4 ms·

To me it feels like Texas is the exception rather than the rule here. I have no idea how the rest of the US is, but in the Netherlands if you go 10 mph (16 kmh)

by dtech 10y ago

To me it feels like Texas is the exception rather than the rule here. I have no idea how the rest of the US is, but in the Netherlands if you go 10 mph (16 kmh) above the speed limit you'll often end up with a €121 ticket in your mail since speed cameras are ubiquitous. To be fair speeding tickets are mostly used as an extra road tax here with a thin veil of safety, but I still wouldn't want to drive in a car that automatically decides to sent me €100+ tickets.

revelation 10y ago
Just because you don't remember a time without speed cameras doesn't mean they are ineffective and a "thin veil of safety". It's like vaccines, over time people seem to forget why we have them in the first place. France makes an excellent case study for this. They only implemented speed cameras and related safety measures around 2002/2003 but managed a remarkable drop in fatalities and average speeds [1][2]. Speed is insidious; we live in a three-dimensional world so drag increases quadratically with velocity, or going at 40mph requires four times as much power as at 20mph, and there is of course a corresponding increase in the kinetic energy in an impact. This is particularly important for pedestrians, where the difference between 20mph and 30mph is likely injury vs likely death. 1: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23298692 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23298692 2: http://imgur.com/a/of7JV http://imgur.com/a/of7JV
- dbg31415 10y ago
  > Just because you don't remember a time without speed cameras Sorry... I'm not even from Texas, but I've lived here for 12 years. I do love it. And I find so much of it hilarious. The government here does everything it can to put itself out of business. Speed cameras, for example, are banned in Texas. * Texas Transportation Code - TRANSP § 542.2035 | FindLaw || http://codes.findlaw.com/tx/transportation-code/transp-sect-542-2035.html http://codes.findlaw.com/tx/transportation-code/transp-sect-...
  - brianwawok 10y ago
    After having lived with red light cameras in Chicago and all the corruption that entailed... Go Texas.
- dtech 10y ago
  I have not lived in a time when there were no speeding cameras where I lived, so it's not some kind of weird nostalgia. I have no doubt that speeding cameras make the road safer, but they are being abused in the Netherlands, because they are a very good source of income. For example, driving 4 kmh (2.5 mph) over the limit causes a €37 fine. The threshhold for fining has been lowered from 10 kmh to 4 kmh. Fines have quadrupled over the last 3 decades. This all gets worse because we have 4 (80, 100, 120, 130) + dynamic as common limits on the highways, which change every few kilometres on some roads with only minimal signs. A large amounts of fines was actually declared invalid by court because of this reason.
dbg31415 10y ago
Please keep in mind that Texas is the 2nd most populated US state. Hard to dismiss that large of a market as an outlier. But it's also a good example of why there are so many different traffic laws and enforcement policies across the US. Texas (28M people over 696,241 km2) is very different than states like New Jersey (9M people over 22,591 km2). For giggles... Just one city in Texas, Houston, has a metro-area footprint of 26,060 km2 -- bigger than a 8 US States in terms of land area, and bigger than 33 states in terms of population -- again, that's just one city. Population density varies widely between our 254 counties as well (one county had about 4.5M people, another had 112). We aren't a one-size-fits-all sort of place, Texas or America. * List of U.S. states by population density - Wikipedia || https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_population_density https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_populat... * List of countries and territories by population density - Wikipedia || https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_territories_by_population_density https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_territor... * Texas County Population Estimates, 2010-2015 Arranged in Descending Order | TSLAC || https://www.tsl.texas.gov/ref/abouttx/popcnty201011.html https://www.tsl.texas.gov/ref/abouttx/popcnty201011.html
- dtech 10y ago
  Maybe I worded it slightly wrong, I was simply trying to make the point that the vehicle behavior that irritated you (keeping the speed limit) is the absolutely sanest thing to do in other places and can have a high cost for the driver if not followed depending on the location.

by dtech 10y ago

revelation 10y ago

Just because you don't remember a time without speed cameras doesn't mean they are ineffective and a "thin veil of safety". It's like vaccines, over time people seem to forget why we have them in the first place. France makes an excellent case study for this. They only implemented speed cameras and related safety measures around 2002/2003 but managed a remarkable drop in fatalities and average speeds [1][2]. Speed is insidious; we live in a three-dimensional world so drag increases quadratically with velocity, or going at 40mph requires four times as much power as at 20mph, and there is of course a corresponding increase in the kinetic energy in an impact. This is particularly important for pedestrians, where the difference between 20mph and 30mph is likely injury vs likely death. 1: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23298692 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23298692 2: http://imgur.com/a/of7JV http://imgur.com/a/of7JV

dbg31415 10y ago
> Just because you don't remember a time without speed cameras Sorry... I'm not even from Texas, but I've lived here for 12 years. I do love it. And I find so much of it hilarious. The government here does everything it can to put itself out of business. Speed cameras, for example, are banned in Texas. * Texas Transportation Code - TRANSP § 542.2035 | FindLaw || http://codes.findlaw.com/tx/transportation-code/transp-sect-542-2035.html http://codes.findlaw.com/tx/transportation-code/transp-sect-...
- brianwawok 10y ago
  After having lived with red light cameras in Chicago and all the corruption that entailed... Go Texas.
dtech 10y ago
I have not lived in a time when there were no speeding cameras where I lived, so it's not some kind of weird nostalgia. I have no doubt that speeding cameras make the road safer, but they are being abused in the Netherlands, because they are a very good source of income. For example, driving 4 kmh (2.5 mph) over the limit causes a €37 fine. The threshhold for fining has been lowered from 10 kmh to 4 kmh. Fines have quadrupled over the last 3 decades. This all gets worse because we have 4 (80, 100, 120, 130) + dynamic as common limits on the highways, which change every few kilometres on some roads with only minimal signs. A large amounts of fines was actually declared invalid by court because of this reason.

dbg31415 10y ago

Please keep in mind that Texas is the 2nd most populated US state. Hard to dismiss that large of a market as an outlier. But it's also a good example of why there are so many different traffic laws and enforcement policies across the US. Texas (28M people over 696,241 km2) is very different than states like New Jersey (9M people over 22,591 km2). For giggles... Just one city in Texas, Houston, has a metro-area footprint of 26,060 km2 -- bigger than a 8 US States in terms of land area, and bigger than 33 states in terms of population -- again, that's just one city. Population density varies widely between our 254 counties as well (one county had about 4.5M people, another had 112). We aren't a one-size-fits-all sort of place, Texas or America. * List of U.S. states by population density - Wikipedia || https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_population_density https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_populat... * List of countries and territories by population density - Wikipedia || https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_territories_by_population_density https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_territor... * Texas County Population Estimates, 2010-2015 Arranged in Descending Order | TSLAC || https://www.tsl.texas.gov/ref/abouttx/popcnty201011.html https://www.tsl.texas.gov/ref/abouttx/popcnty201011.html

dtech 10y ago
Maybe I worded it slightly wrong, I was simply trying to make the point that the vehicle behavior that irritated you (keeping the speed limit) is the absolutely sanest thing to do in other places and can have a high cost for the driver if not followed depending on the location.