Why not just automate traffic violations and remove 83% of police?
Some cities have been sued for doing that. You can’t face your accuser in court if your accuser is a computer.
what if your family member or friend was using your car? what if your car was stolen? also, some of those cameras will ticket for legal right on red.
they just catch plates and send a ticket in the mail to the registered owner. it’s not great. source - i live in a city with these, though state law now means the city can no longer enforce tickets. also, the idea of camera/computer generated rosters of law-breakers is unsettling.
Sort of, the idea is that you can face the citing officer in court. Granted, all the officer has to do is lie and the judge is likely to side with them over a rando citizen, but that’s the intent of the law.
Red light cameras, sure. It can be done fairly - not that it is everywhere.
Speed cameras just trap people new to an area. The people who live in an area learn to avoid them and thus they don’t stop habitual speeders who are a danger. Plus they can’t be everywhere.
The bias needs to be taken out of it. Police can’t seem to stop themselves from racial profiling. Its like a compulsion.
I used to drive truck over the road, and I can attest to the fact that those red light cameras can also be made very deliberately unfair. The city of Hannibal, Missouri had these cameras at the intersection of Highway 61 and Red Devil, at the bottom of a steep hill. About 1/5 of a mile up the hill south of the intersection was a pole with a sensor on it set to about 12’6". I observed that any time any vehicle over that height passed that sensor, the light would trip to red. And it was set at a distance that a loaded semi would be all but guaranteed to run that light. Those of us who traveled that corridor with any frequency knew the sensor was there, and would try to want other drivers over the CB, but a lot of drivers had stopped routinely using the CB by then, so the light proved quite lucrative. At least, until it started causing wrecks from the trucks jackknifing in the intersection in the winter. That setup ran for three or four years before the city was dragged into court over it and forced to remove the red light cameras, though it was done in such a way as to question the enforceability of the tickets and without ever directly acknowledging that the cameras were set up to entrap commercial vehicles.
Gridlock cameras can be added to red light cameras, also reducing congestion policing costs.
Speed cameras trap people new to an area.
Or they could just, not speed? And speed cameras can be everywhere. They cost up to $50k to deploy and collect to 2k+ fines per year (based in my location, this obviously varies wildly), so they run net positive. Rotating locations can also get after the habits of locals, though that’s the 50k cost, I’d guess statics are cheaper.
If immediate reduction is most important than habit changing over time (i.e. a school zone or highway transition) speed linked red lights can achieve the effect. Such to say, if you drive over the limit, the light turns red. This forces you to stop and pisses off everyone behind you, providing social pressure. These are only in the pilot stage, so I don’t know the real deployment costs.
Speed traps are called speed traps because the limit suddenly drops like 20-30 mph in a very short distance. Saying “just don’t speed” completely ignores how speed traps work and why they exist .
