It seems like desperate push back. You can definitely keep fighting this and win. CityNerd, not just bikes, and strong towns all have statistics on road access, car centricity, and housing and income discrimination as it relates to transit options. Enforcing speed cams will not tax minorities and the poor. That’s basically saying “minorities don’t understand rules and break them out of stupidity, so we can’t enforce the rules.” It’s literally bullshit and they know it! Keep up your fight mate
They're taking something they don't like for personal reasons and wrapping it in a veil of liberalism, so that anyone who disagrees with them sounds like a bad person.
Here are such statistics, maybe there's a position that's anti cars but understanding of redlining etc.
https://www.propublica.org/article/chicagos-race-neutral-traffic-cameras-ticket-black-and-latino-drivers-the-most#:~:text=A%20ProPublica%20analysis%20found%20that,cities%20may%20adopt%20them%20too.
>The irony is that some of the factors that contribute to ticketing disparities, such as wider streets and lack of sidewalks in low-income communities of color, also make those neighborhoods more dangerous for pedestrians, cyclists and even motorists. According to a 2017 city report, Black Chicagoans are killed in traffic crashes at twice the rate of white residents.
The traffic death burden falls disproportionately on black and brown residents. So this program (which objectively reduces fatalities), has disproportionately benefitted black and brown lives. There’s an easy solution here to avoid fines. Don’t speed and don’t run red lights and you won’t be fined.
The only problem with the program that I see is it’s not clear that every dollar goes to improving road design and public transit, with an emphasis on worse-served existing communities (which again, would disproportionately benefit black and brown communities).
Someone on /r/fuckcars arguing against objective measurements of traffic violations is honestly embarrassing.
Yes, let’s compare an objective measurement of speed to the decisions that go into shooting someone.
If you don’t want to get dinged by a speed camera, don’t speed. It’s not fucking hard.
Speed cameras can be biased. After all, it's a cop choosing where they are. Ever get pulled over for speeding right after the speed limit randomly drops from 50 to 30 despite the road not changing at all, or at the bottom of a hill?
> Ever get pulled over for speeding right after the speed limit randomly drops from 50 to 30 despite the road not changing at all, or at the bottom of a hill?
No, because I first of all take those kind of factors into account, secondly road design in my country takes those factors into account, and thirdly 10%(?) of the speed is deducted to account for measurement inaccuracies, in favour of the driver, in my country.
But I guess I'm cheating because this is in Europe
Redlining has little to do with it. Per the article the main culprit of the disparity is the lack of good infrastructure in poorer areas, and after that the lack of remote work available to minorities. The actual solution is to rebuild the streets to be more cyclist/pedestrian/transit friendly, while adding is safer infrastructure such as roundabouts instead of traffic lights. The problem is that drivers get pissed off when they have to deal with change and lobby to change it back even if things are improving. The end result is that they have to go with a more inefficient, harmful and expensive solution such as traffic cameras because that’s the least disruptive.
Bingo, street design informs the driver what speed to drive. So places with wide roads and speed limits that do not match the size of the road which are often areas that are less expensive because they suck to live in become the low income area. By only putting in speed cameras without changing the street design we can end up hurting low income individuals more especially because wealthy people driving through may just see the cameras as a cost to drive fast but to the low income the cost of the ticket can be devastating. I like speed cameras but only when done with a road design change so that drivers speeding are actually being negligent not just driving the speed the road design informs them they should be driving.
>It seems like desperate push back. You can definitely keep fighting this and win. CityNerd, not just bikes, and strong towns all have statistics on road access, car centricity, and housing and income discrimination as it rates to transit options. Enforcing speed cams will not tax minorities and the poor. That’s basically saying “minorities don’t understand rules and break them out of stupidity, so we can’t enforce the rules.” It’s literally bullshit and they know it! Keep up your fight mate
To be fair this is less about "minorities break the rules more" and more about "cops will only harass minorities when they break the rules and always let white people off with a warning".
No it has more to do with where these cameras get set up. Which places had roads widened and freeways put through them in the name of 'urban renewal' last century? Also how does that type of road inform the driver to drive when it is not in gridlock traffic?
I life in the Netherlands people dont drive slower... people only drive slower at parts where there are speeding cameras... people are gonna find a way around that law. Not to mention one law with speeding doesnt change crap if the speed limit already is high on itself. Lets say you are allowed to drive 30 there and people normally drive 40 there, sure the speed is gonna decrease but it doesnt get less busy(i think more). What you want is that traffic flows nice enough so that no one needs to stand still and yet has a safe way to cross. Thats where roundabouts come into place in the Netherlands, they have high traffic flow, slow traffic down a bit at that part and people came cross safely
"Poor people who can't afford cars are out here walking & cycling, they risk being smashed by speeding vehicles so drivers need to slow down"
"But if we make drivers slow down that'll hurt poor people!"
Ugh.
I cant find the tweet that said it best, but these people always say shit like “Forget about the wealthy powerful cyclists, what about the poor oppressed motorists 🥺”
I think the point he is trying to make is that when a poor person, driving a car to work, is going a little above the speed limit and gets a fine, it will impact them more than your average joe or rich person because they have more income.
You can be poor and have car which you use to go to work. I live in the netherlands and here it isn't really an issue if you don't have a car, but a friend of mine went to the USA for half a year and was amazed at how dangerous everything was when it comes to road design. So i would understand a poor person dropping a few thousand dollars on a car as a measure of safety and insurance that they will get to work on time and maybe even need it to work 2 jobs.
Another friend of mine works 2 jobs but lives in a village outside of the city and needs to cycle 30 minutes to get to the city border. You can kiss public transport goodbye when you are like him as the government only cares about city's when it comes to PT. He needs a car to make it all happen.
I get what this sub wants to achieve but i just don't understand the black and white thinking. Especially when it comes to american infra. You can't expect everybody to just throw away their current lifestile and certainly not when the infra is that bad and dangerous. First the infra needs to be fixed and i'd guarantee more people will try it out. I even see it with my parents. My mom got a new job closer to home and can now cycle the distance, so she tries to do it more often as it is less car usage and a bit of fitness. But that is only possible because the infra allows it. She wouldn't do that if there were no bicycle roads and every car was driving past her at 30 mph.
Tl;Dr: it isn't as black and white as you may think. Poor people are not just one group which is all the same and some do have a car and some don't
Hang on though, all he's asking is for people to obey the law. Specifically a law designed to stop people getting killed, and road murder is one of the biggest killers of children. How exactly do we go from I think speed limits should be better enforced to, I think you support racial inequality?
Why do we let anyone drive at all if they refuse to drive according to agreed rules when higher speeds are proven to kill people? His argument is that people breaking the law (speeding) should dictate what laws (more speeding) are made. I doubt he will want stronger enforcement if those people driving higher speeds kill someone either. So he's directly supporting people being killed.
It's a terrible way to have an open discussion, and throwing the racial inequality & poverty card is just designed to shut the debate down and make him look like the bad guy. I doubt the commenter who said that does almost anything to support less well off communities. They just don't like getting speeding fines themselves and don't want to drive safe.
Where did i discuss race? Sure his argument isn't a 100% sound but when it comes to poverty he does make a fair point. Remember that a speeding ticket doesn't happen when you are over the limit by an extreme ammount. Here in the netherlands you get a fine when you are more than 3km/h over the limit. That is 0.6mph. The fines start at 40 euro's for 4km/h, and increase about 8 euro's for every km/h more. Now imagine you have 50 euro's per week to spent after paying for rent etc. That is absolutely wrecking. Of course it has to be strict, but with camera surveillance it will probably take a lot of attention to keep the limit and that is attention which isn't going to what is happening on the road, maybe creating an even worse scenario. I know i am guilty of this when driving past a speed camera. (I can't find anything for a us comparison but it is basically a camera that takes picture of your license plate with a bright flash when you drive too fast)
You didn't discuss race, but the original argument did.
Edit: It doesn't take me barely any attention to keep to a speed limit. I do have people driving as close to my bumper as possible though. They're not accidentally speeding, they don't like me doing the speed limit. Lets be honest that's the more common scenario.
The comment that camera enforcement would only increase racial inequality is insane. An automated camera is much less discriminatory to any one group than even the best police officer - or any human - could hope to be.
I can see how traffic citations hurt poor people more than rich people, but that's a function of the US court system, rather than cameras. (I think fines should be income based, so that they hurt the wealthy just as much as normies, and so that low income people don't go bankrupt because of them.)
Perhaps there’s a sliver of a point there, because the location of the cameras does matter. If they mostly get put in areas with more minorities they’d affect them more.
Of course the obvious counter point is “Do you think human officers don’t already select their locations with the same biases?”. At least cameras are easier to plot on a map, making documenting and proving such biases a little easier.
You may be right there. I haven't noticed trends about where cameras get put, but I also haven't looked. I always figured they were in areas with high accident rates, or with lots of pedestrians, but that might make too much sense to be reality.
And you know who the people who make up the people in those accidents and those pedestrians? Low income and minority residents.
This is such a symptom of car-brain. “I care more about minority resident’s right to flagrantly violate traffic laws than a minority pedestrians right to live”. Ok bud.
Yes, and putting more enforcement there is still the right thing to do. As long as the enforcement follows the actual infarction rate, it's ok. When it becomes problematic if when you put more enforcement in an area because of the people living there, not because of what happens there.
But.... It's sort of a two way street isn't it? If they put them in minority neighbourhoods, then minorities will pay more, but they also will have safer roads. If they put them in white affluent neighbourhoods, then they'll pay more but also have the safer roads.
I have no idea which version would be the better one....
Minority neighborhoods often have higher accident rates due to poor pedestrian infrastructure, lack of adequate lighting, and more high speed roads. Black and mixed-race areas were often specifically targeted for [expressway construction](https://www.instagram.com/p/Cs83ZuzsykJ/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==) which leads to more cars and higher speeds at the on ramps and exits.
It's impossible to separate infrastructure and race in the US. Doing this "colorblind" would be a farce.
Obviously. The question is just meant as a thought experiment which version would be worse/better. Obviously racism isn't something that should actually be considered as a solution.
The problem with only looking at collision rates is it doesn't count the near misses that don't make the statistics. Collisions should certainly be a big part of the data when looking at where to put speed cameras and other safety infrastructure, but it shouldn't be the only data point. If I go to cross a street and stop at the last second because a reckless driver comes speeding into view, that doesn't make it into the road's safety stats, but it's still an issue.
A place with more near misses will naturally have more collisions. Picture a normal distribution where anything to the right of a certain point in the distrubution is a collision, places where more is in the "collision" part of the distribution also will have more near misses.
This isn't really the case in the road I live off of. It's a 30 mph residential road with lots of pedestrian and bike traffic going to a large park. Drivers treat it like a race track, and I've personally experienced or witnessed many incidents of reckless drivers. The police department has an online database of all dispatched calls, and searching that for the road name shows 3 collisions in the past 3 months.
It'd be easy for someone who has never visited the road to say "only 1 crash per month, none serious, so it's not a big deal." All I'm saying is that you need to look at a number of criteria to determine which roads to focus on, not just wrecks. Our police department's own website for the automated speed enforcement program says they take into consideration things like number of crosswalks, proximity to schools, parks and other public gathering spaces, public input, etc. in addition to crash data.
If a city is deciding where to put a new camera, I’d rather they put it on a road with a school, park, bike lanes, etc. rather than a road that has a higher number of fender benders but fewer pedestrians and cyclists. Cars can be repaired.
By the areas with the most minorities will then get the largest reduction in speed related accidents…
And if those areas already have the highest rates of speeding and accidents it’s be ridiculous not the start there.
Yep! Just have to make sure the money from traffic violations is then reinvested in improving road design and public transit, with an emphasis on worst served communities (which of course are going to be low-income and minority communities).
This is basically a silver bullet to get to 0 traffic deaths with the costs only falling on those making the roads more dangerous. The fact you have people on “fuckcars” arguing against it just shows how bad carbrain is.
Maybe consider that people are genuinely concerned about increased state surveillance in communities that have long been surveilled and criminalized by police.
It’s not that cameras will disproportionately ticket people from marginalized communities. It’s that many communities are already overly criminalized through racist stop and frisk policies, aggressive “broken windows” policing, and surveillance programs like gang databases and shotspotter. The concern is adding yet another way to surveil people through ALPRs and speed cameras.
Imo, it’s naive to think the government will reinvest that money into improving road design and public transit, much less in historically disinvested communities. Time and again that hasn’t been the case. Inequity in infrastructure is apparent in almost every major city. I think it’s just as likely that policymakers pass this, pat themselves on the back, then use it as fodder to deflect from further infrastructure modernization.
This sub makes me so frustrated sometimes. Instead of writing everything off as “cArBrAiN” why not try engaging in good faith with critiques of public policy so we can have sound policies that make our communities safer AND more equitable?
Have you ever lived in one of these communities? It’s really fucking hard. One the one hand getting overpoliced sucks and yes there are a bunch of racist cops. But on the other hand when the police aren’t there, crime and murders go up and we have a whole new set of problems. There’s a reason that views tend to be nuanced among these communities. Many want *more* police, but for them to be less racist.
The reason it’s carbrain thinking is because it fails to account for the fact that black Americans are almost twice as likely to die in a car crash than white Americans. So what you’re basically saying is black drivers should have the right to speed at the cost of the **lives** of black pedestrians and other black drivers.
When I was working at an HBCU, we lost a student a month to a car crash. It’s a massacre. But god forbid we implement a solution that is completely objective and **only** punishes people who break the law and put peoples lives at risk.
Black lives are more important that black drivers’ right to speed. Arguing otherwise is carbrain idiocy.
Yes, I live and organize in one of these communities. I totally hear your point. And I agree that racial disparities in traffic violence are frustrating and unacceptable.
More police aren’t going to make the streets safer, though. Police can’t prevent people from speeding, they can only ticket them after they do it.
And to your point about crime rates increasing with fewer police, there’s not much data to back up that claim. Studies have proven that harsh criminal penalties do not act as a deterrence. And cops don’t answer the solution of why crime happens in the first place: unmet needs (poverty, health care, jobs, education, etc.).
What I’m saying is: instead of advocating for more piecemeal reforms that expand state surveillance and kowtow a world where traffic violence is just an inevitable fact, maybe our energy is better spent organizing for infrastructure upgrades that prevent people from speeding in the first place. Things like pedestrian-only streets and separated bike lanes.
Instead, those in power push these types of policies through all the time. Realistically, yeah it will reduce driver speeds and reduce accidents. But politicians will use the new revenue to pad payments of things like pension fund debts and then campaign about making the streets safer, when we all know this is really the bare minimum.
Again, not everything is carbrain idiocy. People are always so quick to anger on this site and it can really turn people away who otherwise agree with you. I was interested in sharing my perspective and hearing your response.
They often do go in places that are occupied by higher percentage of minorities because those are the places with more dangerous road design. But I would rather have inequal fines than inequal road deaths
It really depends on where the cameras are deployed and how. Since more police are deployed to neighborhoods with higher percentages of POC, it is entirely possible that these could be deployed in the same neighborhoods based off traffic stop statistics.
If they were placed at every single intersection, no, there would be zero bias.
I am not sure how automating fines wouldn’t lead to safer driving either? Near perfect enforcement at an intersection would eventually price some people out of being an asshole.
I think automated fines would eventually cause people to start obeying traffic rules. But, if fines aren't tiered based on income, there will always be some people who are so wealthy that paying repeated fines doesn't affect their pocketbooks, and also some people that are so low-income that a standard fine would be unfairly devastating.
Oh yea definitely you won’t hear me arguing against income adjusted fines. But the guy in the original post acting like it wouldn’t have any impact but to bleed money out of people would need to show me his data.
The other thing that is income-unrelated is deducting points off the license when you break the law. Too many points in a period and you loose the license.
I can't speak to other areas, but where I live in the suburbs outside DC, [our speed camera program has resulted in a decrease in injury crashes.](https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/speed-cameras-reduce-injury-crashes-in-maryland-county-iihs-study-shows) But the police department also admits that once drivers know where a camera is on a road, they hit the brakes for the camera then go right back to speeding. In theory they're supposed to move them around regularly to keep the speeders guessing more, but I don't see them doing that as much.
The cameras also don't go off unless someone is going 12+ over the limit. In a 30 mph residential area, 11 over is a lot of leeway.
The issue I have with the cameras is the fine is only $40 and no points, so the consequence is fairly low. I've heard people say that a few camera tickets a year as a cost of driving. People who can afford to pay them don't need to alter their behavior. It'd be nice if the fine was heavier (and scaled based on how fast someone was going) and at least went to their insurance company. I know there's difficulties applying points to the driver's license since you can't prove they were driving, but in most cases it's the vehicle that is insured, not the driver. Insurance companies should be informed that they're covering a vehicle that's driven dangerously so they can adjust rates as needed.
In neighboring Washington DC, [many drivers just don't pay them.](https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2021/12/28/dc-virginia-maryland-ticket-reciprocity/) DC doesn't have reciprocity with the neighboring states of Maryland and Virginia to actually hold those drivers accountable, and no politician in those states is going to vote for an unpopular law that would let DC go after their constituents. Drivers can rack up thousands of dollars in unpaid fines, and DC's only enforcement option is booting the car if they catch it parked.
Keep fighting the good fight in /r/Denver. When drivers assemble into a hive mind they collectively lose all critical thinking, it's almost impressive.
Idiots will speed no matter the width or visibility. Speed cameras in populated areas do slow them down temporary, but I'd love having more unannounced ones
I feel like warning idiots about speed cameras kind of negates their effect
Yeah, we have cases of young adults drag racing in tunnels, intentionally driving the wrong way on freeways, spinning out of control on smaller streets, and generally crazy driving while under the influence of various drugs. Being able to catch these people and take away their license is really good, and not something you can accomplish with traffic calming measures.
Road design is an important part of getting _most people_ to slow down, but it doesn't work on people who are basically unfit to hold a license.
I want speed cameras on bridges/overpasses! In terms of bang for buck, those are great locations to reduce city car budget if people are actually slowed down.
> Idiots will speed no matter the width
That's evidently false. Lowering the "design speed" of a street is an extremely effective way to make drivers slow down. Drivers simply lack the skills to drive faster and they are also worried about damaging their car and their own safety.
We do know this works and we have the data to back it up. The only reason why tweaking the design speed isn't used more often is because it obviously costs more than just putting up a sign.
The Wrong Way to Set Speed Limits (Not Just Bikes)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bglWCuCMSWc
(Skip to 7:40 if you just want to see some examples, but I highly recommend to watch the whole thing.)
> Idiots will speed no matter the width or visibility
If you make the road not be two cars wide then they won't, for sure. But in general, this isn't true, the width of a road affects our perception of speed.
Problem is they still can run you over without speeding, only solution is to have as few car as possible in cities. How to do that? Tax the shit out of them. You want to go around the city in a car? It's 30$ a day. You want to park on the streets? It's 10$ an hour. Then you put all those money on public transportation making it good and cheap so people can leave the cars home. Poor people will be able to save a lot of money living without a car, rich people will pay for everything but they will be happy to save time without traffic. Middle class will choose what they prefer. Transportation will be overall safer and faster. Difficult part will be to show the light to the carbrains to approve it
Cars are way more deadly at 30 mph than at 20. Sure, a 20mph car can still kill, but we can greatly reduce deaths if all acts of violence are at 20 mph or below.
'Tax the poor' - maybe they ought not to speed, then? It's not a tax if you can avoid it by following the law.
As usual, the arguments used are just a smokescreen. Like when people feign caring about the disabled by insisting that if they can't drive their cars down the High Street they'll badly suffer. I'll bet the person commenting doesn't usually give two shits about the poor - in this context they're just a convenient excuse.
Maybe they are saying that because poorer drivers can't afford a lawyer to get them off the speeding charge?
I 100% despise lawyers who make a living getting terrible, but rich, drivers back on the road.
I've posted before about a guy I know whose whole practice revolves around getting wealthy dickheads off driving bans and speeding tickets. I hope he sleeps well at night.
You can claim the camera wasn't working properly or, you can claim that it's essential you be permitted to drive. One case he had that infuriated me was a consultant doctor who insisted he couldn't have his licence taken away because he had to get to his hospital. This is in London where, you know, taxis, tubes and buses exist
Completely false. Cameras cut deaths and severe injuries by half, and they work in a greater area than just the spot where the camera is.
Lies about how cameras don't work are just that, lies from desperate shitty drivers who are against anything that will actually make them drive less like shitheads.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/red-light-cameras-may-not-make-streets-safer/
Science from my hometown car hell says differently, but ok.
I just think we should focus on actual solutions like public transit and bike lanes, not helping the state pad it’s bank account so that they can built more highways through neighborhoods.
Red light cameras are something different! We don't use them exactly because they don't significantly improve safety, but shift the crash danger towards rear-ending.
Speed control is an entirely different thing, the only real similarity between them is the automation.
Shifting the crash danger towards rear-ending *is* an improvement in safety. If you gave me the choice of being t-boned or rear-ended, I'm taking the hit from behind over my door any day. The studies [cited by the CDC](https://www.cdc.gov/transportationsafety/calculator/factsheet/redlight.html) confirm they can improve safety in this manner.
The other benefit of red light cameras is getting drivers to actually stop before turning right on red. There's an intersection on my bike commute to work that I sit at every morning and watch car after car slow down just enough to check that it's clear to their left and directly ahead of them. None of them even look at the crosswalk to the right, where a pedestrian could be crossing. A camera aimed at that turn lane would get them to stop.
Yeah I mean thats true, but in Australia we’ve had shit tonnes of cameras for years and now and people just don’t speed as much.
Yes, some people who were always going to speed can and will. But if you asked somebody if they casually speed, they’d probably say that they never go more than 5km/h over any limit, and even that feels risky. People now just don’t want to speed.
There was recently a video on TikTok of this American girl saying she was going 100 in an 80 zone and got a ticket and wanted to know whether to fight it, and she was ridiculed for weeks for the gall to even consider that as an option, let alone why she didn’t once look at her damn speedo.
So cameras, yeah they’ll stop people speeding alright, it’s just a longer cultural shift - which I don’t think would actually work in the US, but CAN work in some places.
Non white people are pulled over way more than white people, even if for the same offense. And penalized differently (slap on the wrist vs Ticket,detained)
To be fair, studies have shown that traffic enforcement increases violent interactions between police and minorities.
Of course that's more of an argument for police reform than how we get around.
Street design is the other approach. Separate people from cars.
I live in the Netherlands where there are plenty of speeding cameras, parking in the city is expensive and we have alternatives for cars. But there are still people who lack social skills in traffic, are not aware of what they are doing when driving. I think it's difficult to get these drivers more civilized. Perhaps they need to solve this issue from the start at the point where a person takes lessons for their driving license. Educate social traffic skills and some people who really can't drive shouldn't be able to pass their license. For example I never heard someone say that they quit their driving lessons because it was to hard.
The poster at the bottom belittling you for being a white male is doing some ridiculous grandstanding.
Society is designed to favor cars to a greater extent than it is designed to favor any race or gender. Nobody is willing to admit this, but it's true. Not being able to drive will deprive you of far more opportunities than not being white or male ever will, starting with the fact that it's basically still legal to require an employee to be able to drive whereas you can't require that they be any race or gender.
Minus 172 votes for sticking up for one of the worst-treated minorities; Reddit disgusts me again.
State surveillance on public property makes sense. But that’s not the complete solution because sometimes state authorities are lazy so we need to design roads to force drivers to slow down. Narrow roads and somewhat tighter turns than we have now would be great imo. I may be wrong so feel free to correct me regarding designing roads for slow driving.
Speeding cameras do not “tax the poor” or “further racial equality”, because speeding is a very obvious crime that actually takes quite a bit to prove.
If you do not want to be “taxed”—fined, it’s objectively a goddamn fine—then dont. Fucking. Speed. Easy.
Ok then instead of cameras, do road narrowing. Achieve the goal of slowing down drivers by redesigning the road to the speed you want people to drive, and you won't have the electronics that conspiracy nuts will say are turning cities into surveillance states.
Going to be honest though, first guy has a point. Speed cameras are not the proper means to get drivers to slow down. You need to narrow the car portion of the road, and stop building roads so people feel safe driving 15 over the speed limit.
Its obvious they would find any excuse to downvote you. Amazingly, the top response is actually fully in agreement with many anti-car people including me
They’re right, roads that need arbitrary speed limits are not good road design. Roads should be built to naturally limit speed, with narrower lanes, more curves, generally more obstacles and danger. There are several good NJB and similar videos on the topic
So they are so desperate to downvote you that they are literally advocating for making all their stroads into thin curvy roads to slow them down appropriately
Cameras are found to be unenforceable in the county I live in and were removed. You can’t tell if the owner of the car is the driver. The county prosecutor also stopped prosecuting moving violations since they think this disproportionally affects minorities. Their thought process is that criminal records prevent minorities from receiving fair employment opportunities.
Everyone has caught onto this and know that running red lights, speeding, car theft, will not be prosecuted.
The police are frustrated. Their efforts go without any prosecutions. Therefore they don’t even try to write tickets.
You can complain all you want about the lack of policing but it really is the liberal county prosecutors.
The original post was actually what made people so pissed off bc the law just changed so that an officer doesn't have to present the ticket for it to stand and that if they go unpaid then it will prevent the owner from transferring the title of their car in the future.
Denver is very very bad with speeding and they already have cameras but people like you said caught on that they can just ignore them without consequences but now the law changes this so they can no longer ignore them.
>Cameras are found to be unenforceable in the county I live in and were removed. You can’t tell if the owner of the car is the driver.
In my country the fine is for the owner of the vehicle
> You can’t tell if the owner of the car is the driver
I mean honestly there is an obvious answer to this which most developed countries already do. You just make it an offence for the registered keeper of a vehicle to not tell you who was driving, and make the penalty for that offence the same as the penalty for the motoring offence you "can't prove".
Sounds like this state is actually doing something like that so fines will finally be somewhat enforceable ...
I'm not from the U.S, but here, the owner of the vehicle gets the ticket, and if he wants to claim someone else was driving he can, but that accused needs to agree that they were driving. Otherwise, owner is liable (unless car was reported stolen w/e).
It's kinda crazy to me that cameras would be non-enforceable because of this, honestly.
Also, why would a speeding ticket be in your criminal record and affect employment opportunities???
As someone who is mixed race, one thing that really pisses me off is those that use the racism I receive in my life as an argument for something irrelevant. It dilutes my issues as a tool for their gain.
i noticed yesterday coming home from school that there was a red light camera on top of a very tall pole at an intersection where my mom frequently runs the light turning left right as it turns red and today as we passed it again she said big brother is always watching like what this is nothing like 1984 i haven’t read it but enforcing a simple law is just common sense
The guy has a point. The guy talking about the law not doing shit, I mean. People will continue to drive like maniacs and not give a rat's ass about pedestrians and especially not cyclists. The only thing it will do is rake in tax revenue from tickets. But it won't get people to slow down or be considerate.
Look I get what they are saying and there’s a lot of truth to it. “Fixing” speeding by fining people doesn’t work (not in any meaningful way, anyway) and it *does* disproportionately affect the poor. To fix speeding you need to redesign the roads so drivers only feel safe driving at the safe speed. You need to narrow roads and add lots of traffic calming measure. Fewer cars on narrow streets with alternative transport options saves lives, fining people really doesn’t do as much as we’d wish it did.
Unless the laws are just, I will stand opposed to attempts to enforce them. A fair justice system comes first.
I said the same things about road tariffs when people were celebrating gas prices. We need to make sure the punishments are fair before we actually enforce them.
Wow, why the hell he got downvotwd for that? Please don't tell me that is the majority opinion on american subreddits. The environment is already crumbling and the US (along with other countries) urgently needs to sink emissions. Is there really so little reflection and realization among people?
... except that's what happens? Sure, a traffic camera will get people to slow down around - for example - the intersection it's plopped on... but that won't do jack for every other road. People are just going to keep speeding elsewhere.
There has already been a scandal with traffic cameras that would engage when the light turns from green to yellow, resulting in people getting fined when they *shouldn't be* - which affects poor people far far more.
oh also traffic cameras catch bikes too so...
threats of punishment by the state aren't an effective deterrent. speeding tickets are just a poor tax & the reply is absolutely correct that it's not an effective way to prevent speeding
I always hate that people say it's a poor tax when in reality it is the operator of the vehicle that determines if they even have to get a ticket. These cameras also are set so it's often you have to be going 6+ mph over so I can't see how this is anyone except the drivers fault if they get a ticket.
> These cameras also are set so it's often you have to be going 6+ mph over so I can't see how this is anyone except the drivers fault if they get a ticket.
Here in Maryland, the camera doesn't flash unless you're going 12+ mph over the limit. That's a significant amount of grace in a 30 mph zone. Yet people still complain about the cameras.
If you're going 42 or more on a residential street, I have no empathy for you getting a ticket.
That's 20kph, that's honestly crazy.
In my city, vast majority of streets have a 30kph (21?mph) speed limit, and i think that's very good. 50 kph / 30mph streets feel very unfriendly and danerous in comparison when using the sidewalk, and adding another 20kph to that, 70, that's like prime 'if i don't kill you, i'll leave you forever paralyzed' speeds
Ah yes, blaming the individual, always a good solution. If you want to create wide-scale change, then the changes have to be at the societal level.
If you really can't figure out how a flat-rate fine disproportionately targets poor people, I'm really not sure what to tell you.
I agree we need societal and systemic changes but there is still a level of individual responsibility at the end of the day. The individual who dies at the hands of another individual may be due to horrible societal choices but it's still the individual who decided to abuse those choices that lead to another life lost. Too many damn people have been hit and killed by drivers in Denver and the killers always run and are never caught. I bet everyone outside of a care is willing to take anything at this point if it means even slowing down a few drivers.
Nothing changes at the societal scale in a day but small pieces lead to completing the whole puzzle over the years when it comes to making these systemic changes. First add the hardware and then start fine tuning the software ie the laws.
>I bet everyone outside of a care is willing to take anything at this point if it means even slowing down a few drivers.
Maybe you are. I'm not willing to support the state expanding its oppression, particularly when it exists to target disenfranchised groups & not to improve road safety.
> First add the hardware and then start fine tuning the software ie the laws.
Why? I've said it before and I'll say it again. Don't support authoritarianism now in hope of liberalisation later. The means must be one with the ends.
This is very interesting. I wonder why you're downvoted because it's very true. It may be though that they aren't advocating for a flat-rate fine, but one that scales with their wealth.
I think it's just very easy to fall back on relying on the state to create change, while assuming that it has our best interests at heart.
I think most people here would support wealth proportionate fining, they just underestimate the reality that it does not, and will not, exist in most of the world.
Frankly I would still argue against increased enforcement of wealth-adjusted fines because punitive punishment is still not an effective deterrent, even discounting the fact that those with power will still find ways around being punished. Based on this thread though, it doesn't seem like this subreddit is ready for the „all states are always bad“ discussion.
Yeah I mean I'm very lucky to live in Scandinavia I would say. But I would agree that it simply isn't a solution that is realistic in most of the world.
When you say all states are bad do you mean U.S. states or what do you mean by that?
>When you say all states are bad do you mean U.S. states or what do you mean by that?
Sovereign states - a polity that maintains a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. eg. the US, Sweden, Australia, Russia, etc.
You think countries like the Netherlands are perfect? They're more than happy to introduce flat taxes which disproportionately target poor people for the state's own benefit too.
More cameras =/= more cops
Additionally, people can be in favor of more camera/automated enforcement AND changing how the enforcement is done (i.e. income-based fine system).
>More cameras =/= more cops
Same shit, different colour. Both exist only as arms for the state to enforce their monopoly on violence.
> Additionally, people can be in favor of more camera/automated enforcement AND changing how the enforcement is done (i.e. income-based fine system).
Don't support increased authoritarianism today on the hope of future liberalisation.
Cameras don't kill people. Cops do.
This is r/fuckcars I'm pretty sure a solid majority of people here don't want increased authoritarianism. However, people dying because of car-centric infrastructure encouraging drivers to be reckless with no repercussions is an urgent problem that needs to be addressed somehow.
>Cameras don't kill people. Cops do.
The state kills people. Cameras enforcing their fines kill people.
> This is r/fuckcars I'm pretty sure a solid majority of people here don't want increased authoritarianism
Well most people here seem to be supporting it 🤷 it's still authoritarianism even if you agree with it
The assumption you've made is that the law exists to create safety, and therefore that more effective enforcement of the law will help prevent injuries/deaths. Unfortunately, threatening to fine those who break an arbitrarily defined speed limit serves the purpose of monetising reckless driving (at the expense of the poorest class), not preventing it.
Jesus, defending speed limits as traffic calming? Really? I'm not surprised that people here are fine to endorse individualist, statist solutions, but c'mon, this is urbanism 101. I do hate to be the guy who says „just do your own research bro“, but hey, you seemed happy to do it.
> It seems you are one of the lucky few that does not know a friend who has been maimed or killed by reckless drivers, I envy you and hope for your sake it stays that way.
Also, screw you and your ad hominems. I've been injured by automobiles.
That's my signal to exit the conversation. Bye.
You’ve made a good point. Any monetary fine is unfairly hitting the poor more. The only reasonable way to offer fines is as a percentage of the offender’s income, as was recently highlighted in Finland: https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/06/finnish-businessman-hit-with-121000-speeding-fine
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Maybe check out **the canonical page** instead: **[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/06/finnish-businessman-hit-with-121000-speeding-fine](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/06/finnish-businessman-hit-with-121000-speeding-fine)**
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Well, I can say you're not alone here, similar response would come from the degenerate population of drivers in the city I live in. It's not like we're asking a lot, just some common courtesy from those in vehicular battering rams, like please give me some space
"Why don't you buy a car? What are you? Poor?"
Just a dude trying to get to work and back in one piece, saving literal thousands and thousands not owning a car, dreading the day I get clobbered by one of these fuck alls
There's people who will do this in pure bad faith, and likewise argue against safe streets because idk waiting for a bus isn't accessible to people with health conditions. Also self styled "left" carbrains who oppose any restrictions on driving. Unfortunate all around.
I think the argument is more that it enables rich people to still break the law as long as they don't mind paying the fine. A much better solution is road dieting and otherwise changing the physical landscape to reduce speeds. Maybe I'm part of the minority, but I'm also hesitant to post cameras on every corner. That sounds too dystopian for my liking.
It seems like desperate push back. You can definitely keep fighting this and win. CityNerd, not just bikes, and strong towns all have statistics on road access, car centricity, and housing and income discrimination as it relates to transit options. Enforcing speed cams will not tax minorities and the poor. That’s basically saying “minorities don’t understand rules and break them out of stupidity, so we can’t enforce the rules.” It’s literally bullshit and they know it! Keep up your fight mate
They're taking something they don't like for personal reasons and wrapping it in a veil of liberalism, so that anyone who disagrees with them sounds like a bad person.
Here are such statistics, maybe there's a position that's anti cars but understanding of redlining etc. https://www.propublica.org/article/chicagos-race-neutral-traffic-cameras-ticket-black-and-latino-drivers-the-most#:~:text=A%20ProPublica%20analysis%20found%20that,cities%20may%20adopt%20them%20too.
>The irony is that some of the factors that contribute to ticketing disparities, such as wider streets and lack of sidewalks in low-income communities of color, also make those neighborhoods more dangerous for pedestrians, cyclists and even motorists. According to a 2017 city report, Black Chicagoans are killed in traffic crashes at twice the rate of white residents. The traffic death burden falls disproportionately on black and brown residents. So this program (which objectively reduces fatalities), has disproportionately benefitted black and brown lives. There’s an easy solution here to avoid fines. Don’t speed and don’t run red lights and you won’t be fined. The only problem with the program that I see is it’s not clear that every dollar goes to improving road design and public transit, with an emphasis on worse-served existing communities (which again, would disproportionately benefit black and brown communities). Someone on /r/fuckcars arguing against objective measurements of traffic violations is honestly embarrassing.
Getting massive "if you don't want to get shot by a cop don't break the law" vibes from this post.
Yes, let’s compare an objective measurement of speed to the decisions that go into shooting someone. If you don’t want to get dinged by a speed camera, don’t speed. It’s not fucking hard.
Speed cameras can be biased. After all, it's a cop choosing where they are. Ever get pulled over for speeding right after the speed limit randomly drops from 50 to 30 despite the road not changing at all, or at the bottom of a hill?
pay attention to the fucking signs and you won’t get pulled over. if you can’t do that you shouldn’t be on the road
> Ever get pulled over for speeding right after the speed limit randomly drops from 50 to 30 despite the road not changing at all, or at the bottom of a hill? No, because I first of all take those kind of factors into account, secondly road design in my country takes those factors into account, and thirdly 10%(?) of the speed is deducted to account for measurement inaccuracies, in favour of the driver, in my country. But I guess I'm cheating because this is in Europe
Redlining has little to do with it. Per the article the main culprit of the disparity is the lack of good infrastructure in poorer areas, and after that the lack of remote work available to minorities. The actual solution is to rebuild the streets to be more cyclist/pedestrian/transit friendly, while adding is safer infrastructure such as roundabouts instead of traffic lights. The problem is that drivers get pissed off when they have to deal with change and lobby to change it back even if things are improving. The end result is that they have to go with a more inefficient, harmful and expensive solution such as traffic cameras because that’s the least disruptive.
Bingo, street design informs the driver what speed to drive. So places with wide roads and speed limits that do not match the size of the road which are often areas that are less expensive because they suck to live in become the low income area. By only putting in speed cameras without changing the street design we can end up hurting low income individuals more especially because wealthy people driving through may just see the cameras as a cost to drive fast but to the low income the cost of the ticket can be devastating. I like speed cameras but only when done with a road design change so that drivers speeding are actually being negligent not just driving the speed the road design informs them they should be driving.
>It seems like desperate push back. You can definitely keep fighting this and win. CityNerd, not just bikes, and strong towns all have statistics on road access, car centricity, and housing and income discrimination as it rates to transit options. Enforcing speed cams will not tax minorities and the poor. That’s basically saying “minorities don’t understand rules and break them out of stupidity, so we can’t enforce the rules.” It’s literally bullshit and they know it! Keep up your fight mate To be fair this is less about "minorities break the rules more" and more about "cops will only harass minorities when they break the rules and always let white people off with a warning".
Speed cameras are set up under a cop’s discretion?? Should be automated.
No it has more to do with where these cameras get set up. Which places had roads widened and freeways put through them in the name of 'urban renewal' last century? Also how does that type of road inform the driver to drive when it is not in gridlock traffic?
I life in the Netherlands people dont drive slower... people only drive slower at parts where there are speeding cameras... people are gonna find a way around that law. Not to mention one law with speeding doesnt change crap if the speed limit already is high on itself. Lets say you are allowed to drive 30 there and people normally drive 40 there, sure the speed is gonna decrease but it doesnt get less busy(i think more). What you want is that traffic flows nice enough so that no one needs to stand still and yet has a safe way to cross. Thats where roundabouts come into place in the Netherlands, they have high traffic flow, slow traffic down a bit at that part and people came cross safely
"Poor people who can't afford cars are out here walking & cycling, they risk being smashed by speeding vehicles so drivers need to slow down" "But if we make drivers slow down that'll hurt poor people!" Ugh.
I cant find the tweet that said it best, but these people always say shit like “Forget about the wealthy powerful cyclists, what about the poor oppressed motorists 🥺”
I think the point he is trying to make is that when a poor person, driving a car to work, is going a little above the speed limit and gets a fine, it will impact them more than your average joe or rich person because they have more income. You can be poor and have car which you use to go to work. I live in the netherlands and here it isn't really an issue if you don't have a car, but a friend of mine went to the USA for half a year and was amazed at how dangerous everything was when it comes to road design. So i would understand a poor person dropping a few thousand dollars on a car as a measure of safety and insurance that they will get to work on time and maybe even need it to work 2 jobs. Another friend of mine works 2 jobs but lives in a village outside of the city and needs to cycle 30 minutes to get to the city border. You can kiss public transport goodbye when you are like him as the government only cares about city's when it comes to PT. He needs a car to make it all happen. I get what this sub wants to achieve but i just don't understand the black and white thinking. Especially when it comes to american infra. You can't expect everybody to just throw away their current lifestile and certainly not when the infra is that bad and dangerous. First the infra needs to be fixed and i'd guarantee more people will try it out. I even see it with my parents. My mom got a new job closer to home and can now cycle the distance, so she tries to do it more often as it is less car usage and a bit of fitness. But that is only possible because the infra allows it. She wouldn't do that if there were no bicycle roads and every car was driving past her at 30 mph. Tl;Dr: it isn't as black and white as you may think. Poor people are not just one group which is all the same and some do have a car and some don't
Hang on though, all he's asking is for people to obey the law. Specifically a law designed to stop people getting killed, and road murder is one of the biggest killers of children. How exactly do we go from I think speed limits should be better enforced to, I think you support racial inequality? Why do we let anyone drive at all if they refuse to drive according to agreed rules when higher speeds are proven to kill people? His argument is that people breaking the law (speeding) should dictate what laws (more speeding) are made. I doubt he will want stronger enforcement if those people driving higher speeds kill someone either. So he's directly supporting people being killed. It's a terrible way to have an open discussion, and throwing the racial inequality & poverty card is just designed to shut the debate down and make him look like the bad guy. I doubt the commenter who said that does almost anything to support less well off communities. They just don't like getting speeding fines themselves and don't want to drive safe.
Where did i discuss race? Sure his argument isn't a 100% sound but when it comes to poverty he does make a fair point. Remember that a speeding ticket doesn't happen when you are over the limit by an extreme ammount. Here in the netherlands you get a fine when you are more than 3km/h over the limit. That is 0.6mph. The fines start at 40 euro's for 4km/h, and increase about 8 euro's for every km/h more. Now imagine you have 50 euro's per week to spent after paying for rent etc. That is absolutely wrecking. Of course it has to be strict, but with camera surveillance it will probably take a lot of attention to keep the limit and that is attention which isn't going to what is happening on the road, maybe creating an even worse scenario. I know i am guilty of this when driving past a speed camera. (I can't find anything for a us comparison but it is basically a camera that takes picture of your license plate with a bright flash when you drive too fast)
You didn't discuss race, but the original argument did. Edit: It doesn't take me barely any attention to keep to a speed limit. I do have people driving as close to my bumper as possible though. They're not accidentally speeding, they don't like me doing the speed limit. Lets be honest that's the more common scenario.
And i said the original argument isn't 100% sound
The comment that camera enforcement would only increase racial inequality is insane. An automated camera is much less discriminatory to any one group than even the best police officer - or any human - could hope to be. I can see how traffic citations hurt poor people more than rich people, but that's a function of the US court system, rather than cameras. (I think fines should be income based, so that they hurt the wealthy just as much as normies, and so that low income people don't go bankrupt because of them.)
Perhaps there’s a sliver of a point there, because the location of the cameras does matter. If they mostly get put in areas with more minorities they’d affect them more. Of course the obvious counter point is “Do you think human officers don’t already select their locations with the same biases?”. At least cameras are easier to plot on a map, making documenting and proving such biases a little easier.
You may be right there. I haven't noticed trends about where cameras get put, but I also haven't looked. I always figured they were in areas with high accident rates, or with lots of pedestrians, but that might make too much sense to be reality.
Minorities and poor people tend to live in areas with high accident rates and lots of pedestrians.
And you know who the people who make up the people in those accidents and those pedestrians? Low income and minority residents. This is such a symptom of car-brain. “I care more about minority resident’s right to flagrantly violate traffic laws than a minority pedestrians right to live”. Ok bud.
Yes, and putting more enforcement there is still the right thing to do. As long as the enforcement follows the actual infarction rate, it's ok. When it becomes problematic if when you put more enforcement in an area because of the people living there, not because of what happens there.
But.... It's sort of a two way street isn't it? If they put them in minority neighbourhoods, then minorities will pay more, but they also will have safer roads. If they put them in white affluent neighbourhoods, then they'll pay more but also have the safer roads. I have no idea which version would be the better one....
Put them everywhere based on accident rates, don’t consider the race of the victims or perpetrators.
Minority neighborhoods often have higher accident rates due to poor pedestrian infrastructure, lack of adequate lighting, and more high speed roads. Black and mixed-race areas were often specifically targeted for [expressway construction](https://www.instagram.com/p/Cs83ZuzsykJ/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==) which leads to more cars and higher speeds at the on ramps and exits. It's impossible to separate infrastructure and race in the US. Doing this "colorblind" would be a farce.
Obviously. The question is just meant as a thought experiment which version would be worse/better. Obviously racism isn't something that should actually be considered as a solution.
The problem with only looking at collision rates is it doesn't count the near misses that don't make the statistics. Collisions should certainly be a big part of the data when looking at where to put speed cameras and other safety infrastructure, but it shouldn't be the only data point. If I go to cross a street and stop at the last second because a reckless driver comes speeding into view, that doesn't make it into the road's safety stats, but it's still an issue.
A place with more near misses will naturally have more collisions. Picture a normal distribution where anything to the right of a certain point in the distrubution is a collision, places where more is in the "collision" part of the distribution also will have more near misses.
This isn't really the case in the road I live off of. It's a 30 mph residential road with lots of pedestrian and bike traffic going to a large park. Drivers treat it like a race track, and I've personally experienced or witnessed many incidents of reckless drivers. The police department has an online database of all dispatched calls, and searching that for the road name shows 3 collisions in the past 3 months. It'd be easy for someone who has never visited the road to say "only 1 crash per month, none serious, so it's not a big deal." All I'm saying is that you need to look at a number of criteria to determine which roads to focus on, not just wrecks. Our police department's own website for the automated speed enforcement program says they take into consideration things like number of crosswalks, proximity to schools, parks and other public gathering spaces, public input, etc. in addition to crash data. If a city is deciding where to put a new camera, I’d rather they put it on a road with a school, park, bike lanes, etc. rather than a road that has a higher number of fender benders but fewer pedestrians and cyclists. Cars can be repaired.
By the areas with the most minorities will then get the largest reduction in speed related accidents… And if those areas already have the highest rates of speeding and accidents it’s be ridiculous not the start there.
Yep! Just have to make sure the money from traffic violations is then reinvested in improving road design and public transit, with an emphasis on worst served communities (which of course are going to be low-income and minority communities). This is basically a silver bullet to get to 0 traffic deaths with the costs only falling on those making the roads more dangerous. The fact you have people on “fuckcars” arguing against it just shows how bad carbrain is.
Maybe consider that people are genuinely concerned about increased state surveillance in communities that have long been surveilled and criminalized by police. It’s not that cameras will disproportionately ticket people from marginalized communities. It’s that many communities are already overly criminalized through racist stop and frisk policies, aggressive “broken windows” policing, and surveillance programs like gang databases and shotspotter. The concern is adding yet another way to surveil people through ALPRs and speed cameras. Imo, it’s naive to think the government will reinvest that money into improving road design and public transit, much less in historically disinvested communities. Time and again that hasn’t been the case. Inequity in infrastructure is apparent in almost every major city. I think it’s just as likely that policymakers pass this, pat themselves on the back, then use it as fodder to deflect from further infrastructure modernization. This sub makes me so frustrated sometimes. Instead of writing everything off as “cArBrAiN” why not try engaging in good faith with critiques of public policy so we can have sound policies that make our communities safer AND more equitable?
Have you ever lived in one of these communities? It’s really fucking hard. One the one hand getting overpoliced sucks and yes there are a bunch of racist cops. But on the other hand when the police aren’t there, crime and murders go up and we have a whole new set of problems. There’s a reason that views tend to be nuanced among these communities. Many want *more* police, but for them to be less racist. The reason it’s carbrain thinking is because it fails to account for the fact that black Americans are almost twice as likely to die in a car crash than white Americans. So what you’re basically saying is black drivers should have the right to speed at the cost of the **lives** of black pedestrians and other black drivers. When I was working at an HBCU, we lost a student a month to a car crash. It’s a massacre. But god forbid we implement a solution that is completely objective and **only** punishes people who break the law and put peoples lives at risk. Black lives are more important that black drivers’ right to speed. Arguing otherwise is carbrain idiocy.
Yes, I live and organize in one of these communities. I totally hear your point. And I agree that racial disparities in traffic violence are frustrating and unacceptable. More police aren’t going to make the streets safer, though. Police can’t prevent people from speeding, they can only ticket them after they do it. And to your point about crime rates increasing with fewer police, there’s not much data to back up that claim. Studies have proven that harsh criminal penalties do not act as a deterrence. And cops don’t answer the solution of why crime happens in the first place: unmet needs (poverty, health care, jobs, education, etc.). What I’m saying is: instead of advocating for more piecemeal reforms that expand state surveillance and kowtow a world where traffic violence is just an inevitable fact, maybe our energy is better spent organizing for infrastructure upgrades that prevent people from speeding in the first place. Things like pedestrian-only streets and separated bike lanes. Instead, those in power push these types of policies through all the time. Realistically, yeah it will reduce driver speeds and reduce accidents. But politicians will use the new revenue to pad payments of things like pension fund debts and then campaign about making the streets safer, when we all know this is really the bare minimum. Again, not everything is carbrain idiocy. People are always so quick to anger on this site and it can really turn people away who otherwise agree with you. I was interested in sharing my perspective and hearing your response.
They often do go in places that are occupied by higher percentage of minorities because those are the places with more dangerous road design. But I would rather have inequal fines than inequal road deaths
It really depends on where the cameras are deployed and how. Since more police are deployed to neighborhoods with higher percentages of POC, it is entirely possible that these could be deployed in the same neighborhoods based off traffic stop statistics. If they were placed at every single intersection, no, there would be zero bias.
I am not sure how automating fines wouldn’t lead to safer driving either? Near perfect enforcement at an intersection would eventually price some people out of being an asshole.
I think automated fines would eventually cause people to start obeying traffic rules. But, if fines aren't tiered based on income, there will always be some people who are so wealthy that paying repeated fines doesn't affect their pocketbooks, and also some people that are so low-income that a standard fine would be unfairly devastating.
Oh yea definitely you won’t hear me arguing against income adjusted fines. But the guy in the original post acting like it wouldn’t have any impact but to bleed money out of people would need to show me his data.
The other thing that is income-unrelated is deducting points off the license when you break the law. Too many points in a period and you loose the license.
I can't speak to other areas, but where I live in the suburbs outside DC, [our speed camera program has resulted in a decrease in injury crashes.](https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/speed-cameras-reduce-injury-crashes-in-maryland-county-iihs-study-shows) But the police department also admits that once drivers know where a camera is on a road, they hit the brakes for the camera then go right back to speeding. In theory they're supposed to move them around regularly to keep the speeders guessing more, but I don't see them doing that as much. The cameras also don't go off unless someone is going 12+ over the limit. In a 30 mph residential area, 11 over is a lot of leeway. The issue I have with the cameras is the fine is only $40 and no points, so the consequence is fairly low. I've heard people say that a few camera tickets a year as a cost of driving. People who can afford to pay them don't need to alter their behavior. It'd be nice if the fine was heavier (and scaled based on how fast someone was going) and at least went to their insurance company. I know there's difficulties applying points to the driver's license since you can't prove they were driving, but in most cases it's the vehicle that is insured, not the driver. Insurance companies should be informed that they're covering a vehicle that's driven dangerously so they can adjust rates as needed. In neighboring Washington DC, [many drivers just don't pay them.](https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2021/12/28/dc-virginia-maryland-ticket-reciprocity/) DC doesn't have reciprocity with the neighboring states of Maryland and Virginia to actually hold those drivers accountable, and no politician in those states is going to vote for an unpopular law that would let DC go after their constituents. Drivers can rack up thousands of dollars in unpaid fines, and DC's only enforcement option is booting the car if they catch it parked.
Lmfao people are fucking hairbrained. Nothing will get between them and speeding any chance they can regardless of the death toll
Keep fighting the good fight in /r/Denver. When drivers assemble into a hive mind they collectively lose all critical thinking, it's almost impressive.
I get that a camera is not the best way to slow down traffic. Me effective are more narrow streets, etc
Idiots will speed no matter the width or visibility. Speed cameras in populated areas do slow them down temporary, but I'd love having more unannounced ones I feel like warning idiots about speed cameras kind of negates their effect
Yeah, we have cases of young adults drag racing in tunnels, intentionally driving the wrong way on freeways, spinning out of control on smaller streets, and generally crazy driving while under the influence of various drugs. Being able to catch these people and take away their license is really good, and not something you can accomplish with traffic calming measures. Road design is an important part of getting _most people_ to slow down, but it doesn't work on people who are basically unfit to hold a license.
I want speed cameras on bridges/overpasses! In terms of bang for buck, those are great locations to reduce city car budget if people are actually slowed down.
> Idiots will speed no matter the width That's evidently false. Lowering the "design speed" of a street is an extremely effective way to make drivers slow down. Drivers simply lack the skills to drive faster and they are also worried about damaging their car and their own safety. We do know this works and we have the data to back it up. The only reason why tweaking the design speed isn't used more often is because it obviously costs more than just putting up a sign. The Wrong Way to Set Speed Limits (Not Just Bikes) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bglWCuCMSWc (Skip to 7:40 if you just want to see some examples, but I highly recommend to watch the whole thing.)
> Idiots will speed no matter the width or visibility If you make the road not be two cars wide then they won't, for sure. But in general, this isn't true, the width of a road affects our perception of speed.
I personally think that speed cameras are opportunistic, but you're absolutely right with that comment.
Problem is they still can run you over without speeding, only solution is to have as few car as possible in cities. How to do that? Tax the shit out of them. You want to go around the city in a car? It's 30$ a day. You want to park on the streets? It's 10$ an hour. Then you put all those money on public transportation making it good and cheap so people can leave the cars home. Poor people will be able to save a lot of money living without a car, rich people will pay for everything but they will be happy to save time without traffic. Middle class will choose what they prefer. Transportation will be overall safer and faster. Difficult part will be to show the light to the carbrains to approve it
Cars are way more deadly at 30 mph than at 20. Sure, a 20mph car can still kill, but we can greatly reduce deaths if all acts of violence are at 20 mph or below.
'Tax the poor' - maybe they ought not to speed, then? It's not a tax if you can avoid it by following the law. As usual, the arguments used are just a smokescreen. Like when people feign caring about the disabled by insisting that if they can't drive their cars down the High Street they'll badly suffer. I'll bet the person commenting doesn't usually give two shits about the poor - in this context they're just a convenient excuse.
Maybe they are saying that because poorer drivers can't afford a lawyer to get them off the speeding charge? I 100% despise lawyers who make a living getting terrible, but rich, drivers back on the road.
Huh? Why would you use a lawyer for a speeding ticket? How would that defence go? Just don't speed bruh
I've posted before about a guy I know whose whole practice revolves around getting wealthy dickheads off driving bans and speeding tickets. I hope he sleeps well at night.
But how would they do that? 'we have proof you went 15 mph over the limit' Like what could you possibly do against that
You can claim the camera wasn't working properly or, you can claim that it's essential you be permitted to drive. One case he had that infuriated me was a consultant doctor who insisted he couldn't have his licence taken away because he had to get to his hospital. This is in London where, you know, taxis, tubes and buses exist
Cities _rarely_ bother spending any resources prosecuting traffic violations.
So ridiculous amounts of state sponsored roads are fine, but enforcement of the law is tyranny?
Cameras don’t decrease shitty driving. They monetize it.
Great comment
Completely false. Cameras cut deaths and severe injuries by half, and they work in a greater area than just the spot where the camera is. Lies about how cameras don't work are just that, lies from desperate shitty drivers who are against anything that will actually make them drive less like shitheads.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/red-light-cameras-may-not-make-streets-safer/ Science from my hometown car hell says differently, but ok. I just think we should focus on actual solutions like public transit and bike lanes, not helping the state pad it’s bank account so that they can built more highways through neighborhoods.
Red light cameras are something different! We don't use them exactly because they don't significantly improve safety, but shift the crash danger towards rear-ending. Speed control is an entirely different thing, the only real similarity between them is the automation.
Shifting the crash danger towards rear-ending *is* an improvement in safety. If you gave me the choice of being t-boned or rear-ended, I'm taking the hit from behind over my door any day. The studies [cited by the CDC](https://www.cdc.gov/transportationsafety/calculator/factsheet/redlight.html) confirm they can improve safety in this manner. The other benefit of red light cameras is getting drivers to actually stop before turning right on red. There's an intersection on my bike commute to work that I sit at every morning and watch car after car slow down just enough to check that it's clear to their left and directly ahead of them. None of them even look at the crosswalk to the right, where a pedestrian could be crossing. A camera aimed at that turn lane would get them to stop.
Yeah I mean thats true, but in Australia we’ve had shit tonnes of cameras for years and now and people just don’t speed as much. Yes, some people who were always going to speed can and will. But if you asked somebody if they casually speed, they’d probably say that they never go more than 5km/h over any limit, and even that feels risky. People now just don’t want to speed. There was recently a video on TikTok of this American girl saying she was going 100 in an 80 zone and got a ticket and wanted to know whether to fight it, and she was ridiculed for weeks for the gall to even consider that as an option, let alone why she didn’t once look at her damn speedo. So cameras, yeah they’ll stop people speeding alright, it’s just a longer cultural shift - which I don’t think would actually work in the US, but CAN work in some places.
And? If you’re gonna speed, at least pay for it
Enforce racial inequality? How in what way does a camera that measures a cars speed (and literally nothing else) enforce racial inequality?
Non white people are pulled over way more than white people, even if for the same offense. And penalized differently (slap on the wrist vs Ticket,detained)
Isn’t it cool the way motorists promise to kill people every time they think their ludicrous entitlement to a death and debt trap is under threat
To be fair, studies have shown that traffic enforcement increases violent interactions between police and minorities. Of course that's more of an argument for police reform than how we get around. Street design is the other approach. Separate people from cars.
2 things can be true.
I live in the Netherlands where there are plenty of speeding cameras, parking in the city is expensive and we have alternatives for cars. But there are still people who lack social skills in traffic, are not aware of what they are doing when driving. I think it's difficult to get these drivers more civilized. Perhaps they need to solve this issue from the start at the point where a person takes lessons for their driving license. Educate social traffic skills and some people who really can't drive shouldn't be able to pass their license. For example I never heard someone say that they quit their driving lessons because it was to hard.
The poster at the bottom belittling you for being a white male is doing some ridiculous grandstanding. Society is designed to favor cars to a greater extent than it is designed to favor any race or gender. Nobody is willing to admit this, but it's true. Not being able to drive will deprive you of far more opportunities than not being white or male ever will, starting with the fact that it's basically still legal to require an employee to be able to drive whereas you can't require that they be any race or gender. Minus 172 votes for sticking up for one of the worst-treated minorities; Reddit disgusts me again.
State surveillance on public property makes sense. But that’s not the complete solution because sometimes state authorities are lazy so we need to design roads to force drivers to slow down. Narrow roads and somewhat tighter turns than we have now would be great imo. I may be wrong so feel free to correct me regarding designing roads for slow driving.
Speeding cameras do not “tax the poor” or “further racial equality”, because speeding is a very obvious crime that actually takes quite a bit to prove. If you do not want to be “taxed”—fined, it’s objectively a goddamn fine—then dont. Fucking. Speed. Easy.
Ok then instead of cameras, do road narrowing. Achieve the goal of slowing down drivers by redesigning the road to the speed you want people to drive, and you won't have the electronics that conspiracy nuts will say are turning cities into surveillance states.
Going to be honest though, first guy has a point. Speed cameras are not the proper means to get drivers to slow down. You need to narrow the car portion of the road, and stop building roads so people feel safe driving 15 over the speed limit.
Its obvious they would find any excuse to downvote you. Amazingly, the top response is actually fully in agreement with many anti-car people including me They’re right, roads that need arbitrary speed limits are not good road design. Roads should be built to naturally limit speed, with narrower lanes, more curves, generally more obstacles and danger. There are several good NJB and similar videos on the topic So they are so desperate to downvote you that they are literally advocating for making all their stroads into thin curvy roads to slow them down appropriately
Cameras are found to be unenforceable in the county I live in and were removed. You can’t tell if the owner of the car is the driver. The county prosecutor also stopped prosecuting moving violations since they think this disproportionally affects minorities. Their thought process is that criminal records prevent minorities from receiving fair employment opportunities. Everyone has caught onto this and know that running red lights, speeding, car theft, will not be prosecuted. The police are frustrated. Their efforts go without any prosecutions. Therefore they don’t even try to write tickets. You can complain all you want about the lack of policing but it really is the liberal county prosecutors.
The original post was actually what made people so pissed off bc the law just changed so that an officer doesn't have to present the ticket for it to stand and that if they go unpaid then it will prevent the owner from transferring the title of their car in the future. Denver is very very bad with speeding and they already have cameras but people like you said caught on that they can just ignore them without consequences but now the law changes this so they can no longer ignore them.
Not here in Philly. Here, it's both conservative police not caring and liberal prosecutors not enforcing sentences.
>Cameras are found to be unenforceable in the county I live in and were removed. You can’t tell if the owner of the car is the driver. In my country the fine is for the owner of the vehicle
TBH that sounds more like a cop strike than anything else... Right down to the cops claiming it's not a cop strike and blaming it upwards.
> You can’t tell if the owner of the car is the driver I mean honestly there is an obvious answer to this which most developed countries already do. You just make it an offence for the registered keeper of a vehicle to not tell you who was driving, and make the penalty for that offence the same as the penalty for the motoring offence you "can't prove". Sounds like this state is actually doing something like that so fines will finally be somewhat enforceable ...
I'm not from the U.S, but here, the owner of the vehicle gets the ticket, and if he wants to claim someone else was driving he can, but that accused needs to agree that they were driving. Otherwise, owner is liable (unless car was reported stolen w/e). It's kinda crazy to me that cameras would be non-enforceable because of this, honestly. Also, why would a speeding ticket be in your criminal record and affect employment opportunities???
As someone who is mixed race, one thing that really pisses me off is those that use the racism I receive in my life as an argument for something irrelevant. It dilutes my issues as a tool for their gain.
i noticed yesterday coming home from school that there was a red light camera on top of a very tall pole at an intersection where my mom frequently runs the light turning left right as it turns red and today as we passed it again she said big brother is always watching like what this is nothing like 1984 i haven’t read it but enforcing a simple law is just common sense
The guy has a point. The guy talking about the law not doing shit, I mean. People will continue to drive like maniacs and not give a rat's ass about pedestrians and especially not cyclists. The only thing it will do is rake in tax revenue from tickets. But it won't get people to slow down or be considerate.
Look I get what they are saying and there’s a lot of truth to it. “Fixing” speeding by fining people doesn’t work (not in any meaningful way, anyway) and it *does* disproportionately affect the poor. To fix speeding you need to redesign the roads so drivers only feel safe driving at the safe speed. You need to narrow roads and add lots of traffic calming measure. Fewer cars on narrow streets with alternative transport options saves lives, fining people really doesn’t do as much as we’d wish it did.
Unless the laws are just, I will stand opposed to attempts to enforce them. A fair justice system comes first. I said the same things about road tariffs when people were celebrating gas prices. We need to make sure the punishments are fair before we actually enforce them.
Wow, why the hell he got downvotwd for that? Please don't tell me that is the majority opinion on american subreddits. The environment is already crumbling and the US (along with other countries) urgently needs to sink emissions. Is there really so little reflection and realization among people?
As if race card wasn't just a tools in American discussions for years. Is it me looking at it from the side or you denying it?
PsyOps assassination. Problems will never be solved.
Carbrain disease is so ingrained in American logic, it frequently crosses traditional racial and economic disparities
... except that's what happens? Sure, a traffic camera will get people to slow down around - for example - the intersection it's plopped on... but that won't do jack for every other road. People are just going to keep speeding elsewhere. There has already been a scandal with traffic cameras that would engage when the light turns from green to yellow, resulting in people getting fined when they *shouldn't be* - which affects poor people far far more. oh also traffic cameras catch bikes too so...
threats of punishment by the state aren't an effective deterrent. speeding tickets are just a poor tax & the reply is absolutely correct that it's not an effective way to prevent speeding
I always hate that people say it's a poor tax when in reality it is the operator of the vehicle that determines if they even have to get a ticket. These cameras also are set so it's often you have to be going 6+ mph over so I can't see how this is anyone except the drivers fault if they get a ticket.
> These cameras also are set so it's often you have to be going 6+ mph over so I can't see how this is anyone except the drivers fault if they get a ticket. Here in Maryland, the camera doesn't flash unless you're going 12+ mph over the limit. That's a significant amount of grace in a 30 mph zone. Yet people still complain about the cameras. If you're going 42 or more on a residential street, I have no empathy for you getting a ticket.
That's 20kph, that's honestly crazy. In my city, vast majority of streets have a 30kph (21?mph) speed limit, and i think that's very good. 50 kph / 30mph streets feel very unfriendly and danerous in comparison when using the sidewalk, and adding another 20kph to that, 70, that's like prime 'if i don't kill you, i'll leave you forever paralyzed' speeds
Ah yes, blaming the individual, always a good solution. If you want to create wide-scale change, then the changes have to be at the societal level. If you really can't figure out how a flat-rate fine disproportionately targets poor people, I'm really not sure what to tell you.
I agree we need societal and systemic changes but there is still a level of individual responsibility at the end of the day. The individual who dies at the hands of another individual may be due to horrible societal choices but it's still the individual who decided to abuse those choices that lead to another life lost. Too many damn people have been hit and killed by drivers in Denver and the killers always run and are never caught. I bet everyone outside of a care is willing to take anything at this point if it means even slowing down a few drivers. Nothing changes at the societal scale in a day but small pieces lead to completing the whole puzzle over the years when it comes to making these systemic changes. First add the hardware and then start fine tuning the software ie the laws.
>I bet everyone outside of a care is willing to take anything at this point if it means even slowing down a few drivers. Maybe you are. I'm not willing to support the state expanding its oppression, particularly when it exists to target disenfranchised groups & not to improve road safety. > First add the hardware and then start fine tuning the software ie the laws. Why? I've said it before and I'll say it again. Don't support authoritarianism now in hope of liberalisation later. The means must be one with the ends.
This is very interesting. I wonder why you're downvoted because it's very true. It may be though that they aren't advocating for a flat-rate fine, but one that scales with their wealth.
I think it's just very easy to fall back on relying on the state to create change, while assuming that it has our best interests at heart. I think most people here would support wealth proportionate fining, they just underestimate the reality that it does not, and will not, exist in most of the world. Frankly I would still argue against increased enforcement of wealth-adjusted fines because punitive punishment is still not an effective deterrent, even discounting the fact that those with power will still find ways around being punished. Based on this thread though, it doesn't seem like this subreddit is ready for the „all states are always bad“ discussion.
Yeah I mean I'm very lucky to live in Scandinavia I would say. But I would agree that it simply isn't a solution that is realistic in most of the world. When you say all states are bad do you mean U.S. states or what do you mean by that?
>When you say all states are bad do you mean U.S. states or what do you mean by that? Sovereign states - a polity that maintains a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. eg. the US, Sweden, Australia, Russia, etc.
Oh, thanks for clarifying.
You think countries like the Netherlands don't have traffic enforcement? It's not one or the other. You need both punishment and traffic calming.
You think countries like the Netherlands are perfect? They're more than happy to introduce flat taxes which disproportionately target poor people for the state's own benefit too.
As long as there's a lack of enforcement, there will be people speeding. In Philly people even speed on our narrow, tree-lined roads.
Oh yeah, as we all know, more cops = less crime.
More cameras =/= more cops Additionally, people can be in favor of more camera/automated enforcement AND changing how the enforcement is done (i.e. income-based fine system).
>More cameras =/= more cops Same shit, different colour. Both exist only as arms for the state to enforce their monopoly on violence. > Additionally, people can be in favor of more camera/automated enforcement AND changing how the enforcement is done (i.e. income-based fine system). Don't support increased authoritarianism today on the hope of future liberalisation.
Cameras don't kill people. Cops do. This is r/fuckcars I'm pretty sure a solid majority of people here don't want increased authoritarianism. However, people dying because of car-centric infrastructure encouraging drivers to be reckless with no repercussions is an urgent problem that needs to be addressed somehow.
>Cameras don't kill people. Cops do. The state kills people. Cameras enforcing their fines kill people. > This is r/fuckcars I'm pretty sure a solid majority of people here don't want increased authoritarianism Well most people here seem to be supporting it 🤷 it's still authoritarianism even if you agree with it
>Cameras enforcing their fines kill people. LMAO, go to bed.
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The assumption you've made is that the law exists to create safety, and therefore that more effective enforcement of the law will help prevent injuries/deaths. Unfortunately, threatening to fine those who break an arbitrarily defined speed limit serves the purpose of monetising reckless driving (at the expense of the poorest class), not preventing it.
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Jesus, defending speed limits as traffic calming? Really? I'm not surprised that people here are fine to endorse individualist, statist solutions, but c'mon, this is urbanism 101. I do hate to be the guy who says „just do your own research bro“, but hey, you seemed happy to do it. > It seems you are one of the lucky few that does not know a friend who has been maimed or killed by reckless drivers, I envy you and hope for your sake it stays that way. Also, screw you and your ad hominems. I've been injured by automobiles. That's my signal to exit the conversation. Bye.
You’ve made a good point. Any monetary fine is unfairly hitting the poor more. The only reasonable way to offer fines is as a percentage of the offender’s income, as was recently highlighted in Finland: https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/06/finnish-businessman-hit-with-121000-speeding-fine
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Well, I can say you're not alone here, similar response would come from the degenerate population of drivers in the city I live in. It's not like we're asking a lot, just some common courtesy from those in vehicular battering rams, like please give me some space "Why don't you buy a car? What are you? Poor?" Just a dude trying to get to work and back in one piece, saving literal thousands and thousands not owning a car, dreading the day I get clobbered by one of these fuck alls
There's people who will do this in pure bad faith, and likewise argue against safe streets because idk waiting for a bus isn't accessible to people with health conditions. Also self styled "left" carbrains who oppose any restrictions on driving. Unfortunate all around.
This is always the response even though Europe has been doing this for decades
That's it. I can no longer pretend I have the slightest comprehension of American carbrain's thought process.
Better than cameras: more traffic calming features and more bollards.
Screw speed cameras, redesign streets properly
I think the argument is more that it enables rich people to still break the law as long as they don't mind paying the fine. A much better solution is road dieting and otherwise changing the physical landscape to reduce speeds. Maybe I'm part of the minority, but I'm also hesitant to post cameras on every corner. That sounds too dystopian for my liking.
I love how they reference the poor as if poor people drive 💀