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Do people want it to be easier to break the law? I don’t understand. This reminds me of the commenters defending the would-be car thief on the Amazon Ring vide
by booleandilemma 7y ago
Do people want it to be easier to break the law? I don’t understand.
This reminds me of the commenters defending the would-be car thief on the Amazon Ring video yesterday.
- tomatotomato37 7y agoA lot of American civilians tend to be anti-authoritarianism, either in the "Cops are racist, BLM" sense, or in the "Don't tread on me, Cliven Bundy" sense. Just part of the culture.
- bitexploder 7y agoIn the US you have a right to face your accuser. This is often impossible with red light cameras.
- ovis 7y agoDoesn't the fellow who sees the camera footage and issues a ticket qualify?
- bdibs 7y agoMy understanding is that it's fully automated.
- bitexploder 7y agoAnd often not a legal charge. They do it totally civil in most places.
- rayiner 7y agoThe Sixth Amendment only provides for a confrontation right in “criminal prosecutions.” Speeding and red light camera violations are always administrative citations that carry no criminal penalty.
- bitexploder 7y agoThat’s wrong in many jurisdictions for speeding issues by an actual officer. Red light cameras are indeed civil penalties, which is my point. It’s extra legal and you have zero recourse.
- mikeash 7y agoThe problem is that it creates perverse incentives for governments to make intersections more dangerous in order to raise ticket revenue. We really need to change things to ticket fees don’t go to the issuing government. Then this stuff would be much more reasonable.
- mancerayder 7y agoCan't you solve that by, maybe at the state level, creating some mandate around yellow light time relative to intersection length and perhaps taking into account speed limit? I mean, I'm no urban planner but an analysis around that type of protection should be a plan A, and distrust of government as described here should be a plan B. But, as per the culture, distrusting government seems to be a plan A ("but what if this perverse incentive is created..")
- mikeash 7y agoWhat I describe is plan B. Your plan A was tried and the result was as I described. Mandating timings doesn’t quite work.
- 4ntonius8lock 7y agoNot so much that. More like I really don't trust the system that the law is there to protect. If me and the corporation that puts in the red lights were on a more even footing socially, I'd be more OK with it. But the way it works, is they have virtual immunity. So things like shortening yellows, putting in speed traps, etc happen frequently and are insidious and hard to remove. Also, cops have discretion for a reason. I think skipping a red light is very different if it is a guy taking his pregnant wife to the hospital to give birth than for someone hot head who routinely drives in a dangerous way. The red light camera also discourages putting police out to monitor this, which might result in getting a drunk driver off the street.