| > NYPD officers behind a computer screen who could review the footage and issue the ticket Nobody wants this. The people won't want it. The courts won't want to deal with the all the people fighting the tickets out of spite, the police won't want to be essentially call center jockeys. Also, disconnecting the offense with the punishment is a sure way to make your enforcement system ineffective -- people will just treat it as an occasional NYCFU tax. > But I also think that the current methods of enforcement... You do understand that laws which are selectively enforced against the marginalized shouldn't be laws, right? It's terrible how our institutions treat them, and your solution is to treat everyone like them? > Firstly, the camera systems should blur all faces onboard the camera before transmitting to the internet. Anything less than 100% accuracy will never work. It's easy to brush off small error rates when you're designing the system. Not so much when every mistake is used against you by groups trying to take the cameras down. Plus people are identifiable by far more than just their face. A project at my alma mater could clock people by just their walking cadence. > Yes, but these people could already go down and view the street Not even the courts agree with you on that. Just because a passerby could look through my front windows doesn't mean it's not stalking if you do it 24/7. Just because someone could see me in public doesn't mean the police don't need a warrant if they want to tail me 24/7. > People who speed and go through red lights hate those cameras. Everyone hates those cameras. They lasted less than a year in my city. * They reverse the presumption of innocence since the ticketed person winds up with the burden of proving that state is in error. The obvious situation being that they weren't the one driving the car. * They were sold to the people as a safety implement and as a cash grab to municipalities. * They didn't make the roads any safer since almost all instances of running red lights was accidental and people actually went faster on the roads to make up for the slowdown due to the cameras. * Nobody likes being constantly watched. Especially if it's public you can glean a ton of personal information about people with 24/7 footage like this. You're trying really hard to make fetch happen. If more than half the time the bike lane is blocked by cars then it would probably be better off as a vehicle stopping lane. It would probably free up the bus stop too. I guarantee that more people are hailing rides than riding bikes. |
Car crashes are a leading cause of death in the US. Speeding a mere 5mph over in NYC can mean the difference between a lethal collision and survivable one. Underfunding of police departments where they can't enforce the law is a bug, not a feature. If the law is unjust or the punishment too severe, then that's what needs addressing no?
I find those opposed to traffic cameras are often also ones that break the law as a matter of routine and daily habit. Getting a ticket is not an "oops", it's "a cop happened to be nearby this time". Is it difficult to admit the necessity of laws like stopping at red lights or stop signs?
If there are problems in the program's implementation (e.g. cutting yellow times) or corruption (kickbacks), that is not the fault of traffic cameras. It's a problem with the local government.
Lastly, how do you feel about driverless cars? Automation would surely save lives but would presumably burden car users by following the law all the time as well. Granted, attempting to evade compliance would simply be impossible, not imposed by a fine.