cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/44712264
These up-eds usually complain that photo radar would be fine if the radar worked properly. This one doesn’t even do that. It just complains that speed limits aren’t fair and now drivers have to change their behavior. jfc
It is true that drivers can avoid such tickets by sticking to the posted speed limits, but it is also true that drivers are hardly ever expected to strictly observe those limits.
…
It’s like the generally accepted contract between drivers and police – just drive at a reasonable speed and you’ll be fine – has been broken.
In theory these are good for safety. In practice they are revenue generating machines for local government and a regressive tax on the poor.
What an absolutely bizarre take for this sub.
Both of these can be solved with policy.
If you make it so that the institution that determines where the cameras will be placed doesn’t stand to financially benefit from them, that reduces the incentive to turn them into revenue generating machines.
And if you issue fines based on income, which is already the case in countries like Finland and Switzerland, you also solve the unfairness of the fines.
Poloticians don’t see this as a problem to solve. They see it as the solution to holes in their budget.
If it’s worth complaining about then it’s probably worth getting involved.
Dumb oversimplification.
Call it dumb all you want, but it’s true.
Oi, fuck off from the first one. Make them incentivised as heck to gain financially - they will then place them everywhere they sniff money, which is everywhere limits are broken.
The goal should be to improve safety, not benefit financially.
Placing speed cameras is a tool in your belt to achieve that, but it’s not the only one.
Other alternatives are narrower lanes, speed bumps, trees and objects closer to the road, etc.
But if more cameras means more revenue for the institution in charge of road safety, then that pushes them to not actually fix the reason why people are speeding in the first place. Because that would lower their revenue.
Edit: Here in the Netherlands it is the public ministry who determines where the cameras are located. And the police issues other traffic fines.
However the money from fines is going into the general national budget (just like a tax). Neither the public ministry, nor the ministry of safety who runs the police, gets more money for more fines issued.
This means that their priority is to improve road safety and not maximize revenue.
We need money to vastly overhaul the dangerous design of roads. I’m not too upset if that is partially paid for by people breaking the speed limit.
I get what you mean, but it’s not quite correct.
For example, one situation I have seen in real life: You are on a road with speed limit 100km/h. There’s a bend to the right with bad visibility, and right around the bend is a speed limit 30km/h and a speed camera right next to it. This situation is propbably financially great, but from a safety aspect it’s really not.
It would be much better to gradually decrease the speed limit (e.g. 100, 70, 50, 30) over a longer distance and where there’s better visibility.
In fact, if placing the signs, placing the radars and collecting the fines are handled by the same department, it’s likely that they will purposely create dangerous situations like that to collect more fines.
That’s why it should be three separate departments with separate goals:
And an addition to the expanding police /surveillance state.
This is wrong. They only trigger when a driver exceeds the often already unsafe speed limit.
Policing through some kind of surveillance?
Weird how that makes my statement incorrect apparently.
A tax for what?
A tax is something you can hardly avoid without giving up an activity completely. What kind of legal activity would one have to give up to not get speeding tickets while driving?
You assume that the system is fair. It isn’t. Its rigged to generate revenue. I’ve gotten automated tickets for legally turning right on a red light. My city got busted a few years back for shortening yellow lights just so they could give more tickets. Now they are adding speed traps to any road that is vaguely close to a school or park that will ticket you even if it is the middle of the night on a Saturday where no kids should be around anyway.
Oh, so you are the type of person who thinks that rules should only apply when you want them to?
A speed limit is a speed limit and it applies whenever it applies, not whenever you want it to.
You know, there’s one simple hack to never get speeding tickets: Follow the speed limits. Police men hate this one simple trick and so on.
My compassion is very limited for someone who willingly breaks the law and then goes *surprised pikachu face* when they have to pay a fine.
It’s not like the speed limit signs magically disappear at night, is it?
At least in my state school zone speed limits only apply on school days/hours. The rules should only apply when they are meant to apply.
A regressive tax on the poor would be increasing taxes on everyone including safe drivers and non drivers to make all the changes to the roads necessary to get the same amount of accident and fatality reduction that you get with adding speed cameras.
Speeding tickets don’t have to be a regressive tax, as others have pointed out. Many countries slide speeding tickets based on income.
Revenue generator… for whom? Policy matters. E.g. California’s AB 645 authorization for speeding cameras only allows for recovery of program costs and “any excess revenue shall be used for traffic-calming measures within three years of the end of the fiscal year in which the excess revenue was received.” California’s speeding cameras reduce speeding by improving road infrastructure and active transportation.
Citation needed, otherwise you’re just spreading carbrained misinformation.
Any ticket that is a flat cost is a regressive tax. I think we both know that income based tickets would never fly in the US.
That’s a great policy California has to limit local government from using it as revenue generation, but it far from normal. I’m in Chicago and we don’t have anything like that.
https://www.illinoispolicy.org/chicago-speed-cameras-take-90-9-million-from-drivers-in-2024/
https://www.propublica.org/article/chicagos-race-neutral-traffic-cameras-ticket-black-and-latino-drivers-the-most
That link title should be self-explanatory.
Income based tickets can fly in the US, but it hasn’t been normalized everywhere yet. CA AB 645 doesn’t slide upwards, even though it should, but it does slide downward. The law even requires analysis of the local population before authorizing a speed camera installation.
“a designated jurisdiction shall reduce the applicable fines and penalties by 80 percent for indigent persons, and by 50 percent for individuals up to 250 percent above the federal poverty level.”
“A speed enforcement program developed pursuant to paragraph (1) shall place the speed safety systems in locations that are geographically and socioeconomically diverse. The designated jurisdiction shall describe how it has complied with this provision in the Speed Safety System Impact Report described in subdivision (h)”
“A racial and economic equity impact analysis, developed in collaboration with local racial justice and economic equity stakeholder groups. The analysis shall include the number of notices of violations issued to indigent individuals, the number of notices of violations issued to individuals of up to 250 percent above the poverty line, and the number of violations issued to each ZIP Code.”
The issues you raise are real, but they’re not because of speed cameras. They’re issues of selective speeding enforcement and flat-rate tickets being regressive in a car dependent society. Police officers regularly issue speeding tickets against the impoverished and minority populations without checks and balance. At least speeding cameras won’t lie about where it sits or inspect the color of the driver before writing a ticket.
Illinois, do better with your speeding tickets.
Unless they base the fine on either income or insurance rate. The more expensive it is to insure the more expensive the fine should be.