[JohnMakin]

> This one-liner amendment is its own poison pill: it will also outlaw traffic enforcment, cameras used to ticket people who run red lights or speed, since neither are tolling.

How did traffic enforcement work before these systems?

[tptacek]

Worse and more racistly.

[IAmBroom]

If "worse" means "far less frequently", yes. It required salary hours devoted to watching a single traffic light, or running a particular speed trap.

A city parking lot near me just switched to license-plate readers, and operates far later than local on-street parking - meaning they'll catch almost all parking violations there, and lure in unsuspecting people who think it isn't taking tolls that late.

[tptacek]

I don't like them, I get why everyone hates them so much, but they do displace human quota-driven traffic enforcement that was heavily racially biased.

As I get older, I have less and less patience for the traffic libertarian I used to be. Lax traffic enforcement kills a huge number of people in the US; it's the single largest component of our reduced life expectancy.

(To be clear, for other readers, we are talking about red light cameras, not ALPRs. ALPRs like Flock generally can't be used for traffic enforcement!)