[sejje]

Hopefully other states don't follow this pattern; I don't think the government should be installing surveillance arrays, even if it's "for the children" or public safety.

Trading a little liberty for a little safety and all that.

[Larrikin]

The problem is ever since COVID the cops don't do their job and everyone drives terribly.

[infecto]

Maybe it exists but I wish there was more heavy hitting articles/research on this. I feel like an absolute grumpy old man but it feels drastically different compared to my younger years driving and I am only 40. These days I rarely see police on the side of the road ticketing and when I do it’s usually on a highway. Never do I see people getting pulled over in city streets.

My thesis has been an uptick on BS calls. Said differently the bad neighborhoods have gotten worse and funding for police is mismanaged.

[Spooky23]

Absolutely. They shut down for COVID and never came back.

A big part of traffic stops was to find weed and trade up for an arrest. With legalization, they’ve shifted to camera work, which has gotten even bigger with Flock.

[hamdingers]

Does this NYT article satisfy? https://archive.is/6BzFc

[SteveNuts]

I am constantly amazed at how many people blatantly run red lights now. It used to be that people would sometimes press their luck on a yellow a little bit, but now it'll be red for several seconds and people will still just drive right on through.

I'd love if the police enforced this insanely dangerous behavior instead of trying to catch people going 10 over on the highway.

[stephen_g]

I see this a lot too here in Australia now, and yes it used to be pretty unusual but now I see it every day. I've sometimes wondered if it's just a frequency illusion but I'm sure it has got much worse, maybe since the COVID times?

[matheusmoreira]

It depends. Traffic lights are just mutexes. They are there to stop traffic so that other traffic may pass safely. There's no point if there aren't any other cars. Obviously anyone running a light on a busy intersection deserves to get fined but if you know the terrain, have good visibility into the road where the other traffic comes from and can clearly see there are no vehicles present, running the red light is utterly harmless.

In my city, certain traffic lights literally turn off at night. There's not enough traffic flowing to justify them.

[SteveNuts]

I can’t tell if you’re joking or seriously trying to justify running red lights.

[matheusmoreira]

Use your eyes, your situational awareness and your best judgement. The traffic light is not god's word.

In my neighborhood there used to be a traffic light that would be red for a long time despite not usefully regulating any traffic whatsoever. It stopped traffic despite the fact no other traffic could possibly conflict with it. People realized this and routinely ran that light with zero consequences. At some point the city realized it too and redesigned the traffic controls so that the light would be green in this situation.

[Larrikin]

Stop training yourself to run red lights before you kill some body.

The correct action is to constantly bug your local representative to fix the problem, not break a law written in blood.

[sejje]

I have noticed a severe uptick in bad semi-truck drivers on the interstate since COVID, I'll agree at least with that part.

The local cops here have always just run plates for stolen vehicles. Getting a ticket is almost unheard of. I don't know what their deal is, but you can speed right past them in the other lane, or if they're just parked on the corner.

I'm guessing you still can't pass them on a two-lane road without poking their ego.

[cucumber3732842]

That has more to do with CDL mills out there cranking out minimally qualified drivers.

[mulmen]

I’m not sure if it was COVID or the social movements around the same time like defund the police. Here in Seattle when defunding the police was suggested the police department threatened to close the precinct in a large residential area. Basically they attempted to extort the voters. I think the police have realized that crime is good for them because the more of it voters see the more they think police are needed.

[hrimfaxi]

Which leads to the extreme—maximal crime leads to maximum police budgets!

[mulmen]

There’s no upper bound for either of those things.

[hrimfaxi]

I don't disagree. When the state runs out of enemies it manufactures more.

[thegrim33]

Vilify them, defund them, restrict them, reduce the number of officers to the lowest level in 30 years, and then when crime increases in the next few years .. was it maybe because of everything that was just done? No, that's not it, it's a grand conspiracy across every police officer in Seattle who coordinated/decided to be evil together and intentionally let crime spread. Yup, that all checks out.

[mulmen]

I wasn't inviting another tired relitigation of the defund movement, only observing the apparent origin of police caring even less about crime.

[lazyasciiart]

Ok so now that crime is lower can we blame them?

[dfxm12]

Pre, post and during COVID, you rarely see someone pulled over for running a red because you rarely see it happen. When you do, a cop it is even more rare to be present. These rare events stick out, yes.

Depending on the situation, it might be dangerous for a cop to also run a red to give chase, so consider it might be their job to let it go.

[estimator7292]

Cameras aren't going to solve that.

The "problem" being solved with cameras is "cops aren't generating enough traffic ticket revenue"

[infecto]

Would it not? I actually don’t think I would mind speeding cameras and the like. Put a camera on every street and auto ticket every car.

[Spooky23]

My city does it. It sucks ass. It’s a 70% vendor / 30% city revenue share and people avoid the city and use side streets to avoid the main avenues.

[BenjiWiebe]

Are the speed limits set unreasonably low? Otherwise one could always try abiding to the speed limit.

[1123581321]

Most US cities have lower posted speeds than average drivers’ perception of safe speeds.

[Spooky23]

20 mph.

[andrepd]

That's ridiculous, a radar that snaps a photo when a car goes over the speed limit is not, by any conceivable definition, a surveillance array.

There are real surveillance arrays, please worry about those instead.

[matheusmoreira]

It absolutely is a surveillance array. It is trivial to record the time and license plates of every vehicle captured by the camera and fully map out their movements.

[DiogenesKynikos]

The government is already doing this using your phone.

[pirates]

Which proves that if they can, they will. So there’s no reason to give them more ways to do it.

[DiogenesKynikos]

The reason is that it increases traffic safety.

It's even possible to set the cameras up in such a way that they only store data when a traffic violation occurs. That would address the surveillance issue.

I have a strong sense that the primary objection people have to red light cameras is that they don't like getting caught running red lights, and that the surveillance argument is a rationalization, not the real objection.

[matheusmoreira]

Automated traffic law enforcement is surveillance. The fact it's limited in scope and functionality doesn't matter. It's still surveillance.

All surveillance increases safety. The cost is freedom.

Do you trust humans with the ability to judge the situation and the freedom to decide to run a red light if they think it's safe? Or do you surveil every intersection and punish all infractions regardless of conditions or the existence of actual victims?

For people like me, it's a matter of basic human dignity. I want to be a human with the capacity for judgement and the power to act on it. I want to decide for myself. I want to live in a society that recognizes this. I won't sacrifice this dignity in the name of safety.

[XorNot]

Is only said by those days intending to provide neither?

Is said in place of using actual arguments or evidence?

[hamdingers]

These cameras are by definition still cameras triggered by radar or laser systems, they're inactive unless a speeding vehicle is present. Hardly the surveillance array you're imagining.

[Spooky23]

Noooo. Most cameras retain 30 days of video. That allows officers to review the violation.

These camera systems have always been about surveillance. Flock adds the Silicon Valley software process, while the older tech is “law enforcement tech”.

[cucumber3732842]

This. You say "but we're gonna catch people who speed" or "terrorists" or something like that and all the people who would be against your surveillance suddenly can't get enough of it.

[sejje]

Well, they're putting up the flock cameras, too. We have four in a local small town.

But I'm guessing you are only correct sometimes. I bet some of them can be live-viewed, or track license plates.