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#bus#stop#more#road#cameras#traffic#lane#don#camera#tickets
Discussion (55 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
Hell, let's just police everyone's hard drives just in case, you know? Isn't catching pedophiles a good thing, after all?
But when you’re driving a deadly vehicle on public roads, you don’t have a legal right to privacy that’s the same as if you were on private property.
Laws first, then we’ll talk about cameras.
I think the 80s machines used something more like hand built digital image processing to find the characters, but OCR is absolutely not new.
An automated fine is the least painful way to enforce that.
With that said, the automation of law enforcement is deeply concerning to me. I'm of the opinion that most of our laws are calibrated based on enforcement costs that are simply being removed and it's going to fundamentally transform society if we continue to automate in this way.
The UK model for speed cameras is that they can (generally) only be placed in areas that have shown to have a higher than average number of accidents on the stretch of road, caused by speeding. So at least (in theory) they are focused on reducing accidents and not raising money.
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
I find it interesting, as in the UK we don't have loads of red light cameras (though we do have them) but people driving through red lights is a rarity - even when there is no-one around and at night, the vast majority of people will obey a red light.
It seems pretty messed up to suggest that we shouldn’t enforce people not blowing through red lights because then they’ll slam on their brakes and cause rear end accidents instead.
Plenty of these tickets are BS that most actual cops would not write. The only saving grace is there is video instead of just someone's description of what happened.
I certainly believe there is room for discretion when officers write tickets, but not for passing a school bus.
But, what little I read about it, nothing from the photos or video show that the busses were actually signaling. A bus can stop, and you can pass it. When they embark children, they have to put their flashers on (or, back in the day on my busses, they had signals and a STOP sign that popped out from the driver side). When the flashers are running, that's when you are supposed to stop (both ways). Otherwise, it's just a bus on the side of the road.
"there’s evidence the program is heavily burdening residents who either can’t or don’t pay the fines."
It's not just automated enforcement. It's the surveillance state we're sliding into.
Where is the automation? This is no more automated than a speed camera or a parking camera. It's not even worthy of being called AI truth be told.
Traffic laws are underpoliced by orders of magnitude. Setting aside the general catastrophe which is car-centric (more like car-exclusive) design of our urban and suburban spaces. Technology gives us extremely cheap and easy ways to monitor traffic laws, much cheaper and much more reliable than having a cop roam around. The very least we can do is use it to make cars suck a bit less.
Other automated enforcement mechanisms like average speed cameras and automated tolling are more effective at achieving their purported goals. Ultimately, enforcement will always be secondary to proper road design in both cost and effectiveness.
I got one of these tickets here. The bus was obscured until it was already stopped, by a truck to my left. I was in the furthest possible lane. Very cool ~$380. (For further context, because like in principle I agree.)
Oh and for fun, if you follow that sidewalk down a bit, you get to see this:
https://www.google.com/maps/@40.2281192,-75.3123541,3a,75y,7...
The sidewalk... just... ends because I guess crossing a bridge wasn't in scope?? and I'd pretty regularly see people and kids walking across it to get to the strip mall on the other side.
After falling for decades, annual pedestrian deaths in the US surged 70% from 2010 to 2023
That aligns suspiciously with the rise in smartphones.
Another funny thing is to notice which people are politically acceptable to record, such as store clerks, warehouse workers, call center workers, basically anyone being paid on the lower end.
But the higher up the socioeconomic ladder you go, the less politically acceptable it is have your actions recorded, even just for scrutiny after an incident.
Case in point: where I live, the interstate is often congested, and a driver "camping" in the left lane frequently leads to traffic jams that back up for miles. The cars that get backed up become frustrated and start zooming and weaving through traffic in the right lanes to get past the blockage. And while there are plenty of police, they only go after the speeders (presumably because speeding tickets are more lucrative). I don't think I've ever seen someone pulled over for squatting in the left lane, despite the fact that it's illegal where I live and despite the presence of numerous signs that say "Keep Right Except to Past".
This is what I would call an example of a dysfunctional law, as I highly suspect that if one had the capability and interest to analyze aerial footage of traffic patterns, it would be found that left lane campers are a much more significant factor in the root cause of interstate traffic accidents than speeders. But the incentives are too perverse to fix the problem, so the situation persists.
There’s a school bus. It’s big and yellow. The stop is shining and blinking. There’s kids about to cross the road. So yes, my sympathy for this sort of behavior is non existent.
Yes, but they need to know that threat exists. If they arent aware the bus takes video and sends it to the police, then they don't see the threat. If they don't know you have to stop on a multi-lane road without a median, then they don't see the threat. That's why measuring repeat offenders could be a better signal than an overall number in a relatively short time.
As an aside, diplomats will gladly break laws with a $250 fine because they are largely immune. This is relevant as there are a fair amount in that region. So there are exceptions to your rule.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VinCGmdj-jQ
maybe they should stop driving dangerously
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dz4HEEiJuGo
Fortunately drivers in my area (Detroit Metro) are all in a hurry and seem to want symbiosis with the rest of traffic. They stop and start almost instantly. Kids don't lolly gally. But when I lived in Northern Virginia, it was the opposite. Bus drivers really took liberty with blocking the road for WAY longer than necessary. Huge hall monitor energy, "i'm king of the castle i'll make you wait just to assert myself"
But then surveilence companies will simply find a reason to start tracking the clothes people wear as 'signals' so it's just going to be less cars with more surveilence.
Might still be an upgrade over a unique id glued to you.