In Skopje, Macedonia police started with Safe City speed cameras in January. First month was test period, they send notifications only. First day, 110,000 traffic violations. Now is much less.
The Ontario Premiere yanked cameras out of Toronto and speeding, crashes, pedestrian deaths all went up 2.5x.
With all the tech in cars, why do we allow unrestricted speeds?
True, cars should have speed limiters built in at the manufacturer. No car needs to go over 100-120km/h depending on the highway. In the city 50-80km/h should be the max.
If they really wanted to reduce the speed of vehicles and increase safety they would introduce aggressive road design.
It’s the same idea behind preventing people from skating on benches. You can’t fine it away, so they put bars on benches to make it impossible.
This would be how you take a strode and turn it into a actual street with proper.
Keep in mind though, the above is payed for by tax payers, i.e. all citizens regardless of if they speed or not, or have a car or not.
A camera is payed for ideally by the speeder, and any extra “revenue” should then go to the redesign of said streets, roads, and roadways.
actual street with proper.
proper what, you can’t leave us hanging like that!
A proper strode.
Camera profits probably go to cops.
Gotta pay for all those wrongful death judgements you can’t weasel your way out of and the cost of moving the killer one town over.
Most of it goes to the companies running the cameras from what I’ve seen.
The bars are mostly to prevent people from sleeping on the benches
Urban Spite Design. Another example is sprinklers in shop doorways to prevent homeless people from sheltering from the rain while the shops are closed.
Because those doorways will be covered in shit and piss otherwise. Doorways are not the solution.
I know I was just trying to be less dystopian.
You live in a dystopia we are beyond trying to pretend.
Depends on a lot of factors. But often funding a project that generates money is easier to push than one that creates some abstract value
What if we simply made all traffic worse?
Unironically yes. Traffic jams when the road gets full, and people have a time budget for traveling. So by slowing traffic down, you reduce demand, and thus the risk of traffic jams. Which in turn leads to a better experience for everybody. Bonus points if you also provide alternatives for car travel.
Can’t speed when the roads have lower capacity and the other cars are in the way.
Why not eliminate roads entirely?
No speeding or traffic!
The issue is most of our roadways are designed like strodes.
We should design streets as streets, and design roads as roads.
Roads have no cut curbs or driveways, no parking is allowed on a road. Traffic lights and intersections are minimized and roundabouts are preferred. Roads are like low capacity highways in a sense. Trails run beside roads as opposed to sidewalks to minimize conflicts between pedestrians and vehicles.
Streets are narrow and lower capacity, sidewalks and pedestrians are common. Street parking is allowed. Curbs and driveways are common. Speeds are low and intersections are other signalized or stop signs are used.
This is a strode:
Just FYI the term is spelled stroad.
It’s not the worst idea I’ve heard. I’m listening.
I’m down.
Road traffic? Great! Drivers are less productive and scientifically worse people than non-drivers.
You know, speed cameras are expensive to cities, and a lot of the fines go to paying the company servicing the cameras rather than filling the local coffers. Not to mention they contain a Iot of copper and other sellable materials.
You know speed cameras actually do reduce the speed of traffic.
On top of that they only negativity affect those that speed (with fines). Where something like a speed bump effect both speeder and non-speeder.
Streets and roads were speed cameras were installed in my neighbor actually became more pleasant to drive, walk, and cycle on. No more speeders tailgating others for example.
Now yes your point is valid that a portion of the cash collected from speeders goes to pay for said cameras, but keep in mind it’s the speeders that are paying and not non-speeders or taxpayers.
Of course that’s how they sell the idea initially. But we would be fools to think they aren’t planning on jacking up cost in a couple years to boost profits and expand surveillance to be sold to the highest bidder (fascists). History tells us that information will be used against their political opponents. Imagine how easy it’s going to be to target protestors and immigrants with a camera on every intersection
You make a good point but I just read another article earlier about how camera info was going to ice so fuckem
Fuck ICE without a doubt!
All I could say is any speed cameras, along with any of the existing traffic and highway cameras or neighborhood cameras are implemented in such a way that the city retains full ownership and accountability of collected data.
There should be strong accountability and data protection for this, but city officials and common folk generally trade convenience for privacy for most things related to tech.
I for one sure miss simple CCTV.
Did you know that many of the companies that serve these cameras are data collection firms that sell the data they collect, often to governments for the purpose of tracking people wherever they go. But yeah I guess this the only way we can get people to slow down.
And I’m sure they never give bad tickets to the wrong driver or someone not actually speeding.
That may all be true, but choosing to allow them does create a precedent for automated “unmanned” enforcement of all kinds, which I’m not exactly ok with personally. It is usually terrible for privacy as well, as there’s no guarantee how that data is handled or where it goes.
There are many issues with the area where I currently live, but I would consider the blanket ban on automated enforcement a big plus. It doesn’t mean traffic enforcement can’t be high-tech; it simply means that a citation cannot be issued by an automated system - a human needs to witness the violation, interpret the severity, and personally write and deliver the ticket to the offender.
Speed cameras can also just be implemented very poorly sometimes. The outcomes you cite only happen if the implementation is sound. If corruption in policing already exists these systems can create an opening to exacerbate it. For example, I used to live in a city that had used cameras for so long, the stretches of road covered by them were common knowledge to speeders. The cameras did shape behavior but only in the specific zones they covered. The local police relied on speed cameras and red light cameras so heavily, they served to substitute for in-person enforcement activities instead of augmenting them. That led to the police basically forgetting how to even do traffic enforcement very much at all. They would say “look how much revenue we’re collecting!” at press events, but in reality they were using it to disengage, which created a palpable feeling of lawlessness on the streets. All of that put together led to worse issues than before the cameras were installed, even for things that weren’t related to traffic laws at all.
According to municipal data, the highest volume of official citations occurred along southbound 73rd Avenue at the 2345 block, where 8,127 tickets were issued. The highest speed recorded at the location was 43.7 mph.
The highest overall speed captured by the network was 55.3 mph, recorded on southbound Hegenberger Road between Spencer and Hawley streets.
NEVER EVER GIVE SPEEDERS A HIGH SCORE TO SHOOT FOR!
They don’t. That’s why the radar speed signs change to “SLOW DOWN” when you hit 10 over.
A sign near me has that feature; it also has a failsafe where if you are going more than… 30ish (it’s been a while…) over the limit, it turns off and doesn’t appear to self-reset, regardless of time passed.
Literally crashed the leaderboard, let’s gooo.
So … why are we reading this news on a UK website, rather than one in Oakland CA?
All of Oakland’s news stations were stolen. Can’t have shit in
DetroitOakland.Truthfully - can’t have shit under capitalism.
Detroit was one of the first great American cities and it became hollowed out under the big and little effects of capitalism (and other kinds of isms that lead to the inequitable distribution of resources).
The consolidation and destruction of local news stations is just another outcome of capitalism.
