It’s insane the lengths that some people will go to save a few seconds on their commute, while also endangering others.
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I don’t understand why these people can’t see the cameras are there to protect everyone - including drivers.
Maybe because cameras can’t protect anyone. They gather evidence for incrimination, not prevention.
From 1992 to 2016, speed cameras reduced accidents by between 17 to 39 per cent and fatalities by between 58 to 68 per cent within 500 metres of the cameras.
That’s a report on a single study in the UK. We cannot necessarily assume that the outcome will be the same or even similar in all jurisdictions and social driving norms. The US, for instance, doesn’t have speed cameras, but the use of red light cameras has no effect in the rate of accidents at best and an increase in the rate of accidents at worse and it’s not clear what impact the introduction of such cameras to the US would have. Meanwhile the UAE does have speed cameras, but they do nothing to limit the speed of the Emirate citizens and only the threat of harsh fines, punishment, or deportation keeps the immigrant and working population in line.
While this camera was in a location which already has cameras, the claim quoted was not that “UK cameras protect UK drivers,” but one of “Cameras [in general] protect everyone” which is simply not true. Cameras have only the mechanisms necessary to record and report, they have no mechanism by which they can divert, slow, or stop a car or pedestrian and no mechanism they can use to stop an accident.
The cameras in question are on the UK, and cameras change behaviour because they enforce rules, as the study shows.
The US, for instance, doesn’t have speed cameras
That’s just straight up wrong.
Cameras have only the mechanisms necessary to record and report, they have no mechanism by which they can divert, slow, or stop a car or pedestrian and no mechanism they can use to stop an accident.
There is no need to stop a crash in-progress when the dangerous behavior that would have resulted in that crash never happened in the first place because of the discouraging effect of traffic cameras.
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Some places in the US definitely do have speed cameras.
Speed cameras do prevent speeding, they are used to trap in some cases, but almost always they are sign posted, which causes people to slow down.
That sounds like the signs have a correlated impact more than the cameras having a causal relationship.
The signs work because people are scared of speeding cameras.
If you put up signs everywhere without backing them up with cameras people will obviously ignore them.
The cameras are doing the real work, the signs are just for people new to the area.
There’s not much point arguing with these people my guy. There’s no rational thinking.
How so? Isn’t knowing the consequence a form of prevention?
You’ll never get a real answer because the types of people that post these idiotic disingenuous complaints about speed cameras have nothing to say to the simple question:
Why not just drive within the speed limit?
Or maybe I was just out during the day and didn’t have a chance to respond until now?
I didn’t post a complaint about speed cameras and certainly not a disingenuous one at that. I was just pointing out an incorrect assumption made by an official quoted in the article.
I do think it’s kinda silly that your response to the fact that cameras don’t have a means to control traffic or stop accidents is to ask why I don’t drive the speed limit.
I do.
And cameras still can’t stop me from getting into an accident.
And cameras still can’t stop me from getting into an accident.
Are you stupid? The whole premise is that the risk of actual consequences will slow people down, which in turn reduced the risk of getting into an accident.
If traffic cameras worked to prevent traffic violations they wouldn’t be revenue streams. People would just rationally follow the traffic laws to avoid consequences. Yet, in the real world, we know it will only slow down the people who think about consequences.
If traffic cameras worked to prevent traffic violations they wouldn’t be revenue streams.
They can be both lol. Prevent traffic violations for the people that care about the consequences, and a revenue stream from people that don’t.
Yet, in the real world, we know it will only slow down the people who think about consequences.
Better than nothing.
They literally can’t be both. If the camera is a revenue stream then people are constantly getting tickets, which means nothing has been solved.
I don’t really care about motorists, but that doesn’t stop me from acknowledging these as a scam
Not really. Awareness of punishment does little to abate crime in general and while increasing the chances of getting caught (say by automatic cameras) does discourage crime in a meaningful way it does not prevent it.
Even so, the camera itself is not offering protection. It has no mechanism to control traffic or stop an accident.
I see this language far too often around cameras, but the fact remains they serve only to incriminate after the fact, not to prevent before the fact.
If you want protection, reduce lane sizes, make drives less straight, install speed tables, incentive alternate arterial routes, make sure alternate forms of transportation are effective and available. Hell, install the cameras even, but don’t be dissolutioned that they are what is actually doing anything.
Speed cameras do work though. Here they are often used in specific places where people are driving too fast, especially if near schools and other places where it’s extra dangerous.
For example close to where I live there is a steep hill with a road that goes straight down and after there is a completely straight road and then a really small bridge with a bump.
Some people like to speed down the hill and basically “jump” the bridge bump. Fortunately a speed camera was installed at the bridge and they warn about it well in advance.
While you could technically redesign the road, it would be very costly compared to a camera and that road is a very small road with low traffic and private farmland (or grazing land, I don’t remember) on both sides.
Here the cameras aren’t even activated all the time just enough to achieve their goal of reducing traffic.
These are all better options, but that’ll require closing the road for a while and more money to spend, which have been gambled on leaving the EU from my American understanding of modern British history. Speed cameras are much cheaper, will not require road closure, and there have been studies indicating a 22% effectiveness after installation.
That is a bad take.
TL;DR: If you do incriminating stuff, you should be incriminated.
There are rules that every driver has to adhere to. The rules are there for protection of the drivers and the people that rely on the drivers driving safely. But the thing is: without consequences, some people show bad behaviour, one being ignoring the rules which are made to keep people safe. In order to suppress such behaviour, fines and punishment are used.
I have been driving cars for around 10 years and have gotten a fine three times. The amount I paid for it in total was roughly 10 Euros per year, which is less than 1 Euro per month. And I could have avoided having to pay this by just being mindful and acting according to the rules, which I did not.
If people feel like they should drive 120 kmh in a 50 kmh zone or even worse, without any proper justification, they do not belong behind the wheel of a car.
People would be less upset about the cameras if a) we weren’t already the most surveilled western country already. B) the fine for minor speeding was minor. as you mentioned you paid 100 euros for 3 fines. In the uk you can be fined for doing 33 in a 30, and the fine will be 100 euros per time, plus points that makes your insurance go up as well. And c) there weren’t so god slam many of them. I live in Europe now, but went back to the uk to visit friends and family and honestly there have to be about 40-50 times many cameras in the uk than in Germany!
Speaking from germany, 33 in a 30 wouldn’t even trip the speed cams here. Earliest infraction is basically doing 6mph over on a 30mph road, which would come at 50€ fine. We apparently also have 50 times less speed cameras and it absolutely does not stop people from fucking malding over them. They have to be designed bulletproof here now and even those still get regularly blown up. None of the points you raise change anything about it, because the core issue is people are terminally car brained
Plus they often feel like they’re placed to catch people who drift upto 35 on the downhill section of a road that looks like it should be national speed limit anyway.
If they didn’t feel like a way for them to make money people would accept them easier.
Personally I’m a rare sunday driver so they don’t really affect me but I absolutely see how people can be annoyed by them
Agreed. If they were actually there to stop speeding and not just cash in, then they would just put average cameras on every slip road and then nobody could speed on the motorway at all. Obviously this would be hell for someone like me but I couldn’t argue with it for safety really.
Just drive the speed limit and there’s no problem. Driving massive multiple ton killing machines is already a massive privilege, if you can’t adhere to simple rules of the road, you shouldnt be driving at all.
Self righteous much? You talk like it’s not possible to stray a bit over the speed limit and still be safe. Honestly imo, anyone timid enough to feel like 35mph in a 30 is genuine,seriously dangerous should not be allowed to drive. You should be confident and commanding of said multiple ton machine.
If that is your mindset, then just pretend every speed limit is 5mph lower than it is, so when you are going 5mph faster, you are still driving within the limit. It’s a matter of moving your own personal goalposts if you can’t follow a very simple limit. Not wanting to follow such a basic rule as stay within the speed limit tells me you shouldn’t be allowed to drive and if you cannot understand what a limit is, you should be retaking your test.
You are saying it should be fine to drive 5mph over the limit, okay so let’s say we make that legal. Now you are caught doing 37, that’s only 2mph over the 5mph extra we allow, so should you be punished? All you have effectively done is increase the speed limit by 5mph. The 30 on the sign, that’s all it is, a speed limit. It’s not saying “drive around this number”, it’s saying: do not drive above this number, that’s what a limit is. There’s already a 10% leniency on speed limits to account for things like instrumental errors and minor mishaps, but that doesn’t mean you should be knowingly driving 10% faster than the limit.
I am going to take my own advice and not engage with this any further as it’s a very simple subject of just following the rules of the road and arguing/encouraging otherwise is just illegal and dangerous advice. If you have a problem with a speed limit on a road, you should take that up with your local government and not drive over the limit.
I’m not saying they should abolish or raise speed limits at all. But I’m just sick of this sub randomly popping up on /all and everyone here freaking out that straying over the speed limit by a few mph is a heinous crime when realistically it makes little difference. Again, talking about 30-35 in a 30 not 40 or 50 or something. Makes me worried all these pussies are super jumpy and jittery behind the wheel instead of calm and collected, which imo would cause my accidents than people driving assertively and confidently.
TL;DR: If you do incriminating stuff, you should be incriminated.
Boot tasty.
Oh, yeah… so if you do incriminating stuff, say… acting in a way that directly leads to people being hurt, maimed and / or traumatized, you should just get a pat on the back. I will just have to presume that this is what you are saying.
acting in a way that directly leads to people being hurt, maimed and / or traumatized
If that’s your benchmark then 90% of people should be considered criminal.
Out of interest do you support Israel and/or the continuation of the war in Ukraine or do you support ceasefires?
It’s a bad TL;DR but they do lay out why it’s illegal
I couldn’t care less. These cameras exist entirely to make councils money. When they actually want traffic slowed they redesign the road properly with traffic islands.
Destroying these cameras is a good thing. It either fucks over council revenue sources that mainly fuck the poor while affecting the rich not one bit, or it results in getting actual redesigns of the roads properly because they do actually want that road to be safer.
This method is a little extreme though tbh we usually just chuck paint on them. This one is tall in order to make that less viable it seems.
What’s your usual transportation method?
Bus, train or taxi.
Do you not feel discouraged from speeding or running red lights when there are traffic enforcement cameras watching?
Governments are clamping down on protests against climate change: * silence *
Some idiots cut down speed cameras the people living there specifically asked for: YEAH! Fuck the police!!!1! Rage against the machine!!!1! Fuck mass surveillance!!!1!
Priorities , I guess.
Its easy to cut down a camera… How the fuck would you even go about trying to fix the first one a petition or someshit? Booooring fires up chainsaw
Not that I would ever seriously suggest this, but we could start crowdfunding the sabotage of polluting factories. Payout goes to whichever anonymous person correctly “guesses” the downtime. Just joking of course.
Man I would love to see that happen in a video game
That’s just going to put up the cost of living and result in more waste as less efficient replacements are put in place labelled temporary measures, also money will get spent on security rather than modernization of facilities - new builds got example using security focused design rather than energy efficient design.
It would be better to crowdfund the development of open source tools and products which are more ecologically sustainable while also being cheaper and better than the current option then collectively support and popularize it to put the prior company out of business.
Localized production of globally developed community products is how we actually beat capitalism, only problem is currently everyone wants to be rambo and no one wants to work as a cog in a citizen science r&d project, it’s not as sexy.
If we’re assuming that market forces can put these companies out of business, then additional spending on security would hasten that. It would be even cheaper for them to just reduce pollution in the first place - their net gains from excessive pollution are less than our net losses from it, making this an externality problem. So with defense on the table, the equilibrium becomes for them to pollute less.
Increased costs to polluters should trickle down to our cost of living about as much as decreased costs have - so, it won’t at all. The polluters are getting the whole surplus here.
Fossil fuels have tremendous engineering advantages if one ignores pollution. It’s not a given that we can invent an ecologically sustainable alternative that will outperform fossil fuels if there are low internal costs to polluting.
Edit: oh and I’m totally joking and haven’t given this a lot of thought or anything
Rocks are everywhere.
Power poles seem pretty vulnerable.
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Speed cameras don’t discriminate on who they stop, and their enforcement doesn’t turn violent like it can do for human enforcement.
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does ticketing the owner of the car, via automation, really accurately cite the offender? How does the camera know it was you, without a shadow of a doubt? You’re ticketing or citing the owner of the vehicle without them being present and stopped by an officer. Red Light cameras are just as bad. There’s no guarantee that the person who is listed as the owner was the one to drive the vehicle and commit the offense.
In the UK, where this is, the registered keeper of the vehicle is sent a letter requiring they identify the driver at the time of the incident. Lying about it is a serious offence if caught. So, yes, it’s as accurate as can be.
Do you want to have to defend yourself halfway across town or the state/territory/region you live in when someone steals or borrows your car without permission and speeds or runs a red light?
You’d have reported your car stolen to the police. Again, lying about this is a serious offence.
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Ok, what better infrastructure do you recommend? Consider a 60mph straight road that passes through a village with shops and schools on both sides of the road, currently a 30mph speed limit through that section.
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Speed cameras aren’t hidden in the UK. They are always preceded by warning signs and the cameras themselves are in big yellow boxes that are completely obvious. You’d have to be blind to miss one.
This isn’t privacy issue. It’s just an issue for bad drivers.
Agreed. They are also only activated when the radar has actually detected something.
It’s one of the few cases where I say “Why do you care if you don’t do it?” because the only purpose in this case is to catch people doing illegal things and in theory the license plate of drivers who don’t go over the speed limit shouldn’t be photographed.
They’ve also shown that they work in school zones where the limit is lower than anywhere else, so in my opinion they should at least be installed in all school zones.
Lol no the only purpose is increasing revenue via fines.
If it was a real safety deterrent there would be some immediate feedback like a text message, assuming you have your phone number in your driver’s licence registration. Instead oblivious drivers will be going too fast in that stretch of road for weeks before getting tickets in the mail, and then they’ll get a bunch of tickets.
The point is to hit them with the fine 5+ times not once.
Lol no the only purpose is increasing revenue via fines.
In the UK the police do not receive the income from the fines. The purpose is to increase safety on the roads.
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Right 3 months
Better than any source proving they don’t work that you brought
It’s not they don’t work to decrease speeding… They do. It’s that if the point was immediate deterrence there would be some feedback to the driver they just got a ticket, like the kind of immediate feedback you get when you are pulled over by a real cop.
Why? We don’t even need to bother, they’re proven to work pretty much as soon as they’re installed!
Okay, so you know how it sucks to have people ignore rules and ignore you and your safety, you know how it feels to be treated like dirt by other people… and they probably do it because they do not fear any consequences for themselves and think they are in the right.
So I need to ask you: how will they ever be taught that you have rights that need to be upheld?
The same question has been asked regarding speed limits and speed cameras are one of the answers. And a pretty good one too. The article says:
The cameras in Perranarworthal were installed in March 2023 after campaigning from residents. Where the speed camera is, or was, it’s used by parents taking their children to two primary schools … it’s one of the busiest crossings in Truro and there’s been a number of quite bad accidents. For hundreds of people in that area, the speed cameras actually had a really positive effect on their quality of life. Parents feel safe letting their kids walk to school now.
What has happened here is just completely antisocial behaviour that is ruled by selfish thinking. This is not kicking big brother’s ass. This is kicking asses of people who can not defend themselves against idiots in better ways.
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Yeah this is one of those needs other methods of speed control. Cameras and tickets can only do much.
Yeah, fuck mass surveillance. Anyone downing cameras is ok in my book
If people are driving too fast on a road then the road is badly designed. Speed cameras are a bandage covering up the problem of shit infrastructure.
Better infrastructure would be great, but there will always be places where you will need to drive slower than the designed speed, and drivers should be able to follow that if they’re going to be allowed to pilot a large and dangerous vehicle.
Traffic calming and speed cameras are carrot and stick in lowering the speed of roads. Lowering the design speed of roads alone is never going to stop drivers in a hurry from driving dangerously fast. People aren’t deterred from commiting crimes by heavy penalties, they are deterred by the chance of getting caught. Automatic traffic enforcement raises that chance to 100%.
Lowering the design speed of roads alone is never going to stop drivers in a hurry from driving dangerously fast
Why wouldn’t it? If drivers feel unsafe speeding down a road then they simply won’t speed, rendering speed cameras unnecessary. If you see a speed bump ahead of you aren’t you going slow down?
Speed cameras are applicable to all roads, from the 30 km/h residential street to the 140 km/h highway. Speed cameras are also self-funding and thus have a negative cost. Fines collected by speed cameras can be used to finance road redesign and traffic calming measures.
It’s not like that in every country. For example, speed cameras in Italy can’t be placed in 30 km/h zones
They can also be used to kickback to the politician and the lobbyist who work for the company that profits from them.
Please explain to me where the money to redesign and rebuild like half the city’s roads is going to come from if not from a transitional period of speed cameras.
Say, why are you such a virulent opponent of speed cameras? Do you find yourself to be a chronic speeder?
I don’t drive. But when when did you stop beating your wife?
Lol the absolute state of speed camera opposers
If you don’t drive, you have literally no reason to oppose speed cameras. Speed cameras reduce the negative externalities of cars at literally no cost to you. If you don’t drive, you cannot get a speed ticket.
Also, for the China fans out there, consider how the widespread implementation of automatic traffic enforcement cameras in China that do things from watching if you’re speeding, to watching if you’re driving in multiple lanes at once, to watching if you’re wearing a seatbelt have massively improved driving conditions and reduced road chaos in China. Automatic traffic enforcement makes driving better.
We could expropriate the expropriators. 😉
The same can be said for anything that the government contracts out. Road building is another good example, and there’s a lot more money to go around there than with speed cameras.
I was once passed by someone who was speeding along a narrow, windy road while I was following the speed limit. That entire length of road is a no passing zone. If they had passed slightly later, they would have had a head-on collision with another automobile that was coming the opposite direction. Some people will just do dumb things, no matter the road design.
I mean so what’s to be done then. I agree on “redesign pretty much every street or road” but like, until then, it’s just a great big free for all?
If the road is dangerously designed, close the road.
Ah yes, let’s just close all the roads in the country until we get that sorted out, great idea.
I’m not sure if you’re being serious here
Why not? It’s obviously a huge hazard and people can’t be trusted to use it safely. So for the public health and safety this road should be closed. This also means the poor council doesn’t need to maintain this road anymore saving money in the long run. Maybe a train could even replace where the road was increases throughput and safety for everyone.
Why not?
Because that’s hardly what can be considered a realistic solution. Again, not against it, but what, are you gonna close down like 90% of roads? Only some of them, if so, which ones, and how is stuff handled on the ones that remain open?
Not all roads, just roads that “require” speed cameras.
just roads that “require” speed cameras.
So when’s that the case or not
I’m sure your plan will be popular with the motoring public that anti speed camera rhetoric is trying to appeal to.
Lmao cutting down speed cameras is praxis. Jog on. These things are just there to make local councils money.
When they actually want a slower road they put speed bumps or traffic islands on it.
Yes, let’s stick speedbumps on the M4 clean air zone outside Newport, that’ll solve things.
Eh? This is nowhere near Newport and it’s not a motorway either.
There are speed cameras all over the country, including on non-residential roads where traffic calming measures are not appropiate interventions.
They wouldn’t make money if people managed to, you know, just follow the speed limit. If you can’t follow a basic rule of the road you shouldn’t be driving.
We live in material reality, not a fantasy in your head. Justifying bullshit that specifically fucks over the poor while not really affecting the rich (because fines are just fees you pay to break the law when you’re rich enough for them to be minor inconveniences) with what amounts to Cartman screaming RESPECT MAH AUTHORITAH is bullshit. You want people to actually slow down? Redesign the road.
This praxis does two things, it prevents the poor being fucked over if these are just there to make council money, or it causes them to give up on the camera and properly redesign the road when it’s actually about real safety concerns.
Given this has happened before and they only replaced the camera I’m siding with “it’s for council income not actual safety”. If they do it again I feel doubley vindicated in that opinion. If it’s actually about real safety concerns they’ll give up on the camera and add in pedestrian refuge islands to slow traffic instead. Love these badboys
You want people to actually slow down? Redesign the road.
I’ve posed this question elsewhere in this thread and: what until then? Like what do you do until a good, what, 50 - 90% of road depending on criteria, is redesigned?
The process and length of time it takes for either option are practically the same. It’s irrelevant. Not to mention a traffic island costs like £3k while a camera costs £85k (guess why they pick the camera despite the price).
The process and length of time it takes for either option are practically the same.
Sure, but you’re arguing for like instant speed camera abolishment or destruction here, aye?
Not to mention a traffic island costs like £3k while a camera costs £85k (guess why they pick the camera despite the price).
Dunno if you got to that one already but I’ve did a reply pointing out where you’re a bit off there
Sure, but you’re arguing for like instant speed camera abolishment or destruction here, aye?
As a means of discouraging their construction in the first place and the harm they do to the poor I am defending the person who did this.
I am not advocating anyone do anything illegal.
You can just say yes, you don’t have to couch this shit in a good WKUK skit.
Do they do harm to the poor that are on bicycles, or walking, then?
Upvoted for an early reference of South Park
The local community campaigned to get these speed cameras because people were speeding. Redesigning the road would be great, if the council had money to, but I doubt they do.
Poor people aren’t getting screwed over by this because poor people can’t afford to drive, they’re the ones that have to deal with the unsafe driving of the middle class dada on their German coupes that can’t bare to drive at less that 50mph.
It literally says in this article that one of the cameras mentioned has clocked 17,000 people. Of course they have money to do it. Croydon council responded to FOI request stating it costs £2.5-£3.5k to install traffic islands. The cost of a speed camera installation on the other hand is £85,000 according to Bedford Council, with a £5000 annual upkeep cost.
The cost of physical redesign traffic calming measures is significantly cheaper to install than the cameras, whose cost is justified by councils because of the income they bring in thereafter.
The insistence on replacing it instead of doing something else is being justified internally because even with these attacks they consider it to be making more than it’s costing them.
Poor people aren’t getting screwed over by this because poor people can’t afford to drive,
Mate fuck right off. This statement just screams that you’ve never actually done any organising or volunteering with the poor in the UK. Please volunteer at a food bank for once in your fucking life and learn what kinds of people the 3million people in this country attending them are like. It will surprise you, expand your view of society a bit, and you’ll be doing an actually-good useful thing.
The poorest people own the fewest cars, and are the most affected by things like air pollution, and if they do have to own cars they’re the ones most at hurt by car dependency (which is perpetuated by road violence caused by things like speeding).
And please don’t pretend like you know my life.
If you say utterly stupid ass things like poor people don’t own cars I will absolutely assume you don’t interact with the people struggling to survive in this country in any capacity. It’s a bloody stupid thing to say mate.
I mean what I said, go and volunteer and see for yourself.
I’m sorry I didn’t think I needed to spell it out that much to you. Obviously I don’t think all poor people don’t drive. But the poorest don’t, and statistically poorer people drive a lot less and are more impacted by things like this.
Croydon council responded to FOI request stating it costs £2.5-£3.5k to install traffic islands. The cost of a speed camera installation on the other hand is £85,000 according to Bedford Council, with a £5000 annual upkeep cost.
Croydon cites average cost for roughly such an action at 2,5k - 3,5k in a denial of the FOI request which means there’s pretty much no way to know how much it actually costs depending on what they calculate the average on and if you have any idea about the cost of public works that number should strike you as very, very oddly low.
Wiltshire government here cites about 45.000k for a traffic island narrowing a road to one lane, all in all.
The source you cite for the cameras, however, puts those costs for 2 cameras, so 42,500 a pop / 2500 upkeep annual, albeit with returns via fines obviously.
Couldn’t they just plant some of these bad boys along the road? Like, put two in the center, and you have a pedestrian refuge island.
“Speed trap” cameras are an entirely apt name. The solution to speeding isn’t cameras, or patrols, or administrative controls, it’s traffic calming, and that reduces capacity, so it’s not considered. The trap is driving on the road at speeds they seem to be designed for, with speed limits significantly lower.
Fuck cars, but fuck cops more. We don’t need to live in a panopticon. These cameras are a step in the wrong direction, and while I don’t think the person who cut them down is doing the right thing for the right reasons, they are doing the right thing.
and while I don’t think the person who cut them down is doing the right thing for the right reasons, they are doing the right thing.
So you think they are doing the right thing for… the wrong reasons?
Yeah, the omnipotentEntity seems to lack a bit of reasoning here.
Cameras are enforcement without the discrimination and potential for violence that cops bring.
Traffic calming is great but it’s also more expensive. Maybe drivers should just try driving below the speed limit.
Incorrect; they discriminate disproportionately on poor people
Unless the fines are proportional to wealth, I don’t see how you can argue that they’re not disproportionally punishing the poorest who are caught.
I agree the fines should be proportionate, but a police officer doing the enforcement can stop whoever they don’t like the look of whether or not they are actually speeding whereas a camera will only target those who are actually, you know, speeding.
I didn’t say pigs are any better.
My point is if someone has the wealth to not feel the fine, the camera does nothing to influence their behaviour and such target those who can’t afford it.
If not cameras and not police then it’s what? Just let people drive as fast as they want?
Shrug a better solution? Most roads have neither, why are you speaking as if it’s a requirement?
Speeding drivers get points on their licence regardless of their wealth.
So they get a few opportunities before feeling any kind of punishment?
I’ve had a speeding ticket where I was offered a “no points” option to pay a higher fine. That was only offered after I showed up in court. This would discriminate against poorer drivers.
However it throws hundreds of people through the equally discriminatory criminal justice system, and allows car insurance companies to jack up rates. Functioning even more effectively as a tax on being different than regular cops do. It also creates a financial incentive for the government not to fix the underlying cause of the problem of speeding.
Wishing and hoping for people to be better than they are isn’t a solution. Just because traffic calming is more expensive, that’s not a reason to not do it. It is something that needs to be done if you want to break car dependency.
Wishing and hoping for people to be better than they are isn’t a solution. Just because traffic calming is more expensive, that’s not a reason to not do it. It is something that needs to be done if you want to break car dependency.
We should be doing that, but local councils don’t have the money after more than a decade of tory austerity. I also believe that driver’s should be able to drive below the speed limit even if the road isn’t correct for it, because there will always be places like that (around construction, for example), and like you say we can’t just wish and hope for them to follow that rule so some enforcement is needed.
In engineering, there is an idea called hierarchy of controls.
Traffic calming is a “substitution” of the hazard. It, like unexpected construction, forces drivers to slow down due to the road not being psychologically safe to drive fast on.
Speed limits are an “administrative control” on the other hand.
People will drive as fast as they (possibly incorrectly) feel is safe, and a lot goes into that, of which speeding fines are only one very small part. If you really want safe streets for pedestrians and motorists, it is just not as effective an option.
Additionally, I’m level certain that Tory austerity is not really a viable excuse here, because I’m sure that there are ongoing efforts to “alleviate the traffic problem” by adding capacity. It’s not that the money doesn’t exist, it’s that the money doesn’t exist for this. Because elected officials aren’t interested in this, because they’re more interested in fine revenue and keeping car people happy.
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No offense but you should re-read the posts above.
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The sentence just prior.
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Theres an interesting argument by Chuck Mahron against speed cameras: https://podcast.strongtowns.org/e/the-arguments-for-speed-cameras…and-why-they-don-t-hold-up/
The core of his argument is that it’s bad to punish normal behavior, instead you should just do traffic calming, even cheap traffic calming
You will unconsciously drive as fast as the road allows you unless you keep checking your speedometer. Some cars too can insulate you from the noise and sense of speed that you will drive faster than you’d typically do in another car.
Spoken as someone who doesn’t drive.
Did you know that keeping track of your speed is easy and a critical part of driving?
Some cars too can insulate you from the noise and sense of speed that you will drive faster than you’d typically do in another car.
How about electric cars?
Lol when I read the title I was happy for them
They should put up a new one for each one vandalised
Unlimited funding for speed camera’s and kickbacks, zero funding for road redesign? That sounds really safe!
They need a vandalism camera on the speeding cameras!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A speed camera that was only recently replaced was among two cut down overnight in Cornwall.In the latest attack on the county’s speed traps, police said the speed camera at Perranarworthal had been cut down for a second time after it was first vandalised in October 2023 and replaced in November.Another camera was also attacked on Tregolls Road in Truro at about 03:10 GMT, officers said.Devon and Cornwall Police said those responsible had left the scene before officers arrived.
The cameras in Perranarworthal were installed in March 2023 after campaigning from residents.Cornwall Councillor Peter Williams, who represents Perranarworthal, said: "It is absolutely horrendous why people go and do these things under the noses of where people live.
The speed camera on Tregolls Road in Truro had more than 17,000 activations the year after it was installed, according to police.Loic Rich, Truro City Councillor for the Tregolls Ward, said parents had complained about the dangers of speeding in the area.He said: "Where the speed camera is, or was, it’s used by parents taking their children to two primary schools … it’s one of the busiest crossings in Truro and there’s been a number of quite bad accidents.
"For hundreds of people in that area, the speed cameras actually had a really positive effect on their quality of life.
"Whoever’s cut down the speed camera, and I don’t know why they’ve done that or what they’re trying to achieve, I think it’s a real shame.
Cornwall Council and Devon and Cornwall Police, both members of the Vision Zero Road Safety partnership, said in a joint statement that they were disappointed to see “yet more mindless vandalism targeted at safety cameras”.They said: “These devices were installed at the wishes of the community to improve road safety in areas, which had previously experienced high speeds and several serious and fatal collisions.“While these cameras are inactive, these communities no longer have the protection they were once afforded, which is really saddening.“The cost of replacing these cameras is also a burden which has to be footed by the taxpayer, making these attacks all the more bizarre.”
The original article contains 434 words, the summary contains 350 words. Saved 19%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Meh, fuck the cameras. They don’t stop the actual dangerous drivers and just end up tagging folks going 8mph (13kph) over. Fix the street and infrastructure.
From 1992 to 2016, speed cameras reduced accidents by between 17 to 39 per cent and fatalities by between 58 to 68 per cent within 500 metres of the cameras.
Fixing the infra would be great but local councils often just don’t have the money to.
Sounds like they need to increase road taxes then which will have the helpful knock-on affect of reducing the number of cars on the road.
Road tax doesn’t exist in the UK, and if it did it wouldn’t be something the local council has any control over. We need to get rids of the tories in the central government and start funding local councils better.
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So why do folks go 13 kph over? And why is that okay?
Because god forbid we have a small variance for error and using common sense. God forbid I go faster when traffic is minimal or use any judgement while driving. Fuck me for thinking a ticket for going 5 over isn’t worth a beating.
Good. Speed cameras are an abominable hypocrisy. The claim that they’re there because safety is important is undermined by the total lack of action Devon and Cornwall police take against actual unsafe drivers.
I drove past a police officer standing with a speed camera recently at 20mph with another car driving less than two feet from my bumper.
Had I been speeding I’d have gotten a ticket, meanwhile the police watch this actually dangerous driver sail past them without taking any action.
Half a mile later I have to drive onto the wrong side of the road around a lorry parked on a corner, with almost no visibility of oncoming traffic.
Their moral authority is destroyed and their pretence shattered by their own inaction and ineffectiveness.
So tear down the speed cameras if it highlights their fiction. Devon and Cornwall police are great at many things. Traffic is not one of them.
A place where I lived they installed eur 600k worth of cameras. I mean every little corner was covered.
Well one day I got beaten up and the police didn’t care when I tried to report it. And another day I found a backpack so I brought it to the police and this woman was incredibly rude to me.
I mean for 600k they could have a full time patrol there!
I don’t really get your argument.
Speed cameras are designed to do one thing – issue citations for speeding.
The job of the police officer is to identify a wide array of crimes and issue citations for them, when they observe them.
The incident where a car was tailgating you and the incident where a lorry was creating an unsafe driving situation have absolutely nothing to do with the speeding camera. Both of those situations are the responsibility of a policy officer, if they are alerted to the crime or observe it themselves. You have a valid complaint about the complacency of your local law enforcement, but what does your argument have to do with the speed camera?
The basis for the rationale for putting up speed cameras depends on the police to act with an unquestionable moral authority.
By acting with inconsistent moral principles they demonstrate their stated and genuine motives differ which undermines the moral authority they need to police by consent.
The basis for the rationale for putting up speed cameras depends on the police to act with an unquestionable moral authority.
No, it doesn’t?
Yes it does
It explicitly takes control away from the police and moves it to simple sensors and circuits, as well as simple bureaucratic mailing lists. If it screws up, you can either request a manual review of the footage or spend an afternoon to bring your own evidence it in front of a judge. The police have nothing to do with it.
Except when the camera is in the policeman’s hand and when they run the training courses you mean?
Well, we are talking about a pole mounted camera, and if it was misscalibrated is would be very easy to prove, so yes?
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Once?
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Given that they need to police by consent, they very much need that MoRaL aUtHoRITy to do tHeIr JoBs
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That is basically what is said here, yes.
Speed cameras are known to decrease safety. There have been many studies on this.
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I had a look earlier and only saw the opposite (see https://www.lse.ac.uk/News/Latest-news-from-LSE/2017/10-October-2017/Speed-cameras-reduce-road-accidents-and-traffic-deaths-according-to-new-study), do you have any links?
“There have been many studies”
Then cites no studies
Alright, I gotta ask. What’s the speed limit, and what’s the threshold that you get mailed a ticket?
I’m asking because in the state where I live in the US, speed cameras were outlawed unless a police officer was stationed to sit there and watch it all day. The reason being is that people were getting mailed $200 tickets for going 1 mph over the speed limit. This was problematic because no car’s speedometer is perfectly calibrated, and people who tried to do the right thing were getting a dozen tickets in the mail before they even realized they’d done something wrong.
Also, cameras were disproportionately being installed in poor neighborhoods, punishing more people without the means to pay the tickets. Which is obviously not a safety measure, but a punitive measure.
The tolerance is usually 10% + 2 mph in the UK.
So going 39mph in a 35mph zone gets you a ticket? I’d probably cut down the camera too, in that case. You’d spend more time watching the speedo than the road, which would make the road less safe.
Um, you do know that being able to acutely control your speed is a critical prerequisite for being able to operate a motor vehicle, right? Being unable to keep it within a 2-3 mph range is not normal, and may indicate a minor neurological condition or lack of patrice and training. You should not be getting task saturated monitoring your speed, as beyond watching for people entering the road before you, monitoing for lights and signs, and monitoring the space between the vehicle in front of you, speed control is the fourth most important thing to keep an eye on while using our shared pubic road infrastructure.
Cruise control exists, and is an very useful way to reduce task saturation if you need to, but if you don’t have that in your vehicle may I suggest the radical idea of aiming for a speed slow enough you won’t unknowingly cross the limit by that much. The speed limit is the upper bound, not lower. Like just do try and do 30 or 25 if you can’t tell the difference. Thanks to how travel times work, it won’t even have that much impact on your arrival time at ranges short enough to be done on 35mph streets.
You are operating an device that can kill innocent unrelated strangers in an instant, it is YOUR job to do so safely within the bounds of the road networks design. If you are unable to do so, then you are unable to do so. There is no shame in that, much like there is no shame in needing glasses, but please, adjust your life so that you don’t risk killing innocent people at risk for your own convenience.
Being too attentative (distracted) to the speedometer is far more dangerous than the harm of going 5-9 mph over in many cases. And like mentioned earlier in tbe thread, many cars have a spedometer only accurate within 2-4 mph.
Being able to tell how fast your vehicle is moving to within a 2 to 4 mph range, what the law in question id designed to accommodate for, is not being too attentive to the speedometer. It is part of the very basic foundation of being able to control a motor vehicle. Again, I’m sorry you are only leaning this now, but being unable to do so is not normal for a driver.
Our common roads, vehicles, insurance, and laws are all designed under the assumption that going five over is an intentional act because for nearly all drivers it very much is.
I worry that like much like it might be hard for a child to realize they need glasses becuse they assume their normal and everyone else’s vision is as bad as their’s, you are assuming that everyone struggles with monitoing their speed to within five to ten miles an hour, they don’t. That’s one of the things that a drivers test is soposed to test for in the first place.
A speedometer that is only accurate to within 2 to 4 mph is still only off by 2 mph at most on average, given that the center of that range is going to be on the vehicle’s real speed.
At the speeds we’re talking about, being nine over is equivalent to an extra half a vehicle’s worth of kinetic energy on top of what the road was designed for, which has a very big impact on whether or not your vehicle’s breaks can act to dissipate that energy in the time the civil engineers who designed the road system assume it will.
Please provide a source that going 44 in a 35 is far less dangerous than what should be a subconscious part of driving. All I could find was this study, which shows that if you don’t see them come out from behind a parked car on the side of the road in time, and if you are struggling to monitor the speedometer that is likely, going from an impact speed of 32mph to 42 mph, doubles the odds of killing the person you just hit.
There are no 35mph zones in the UK. They’re all multiples of 10. The limits are well known and we’re taught how to follow them, it’s not the problem you’re making it out to be.
I think speeding is fun actually
Damn right op, going at 30 rather than 20 is a terrible thing to do. Driving at 20 is the moral choice. Yes it means your commute will be 50% longer than if you’d driven at 30, but that’s a sacrifice we should all be willing to make, said no-one with a 2 hour daily commute.
You use twice as mich fuel to accelerate from 0 to 30mph as 0 to 20mph, and if you hit a pedestrian at 30mph there’s a 20% chance it will be fatal Vs 2.5% at 20mph.
You are never going to average the speed limits throughout your drive, unless you’re speeding. In an urban environment, where 20mph speed limits are used, you will lose seconds on your journey.
But anyway, where is this coming from? The post is about speed cameras, not what the limits are set to. Why are you even bringing that up?
Quite simple really, every speed camera you put up usually ties in with a lowered speed limit.
Except it won’t be 50% longer, not unless you’re going cross country. If you’re driving anything less than 100+ MI =,10 mph isn’t going to make pretty much any difference in your commute time at all. Not to mention your just going to hit a light and someone traveling the actual speed limit will then pull up right along side you while you wait
30mph - 30 miles in 1 hour 20mph - 20 miles in 1 hour, or 30 miles in 1.5 hours
However, you do have a point about the hell that is stop-start traffic.
That’s the point yes, looking purely at math assuming a completely 100% clear no stop Journey it would be faster. But that’s not how life works, you stop at lights, you slow down at ramps, you stop at intersections. All of these things together make it so that unless you’re traveling like a hundred miles or more it’s just not going to make a difference. I very regularly make trips between Seattle and Portland, the difference between trying to cruise control 65 the whole way and trying to cruise control 75 the whole way isn’t very large. Last time I remember trying I think it was about a 20 minute difference in a trip that is almost 3 hours Real world slowdowns end up equalizing much of the journey
As someone who commuted an hour each way for a year, I both calculated to the best of my ability and then tested. I could shave 5 minutes off by going 65 instead of 55 on the 55 mph highways, and fuel consumption was significantly higher. Going 30 in a 20 zone will do jack shit for someone commuting on surface streets
