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A collection of some classic Lemmy memes for your enjoyment
Gonna be downvoted, because apparently this is car brain central, but the amount of mental gymnastics people will do to make red light camera enforcement "bad" is crazy.
The US' private company control over these cameras notwithstanding.
Fuck me, so many people die on on roads, and especially at intersections.
The US’ private companies
this is entirely the problem, because they're turning over info to ICE and other agencies and it's being used oppressively.
The city I work for put up Flock cameras with specific instructions from Council that they were only to be used for identification of cars flagged in active warrants.
Within a week of their installation, police used the cameras to track the movements of someone who filed a complaint.
Fuck the police
I just don't think having this kind of surveillance state apparatus is ever worth it I don't want the government or private companies tracking my every move.
I don't even own a car and I want these cameras gone.
I can condone taking down pedestrian surveillance, but people who drive cars should follow the rules or get fucked.
Ea Nasir is a really interesting case study of how one piece of information can be interpreted in two completely different ways.
One interpretation, and the one most people know, is that the authors of the clay tablets complaints are legitimate.
The other is that Ea Nasir kept them as a record of people attempting to harm his reputation. So he could remember who to avoid doing business with in the future.
Also ancient Sumer had a pretty decent legal system for it's time, it's entirely possible Ea-Nasir was keeping the tablets for a possible court case. So the ancient equivalent of saving texts from a shit customer.
I would give this merchant zero stars if I could
There seems to be 2 main camps in this thread.
Fuck the police, and fuck shitty drivers.
Both camps are correct.
And flock cameras are apparently easily rooted and repurposed.
On the one hand, omnipresent surveillance is bad and ripe for abuse.
On the other, I feel like the haphazard and selective enforcement of traffic laws by police officers is also really bad. Cops can selectively enforce laws so poor people or black people or whatever out-group suffers more. A machine should be impartial.
On the last hand, no traffic enforcement is probably going to get people killed. So that's not desirable.
Also, fines are problematic. Fines should probably scale with wealth, but also it shouldn't be a revenue source because that's a perverse incentive.
I mean, being anti-authority is fine, but even if you achieve your stateless society, don't you still want your stateless society to still have traffic co-ordination somehow?
Stateless =/= rule-less
Photo enforcement cameras are problematic for several reasons.
A) It has been shown that yellow lights with such cameras are very often set to a yellow duration briefer than generally accepted engineering practices to increase revenue *1
B) They discourage a rare misbehavior, actually running red lights, whilst causing another to become common. That is slamming on the brakes even when it isn't safe to stop. Exacerbated by A. Better slam on the brakes when it flicks yellow even if you are way too close to reasonably stop whilst going only the speed limit.
People who are caught up by it are almost always those who found themselves a bit too far into the intersection to safely stop. EG those who cross the threshold right as it is changing. There is for reasons of safety a few seconds between one light turning red and another green. At 30 mph (44 feet per second) someone will fully clear a 40 foot intersection in less than a second. That is to say the only people you catch aren't those who would have collided.
They are those
C) Most of the money goes to the contractor who owns the cameras. Essentially you are letting a private company prey on your citizens as long as government gets to keep the scraps.
*1 https://ww2.motorists.org/blog/6-cities-that-were-caught-shortening-yellow-light-times-for-profit/
I'll add one more. They subvert our right to a trial and seeing our accuser. The fines are all supposed to be viewed by some sort of officer that is supposed to show up if you challenge the ticket. The only one I've received didn't have any info on how to challenge it. It was like a bill that obfuscated my right to a trial. Guilt is assumed and forgiveness is ignored. 28 in a school zone in an unfamiliar city, instant fine with no "oops I fucked up" recourse.
If only it were possible to transport humans and goods without a network of cameras invading everyone's privacy.
If only that was the natural state of the world for more of human history until just a few years ago.
As someone else pointed out, the traffic light itself isn't being affected, just the automated enforcement mechanism of the camera. We managed just fine without those.
Traffic enforcement cameras are one of the worst ways I can think of to coordinate traffic.
Government surveillance tracking device you mean? Enrich the local cops devices? Over half of violations monies collected goes to the corporations that market them to local and state officials with lavish dinners and vacations devices? Financial incentive to calibrate them to flag innocent drivers knowing there is little to no recourse against the company devices? 5.5 lbs you say?
I'm a little confused, do you want people running red lights in the name of "personal liberty, yeehaw" because that seems like a bad idea.
No, I just haven't seen any evidence red light cameras are effective.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/red-light-cameras-may-not-make-streets-safer/
Also I don't like everything being under camera surveillance, so I need a strong justification to be fine with more of it
Big problem with these is profit motivation. They are usually operated by a for profit business that the city contracts to. One of the cities near me had a few installed. The company made 5 million a year in fines, city ended up with pennies. The road is built like a 40mph road but has a 25mph speed limit only where the cameras are. There is no money to update the road to actually make it safer because it all goes to the company operating the cameras.
That's not to mention they usually change the timing to catch people off guard for more tickets. Someone went around in my area timing a bunch of different lights and found that every light with the ticket generating cameras had yellow lights shorter than the legal limit for the state.
I heard the ones in school zones actually have 10lb of copper and a chocolate bar inside
Yay! Crashes! 🥰
They would remove the camera not the traffic light. I don't think that would cause an accident
Sure, remove the red light but please also remove cars.
Taking out speedtrap so driver can self regulate is like taking out ~~CDC~~ FDA so big pharma can self regulate.
These aren't about speed anymore, they're all turning into auto license plate readers run by private corporations for an infinite surveillance dragnet
You don't have a speedtrap issue, you have private vulture issue. Signing the enforcement right to private company is a recipe for disaster.