8 ms·

A “Predatory” Stop-Sign Camera Is Terrorizing My Neighborhood

65 points by LordAtlas 6y ago

elmerfud 6y ago
The author does a good job highlighting the profiteering use of these devices. My concern is that when you're issued a ticket by one of these you're never truly given a chance to examine the evidence. We have fallen prey to the idea that the magic box says you did it, therefore you did it. There is no examination of the "thought process" of the magic box. That's all protected as proprietary. In a setting where you have an arresting officer you can question the officer in court you can question his thought process his procedure you can understand why he made the decision he made and challenge all of those base assumptions. Because if there was some flaw in his initial reason for the suspicion there was no basis of charging you with a crime. With the magic box we are allowed to do none of this. It's assumed that the software in the magic box apparently has zero bugs or those bugs would become readily apparent when you test a known set of inputs against a expected set of outputs. Anyone who's got any kind of software engineering experience knows that if you have a test of expected inputs with expected outputs you will make your software match that. without the full disclosure of the code that's running on the device for examination there is no effective cross-examination of the one witness the state has against you for violation of a crime. That's the only way we can examine the thought process of the magic box itself. Until courts can be convinced to throw out cases when the source code is not produced this kind of thing will happen. The assumption that the magic box is right and will always be right. Because you can't even get the magic box to perform your own testing you are never allowed to examine the evidence against you.
- throwawayq6tti 6y ago
  IANAL, but the way I understand it is that the way they get around that is by making the violation a civil penalty, not a criminal offense. You can fight it and maybe get a "hearing" but really would have to go out of your way to get an actual judge involved. Good news, doesn't affect your driving record. Bad news, everything else that is wrong with it on every level still applies.
  - chris_wot 6y ago
    At this point, it sounds like they need a class action lawsuit.
- beagle3 6y ago
  Israel has, in many cities, switched to video evidence - you can review the a movie of the claimed infraction from a few minutes before to a few minutes after it happened. The exact algorithm doesn't matter w.r.t to any specific event -- although it does matter if you claim e.g. selective enforcement. There's still issues of authenticity, integrity, time keeping precision, etc - but I think these are better understood problems; no idea if source code for those was ever demanded (or available), or if they were challenged.
- suifbwish 6y ago
  It’s an awful shame that it is becoming so popular to burn out the sensors on these with high wattage infrared lasers
  - phobosanomaly 6y ago
    Slightly different tack, but I was thinking if you had a license frame that had enough infrared LEDs around it, it wouldn't be visible to LEO officers, but the glare might disrupt any license-plate scanners on police cars, or traffic cameras. I googled it, and it's been discussed a bit in a previous HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9258462 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9258462
- AlfeG 6y ago
  In Russia tickets from camera are issued by police officer. There is also a lot of errors, but You can go to court with a person that sign You a ticket. And it works.
  - tinus_hn 6y ago
    And if you don’t want a ticket, you can just buy one of the license plates that are exempt. It works!
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - merpnderp 6y ago
    In my state in the US traffic cameras can not be used to issue traffic fines and license plate readers can only be used by an officer in an equipped car. Corruption is real and it’s good to have laws reflect this.
- smileysteve 6y ago
  > In a setting where you have an arresting officer you can question the officer in court you can question his thought process his procedure you can understand why he made the decision he made and challenge all of those base assumptions. This is strange as many jurisdictions take an officer's written report of crimes as a higher form of evidence than any other evidence (video), combined with post court revealations that officers routinely lie under oath. Then you have the whole escalation issue, where a failed turn signal, excessive (or, now less than excessive) speed, or failure to stop leads to a situation where 1. The police officer is likely to be hit by a vehicle while on the side of the road 2. The stopped driver may react erratically 3. The stopping officer may act erratically. With recent American police failings coming to light, we should welcome video evidence as safer and more accurate for all parties
  - Fjolsvith 6y ago
    A person could just remove themselves from statutory jurisdiction and travel "outside the box". https://theamericanstatesassembly.net/correct-your-status https://theamericanstatesassembly.net/correct-your-status
- duxup 6y ago
  The state supreme court of Minnesota struck down traffic cams as they felt it was unfair because: >The court argued that Minneapolis had, in effect, created a new type of crime: "owner liability for red-light violations where the owner neither required nor knowingly permitted the violation."
- LorenPechtel 6y ago
  I would take a different approach: The source code shouldn't be allowed to testify in the first place. Do whatever you want with the black box but the court should ignore it. What the camera should do is produce a video of the offense and that's the only thing the court should look at. The case where the source matters is the breathalyzer--and in that case it shouldn't matter because the the system is *inherently* seriously flawed by biology: breath alcohol is not a good indication of blood alcohol. The breathalyzer should only be used to figure out who needs to be blood tested, it is not remotely reliable enough for court.
- perryizgr8 6y ago
  > My concern is that when you're issued a ticket by one of these you're never truly given a chance to examine the evidence. This is my issue with alcohol breath-analyzers as well. I have no knowledge about how they work, whether they truly measure the amount of alcohol one has ingested, or they infer it from some other measure. I have read accounts from people saying even eating a lot of carbs can trigger the detectors. But since I am no expert, challenging the issue at a traffic stop is very difficult. I am very particular about never driving after having a drink, I even go so far as not driving the same day if I've had even a single beer. But every time a policeman stops me and asks me to blow into the device, I'm scared that it will go off. And my point is that I shouldn't be scared, given that I am not breaking the rule.
upofadown 6y ago
>“It’s frustrating because there’s no legal definition of what a full-stop is,” he said. Um, not moving for a time?
- sidpatil 6y ago
  Is that a legal definition?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- rahimnathwani 6y ago
  Stop is pretty clear, if you ignore the fact that your car body will move a bit after your wheels stop moving. Where to stop is less clear. In California, the DMV handbook says: "...you must make a full “STOP” whenever you see this sign. Stop at the white limit line (a wide white line painted on the street) or before entering the crosswalk..." You could argue that the 'at the white line' part is unclear. Does it mean that the entirety of your car must be behind the white line? If so, how far behind is acceptable? Anything over 1/16th of an inch? Is 1 foot behind OK? How about a yard? If not, is it OK as long as some part of your vehicle is above the line when you stop? If not, how far over the line can you be?
  - upofadown 6y ago
    The handbook is not the law. You would have to dig into the actual legislation for that. Normally one would assume that they want you to stop at any distance behind the line because nothing else makes sense in context.
    - rahimnathwani 6y ago
      You're right, the handbook is not the law. "stop at any distance behind the line" would include stopping 50 yards behind the line, which would not achieve anything useful.
Maursault 6y ago
IMO all enforcement cameras violate the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment and are therefore unconstitutional.
- xxpor 6y ago
  How so?
  - Maursault 6y ago
    A traffic camera is effectively a witness. The Sixth Amendment gives us the right to face and cross-examine our accusers in court. Ever see a traffic camera in court? Even if that were possible, how does one cross-examine a traffic camera?
- merpnderp 6y ago
  The Supreme Court makes the rulings and apparently disagrees with you.
  - Maursault 6y ago
    This is false. Between the states and US Supreme Courts, the rulings regarding traffic cameras go either way. Last year the US Supreme Court found a violation of the Fourth Amendment in favor of the suspect to suppress [1] [1] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/18-556_e1pf.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/18-556_e1pf.pdf
Zanni 6y ago
The first comment on the article is better written and more credible than the article itself. Yes, selective enforcement sucks, but it seems the author's own neighborhood board asked for more enforcement? And, yes, over-sensitivity can be a problem, but the author doesn't make this case effectively (the camera could just have been under-sensitive before).
- OskarS 6y ago
  Oh, come on. > Data from MPD shows that in June 2020, the camera in question snapped 82 violators. Then there were 2,850 tickets in July 2020 (compared to 231 tickets in July 2019). Then the camera started flashing like paparazzi in Cannes: From August through November, a total of 17,216 tickets were issued. That’s $1,721,600 from one camera at one intersection in just four months. This is the SAME CAMERA, just recalibrated, and it issues 34x as many tickets one month to the next. In four months, this single camera has sucked almost $2 million from the residents. How many stop-sign violators do you think this tiny intersection has? And if you're caught by this clearly malfunctioning camera, you basically have no recourse in the legal system? This is abusive, plain and simple. Whether or not it was intentionally done like this another question (probably it wasn't, probably it's just a miscalibration), but either way it doesn't make it right. Remember: the purpose of a camera like this is to improve conditions for residents, but instead it's bleeding them for money with absolutely no proof of any improvement in safety. EDIT: oh, and another thing: > “I’ve got five tickets,” Gopalakrishna told me. “Before I found out about the first one, I’d gotten four more.” If you don't know that you've gotten a ticket until much later, how exactly are you supposed to modify your behavior? How could you possibly avoid getting tickets 2-5 if you don't even know about getting the first one?
- LorenPechtel 6y ago
  The city claims it was asked for. That doesn't mean it was, or perhaps it's just one Karen asking for it.
  - spacemanmatt 6y ago
    I've asked for such cameras to be placed around my state's capitol and many of the wealthy neighborhoods but it never happens. I wonder why this neighborhood got one?
sjg007 6y ago
The solution is round a'bouts. Also my ring camera has a 10 second pre and post event loop. No reason the traffic cams shouldn't have that either.
doggydogs94 6y ago
How many of us actually come to a complete, full, zero-mph stop at a stop sign if nobody is around (or we are in a hurry).
- merpnderp 6y ago
  That doesn’t alway matter. Last time I was pulled over I stopped and counted to five cause the cop was sitting in the median. He pulled me over anyway to check if I was drunk (it was midnight) admitted I had stopped and let me go. But I’d still rather deal with a cop who bends the rules than a traffic enforcement company behind fifteen layers of corruption and government chaff.
BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 6y ago
1. If your stop duration is less than the frame rate of the camera, you will be logged as a violator. 2. Where is the camera expecting you to stop? If you stop before or after the point the camera is expecting, the camera will record you as driving through the stop. 3.To hopefully avoid a ticket, stop every three inches or so waiting five seconds each time.
airhead969 6y ago
Inverted totalitarianism at work when you outsource government services to unaccountable corporations.
LatteLazy 6y ago
Can anyone explain why the US has so many stop signs? Here in rainy Britian, we have "give way" signs at 99.9% of junctions. You're not required to stop. There are stop signs, but in 10 years of driving I've only seen 1 in the UK. They don't seem necessary frankly...
- mikhailfranco 6y ago
  The US also has 4-way stop signs, where each driver has to remember the arrival of the other vehicles, then move off in the correct sequence. I once also saw a 3-way stop, meaning a 4-road junction, where one road had right-of-way and the others had to do the precedence order. Obviously, this was insanely dangerous - if anyone on the stopping approaches thought it was a 4-way stop, and assumed that all other vehicles would stop, then it would pull out in front of a vehicle that actually had the right-of-way. Then there's right-turn-on-red, which is scary for pedestrians...
- esotericn 6y ago
  Stop signs are fairly common out in rural areas without much traffic in the UK. The US just has a lot more of that. We also just have roundabouts all over the place and Americans seem to be allergic to them for whatever reason.
  - leephillips 6y ago
    But this is about DC. DC is full of intersections which should be controlled by traffic lights but have either nothing or a stop sign, because that’s cheaper. It’s an example of the generally poor infrastructure, and it makes the pedestrian experience rather annoying.
    - mb7733 6y ago
      I think the pedestrian experience of 4-way stops is pretty great - you always get right of way. Pedestrian experience is probably the one downside of roundabouts.
hereme888 6y ago
I'm surprised no one has put on a hoodie and sledge-hammer the heck out of it.
Shivetya 6y ago
Besides the obvious issue the secondary problem with most of these systems is they prey on the poor doubly so as it can lead to loss of vehicle in some localities. HOWEVER. DC's own web page details in this PDF[0] the fines for traffic. $50 if you do not stop for a stop sign, same fine for passing a school bus with flashing lights. So in effect by using the 3rd party service they are doubling fines. If anything automated fine systems should be mandated to be a fraction of the fine you would incur when ticketed by an officer. [0]https://go.mpdconline.com/GO/CIR-07-04.pdf https://go.mpdconline.com/GO/CIR-07-04.pdf
peanut_worm 6y ago
Why would no one just destroy it with a baseball bat
monkeybutton 6y ago
>What if they said all of a sudden everybody who jaywalks in one neighborhood gets a ticket? Would anybody say that is fair? So, how would we make it fair? There's lot of societally acceptable but tickete-able offences out there. Jaywalking, speeding 5-10 over, almost-fully-but-not-quite stopping at stop signs (incidentally in my country these are called "American" stops). Before, people were a lot more lax about it but now with technology they could be enforced 100% of the time. Should the rules be changed to less strict? Only apply fines in dangerous situations (excessive speeding or not stopping at all)? Smaller punishments in acceptance that everyone is going to be caught more frequently? Normalizing an ever watching, ticket printing machine?
- omginternets 6y ago
  I think you are fundamentally misunderstanding the purpose of these laws. With civil statutes, the objective is not to fully extinguish behaviors like jaywalking, but to provide law-enforcement with tools to maintain order. Most officers don't run around citing people for every violation they spot. They instead look for people who are behaving in a way that is dangerous or disorderly, and then use the law to reign them in. This kind of automation gets that relationship exactly backwards, and is not the basis of a healthy balance between freedom and order.
  - sneak 6y ago
    > With civil statutes, the objective is not to fully extinguish behaviors like jaywalking, but to provide law-enforcement with tools to maintain order. Most officers don't run around citing people for every violation they spot. They instead look for people who are behaving in a way that is dangerous or disorderly, and then use the law to reign them in. It's not about "maintaining order". These laws serve as a legitimate cover story for police to harass indiscriminately, as they are widely disregarded, giving a blank check to police to stop and harass anyone based on their own hunches, biases, or prejudice. It's a bad system, and it has nothing to do with maintaining order, and everything to do with legitimizing police misconduct.
    - 6y ago
AcerbicZero 6y ago
I’d get a can of spray paint and resolve this issue the old fashioned way. This seems like a problem that can be solved by general refusal to comply.
mwattsun 6y ago
I was moved to a new city to get a fresh start. The city had a camera van. The operator would park the van in random places and flash people going over the speed limit. Needless to say, this van and it's operator were very unpopular. My boss came in to work one day very agitated. He said he went by the van earlier in the month and got flashed, when he knew he was under the speed limit. So he went by the van again, this time 5 mph slower. He got flashed again. He figured he had a good case in traffic court now so he went by the van again, now 10 mph hour slower, to make his iron clad case. He was agitated on this day because he just received three tickets for not wearing his seatbelt.
WYSIMOLWYG 6y ago
Last week I received a $100 ticket from DC by this exact same camera for "not stopping at the stop sign". I reviewed the captured footage from the ticket which shows me coming to a stop before proceeding across the intersection (granted my front wheel was in front of the stop line but behind the start of the crosswalk). In order to make my case to contest the ticket I downloaded a video analysis tool called Tracker[0], and tracked the position of my car's logo frame-by-frame. The tool allowed me to easily plot the velocity of the car over time to show that I reached 0m/s before passing the intersection. Now I wait and see if they accept the evidence and drop the ticket (after reading this article I'm not too optimistic that they will...). [0] https://physlets.org/tracker/ https://physlets.org/tracker/
- LorenPechtel 6y ago
  I would be very surprised if they do--it's abuse like this that pays for the cameras.
aaomidi 6y ago
So, Pennsylvania doesn't allow local cops to use radar for speed detection. This causes everyone to drive 10-30 mph faster than the speed limit. However, I've never felt safer driving in anywhere else in America than I do in PA. I'm not sure how does PA perform in highway safety, but if the data is also on my side it's a great case study that speeding enforcement or just various traffic law enforcement doesn't do much to increase safety. Or might even decrease it.

65 points by LordAtlas 6y ago

The author does a good job highlighting the profiteering use of these devices. My concern is that when you're issued a ticket by one of these you're never truly given a chance to examine the evidence. We have fallen prey to the idea that the magic box says you did it, therefore you did it. There is no examination of the "thought process" of the magic box. That's all protected as proprietary. In a setting where you have an arresting officer you can question the officer in court you can question his thought process his procedure you can understand why he made the decision he made and challenge all of those base assumptions. Because if there was some flaw in his initial reason for the suspicion there was no basis of charging you with a crime. With the magic box we are allowed to do none of this. It's assumed that the software in the magic box apparently has zero bugs or those bugs would become readily apparent when you test a known set of inputs against a expected set of outputs. Anyone who's got any kind of software engineering experience knows that if you have a test of expected inputs with expected outputs you will make your software match that. without the full disclosure of the code that's running on the device for examination there is no effective cross-examination of the one witness the state has against you for violation of a crime. That's the only way we can examine the thought process of the magic box itself. Until courts can be convinced to throw out cases when the source code is not produced this kind of thing will happen. The assumption that the magic box is right and will always be right. Because you can't even get the magic box to perform your own testing you are never allowed to examine the evidence against you.

throwawayq6tti 6y ago
IANAL, but the way I understand it is that the way they get around that is by making the violation a civil penalty, not a criminal offense. You can fight it and maybe get a "hearing" but really would have to go out of your way to get an actual judge involved. Good news, doesn't affect your driving record. Bad news, everything else that is wrong with it on every level still applies.
- chris_wot 6y ago
  At this point, it sounds like they need a class action lawsuit.
beagle3 6y ago
Israel has, in many cities, switched to video evidence - you can review the a movie of the claimed infraction from a few minutes before to a few minutes after it happened. The exact algorithm doesn't matter w.r.t to any specific event -- although it does matter if you claim e.g. selective enforcement. There's still issues of authenticity, integrity, time keeping precision, etc - but I think these are better understood problems; no idea if source code for those was ever demanded (or available), or if they were challenged.
suifbwish 6y ago
It’s an awful shame that it is becoming so popular to burn out the sensors on these with high wattage infrared lasers
- phobosanomaly 6y ago
  Slightly different tack, but I was thinking if you had a license frame that had enough infrared LEDs around it, it wouldn't be visible to LEO officers, but the glare might disrupt any license-plate scanners on police cars, or traffic cameras. I googled it, and it's been discussed a bit in a previous HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9258462 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9258462
AlfeG 6y ago
In Russia tickets from camera are issued by police officer. There is also a lot of errors, but You can go to court with a person that sign You a ticket. And it works.
- tinus_hn 6y ago
  And if you don’t want a ticket, you can just buy one of the license plates that are exempt. It works!
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- merpnderp 6y ago
  In my state in the US traffic cameras can not be used to issue traffic fines and license plate readers can only be used by an officer in an equipped car. Corruption is real and it’s good to have laws reflect this.
smileysteve 6y ago
> In a setting where you have an arresting officer you can question the officer in court you can question his thought process his procedure you can understand why he made the decision he made and challenge all of those base assumptions. This is strange as many jurisdictions take an officer's written report of crimes as a higher form of evidence than any other evidence (video), combined with post court revealations that officers routinely lie under oath. Then you have the whole escalation issue, where a failed turn signal, excessive (or, now less than excessive) speed, or failure to stop leads to a situation where 1. The police officer is likely to be hit by a vehicle while on the side of the road 2. The stopped driver may react erratically 3. The stopping officer may act erratically. With recent American police failings coming to light, we should welcome video evidence as safer and more accurate for all parties
- Fjolsvith 6y ago
  A person could just remove themselves from statutory jurisdiction and travel "outside the box". https://theamericanstatesassembly.net/correct-your-status https://theamericanstatesassembly.net/correct-your-status
duxup 6y ago
The state supreme court of Minnesota struck down traffic cams as they felt it was unfair because: >The court argued that Minneapolis had, in effect, created a new type of crime: "owner liability for red-light violations where the owner neither required nor knowingly permitted the violation."
LorenPechtel 6y ago
I would take a different approach: The source code shouldn't be allowed to testify in the first place. Do whatever you want with the black box but the court should ignore it. What the camera should do is produce a video of the offense and that's the only thing the court should look at. The case where the source matters is the breathalyzer--and in that case it shouldn't matter because the the system is *inherently* seriously flawed by biology: breath alcohol is not a good indication of blood alcohol. The breathalyzer should only be used to figure out who needs to be blood tested, it is not remotely reliable enough for court.
perryizgr8 6y ago
> My concern is that when you're issued a ticket by one of these you're never truly given a chance to examine the evidence. This is my issue with alcohol breath-analyzers as well. I have no knowledge about how they work, whether they truly measure the amount of alcohol one has ingested, or they infer it from some other measure. I have read accounts from people saying even eating a lot of carbs can trigger the detectors. But since I am no expert, challenging the issue at a traffic stop is very difficult. I am very particular about never driving after having a drink, I even go so far as not driving the same day if I've had even a single beer. But every time a policeman stops me and asks me to blow into the device, I'm scared that it will go off. And my point is that I shouldn't be scared, given that I am not breaking the rule.

upofadown 6y ago

>“It’s frustrating because there’s no legal definition of what a full-stop is,” he said. Um, not moving for a time?

sidpatil 6y ago
Is that a legal definition?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
rahimnathwani 6y ago
Stop is pretty clear, if you ignore the fact that your car body will move a bit after your wheels stop moving. Where to stop is less clear. In California, the DMV handbook says: "...you must make a full “STOP” whenever you see this sign. Stop at the white limit line (a wide white line painted on the street) or before entering the crosswalk..." You could argue that the 'at the white line' part is unclear. Does it mean that the entirety of your car must be behind the white line? If so, how far behind is acceptable? Anything over 1/16th of an inch? Is 1 foot behind OK? How about a yard? If not, is it OK as long as some part of your vehicle is above the line when you stop? If not, how far over the line can you be?
- upofadown 6y ago
  The handbook is not the law. You would have to dig into the actual legislation for that. Normally one would assume that they want you to stop at any distance behind the line because nothing else makes sense in context.
  - rahimnathwani 6y ago
    You're right, the handbook is not the law. "stop at any distance behind the line" would include stopping 50 yards behind the line, which would not achieve anything useful.

Maursault 6y ago

IMO all enforcement cameras violate the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment and are therefore unconstitutional.

xxpor 6y ago
How so?
- Maursault 6y ago
  A traffic camera is effectively a witness. The Sixth Amendment gives us the right to face and cross-examine our accusers in court. Ever see a traffic camera in court? Even if that were possible, how does one cross-examine a traffic camera?
merpnderp 6y ago
The Supreme Court makes the rulings and apparently disagrees with you.
- Maursault 6y ago
  This is false. Between the states and US Supreme Courts, the rulings regarding traffic cameras go either way. Last year the US Supreme Court found a violation of the Fourth Amendment in favor of the suspect to suppress [1] [1] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/18-556_e1pf.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/18-556_e1pf.pdf

Zanni 6y ago

The first comment on the article is better written and more credible than the article itself. Yes, selective enforcement sucks, but it seems the author's own neighborhood board asked for more enforcement? And, yes, over-sensitivity can be a problem, but the author doesn't make this case effectively (the camera could just have been under-sensitive before).

OskarS 6y ago
Oh, come on. > Data from MPD shows that in June 2020, the camera in question snapped 82 violators. Then there were 2,850 tickets in July 2020 (compared to 231 tickets in July 2019). Then the camera started flashing like paparazzi in Cannes: From August through November, a total of 17,216 tickets were issued. That’s $1,721,600 from one camera at one intersection in just four months. This is the SAME CAMERA, just recalibrated, and it issues 34x as many tickets one month to the next. In four months, this single camera has sucked almost $2 million from the residents. How many stop-sign violators do you think this tiny intersection has? And if you're caught by this clearly malfunctioning camera, you basically have no recourse in the legal system? This is abusive, plain and simple. Whether or not it was intentionally done like this another question (probably it wasn't, probably it's just a miscalibration), but either way it doesn't make it right. Remember: the purpose of a camera like this is to improve conditions for residents, but instead it's bleeding them for money with absolutely no proof of any improvement in safety. EDIT: oh, and another thing: > “I’ve got five tickets,” Gopalakrishna told me. “Before I found out about the first one, I’d gotten four more.” If you don't know that you've gotten a ticket until much later, how exactly are you supposed to modify your behavior? How could you possibly avoid getting tickets 2-5 if you don't even know about getting the first one?
LorenPechtel 6y ago
The city claims it was asked for. That doesn't mean it was, or perhaps it's just one Karen asking for it.
- spacemanmatt 6y ago
  I've asked for such cameras to be placed around my state's capitol and many of the wealthy neighborhoods but it never happens. I wonder why this neighborhood got one?

sjg007 6y ago

The solution is round a'bouts. Also my ring camera has a 10 second pre and post event loop. No reason the traffic cams shouldn't have that either.

doggydogs94 6y ago

How many of us actually come to a complete, full, zero-mph stop at a stop sign if nobody is around (or we are in a hurry).

merpnderp 6y ago
That doesn’t alway matter. Last time I was pulled over I stopped and counted to five cause the cop was sitting in the median. He pulled me over anyway to check if I was drunk (it was midnight) admitted I had stopped and let me go. But I’d still rather deal with a cop who bends the rules than a traffic enforcement company behind fifteen layers of corruption and government chaff.

BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 6y ago

1. If your stop duration is less than the frame rate of the camera, you will be logged as a violator. 2. Where is the camera expecting you to stop? If you stop before or after the point the camera is expecting, the camera will record you as driving through the stop. 3.To hopefully avoid a ticket, stop every three inches or so waiting five seconds each time.

airhead969 6y ago

Inverted totalitarianism at work when you outsource government services to unaccountable corporations.

LatteLazy 6y ago

Can anyone explain why the US has so many stop signs? Here in rainy Britian, we have "give way" signs at 99.9% of junctions. You're not required to stop. There are stop signs, but in 10 years of driving I've only seen 1 in the UK. They don't seem necessary frankly...

mikhailfranco 6y ago
The US also has 4-way stop signs, where each driver has to remember the arrival of the other vehicles, then move off in the correct sequence. I once also saw a 3-way stop, meaning a 4-road junction, where one road had right-of-way and the others had to do the precedence order. Obviously, this was insanely dangerous - if anyone on the stopping approaches thought it was a 4-way stop, and assumed that all other vehicles would stop, then it would pull out in front of a vehicle that actually had the right-of-way. Then there's right-turn-on-red, which is scary for pedestrians...
esotericn 6y ago
Stop signs are fairly common out in rural areas without much traffic in the UK. The US just has a lot more of that. We also just have roundabouts all over the place and Americans seem to be allergic to them for whatever reason.
- leephillips 6y ago
  But this is about DC. DC is full of intersections which should be controlled by traffic lights but have either nothing or a stop sign, because that’s cheaper. It’s an example of the generally poor infrastructure, and it makes the pedestrian experience rather annoying.
  - mb7733 6y ago
    I think the pedestrian experience of 4-way stops is pretty great - you always get right of way. Pedestrian experience is probably the one downside of roundabouts.

hereme888 6y ago

I'm surprised no one has put on a hoodie and sledge-hammer the heck out of it.

Shivetya 6y ago

Besides the obvious issue the secondary problem with most of these systems is they prey on the poor doubly so as it can lead to loss of vehicle in some localities. HOWEVER. DC's own web page details in this PDF[0] the fines for traffic. $50 if you do not stop for a stop sign, same fine for passing a school bus with flashing lights. So in effect by using the 3rd party service they are doubling fines. If anything automated fine systems should be mandated to be a fraction of the fine you would incur when ticketed by an officer. [0]https://go.mpdconline.com/GO/CIR-07-04.pdf https://go.mpdconline.com/GO/CIR-07-04.pdf

peanut_worm 6y ago

Why would no one just destroy it with a baseball bat

monkeybutton 6y ago

>What if they said all of a sudden everybody who jaywalks in one neighborhood gets a ticket? Would anybody say that is fair? So, how would we make it fair? There's lot of societally acceptable but tickete-able offences out there. Jaywalking, speeding 5-10 over, almost-fully-but-not-quite stopping at stop signs (incidentally in my country these are called "American" stops). Before, people were a lot more lax about it but now with technology they could be enforced 100% of the time. Should the rules be changed to less strict? Only apply fines in dangerous situations (excessive speeding or not stopping at all)? Smaller punishments in acceptance that everyone is going to be caught more frequently? Normalizing an ever watching, ticket printing machine?

omginternets 6y ago
I think you are fundamentally misunderstanding the purpose of these laws. With civil statutes, the objective is not to fully extinguish behaviors like jaywalking, but to provide law-enforcement with tools to maintain order. Most officers don't run around citing people for every violation they spot. They instead look for people who are behaving in a way that is dangerous or disorderly, and then use the law to reign them in. This kind of automation gets that relationship exactly backwards, and is not the basis of a healthy balance between freedom and order.
- sneak 6y ago
  > With civil statutes, the objective is not to fully extinguish behaviors like jaywalking, but to provide law-enforcement with tools to maintain order. Most officers don't run around citing people for every violation they spot. They instead look for people who are behaving in a way that is dangerous or disorderly, and then use the law to reign them in. It's not about "maintaining order". These laws serve as a legitimate cover story for police to harass indiscriminately, as they are widely disregarded, giving a blank check to police to stop and harass anyone based on their own hunches, biases, or prejudice. It's a bad system, and it has nothing to do with maintaining order, and everything to do with legitimizing police misconduct.
  - 6y ago

AcerbicZero 6y ago

I’d get a can of spray paint and resolve this issue the old fashioned way. This seems like a problem that can be solved by general refusal to comply.

mwattsun 6y ago

I was moved to a new city to get a fresh start. The city had a camera van. The operator would park the van in random places and flash people going over the speed limit. Needless to say, this van and it's operator were very unpopular. My boss came in to work one day very agitated. He said he went by the van earlier in the month and got flashed, when he knew he was under the speed limit. So he went by the van again, this time 5 mph slower. He got flashed again. He figured he had a good case in traffic court now so he went by the van again, now 10 mph hour slower, to make his iron clad case. He was agitated on this day because he just received three tickets for not wearing his seatbelt.

WYSIMOLWYG 6y ago

Last week I received a $100 ticket from DC by this exact same camera for "not stopping at the stop sign". I reviewed the captured footage from the ticket which shows me coming to a stop before proceeding across the intersection (granted my front wheel was in front of the stop line but behind the start of the crosswalk). In order to make my case to contest the ticket I downloaded a video analysis tool called Tracker[0], and tracked the position of my car's logo frame-by-frame. The tool allowed me to easily plot the velocity of the car over time to show that I reached 0m/s before passing the intersection. Now I wait and see if they accept the evidence and drop the ticket (after reading this article I'm not too optimistic that they will...). [0] https://physlets.org/tracker/ https://physlets.org/tracker/

LorenPechtel 6y ago
I would be very surprised if they do--it's abuse like this that pays for the cameras.

aaomidi 6y ago

So, Pennsylvania doesn't allow local cops to use radar for speed detection. This causes everyone to drive 10-30 mph faster than the speed limit. However, I've never felt safer driving in anywhere else in America than I do in PA. I'm not sure how does PA perform in highway safety, but if the data is also on my side it's a great case study that speeding enforcement or just various traffic law enforcement doesn't do much to increase safety. Or might even decrease it.