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NY Man Arrested for Cutting Wires to Red Light Cameras (2016)
- xutopia 8y agoHe's probably right about being a scheme... goes about it entirely the wrong way to stop the scheme.
- gameswithgo 8y agoWhat approach can a normal, non wealthy, non connected citizen take?
- monochromatic 8y agoGet the local news to make a stink.
- syshum 8y agoSeems like he tried that, and other venues and was ignored.
- ngngngng 8y agoIn America? hahahahahahahahaha
- alphabettsy 8y agoIdk. Also, a bit crazy, but maybe called to say he was going to do it with news coverage, but not actually do it?
- CarVac 8y agoAny way to get a law in the books that specifies a minimum yellow light duration for a given speed limit? www.shortyellowlights.com/standards/ has a formula.
- pkaye 8y agoI know there is a state wide rules in California. And because of complaints about red light cameras, they even increased some of the limits by 0.5s. I'm not sure of the exact numbers right now. I know my own city was caught doing some of these games but after the changes were made, they saw a 77% drop in red light tickets at some locations.
- cwkoss 8y agoSeems like he would have gotten away with snipping the wires if he didn't ask the news to report on it...
- Miner49er 8y agowhat way would you suggest? keep in mind that the longer it takes the more people will die/be injured.
- kamarg 8y agoI may not understand how these cameras work but how does cutting the power to these prevent those people from being injured/dying? Sure people aren't going to get tickets from them but the yellow light is still going to be shortened. So even if they take the cameras out, unless they put the yellow light back to 5 seconds, the injury/fatality rate is still going to be elevated.
- kempbellt 8y agoSometimes, civil disobedience can be the right way to solve a systemic problem
- Kaveren 8y agoCivil disobedience is sometimes necessary. Good on him. I hope he brings more attention to this story so that action may be taken to change the system.
- PhasmaFelis 8y agoGoing through proper channels failed completely, so all he can do at this point is try to bring attention to it. He's certainly succeeded at that, since this article is the first I've heard of it.
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y agoThe ability / desire / necessity to break laws where those laws are dysfunctional is, at the very least, important, if not essential to a healthy society. We call this civil disobedience. The article draws attention to this. From the article: The shortened duration times at the traffic lights generate $32 million for Suffolk County, which is why the county allows the practice to continue despite their own study showing they lead to an increase in accidents with injuries. The wrong people have been arrested here. If you can't offer a comprehensive alternative to his actions then your comment lacks substance.
- dymk 8y agoYou sue. You don't go destroying property.
- vsviridov 8y agoA private middle class citizen suing a $7B company... Yeah, right...
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- dymk 8y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_action https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_action
- syshum 8y agolol, Yea... You do know the government has sovereign immunity right, and a cause of action around Traffic Management would be tossed almost instantly
- jessaustin 8y ago"You" don't have standing to sue unless you have been harmed. He got a traffic citation, which is an extremely small harm. No lawyer would pick that up on contingency. Small claims court would throw it right out as frivolous without even considering the larger issues. Now what?
- empath75 8y agoThis is classic civil disobedience. He actually did it in public and asked to be arrested. That's the way it's supposed to be done.
- endorphone 8y agoA few years ago these claims would have been considered conspiratorial, and would have yielded public outrage. Now it's just banal and accepted that a municipality and private company got together to manipulate and effectively rob their own citizens. How have politics become so corrupt? At the early days of the broadly available internet I was sure it would lead to a more informed public, and from that a more accountable, responsible leadership. If anything we have gone in the opposite direction.
- docbrown 8y ago>How have politics become so corrupt? Anonymous dark money being funneled into politicians pockets, a complete lack of oversight on many departments and overall complacency from many people who now view the security state as a safety measure for us all.
- nickthemagicman 8y agoThis. Citizens United's effects are just beginning to be felt.
- wowzap 8y agoOh Christ. Why is Citizen's United bad? All it says is you can make a political film leading up to an election and the production of that film shouldn't count as a campaign contribution. It's a perfect example of freedom of speech.
- mattnewton 8y agoBecause in practice it circumvents all the campaign finance laws that tried to somewhat level the playing field between candidates backed by the super rich and those not.
- whiddershins 8y agoThat might say more about how well the laws were written. It’s tricky to make campaign finance laws that don’t result in censorship. If the law would have prevented someone from making and distributing a documentary ... I believe it was a documentary critical of Hilary Clinton, which is interesting ... the law wasn’t well written and could easily be abused.
- joncrane 8y agoHow reliable is this source of news? The farther I go, the less tied to the truth the content seems to be.
- Kaveren 8y agoHere's some sources on this I found after a light search: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/06/man-indicted-for-disabling-red-light-cameras-faces-7-years-in-prison/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/06/man-indicted-for... https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2016/09/07/red-light-robin-hood-senate/ https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2016/09/07/red-light-robin-hood... Edit: The study linked to in the original article gives me a 404. It's a link to the 2014 annual report's PDF. I couldn't find it elsewhere, but here's a link to 2015's annual report: http://suffolkcountyny.gov/Portals/37/PDF/Red%20Light%20Safety%20Program%202015P.pdf* http://suffolkcountyny.gov/Portals/37/PDF/Red%20Light%20Safe...
- c3534l 8y agoZero. Read the rest of the site. These are paranoid ramblings of mostly one individual. The fact that this is on the front page of hacker news really makes me worry about the critical thinking skills of the forum.
- frankhorrigan 8y agoWhile true, there still remains the question of how inaccurate this particular article is. Would definitely like to know if more accidents are caused by reduced yellow light times. And whether local police support the guy.
- cabaalis 8y agoActually, critical thinkers will separate ideas from their source.
- zarriak 8y agoI found this website after searching for the reports: http://www.redlightscam.com/suffolk-county-red-light-cameras-annual-reports.html http://www.redlightscam.com/suffolk-county-red-light-cameras... They seem to have the preserved the report mentioned in the article here: http://nebula.wsimg.com/fcf2a132df15209b05e0822aab6046bf?AccessKeyId=262E4EF7A8240228F3C0&disposition=0&alloworigin=1 http://nebula.wsimg.com/fcf2a132df15209b05e0822aab6046bf?Acc... Go to page 13 of the report and it seems quite clear that they have increased.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- jessaustin 8y agoIf you think Ruth may be paranoid, consider the case of John Lang, a traffic-light scam whistleblower in Fresno, California who posted on Facebook that police were trying to kill him just days before he was found stabbed to death in his burned down house. Police ruled his death a suicide. Wow Xerox don't play. [EDIT:] after a bit of online research, it seems plausible that Mr. Lang's death was actually a suicide. That doesn't change the fact that a three second yellow would be unsafe at most normal automotive speeds...
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- wilkystyle 8y agoThis is the part of the article that stuck out to me, too. I sure was thinking he might be acting a little dramatic, but this paragraph makes the paranoia sound more plausible. Seems like a plot out of Hot Fuzz to rule being stabbed to death in his own burning house a suicide...
- scarmig 8y agoJohn Lang was severely mentally ill. And police didn't rule his death a suicide: the coroner did, because the stab wounds he experienced were superficial and appeared self-inflicted, and his cause of death was from smoke inhalation. Firefighters had to chop down barricades that had been constructed from the inside of his house. Plus, the police aren't going to kill you by stabbing you and then burning your house down (at least, if they're acting as part of a conspiracy). There's no benefit and huge potential costs for them.
- jiveturkey 8y ago> And police didn't rule his death a suicide: the coroner did, The coroner is a police employee in Fresno.
- danso 8y agoThe first Google result for "john lang fresno" brings up this r/UnresolvedMysteries thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/4z1kk9/john_lang_the_man_who_documented_his_harassment/ https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/4z1kk9... A top reply links to the autopsy report, which notes among other things that Lang had barricaded his doors and also had functioning indoor cameras, which showed him "sitting in the living room area of the house with a large knife" the day before his death: http://dig.abclocal.go.com/kfsn/PDF/JohnLang-16-01-222.pdf http://dig.abclocal.go.com/kfsn/PDF/JohnLang-16-01-222.pdf It's not unheard of for a corrupt police department to commit crimes or tamper/fabricate evidence. But generally, it seems counterproductive to silence a critic by murdering him at home and burning his house down, which draws a lot of attention and complicates the number of agencies involved.
- jakelarkin 8y agoanybody ever been to Milbrae? It's a tiny town with no courts and no police of its own. The cameras at intersections around the BART station make $millions for the city, mostly for vaguely marked and unnecessary no right turn on red.
- chrisdhoover 8y agoYep, total trap. The in and out is there. Be careful getting a burger and leaving, you need to watch it turning right to go back to 101
- eevilspock 8y agoWe need more boycotts, protests, civil disobedience, voting with our feet, delete Facebook/Google/Uber/etc, Robin Hoods. We need a society driven by values and humanity, not the Dollar Almighty. If not us, then who?
- dvtrn 8y agoIf not us, then who? Probably our great, great grandkids, when things end up far, far worse for them because it wasn't us doing anything about it now. You know, to play devil's legal counsel. Er, I mean advocate /s
- cwkoss 8y agoI think our society is currently too vain for effective civil disobedience: if you social media post evidence of disobedience it spreads your message but makes you cheap to prosecute.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- cabaalis 8y ago> Another vexing problem for Ruth is the coverage the issue has gotten from local news, specifically News12, which is owned by CableVision who provides the internet service to the cameras at the lights. ...... When victims of the lights went to News12 about the deaths of their family members due to the shortened lights, News12 interviewed them, but never ran the story. And while other local media outlets report from Ruth’s point of view and most of the public’s, News12 has painted Ruth a criminal. And yet we're supposed to treat the for-profit media in this country as sainted individuals, with no biases or influences whatsoever?
- nemild 8y agoI hope not. I’d be curious who’s telling you to treat them as sainted inviduals. Here’s my media literacy guide that catalogs all the biases (contributions welcome): https://github.com/nemild/hack-the-media/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/nemild/hack-the-media/blob/master/README....
- tomohawk 8y agoComparing media coverage of death with actual causes is misleading. There are many other reasons why something may be covered, other than just frequency of occurrence. Often coverage is for things that we might do something about. For example, there is quite a bit of coverage of terrorism because much of it is preventable. When systems break down and the barriers to it no longer work, we get Syria.
- brokenmachine 8y ago> Often coverage is for things that we might do something about. I disagree. IMO it is almost always about maximizing "engagement" to the news source itself through those ways described in that github - getting the viewer to feel emotions/outrage/etc. What am I, as a private citizen, meant to do to prevent a plane crash, random act of violence, terrorism, or whatever else that is being massively overreported? > there is quite a bit of coverage of terrorism because much of it is preventable. In what way do you propose I, as a normal middle-class office worker, prevent terrorism (which is already a vanishingly unlikely cause of death anyway)? Or even more broadly, how do you propose our government prevents terrorism? Surprisingly, the unprecedented levels of spying and monitoring of our own people doesn't seem to have stopped it yet. Maybe even more spying will enable us to win that pesky war on terror. We are not dealing with rational actors here. These are people who truly believe they are going to be martyrs and have eternal happiness just for dying in the right way at the right time. You can't negotiate or reason with that. Also you can't prevent every danger. There will always be, eg footpaths that people can drive cars onto, or whatever other ways to kill random people if you are crazy enough. As a normal citizen, I would much prefer my government spent its resources preventing the overwhelmingly more likely (and preventable) forms of death or injury - but that doesn't sell papers, fund the war machine, or enable massive and ineffective civil rights degradation.
- MK_Dev 8y agoDid I just a read an upcoming movie script?
- crwalker 8y agoIf the claim that standard 5 second yellow lights were shortened to 3 seconds for traffic cameras is true, Suffolk county officials should be ashamed. This is simply extortion.
- theonemind 8y agoIf true, they should be ashamed and THEN go to prison. That kills people.
- gambiting 8y agoFyi - light goes to yellow for 3 seconds before going to red in all of EU and people don't die because of it. I'd say 5 seconds in US is unusually long.
- detaro 8y agoI'd guess consistency is more important than the absolute value.
- crwalker 8y agoThe problem isn't the specific number, it's the intent behind changing the number and the decades of training the public on a different number.
- ska 8y agoI suspect the problem is more expectation than absolute value.
- tomjakubowski 8y agoReally? Doesn't it vary depending on, say, road speed or visibility? It does in California.
- glogla 8y agoIt does in EU also. There's a EU-wide lower-bound of 3 seconds, I guess gp mixed it up.
- busterarm 8y agoApparently the (very cynical) lesson in all of this is that you don't get between the State and its money. They'll either incarcerate or kill you.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- greatamerican 8y agoa modern day Robin Hood!
- IronWolve 8y agoWow, recap of the article, lots of WTFs. 1. Cameras lowered from 5 to 3 seconds. 2. Cameras placed in low income neighborhoods. 3. They put a camera at the mans house! 4. John Lang, a traffic-light scam whistleblower in Fresno, California who posted on Facebook that police were trying to kill him just days before he was found stabbed to death in his burned down house.
- jacobush 8y agoYou mean he committed suicide by cop. Oh wait that is another meme. He committed suicide by the tried and try "stab myself to death will burning down my house method" which is all the rage nowadays.
- danso 8y agoThe coroner's report notes that firefighters discovered his home was barricaded at the time of the fire. The cause of death was not stab wounds but smoke inhalation and fire: http://dig.abclocal.go.com/kfsn/PDF/JohnLang-16-01-222.pdf http://dig.abclocal.go.com/kfsn/PDF/JohnLang-16-01-222.pdf
- AdeptusAquinas 8y agoThats an odd document. Cause of death: smoke inhalation; contributing factor, multiple stab wounds. Conclusion: suicide.
- gcapell 8y agoTowards the back of the article it talks about video from inside the house where the man shows the knife to the camera then turns off the camera.
- ambicapter 8y ago> Ruth pointed out some cameras that were put up have been taken down after they fell short of daily contract-quota with Xerox to produce 25 citations, per camera, between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., which costs Suffolk County $2,132 per day, according to the Xerox contract with the county. > Xerox collects $13 from Suffolk County for each ticket, which increases to $33 per ticket when a camera generates more than 90 tickets in a month. Wow, talk about a misalignment of incentives.
- dmix 8y ago> Wow, talk about a misalignment of incentives. Even though I lean libertarian I despise most of these public/private partnerships for this reason. Profit seeking combined with governments use of force (for monopoly or as part of the business model) is almost always worse than pure public services or markets. Private prisons are a classic example of that, but there are countless less obvious ones in every local government. And it sucks because people blame capitalism for these failures, despite the arrangement looking nothing like a traditional market.
- mrcsparker 8y agoI lean very libertarian, especially when it comes to criminal justice and sentencing reform. Private prisons can be seen as a byproduct of over-criminalization and over-enforcement. These red light cameras are in the same world where government sees the tightening of enforcement as a valid revenue model.
- chiefalchemist 8y agoCertainly the programming of the lights is public information. If it's not, a stop watch could document the setting. From there, I would imagine there are published best practices. That is, if the speed limit is X, the duration of the amber light has a very defined duration. The town itself acknowledged the sub optimal programming of the light. How is it that someone needs to resort to civil disobedience in order to have his/her fellow citizens properly protected; protected from their own (local) gov?
- rhinoceraptor 8y agoBe careful, that kind of speech could get you charged with practicing engineering^Wcommon sense without a license: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/12/08/criticizing-red-light-cameras-is-not-a-punishable-offense-oregon-concedes https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/12/0...
- cwkoss 8y agoIs Xerox a front for the Illuminati or something? /s How is so much power being exerted against people questioning red light cameras? Feels like there is some national entity providing support.
- DoreenMichele 8y agoWhen he was in jail for his most recent arrest, a sheriff’s deputy even offered to bail him out. :) If only real life more often played out like that scene in Scent of a Woman where righteousness wins out and doesn't end in the bad guys ruining the guy taking a stand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAtzy-l3H1g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAtzy-l3H1g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcj1wMZRitI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcj1wMZRitI
- hitsthings 8y agoWhy is an article from 2016 a top story now?
- cronix 8y agoThese are easy to get around though. It might depend on the State, but in Oregon, in order to actually get ticketed by those stupid things, the image of the driver in the car must match the picture of the driver the car is registered to. So if you're married, just register your wife's car in your name and hers in yours. The pics will never match, and no ticket. If you have to go to court, you can show the judge the pic and it's clearly not you driving, so no ticket.
- artursapek 8y agoThe problem is most people won't think of doing this, and bother to actually go to court.
- Scoundreller 8y agoIn my jurisdiction, they changed the laws to make it nearly impossible to fight the ticket and exempt the signor of the ticket from having to appear in court. (Ontario, Canada)
- PhasmaFelis 8y agoI felt like the problem is that some people will think of doing this, and use it to drive like assholes and endanger people without penalty.
- 300bps 8y agoSome states are “owner responsibility” states which means it doesn’t matter who is driving. And going through red lights is dangerous. Wouldn’t it be better to stop doing it rather than come up with a way to outsmart the system?
- cronix 8y agoSure, one should never intentionally run a red light, and I wasn't suggesting that they do. The article specifically talks about them shortening the duration of a yellow light from 5 seconds to 3 in order to increase revenue by catching more people running the (shorter) light. They purposefully are creating a situation where people feel the need to speed up to make it through the shorter duration light and more people are getting killed because of it. I don't know about where you live, but in a lot of places if you cross the crosswalk and are now in the intersection and the light just changes from green to yellow, 3 seconds isn't enough to clear the intersection before it turns red unless you were already traveling the speed limit and the lane is clear ahead of you. Imagine yourself in rush hour traffic and you're the first car stopped at a green light because you can't safely clear the intersection. The car ahead moves and you start to enter the intersection because there is now space to clear the intersection without having to stop in it. Just as you start to accelerate it turns yellow, and then red 3 seconds later before you clear it because they shortened the time. If the light stayed at a 5 second yellow light, you would have made it through. Is that genuinely your fault if you did everything according to the book but only got caught because they artificially lowered the yellow light time?
- tyingq 8y agoPainting the lens black might be a better balance of quick and effective.
- JoeAltmaier 8y agoBut you'd have to reach the lens. The wires might be handier...
- tyingq 8y agoAhh, I had assumed the wires were only exposed at the same height, but protected at ground level. Maybe not? I wonder if putting a bag over it is a lesser degree crime.
- reaperducer 8y agoAhh, I had assumed the wires were only exposed at the same height, but protected at ground level. In some red light camera installations you can use an Allen wrench to open an oblong metal panel at the base of the camera pole and expose the power circuit. ...said a friend.
- jiveturkey 8y agotrivial. you don't need to climb the pole, just a spray can (or a wet mop, etc) on a broom stick.
- brlewis 8y agoThe shortened duration times at the traffic lights generate $32 million for Suffolk County, which is why the county allows the practice to continue despite their own study showing they lead to an increase in accidents with injuries. This is exactly what lawsuits are for.
- olyjohn 8y agoLawsuits cost a lot of money.
- duxup 8y agoThe legality of issuing tickets without being able to identify the driver is beyond me. I"m sure there is a "reason" it just seems inherently unjust to me. Heck I'd rather just have humans deal with it as a sort of jobs program even ;)
- dragonwriter 8y agoA ticket is a summons, not a conviction; the owner of the car can, of course, argue that they were not driving, and present evidence to that effect.
- duxup 8y agoA summons for a person based on "I saw your car" seems unjust too.
- dragonwriter 8y agoAt a minimum, the vehicle owner should have information about who had the car if it wasn't stolen (and that it was stolen if it was.)
- duxup 8y agoA summons based on the idea that the car owner might know who ran a red light seems even more absurd...
- tzs 8y agoIn the US most people keep pretty good track of who is using their car at any given time. The idea that the owner would not know who ran a red light using their car, or at least be able to narrow it down to a couple of immediate family members, is pretty close to absurd here. How do car owners manage access to their cars in your country?
- 8y ago
- kevin_thibedeau 8y agoMore creative would be to inject an altered video feed with the license plates changed.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- trhway 8y agoVertical integration in law enforcement is coming. Some components are already here - private cameras, private prisons, that judge getting kickbacks for sending children to the private prison...
- dragonwriter 8y ago> Vertical integration in law enforcement is coming. It's been around for a long time, it's called “the state”.
- trhway 8y agoI stated it badly - I meant that private components of law enforcement start to form their own structure instead of being just a separate components embedded in the state structure.
- Simulacra 8y agoWhat a patriot...
- lamarpye 8y agoIs this a crime?
- tkok89 8y agoAs a person outside of US, I find this interesting. In Finland, the duration of a yellow light is defined in Finnish directive for traffic lights. For speed limits of 40-50 (km per h) duration is three seconds and for 60 kmph it is four seconds and over that it must be 5 seconds. So the three second time is a norm here in a city area. I wonder how much that affects the statistics of traffic safety. Can someone explain me, why a shorter duration of yellow light causes more accidents? In Finland I think it is not illegal to drive pass red light if it is not safe to stop before them, so when you see the yellow light you must consider if it is possible stop the vehicle safely.
- esotericn 8y ago> Can someone explain me, why a shorter duration of yellow light causes more accidents? The purpose of an amber/yellow light is to give drivers a transitionary stage. Consider the limiting case, that a light goes from green to red with no intermediate period. Drivers will not be able to avoid running red lights. They'll approach the junction at 30mph, the light will change just before they reach it, and they'll go through. Now you've normalised running red lights. Drivers can't stop if they're 5m from the red (at 30mph), but what about 30m? 50m? 100m? There's no clear cutoff. So either you make the all-red cycle really quite long, or accidents increase.