyone get to see that you got caught, they got reminded of the speed limit!
Unfortunately, these seem to be instantaneous, radar-based speed cameras. Average-speed cameras in parts of Europe seem to work wonders for traffic calming and enforcing reasonable speeds, while avoiding many of the complaints made against instantaneous-speed cameras. Unfortunately, average-speed cameras and enforcement methods are apparently illegal in California.
To make matters worse, it sounds like rather than being applied consistently over an area, the plan here is to place these cameras specifically in chosen 'high risk' areas. That sounds like it risks having them put in areas with traffic design problems, confusing speed changes, or other aspects that will make automated enforcement seem more like trickery and revenue generation than legitimate traffic enforcement, and generate significant public opposition. California both has some problematic history with camera-based enforcement (eg, contractual and design scandals with red light cameras), and an annoying tendency to kill off urban improvements by running poorly implemented trials and then pointing to the unsurprising failure or opposition as a reason not to proceed to more general implementation.
Simply putting average speed cameras along otherwise normal sections of the 5 and 405, or along major stroads, would, I expect, drastically change speeds in Los Angeles, without the same risks or complexities.
Average speed camera's are an incredibly frustrating experience. When the zone ends you see everyone accelerating out of spite.
Please remember that Europe is not homogeneous. Much of the continent uses instantaneous speeds.
We've had them for several years in our city in northern Canada. They truly are bs as far as a deterrent - you get a ticket mailed out four to six weeks after the event and you're lucky if you can even remember driving on that road, let alone if you were speeding. The only warning is if you are eagle eyed enough to spot one mounted on the light posts beside an intersection, or you recall the last place you got the fine.
Eventually the city got tired of the backlash from citizens who clearly realized that they have very little to do with "safety" and a whole lot to do with money generation, so they changed the contract to include the actual pic of your speeding car's license plate and gave a little more leeway on the speed. That didnt work either and drivers were still highly irritated.
So what do we have now? We have speed cameras mounted in vehicles that are parked on the shoulder. They did that for a few months and still got complaints.
So the latest solution is that the vehicles now have a bright fluorescent sign, about the size of a placemat, that says something generic like "Safety" or some actually say "Speed Camera". I guess the thinking is that an alert driver at least has the chance to notice a parked vehicle with heavily tinted windows with a fluorescent sign on the back. And if you dont, thats your problem.
Whatever happened to the old fashioned way, where at least you had to face an officer and come up with a stumbling excuse why you were speeding, while your fellow citizens drove by more slowly in the motoring equivalent of the walk of shame.