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Mats Järlström’s victorious 6-year battle over yellow lights
- dexen 7y agoArchived version, since access is blocked for european readers: http://archive.is/Sy521 http://archive.is/Sy521
- hanoz 7y agoThe original article is not available to me because "European Union visitors are important" to them, the archive version, miraculously now compatible with my dns service, features a Google captcha which is unsolvable due to being half off the page. Where did it all go wrong?
- chongli 7y agoThere wasn't a singular moment when it went wrong. It's been a long, steady decline. Hackers have gradually been marginalized and replaced by bureaucrats. I've been reading Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution [1] by Steven Levy. It's fascinating, but also heartbreaking, to see how things have gone, given that the hackers of the 60's and 70's were fighting against it even back then. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers%3A_Heroes_of_the_Computer_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers%3A_Heroes_of_the_Compu...
- CamperBob2 7y agoWell, to be fair, the transition between the hackers and the bureaucrats was greased by abusive MBAs. EU data privacy legislation wouldn't have been seen as necessary if companies weren't exploiting their user base unethically. The fight to keep the Internet open to everyone should have been an easy one for the "hackers" to win... but the other side had help.
- patrec 7y agoYup, all those FAANGS were founded and are currently run by evil MBAs. In reality of course, even Cook started out with a STEM degree.
- hanoz 7y agoIndeed, it's sad to behold. That looks a good book mind, thanks. Anyway, as this isn't Bureaucrat News, I think it would be good if we all started to clamp down on links to articles on the quasi-web.
- johnchristopher 7y ago"Your privacy is real important to us and we would like your consent to rape it and share its remains with our partners."
- scarejunba 7y agoWe know, don't we? In the past, people always knew there was a value exchange occurring when you got info. Now, everyone wants the info for free and complains when people don't want to give it to you. Well, that's the nature of systems with this kind of incentive flow. Really, targeted ads were a low-cost way of providing value to content producers which enabled a low-cost way for them to provide to consumers. Fixed cost barriers increase the cost of doing business with these predictable results. It's like creating a slope and then complaining when the ball you placed on it rolls down. That's just the nature of balls and slopes.
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- stared 7y agoEither "Our European visitors are important to us." or "This site is currently unavailable to visitors from the European Economic Area while we work to ensure your data is protected in accordance with applicable EU laws."
- oh_sigh 7y agoEuropeans decided that gdpr is a must. So their desires should be listened to. If the site isn't up to snuff, Europeans should be blocked until their wishes can be granted.
- yummybear 7y agoBut don't pretend they're important to you when you can't provide a solution after almost two years.
- wutwutwutwut 7y agoBut if the site owners are so incompetent that they can't ensure this baseline for its US users, it shouldn't be shared here, right?
- oh_sigh 7y agoUS users as a whole haven't decided the same thing as EU users.
- gnicholas 7y agoReferenced journal article, which hopefully is available to all: https://www.nxtbook.com/ygsreprints/ITE/ITE_March2020/index.php#/34 https://www.nxtbook.com/ygsreprints/ITE/ITE_March2020/index....
- herodotus 7y agoQuick summary: when someone is making a right-turn, and the light has changed to yellow, they do not have sufficient time to finish their turn before the light turns red. Therefore, at lights with red-light cameras, many people who could not possibly stop in time are getting tickets. (The point is that the fact that cars turning have to slow down must be taken into account when calculating how long it takes to traverse the intersection. If you are going at close to the speed limit, you get through while yellow, but if you have slowed down because you plan to turn, and the yellow occurs too late for you to stop, you will be long enough in the intersection to get a ticket). Mr Jarlstrom made many efforts to point this out to the Beaverton (OR) city council. Not only did the officials treat him with disdain, the state even fined him for practising engineering without a license. (Talk about shoot the messenger!) However, it turns out he was right, and he has been vindicated in an article in the Journal of the Institute of Transportation Engineers.
- calvinmorrison 7y agoFined for practicing engineering without a liocense. Institutions will always protect themselves but this is absurd
- tptacek 7y agoNot really. I mean, fining this person was absurd. But licensing the title "engineer" isn't absurd; bad engineering gets people killed.
- masklinn 7y ago> fining this person was absurd. But licensing the title "engineer" isn't absurd You can't logically have one without the other. If he claimed to be an engineer (which he acknowledges) and the state claims the title for licensing (which it did) then you can't enforce that licensing without some sort of penalty.
- detaro 7y agoYou easily can, by being more strict about what constitutes the use of the title of engineer.
- alkonaut 7y agoWasn’t this guy fined for “practicing engineering without a license” or something similar?
- scarejunba 7y agoIndeed he was, and it shouldn't really need to be a cautionary tale because that's the natural result of giving organizations like this such power. It's why software is so much better: no one takes certification guys seriously.
- wizzwizz4 7y agoAh, yes. Software is so much better. https://xkcd.com/2030/ https://xkcd.com/2030/
- scarejunba 7y agoKilled fewer than any of the others.
- wizzwizz4 7y agoBecause we rarely put it in a position of power. When we do, stuff like the 737 Max (where badly-programmed software attempted to compensate for badly-designed hardware, and probably could've got away with it if it weren't badly-programmed), or the 1994 Scotland RAF Chinook crash (where the software controlling the engine was just rubbish, but it's unknown whether that actually caused the crash), or Therac-25 (where the software controlling the radiation therapy machine was rubbish) happens. If you're counting war systems, the list is much longer. I don't. All of these issues were caused by ordinary software development practices being applied in a context where the software was actually important. Real-world software development practices completely suck, and have to be completely thrown out of the window if everybody's going to get out alive. The reason more people haven't died is that software isn't given positions of responsibility very often, and it's usually held to actual standards when it is.
- neonate 7y agohttps://web.archive.org/web/20200301140653/https://www.koin.com/local/washington-county/mats-jarlstroms-victorious-6-year-battle-over-yellow-lights/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200301140653/https://www.koin.... https://archive.md/Sy521 https://archive.md/Sy521 https://outline.com/TtHBpK https://outline.com/TtHBpK
- aetherspawn 7y agoIn Australia you only get a ticket if the rear axle passes over the line while the lights are red. It is very common for people to bank up an intersection and join the perpendicular traffic. Also we have left-lane-to-turn-right intersections. Realistically being in the middle of an intersection when a light is red endangers no-one. You’re already there, so people can see you and aren’t going to T-bone you. Even if stationary.
- snazz 7y ago> Realistically being in the middle of an intersection when a light is red endangers no-one. You’re already there, so people can see you and aren’t going to T-bone you. Even if stationary. At low speeds, maybe. At anything above 30 mph, or at night, or with otherwise reduced visibility, it's still very dangerous to be in the middle of an intersection when traffic is flowing the other way. There's also no right-turn-on-red setup in Australia, which means that this situation is unlikely to happen in the first place.
- denkmoon 7y agoWe have left turn on red, remembering we drive on the left hand side. It is not universal though, it has to be signposted. In practice, you only get "caught" inside the intersection when there is heavy traffic, so speeds shouldn't be particularly high.
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- wwweston 7y agoThere doesn't seem to be much information as to the legal basis for Järlström’s efforts -- is there some Oregon or US requirement that red light cameras need to be "fair" in order to be legal? (Also -- would this extend to California? I received a red light ticket at an odd double intersection here I'm convinced involved a no-win situation, trying to figure out options, traffic lawyers of the ticket clinic variety do not seem to be of particular help.)
- flyingfences 7y agoIn this case, it's not a question about the camera at all - the camera was just what got him interested. The question at hand was the timing of the lights themselves, which were timed upon a simplified model that is not applicable to intersections with turns.
- rory096 7y agoPrevious discussion (2017): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14234223 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14234223
- dang 7y agoAlso https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14197512 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14197512
- pyuser583 7y agoWould formal verification be helpful in this situation?
- dpiers 7y agoWell this is convenient timing. I just received a citation for making a right turn at a red light 0.3 seconds after the light turned red. I had already been preparing my arguments for why my actions produced the safest possible outcome, but these materials should prove exceptionally useful in our case.
- macintux 7y agoIf it’s safe to reveal so, what made it safer to turn than to stop in your case? Having a hard time picturing such a scenario.
- arcticfox 7y agoIf the period of the yellow is too short, you can't safely stop in time.
- dpiers 7y agoDriving 30MPH. The light turned yellow when we were 100 feet from the intersection. If you are traveling straight through the intersection, you can be up to 154 feet away when the light turns yellow and make the light before it turns red. As we decelerated to make the turn, I realized we might not make the light and had to decide whether to take the turn at an aggressive speed or heavily brake to a stop. Suddenly stopping would pose a significant risk to the passengers in my vehicle and in the vehicle behind me. I observed that the intersection was clear and committed to the turn. This is the exact 'dilemma zone' described by Mats. If you are still having a hard time picturing it, there are plenty of diagrams in the ITE journal article that explains his calculations.
- dkdk8283 7y agoRed light cameras are nothing other than a revenue machine. Be suspicious of anyone who advocates for them.
- mcv 7y agoEnforcement of traffic rules shouldn't have to be a problem, but when fines are seen as revenue, that may create perverse incentives for the people who implement the rules. Yellow lights staying yellow for just a bit too short is one of them.
- modzu 7y agotraffic cameras are put up to collect rent, not enhance safety :(
- aliswe 7y agoSorry but this somehow strikes me as a very swedish thing to do.