That’s a horrible system. Britain used to be famous for the professionalism of their police and now they can’t be bothered to make a traffic stop and give people speeding tickets face to face.
I’m a bit biased here, because a close friend’s mother was killed by someone speeding through a red light.
I think automated enforcement of minor driving infractions is a good thing. More efficient use of government resources. Incentivizes drivers to follow the rules of the road.
Automated systems are fine, they would just be a lot better if they were used to dispatch patrol vehicles in real time rather than mailing letters to auto manufacturers.
Now, I'll be the first to agree that you're biased, but surely you see that the rules and norms of the road are generally far more nuanced and not necessarily identical the rules of the road as the government writes them?
There's no reason motorists shouldn't be able to go almost any speed on motorways, conditions permitting. Germany's system is fairly sensible in this regard and many American states have one or two good laws that correlate well with norms and should be adopted elsewhere.
If the rules and laws actually reflected norms of behavior there would be more appetite for enforcement.
Thankfully there is more than one country on earth and we actually have countless examples of this stuff working. Not everything that you’re not personally subject to has to be left to debating hypotheticals.
Except, it does. People worried about getting a fine will not chance a light on yellow. This is patently obvious for anyone that has ever driven in London (where I learned to drive).
Anyone that doesn't care about the fine (perhaps in a stolen car) may still do it, but they'd do it regardless.
Ah yes, the risk of small fines that is why people won't do dangerous things. Have we tried a £50 fine for murder?
Economist brain.
The problem is very simple: driving tests aren't hard enough, too many people have driving licences, and we don't retest people. In addition, enforcement of people driving without a licence is completely pathetic (as anyone who has driven in the UK can attest to, the stuff I have seen over the past few years is insane...obviously there is an underlying cause but if you see a clapped out hatchback, Just Eats bag in the front seat, P plates on the car, you know to steer well clear...as if the multiple dents on the car already didn't give it away).
Automatic enforcement of dumb low level stuff is supposed to free up police time for the more serious things. Whether that happens or not is a political decision. I remember the time before red light cameras in London, and the time afterwards, and the situation was much improved after they showed up.
I agree the driving test is too easy (though several orders of magnitude more difficult than in the US states I've had to do one in), and there is too little enforcement of otherwise dangerous behaviour.
I don't think I mentioned anything wrong with automatic enforcement. I think the claim was that when confronted with a financial incentive, people who drive recklessly will stop driving recklessly. Would this be the case if we paid people £50/month to drive better?
It makes no sense at all. The problem in policy is generally that you have people talking past each other: speed limits are effective for people who are generally going to comply with them anyway, they are not intended to stop serious accidents. The majority of accidents are not caused by "accidents" (as most people on here would think them), they are caused by people who drive recklessly a huge proportion of the time and eventually have an accident.
Again, the solution to this is simple: do not give these people driving licences. In the UK, you can kill someone with your car driving recklessly and be out of jail in 18 months. And I don't think people realise this is true, or that this won't have been the first "near miss" for these people...it will have been months and years of doing stuff that will kill someone, and eventually killing them. How are they supposed to kill people with cars if they can't own a car?
They're sort of damned if they do and damned if they don't, aren't they? If they make traffic stops for speeding people will moan about how they're just trying to meet quotas or ask why they aren't going after "real criminals."
People just want to drive irresponsibly and they will invent any reason to justify why they're the victim, actually.
You've inadvertently completed both parts of a proof by cases. We don't want speeding laws enforced at all right now, because most speed limits are way too low, because they're set for reasons other than actual traffic safety. Let's raise all speed limits to the 85th percentile speed first and only then talk about stepping up enforcement.
Let's not. The Xth percentile speed is not an appropriate measure for a few reasons:
1. Humans are not generally capable of sufficiently accurate long-term low-incidence risk assessment. Meaning, you irrationally value potentially getting to work 10 seconds faster over a 50% increased chance you run over a child crossing the street.
2. Humans are subject to too many irrational psychological factors; stuff like:
• False sense of security due to sitting in a box isolated from the outside world, that's advertised to keep them "safe" in case of a collision.
• Herd mentality, e.g. "everyone's going over the limit, so I will too". Bonus points for rationalizing this behavior "because it's safer to go at the speed of traffic!".
• Delusional rationalizations like "if the limit is 50 then going 10 over must be fine too, due to <reasons>!". Bonus points for applying the "5/10/15/20 over" rule for every possible speed limit — basic maths and physics say hello!
3. The speed humans will travel at on a given road depends primarily on what speed that road seems designed for. People will drive faster on straight, wide roads and slower on winding, narrow ones, regardless of the speed limit. Changing speed limits has little effect compared to changing the physical infrastructure. Show me a picture of a road and I'll tell you how fast people will drive on it.
As such, it makes no sense to first make some sort of a road and only then figure out the limits by observing real traffic. Figure out the appropriate limit first, then design the road with it in mind.
> Bonus points for rationalizing this behavior "because it's safer to go at the speed of traffic!".
But that's true (look up the Solomon curve), and it's exactly why the 85th percentile would be better.
> Delusional rationalizations like "if the limit is 50 then going 10 over must be fine too, due to <reasons>!". Bonus points for applying the "5/10/15/20 over" rule for every possible speed limit — basic maths and physics say hello!
You have cause and effect backwards. People think it's safe to go over the speed limit precisely because most speed limits are too low.
> Changing speed limits has little effect compared to changing the physical infrastructure. Show me a picture of a road and I'll tell you how fast people will drive on it.
Right. So even if going slower is safer, just making the speed limit lower won't accomplish that.
I'll agree with you regarding major arterials but disagree when it comes to suburban neighborhoods. What feels safe from the perspective of someone operating a vehicle can be quite different than what's actually safe when there are pedestrians and cars unexpectedly popping out of driveways.
> What feels safe from the perspective of someone operating a vehicle can be quite different than what's actually safe when there are pedestrians and cars unexpectedly popping out of driveways.
That's all the more reason to raise speed limits on the major roads. Speed limits being more reasonable there makes it more likely that drivers would abide by them even on those smaller residential streets.
The UK is not alone in using traffic cameras to enforce speed restrictions. There was a funny example in Germany where their automated cameras blur the face of any passenger... leaving them to be unable to see who was driving a UK left-hand-drive car with Animal from the Muppets in their passenger seat: https://boingboing.net/2008/10/27/german-traffic-cops.html
your source...is a union? really? you can look at ONS numbers yourself (and you will see this isn't the case).
Scotland has seen a drastic reduction in police numbers (unfortunately for you, not a Tory government :( oh well) despite record government funding levels. Labour's plan appears to be attempting the same trick with consolidation of forces, which should allow massive reductions in numbers. In Scotland, there are some days when there is one traffic car covering an area the size of England, and the expected time to respond to car accidents is usually 6-12 hours (this includes situations with serious injuries).
There is a lot more going on here than funding because government has never had more resources. The Tories, to their credit, actually put money in but (even then) the results were no better.
Also, in response to original comment, I am not sure why you think the Police are competent. Much of the policing function of a few decades ago not lies with private companies. Police numbers are generally high but the level of output has never been lower. You are seeing this in multiple areas of the public sector, public-sector output hasn't increased since 1997 whilst govt spending to GDP has basically doubled. The police have massive structural issues with their remit in the UK because of demographic change, and it is generally seen as a career for people of low ability resulting in fairly weak performance. It doesn't feel complex but than you realise that people don't understand that a politician looking to get elected might say it is even simpler. Does anyone actually work at a company where more spending increases results? I have never seen this to be the case. If anything, more spending seems to lead worse results.
> In Scotland, there are some days when there is one traffic car covering an area the size of England
Are you high, or did an AI write this?
Area of Scotland: 80,231 km^2
Area of England: 132,932 km^2
So on some days, in Scotland, there is one traffic car covering an area that is larger than Scotland. OK, where's it patrolling? Or are you saying Police Scotland only sends out 60% of one car to cover the whole country?
2010-2018...when did the Tories time in government end? Based on your comment, I am assuming 2018.
Lol, quite the pedant. To be clear though, yes when they are short-staffed they only have one car actually on patrol for the whole country (iirc, the actual full staffing policy overnights is two cars...which you can see has been covered by the media).
Traffic was consolidated into Police Scotland so there is only one police force, and so there aren't local forces patrolling a local area. I believe the total number of traffic police is something like 400 now (which is mostly not people on patrol) and so, overnight around holidays, the policy is to have two cars which turns into less than that on some occasions.
> In Scotland, there are some days when there is one traffic car covering an area the size of England,
Scotland is smaller than England, so this makes no sense.
Furthermore, anyone who drives regularly in Scotland knows this to be completely false - there are plenty of traffic cops around (sometimes incognito too), and they are sometimes even seen waiting in rural and semi-rural areas.
Again, there are not. The number has fallen significantly...I am not sure what you are arguing with (or why). You can just check because the number of police and the number of traffic police is reported. If you just Google, you will see that the current staffing level for overnight in Scotland is two cars for traffic police.
I live in a rural area, I have done so for two/three decades. When I moved here, you very often saw police doing speed checks because I live in an affluent area and the police would come out if you asked the right people. I don't think I have seen that for fifteen years. Again though, the data is that the number is way down since consolidation...which was the point and stated aim of the policy.
Hilarious to see pearl-clutching when people point out the SNP has been doing this after complaining about the Tories. This is why the UK is so shit, reality doesn't matter, just politics.
> Hilarious to see pearl-clutching when people point out the SNP has been doing this after complaining about the Tories. This is why the UK is so shit, reality doesn't matter, just politics.
I'm not sure where this tirade came from; I wasn't arguing in favour of any political party.
But getting back to the matter of traffic police - I have eyes, and I can see traffic cops with them. I have family in the force elsewhere in Scotland too, so I know that what you're saying simply isn't true. I really don't know why you are making this false claim.
I avoid speeding issues by the one weird trick of not speeding.
Besides, money is a big factor here. If you want to make it cost-effective for someone to physically flag down speeders and ticket them, you'll have to raise the ticket fines significantly. And (sensibly) the revenue goes to HMT and not the individual police forces, avoiding America's perverse incentives, so you'd have to raise the police budget as a separate line item.
(pursuing speeders is right out - police chases are extremely discouraged for obvious safety reasons)
Tesla isn't speeding either (probably; if FSD is speeding that's another issue), they're just manufacturing cars and leasing them to people in the UK.
In most US states, auto registration and auto titles are two separate things, which means our automated traffic camera systems can mail the tickets to the people who are probably actually driving the car. But I guess it's easy for a country like Britain to lay that kind of burden on auto manufacturers when they don't have any of them anymore.
Not manufacturer, leasing agent. Other manufacturers tend to contract out leasing. This probably happens to them occasionally as well, which makes me wonder how newsworthy this really is.
And besides, as other commenters pointed out, even if things get lost in the mail or the government otherwise drops the ball, they'll still consider that your fault.
I disagree. As much as I hate speed cameras, the way they’ve been implemented (meaning, the fact that you get a letter with evidence and it’s clear you committed the offense, and usually no points, like you might get from a cop) seems to strike a balance of fair punishment.
Now, whether they’re that effective at reducing speeding is a bigger question. Because people just slam the brakes for the 100 feet around the camera and then resume speeding.
I actually quite like the system. They tend to only install speed cameras at high hazard areas e.g. where fatal accidents have occurred. Also the camera's are mostly super visible - bright high-vis yellow, and there are often warning signs as you approach them.
It's quite a different story in other countries at least in terms of visibility!
If you break the government's rules, that should be between you and the government. I shouldn't have to front the cost of any fines or otherwise be in the middle of it.
I think automated enforcement of minor driving infractions is a good thing. More efficient use of government resources. Incentivizes drivers to follow the rules of the road.