[jajko]

Just put enough speed cameras, they are much cheaper than any human police guys in long run, can watch 24/7 things like red lights, stops, seat belts, using of phones while driving etc. They can be even connected together for those a-holes who slow down in front of them just go enter again lightspeed right after, its not rocket science in 2024 and all required tech is there for decade and a half.

Here in Switzerland even foreigners have their cheeks so tight on the roads even sharpened hair wouldn't cross, they behave like angels and traffic is generally well behaved. And when they don't, punishment is heavy and it doesn't matter how many millions you have on your account or whom you know.

Have this, and peace comes. Don't have it, fast a-hole drivers doing whatever they want is not your biggest problem anyway.

[hombre_fatal]

Meanwhile in Texas, red light cameras cannot be used to catch traffic violations as of 2019: https://guides.sll.texas.gov/recording-laws/red-light-camera...

In Houston, bollards and raised pedestrian paths were removed recently (after being installed last year) because drivers kept hitting them.

It's not a tech issue.

[bluejekyll]

If people keep hitting the bollards, doesn’t that mean they’re working?

[AnthonyMouse]

Suppose you have a misaligned intersection, so a car that drives straight through ends up on the sidewalk. This is a bad design because pedestrians get hit by cars.

Suppose you have the same intersection but put bollards on the sidewalk. This is a bad design because drivers hit the bollards and damage their cars.

You want a design where cars go through the intersection without hitting anything.

[bluejekyll]

No. You want an intersection that is safe for everyone outside of cars, and bollards help do that. If drivers aren’t capable of negotiating streets with them, then they shouldn’t be driving, or they should be driving a smaller vehicle. The idea that we should be building our streets to make driving easier is exactly how we’ve ended up with so many people being killed by cars every year in the US. Car centric design is a failed experiment of the last 75 years.

[AnthonyMouse]

> You want an intersection that is safe for everyone outside of cars

Why would you not want an intersection that is safe for everyone, period?

> If drivers aren’t capable of negotiating streets with them, then they shouldn’t be driving, or they should be driving a smaller vehicle.

The size of the vehicle isn't what causes most collisions. Moreover, there are certain roads that have a disproportionate number of collisions. That implies there is something wrong with the road. Roads should be designed for actual reality rather then ideal hypothetical drivers and conditions.

> The idea that we should be building our streets to make driving easier is exactly how we’ve ended up with so many people being killed by cars every year in the US.

That is not how we've ended up there. It was quite the opposite. We made driving a necessity by moving people to the suburbs, without making roads safe enough that everybody could do it, and then demanded it of them regardless.

It isn't the monkey's fault that the only housing he can afford is 30 miles from his job and he has to take a road full of obstructions to get there. The monkey's behavior is predictable, and we know that what happened last year will happen next year unless we do something different. "Damage the monkey's car" is not a solution, it's just the fast track to angry monkeys.

[JadeNB]

> In Houston, bollards and raised pedestrian paths were removed recently (after being installed last year) because drivers kept hitting them.

So the city chooses not to pay the cost of protecting pedestrians, in favor of letting individual pedestrians bear the risk, and cost, of being injured themselves. If ever there were a better example of externalizing costs ….

[bobthepanda]

I wonder if there is a wrongful death basis to sue a city into having safe streets. I know in the US disability groups have successfully sued cities due to a lack of curb ramps.

[gpm]

It's like most issues, political will is needed to implement solutions, technology gives access to better solutions.

[briHass]

These are only useful for otherwise-law-abiding people who go a little too fast. The trend in big cities in the US is to joyride/race with your license plates removed, obscured, or fake, and that's assuming the car isn't stolen (Kia/Hyundai.)

[dghlsakjg]

I think there would be constitutional challenges in the US, but in Canada, the police are allowed/required to seize your vehicle roadside for certain offenses (unfair if you are found not to have committed and offense, but I've never heard of that happening).

[janalsncm]

Cameras only catch criminals after the fact. Bollards directly save lives. In the example here, even if the law is a potential deterrent, killing a person was only punished with three years in prison. Bollards work even if the courts don’t.

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. Until then, we have bollards.

[piva00]

Or even better: put speed bumps, narrow lanes, add chokepoints, lots of design features that physically force drivers to slow down instead of speed cameras that don't impede anything for someone wanting to speed.

Physical features are much harder to ignore.