Interesting proposal: no traffic stops for most minor infractions

[Derec]

In theory. In practice here, the company chose the placement which were in poor neighborhoods at intersections that needed to be upgraded. These were signaled out for "safety" although nothing was done to improve safety. One was notoriously bad and trees were planted in front of the semaphore light to obscure them.

Well it must be bad if your town is using semaphores for traffic control.

The city could never explain how the photo enforcement actually reduced the increasing number of accidents at several corners, but did mention that revenue streams would be hurt and taxes would be raised.

Metro Atlanta jurisdictions started putting red light cameras at many intersections and they actually increased the accident rate because it turns out that people slamming on breaks is more dangerous than going through a just turned red traffic light. They have mostly disappeared but I have recently seen one in Cobb County (home of evolution stickers)

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I'm with Sawyer. Train the damn cops.

The law in Ohio seems grayish. The cameras may actually be unconstitutional in our state, if an officer isn't present.

And a traffic stop is now legal permission to search a car or person (i.e. violate privacy).

source, please? It is not, and it would be unconstitutional to allow that.

Certain cases referenced in the past weeks here, such as the vaginal search for a joint. The problem is an unconstitutional search can happen regardless of its constitutionality.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

Well it must be bad if your town is using semaphores for traffic control.

Yeah, we still use the archaic language in our public works. You whippersnapper!

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The benefit of camera systems is not only that they permit more extensive enforcement of laws against genuinely dangerous driving behavior, but they do so without racial bias.

Interesting as most photo cops are in most prevalent in minority and poor neighborhoods. And they have been shown not to decrease accidents or dangerous behavior, but only as revenue sources. (Many of the actual problems could be done with better traffic designs or the adjustment of traffic lights, or the simple cutting down of branches obscuring the semaphore).

While I do agree there's a revenue aspect to traffic tickets that doesn't mean that there's no safety gain from enforcing the traffic laws.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Of course it's absurd, but that's the argument against traffic cameras which are used to issue citations. If there isn't a cop to chase the offender down and issue a ticket, and there is no accident, it's a true NHNF situation. Those opposed to traffic cameras want to be able to get away with endangering the public, as long as they don't hit someone.

Traffic cameras are another matter.

The normal situation is that traffic cameras don't produce enough legitimate tickets to pay for themselves. Thus they are basically always configured in an abusive way that racks up the tickets without producing any safety benefit.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Interesting as most photo cops are in minority and poor neighborhoods.

Also interesting being picked up in a paper in a state where the cops must identify and ticket the actual driver of the vehicle and not the owner (making cameras unprofitable "not effective" according to the corporation that runs them).

I don't know if that's a valid claim. The traffic cameras in my city are all situated at the intersection of multi-lane major streets. There is kind of a paradox to the system. If traffic cameras are a true deterrent, there is little income to be made from them. The expense has to be borne by the public, in the name of reduced injuries and property damage. This would be reflected in less work for the Traffic Division and lower insurance rates. In other words, an effective traffic camera system cannot pay for itself from fines.

Except traffic cameras show no safety benefits--sometimes even an increase in accidents. Watch for the big dodge of only counting accidents in the intersection--red light cameras tend to displace accidents from the intersection to the streets nearby as people do panic stops to avoid a ticket when faced with a very close situation. Likewise, speed cameras tend to cause slamming on the brakes and thus accidents.

This is because they always exploit bad conditions in the placement of the cameras. Either the limit is too low for the actual traffic flow or the yellow light is too short given the terrain (they like to put them on downhills) and actual speed.

 

[bilby]

Of course it's absurd, but that's the argument against traffic cameras which are used to issue citations. If there isn't a cop to chase the offender down and issue a ticket, and there is no accident, it's a true NHNF situation. Those opposed to traffic cameras want to be able to get away with endangering the public, as long as they don't hit someone.

Traffic cameras are another matter.

The normal situation is that traffic cameras don't produce enough legitimate tickets to pay for themselves. Thus they are basically always configured in an abusive way that racks up the tickets without producing any safety benefit.

Don't be silly. If a traffic camera is issuing tickets to people who have not broken any rules, then that is truly scandalous; but (in all but a handful of cases of embarrassing errors) they don't - they issue tickets to people who HAVE broken the rules - so the tickets they issue are legitimate BY DEFINITION.

Safety benefits are not part of legitimacy; It is irrelevant to the law what speed I can safely drive on a particular stretch of road - the law only cares about what the speed limit is. If I drive at or below that speed, I cannot be penalised for speeding. Safety may be a rationalisation used by the authorities; but it isn't a legal consideration, largely because it is unmeasurable - the cops (or cameras) can measure your speed, but there is no objective measure of your safety.

Configuring a speed (or red light) camera such that it maximises revenue, without regard for any safety benefit, is completely legitimate. Whether it is moral is open to discussion (and given that speed limits are adequately signposted, and that traffic lights are adequately visible to drivers, I would argue that they are indeed moral); but their legitimacy is not in question.

When it comes to road traffic, the objective of the police is to cause citizens to obey the law. Safety may be a result of this; but designing laws to achieve specific goals (be they safety, revenue collection, obedience, or something else) is the job of the legislature, not the enforcement branch.

If safety is the objective, then stopping and ticketing motorists who break the law is far better than camera enforcement; A driver who doesn't even know he is speeding until he gets a ticket in the mail three weeks after the event isn't going to change his behaviour. It is a basic part of human psychology that punishment must be timely in order to deter future transgression, and that delayed punishment is (at best) completely useless.

That doesn't render traffic cameras an illegitimate means to raise funds - indeed, as the tax is purely voluntary, it is a means of funding the government that libertarians should welcome.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I'd like to own a dashboard cam (indeed, a 360 degree cam) with some form of tamper-resistant, legal-evidence quality certification for my private vehicle.
Then if someone wrongs me, I just click a button and the proof of the offense is sent to the cops for record keeping and potential citation.
If someone were to get regular complaints from all sorts of other drivers, the hypothetical aggressive driver ought to be taken off the road.

Yeah, I've proposed such an idea in the past, although I wouldn't bother with 360 coverage. It doesn't even need to be tamper-resistant, just tamper-evident. Make cameras that sign their frames with public key encryption. The public key is available on the manufacturers website, the private key is embedded in the camera in a fashion that it can't be retrieved short of destroying the camera. This is done during manufacture, no copies are retained.

You see a traffic offense, you give the cops the recording. Such recordings are considered legally admissible and to speak for themselves--you don't need to go testify about them. (After all, you had nothing to do with the recording other than mounting the camera in your car and deciding it looked like an offense.) The cops review the recording, if it shows an offense and they can identify the car a notice goes out.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

Interesting as most photo cops are in most prevalent in minority and poor neighborhoods. And they have been shown not to decrease accidents or dangerous behavior, but only as revenue sources. (Many of the actual problems could be done with better traffic designs or the adjustment of traffic lights, or the simple cutting down of branches obscuring the semaphore).

While I do agree there's a revenue aspect to traffic tickets that doesn't mean that there's no safety gain from enforcing the traffic laws.

With the cameras they refused to release any data showing if the cameras reduced accidents. (They did have the data, and there were request submitted for it.) Instead They released video of accidents. When asked how videos of accidents showed that these cameras were making the intersections safer there were blank stares. We never got the data because our supreme court handed down its ruling against the companies.

What really reduces accidents is not enforcement, but traffic management design.

 

[Malintent]

Configuring a speed (or red light) camera such that it maximises revenue, without regard for any safety benefit, is completely legitimate.

No, it is not. Our government is charged with various public services, safety is one, and collecting revenue to support infrastructure is another.

The law is that the collection of revenue is to be implemented in the form of (usually usage) taxes.
Implementation of health and safety related laws, along with fines for violation, is a separate provision of our government.

It is illegal to collect taxes to punish offenders (like cigarette tax is borderlining)
It is illegal to collect fines for violations to fund revenue streams (like DoT violations are doing)

 

[crispy]

Of course it's absurd, but that's the argument against traffic cameras which are used to issue citations. If there isn't a cop to chase the offender down and issue a ticket, and there is no accident, it's a true NHNF situation. Those opposed to traffic cameras want to be able to get away with endangering the public, as long as they don't hit someone.

Traffic cameras are another matter.

The normal situation is that traffic cameras don't produce enough legitimate tickets to pay for themselves. Thus they are basically always configured in an abusive way that racks up the tickets without producing any safety benefit.

How do you configure it in an abusive way?

Unless you think its abusive to get fines for speeding...

 

[Bronzeage]

I don't know if that's a valid claim. The traffic cameras in my city are all situated at the intersection of multi-lane major streets. There is kind of a paradox to the system. If traffic cameras are a true deterrent, there is little income to be made from them. The expense has to be borne by the public, in the name of reduced injuries and property damage. This would be reflected in less work for the Traffic Division and lower insurance rates. In other words, an effective traffic camera system cannot pay for itself from fines.

Except traffic cameras show no safety benefits--sometimes even an increase in accidents. Watch for the big dodge of only counting accidents in the intersection--red light cameras tend to displace accidents from the intersection to the streets nearby as people do panic stops to avoid a ticket when faced with a very close situation. Likewise, speed cameras tend to cause slamming on the brakes and thus accidents.

This is because they always exploit bad conditions in the placement of the cameras. Either the limit is too low for the actual traffic flow or the yellow light is too short given the terrain (they like to put them on downhills) and actual speed.

I always liked that one, the thing about accidents being caused by someone who expected the person in front of them to run the light.

Objections to traffic enforcement cameras always come down to the same strange toddler logic. People know that it's possible to run a red light and not cause an accident. It happens all the time. It is a dangerous thing to do, but no harm, no foul, most of the time. Police resources are finite, so the chances of getting caught while endangering the public are fairly small. Some people don't like the idea of raising odds of getting caught. It offends some strange sense of fairness they picked up somewhere. Probably from a baseball coach who taught that a spitball was okay, just so long as the umpire doesn't check the ball.

For myself, I like the idea of inhibiting people who think the millisecond they trim off their commute is worth the risk of death of injury.

The fines collected by enforcement cameras are irrelevant to the discussion. There is no reason for them to be profitable. The more effective a camera system is, the less money it makes. Anyone expecting to get rich by planting cameras and reaping tickets is an idiot. I wouldn't want to drive in a city where cameras could pay their own way. It would be like if the demolition derby and the bumpercars had a baby.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

The fines collected by enforcement cameras are irrelevant to the discussion.

Tell that to the companies that run them and the cities who collect them.

In our city the cameras were not put in place for the people who run them intentionally as they picked the lights that were most likely to be run by drivers not seeing that there was a light (disoriented drivers). Like I said, branches obscured the lights, along with neon and flashy light backgrounds (after cars made a sharp right hand turn from near darkness). No attempt was made to make these intersections safer. The trees went untrimmed and signages and overhead or lane lights were not discussed. They were installed as revenue generators and in poor neighborhoods less likely to challenge the tickets and rack up additional fees for the city and the company running the cameras.

 

[Achwienichtig]

Safety benefits are not part of legitimacy; It is irrelevant to the law what speed I can safely drive on a particular stretch of road - the law only cares about what the speed limit is. If I drive at or below that speed, I cannot be penalised for speeding. Safety may be a rationalisation used by the authorities; but it isn't a legal consideration, largely because it is unmeasurable - the cops (or cameras) can measure your speed, but there is no objective measure of your safety.

Not quite.

Here in New York, the very first paragraph of our speed limit law is as follows.

Art. 30, S 1180. Basic rule and maximum limits. (a) No person shall drive a
vehicle at a speed greater than is reasonable and prudent under the
conditions and having regard to the actual and potential hazards then
existing.

In other words, a cop can pull you over for driving at a speed that is not reasonable or prudent, which is entirely a judgment call.

A section just a short way down describes situations under which a person must slow down even more than the speed limit, although the exact speed by which one must slow down is also a matter of prudence and not exact measurement.

(e) The driver of every vehicle shall, consistent with the
requirements of subdivision (a) of this section, drive at an appropriate
reduced speed when approaching and crossing an intersection or railway
grade crossing, when approaching and going around a curve, when
approaching a hill crest, when approaching and passing by an emergency
situation involving any authorized emergency vehicle which is parked,
stopped or standing on a highway and which is displaying one or more red
or combination red, white, and/or blue lights pursuant to the provisions
of paragraph two and subparagraph b of paragraph four of subdivision
forty-one of section three hundred seventy-five of this chapter, when
traveling upon any narrow or winding roadway, and when any special
hazard exists with respect to pedestrians, or other traffic by reason of
weather or highway conditions, including, but not limited to a highway
construction or maintenance work area.

So, in fact, you can be pulled over and ticketed even when traveling under the posted speed limit.

For instance, if you do not slow down for a pedestrian who is walking on a narrow shoulder, you can be ticketed. If you drive at the speed limit under conditions of narrow visibility, you can be ticketed. If you drive at the speed limit under heavy rain, you can be ticketed. Heck, you can be ticketed for driving the speed limit on a winding road. All these are matters of judgment about safety.

 

[Bronzeage]

The fines collected by enforcement cameras are irrelevant to the discussion.

Tell that to the companies that run them and the cities who collect them.

In our city the cameras were not put in place for the people who run them intentionally as they picked the lights that were most likely to be run by drivers not seeing that there was a light (disoriented drivers). Like I said, branches obscured the lights, along with neon and flashy light backgrounds (after cars made a sharp right hand turn from near darkness). No attempt was made to make these intersections safer. The trees went untrimmed and signages and overhead or lane lights were not discussed. They were installed as revenue generators and in poor neighborhoods less likely to challenge the tickets and rack up additional fees for the city and the company running the cameras.

What can I say? Your city is being managed by a crew if idiot pirates.

The obvious solution is an act of civil obedience. Slow down and don't run red lights. It won't be long and a profit motivated corporation will close shop. Fight the power.

 

[Bacillus anthracis]

Surely traffic cameras as a means of funding is a libertarian ideal - if the government can be funded in a way that any citizen, no matter how much his income, can opt out of, then taxes are no longer any kind of problem for libertarians. Nobody is forced to pay; anyone who does not wish to fund the government simply has to drive at below the speed limit, and to avoid jumping the lights. No offences = no taxes.

The problem is this: in Los Angeles they decided to pull the cameras that record intersection violations because it increased the amounts of accidents. What was happening was that people who saw the cameras would suddenly jam on their brakes to avoid getting a ticket, which resulted in a skyrocketing number of rear-end collisions. The same holds true for a lot of other cities.

http://www.motorists.org/red-light-cameras/increase-accidents

As for speed limit violations, there's the "flow of traffic" problem. For example, if the flow of traffic is ten miles per hour above the speed limit, someone obeying the actual limit creates a dangerous condition for other drivers and/or threatens to jam up the street. Yes, a cop can decide to arbitrarily pick someone out of that group going with the flow of traffic, but generally they don't.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

Tell that to the companies that run them and the cities who collect them.

In our city the cameras were not put in place for the people who run them intentionally as they picked the lights that were most likely to be run by drivers not seeing that there was a light (disoriented drivers). Like I said, branches obscured the lights, along with neon and flashy light backgrounds (after cars made a sharp right hand turn from near darkness). No attempt was made to make these intersections safer. The trees went untrimmed and signages and overhead or lane lights were not discussed. They were installed as revenue generators and in poor neighborhoods less likely to challenge the tickets and rack up additional fees for the city and the company running the cameras.

What can I say? Your city is being managed by a crew if idiot pirates.

The obvious solution is an act of civil obedience. Slow down and don't run red lights. It won't be long and a profit motivated corporation will close shop. Fight the power.

Actually we won the fight through some uppity lawyers who got tickets and took their cases all the way to our state supreme court.

 

[Bronzeage]

Surely traffic cameras as a means of funding is a libertarian ideal - if the government can be funded in a way that any citizen, no matter how much his income, can opt out of, then taxes are no longer any kind of problem for libertarians. Nobody is forced to pay; anyone who does not wish to fund the government simply has to drive at below the speed limit, and to avoid jumping the lights. No offences = no taxes.

The problem is this: in Los Angeles they decided to pull the cameras that record intersection violations because it increased the amounts of accidents. What was happening was that people who saw the cameras would suddenly jam on their brakes to avoid getting a ticket, which resulted in a skyrocketing number of rear-end collisions. The same holds true for a lot of other cities.

http://www.motorists.org/red-light-cameras/increase-accidents

As for speed limit violations, there's the "flow of traffic" problem. For example, if the flow of traffic is ten miles per hour above the speed limit, someone obeying the actual limit creates a dangerous condition for other drivers and/or threatens to jam up the street. Yes, a cop can decide to arbitrarily pick someone out of that group going with the flow of traffic, but generally they don't.

Do we need a "special" class of driver's license, for people who don't understand that running a red light always has a risk of a ticket, not just at intersections with enforcement cameras? Maybe another special class for people who see no reason to slow down when the light turns yellow and there is a car in front of them.

Traffic laws were created to curb dangerous and reckless behavior by drivers. Why do we need to dumb down the statutes because some people can't understand that their car can't occupy the same space as someone else's car? Suddenly, stopping for a red light has become a form of entrapment. Try telling your insurance company, "It wasn't my fault. The driver in front of me stopped for a red light."

I've studied the Constitution and have not found any language which says, "the right of the people to operate a motor vehicle in any way which pleases them shall not be impeded."

 

[Loren Pechtel]

While I do agree there's a revenue aspect to traffic tickets that doesn't mean that there's no safety gain from enforcing the traffic laws.

With the cameras they refused to release any data showing if the cameras reduced accidents. (They did have the data, and there were request submitted for it.) Instead They released video of accidents. When asked how videos of accidents showed that these cameras were making the intersections safer there were blank stares. We never got the data because our supreme court handed down its ruling against the companies.

What really reduces accidents is not enforcement, but traffic management design.

Traffic cameras are a different case than traffic enforcement in general.

 

[bilby]

Configuring a speed (or red light) camera such that it maximises revenue, without regard for any safety benefit, is completely legitimate.

No, it is not. Our government is charged with various public services, safety is one, and collecting revenue to support infrastructure is another.

The law is that the collection of revenue is to be implemented in the form of (usually usage) taxes.
Implementation of health and safety related laws, along with fines for violation, is a separate provision of our government.

It is illegal to collect taxes to punish offenders (like cigarette tax is borderlining)
It is illegal to collect fines for violations to fund revenue streams (like DoT violations are doing)

Then sue.

If the courts find against you, then it turns out that it was legitimate after all.

If the courts agree with you, and you are right that it's illegitimate, then you might even come out with some compensation.

America has some truly crazy laws, so who knows, you might win.

You wouldn't win here; but then, our laws were based on the rules for running a continent-sized prison, so they tend to be pretty heavily biased towards the authorities. Oddly, this seems to result in more actual individual freedom than is the case in the USA, where your freedom seems to be more present on paper than it is in reality.

Talk back to a cop here, and you can expect to be arrested and thrown in the watch house. You might even get a beating. But you won't be shot dead.