5 ms·

>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? The

>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.
  - omginternets 6y ago
    Yes, this stuff happens, yes it's a consequence of calling upon LEO to make judgement calls, and it's a real problem, and yes it's worth fixing. It is not, however -- by any stretch of the imagination -- the goal of civil statutes to enable indiscriminate harassment. Your anti-cop ideology is leaking. It's unoriginal, uninsightful, and unhelpful.
    - sneak 6y ago
      > It is not, however -- by any stretch of the imagination -- the goal of civil statutes to enable indiscriminate harassment. Do you have any evidence to support this claim? There's plenty to support the idea that these non-crimes exist on the books specifically to enable police to target so-called "undesirables" who would otherwise be breaking no law: https://lbpost.com/longbeachize/opinion/the-classist-racist-history-of-jaywalking-and-why-policing-it-should-stop https://lbpost.com/longbeachize/opinion/the-classist-racist-...
- riekus 6y ago
  I wish this was true. But in reality, in my experience in the Netherlands and in Australia, tickets get written because x, y says so. Not because you were or weren't doing anyy reckless. And we are conditioned by this, I am really dumbfounded when people are not jaywalking in the middle of the night in an empty street. And personally I am glad to take that ticket risk.
  - omginternets 6y ago
    >But in reality, in my experience in the Netherlands and in Australia, tickets get written because x, y says so. Not because you were or weren't doing anyy reckless. Yes, we can certainly agree that this "anti-pattern" occurs, and that it's a perversion of the system. I've been on the receiving end of some technically-correct-but-not-helping-anyone tickets myself. On the whole, however, it is my feeling that police operate as described above. More to the point, it is not the purpose of these laws to fully suppress the behavior they punish. When applied in a manner to do so, it is a perversion.
ericbarrett 6y ago
> (incidentally in my country these are called "American" stops) As an aside, this has always been funny to me—you called them American stops; in America they’re called California stops; in California, we called them L.A. stops. The buck stops there, though: in Los Angeles, nobody stops.
dvdkon 6y ago
Smaller punishments with more tickets would still mean having to deal with paying a ticket, which is often more annoying than a small fine. I think moving the goalposts and changing the rules from "any speeding gets you a fine" to "excessive speeding always gets you a fine and lesser speeding can be grounds for an ad-hoc fine by a present officer (who would explain how speeding was dangerous in that particular situation)". It would hopefully get rid of the feeling that unaccountable machines are preying on our missteps while allowing reasonable police officers to discipline unsafe drivers. You could still of course have police who are just out to annoy others, but I'm not sure that something new ticketing laws can fix.
LorenPechtel 6y ago
Yup. The vast majority of what the cameras capture is safe but technically illegal (although in this case I'm not even sure of that--the law says stop, it doesn't say how long you have to remain stopped) behavior. It's only by statistical fiddling that they show any safety improvement. 1) Red light cameras tend to displace the accidents from the intersection to just before the intersection, but they don't reduce accidents or injuries. 2) Regression to the mean--put a camera in a spot with a high accident rate and see the accident rate drop. But blips tend to average out anyway, unless it's a fundamental problem with the spot you would expect the accident rate to drop back to normal. Also, we don't have cameras here but I have observed a pattern to traffic enforcement: I have *never* seen traffic enforcement other than DUI checkpoints at a location where there wasn't a mismatch between the law and the reality on the road. Examples: 1) There used to be a *big* speed trap on the highway northeast of town. One day they finally raised the speed limit there--and I haven't seen a cop there since. 2) One mile is full of houses, narrow, legitimately 35 mph. Then there's a mile built to 45 mph standards, but it has *one* house (which I believe is not occupied) and is 35 mph, even on the southbound side which in the area near the house is isolated from it by a barrier no little kid could cross. The next mile is built to the same standards and is correctly 45 mph. One guess as to where the cop sits. 3) We used to have a stupid law prohibiting turning on red when there were multiple turn lanes. I'm thinking of a T intersection where the road widened to 4 lanes just before the T. Just after the right turn there's good shelter for the cops to hide--and they really rack up a score on people making perfectly safe turns from the rightmost lane. I believe the legislature finally fixed that. Life has changed, I haven't been though that intersection since to see if the trap went away. 4) One that used to apply right near our house. The half-main street is built to 35 mph standards, but when we moved in there was a spot 1/2 mile along it that was undeveloped and thus narrower--25 mph. That resulted in the whole mile being 25 mph. The cop sat 1/4 mile along, where it still looked like a 35 mph road even though it was 25 mph. When the narrow spot was fixed the limit was raised to 35 mph and I haven't seen a cop there since. And the purely abusive: Crosswalk enforcement, I got nailed in a situation where continuing on was completely safe but I'm not sure I could even have made a panic stop before the line, certainly not without asking for being rear-ended. Not only that but the only place served by that crosswalk was closed. Edit: The only legitimate traffic stops I have ever seen involve a cop driving along and witnessing a problem.
geebee 6y ago
incidentally in my country these are called "American" stops Might amuse you to know that in the US, they're often called "California" stops, and in California, they're often called "Hollywood" stops ;)
EricBurnett 6y ago
I'd start by making it uniformly enforced, and with no "cliff" where you can go from being unticketed to owing thousands through a calibration change. In this case, change the ticketing model to have a graduated scale so e.g. going 1mph through a stop sign is $1, going 2 is $3, going 10mph is $100. Ideally, enforce it through technology at all stops. And then anyone who accrues more than say $10 in fines in a month has to pay it, and everyone can see where they are towards that. And then to make it properly "fair" make it equitable, e.g. ticket costs indexed against your personal income rather than a flat rate.

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.
- omginternets 6y ago
  Yes, this stuff happens, yes it's a consequence of calling upon LEO to make judgement calls, and it's a real problem, and yes it's worth fixing. It is not, however -- by any stretch of the imagination -- the goal of civil statutes to enable indiscriminate harassment. Your anti-cop ideology is leaking. It's unoriginal, uninsightful, and unhelpful.
  - sneak 6y ago
    > It is not, however -- by any stretch of the imagination -- the goal of civil statutes to enable indiscriminate harassment. Do you have any evidence to support this claim? There's plenty to support the idea that these non-crimes exist on the books specifically to enable police to target so-called "undesirables" who would otherwise be breaking no law: https://lbpost.com/longbeachize/opinion/the-classist-racist-history-of-jaywalking-and-why-policing-it-should-stop https://lbpost.com/longbeachize/opinion/the-classist-racist-...
riekus 6y ago
I wish this was true. But in reality, in my experience in the Netherlands and in Australia, tickets get written because x, y says so. Not because you were or weren't doing anyy reckless. And we are conditioned by this, I am really dumbfounded when people are not jaywalking in the middle of the night in an empty street. And personally I am glad to take that ticket risk.
- omginternets 6y ago
  >But in reality, in my experience in the Netherlands and in Australia, tickets get written because x, y says so. Not because you were or weren't doing anyy reckless. Yes, we can certainly agree that this "anti-pattern" occurs, and that it's a perversion of the system. I've been on the receiving end of some technically-correct-but-not-helping-anyone tickets myself. On the whole, however, it is my feeling that police operate as described above. More to the point, it is not the purpose of these laws to fully suppress the behavior they punish. When applied in a manner to do so, it is a perversion.

ericbarrett 6y ago

> (incidentally in my country these are called "American" stops) As an aside, this has always been funny to me—you called them American stops; in America they’re called California stops; in California, we called them L.A. stops. The buck stops there, though: in Los Angeles, nobody stops.

dvdkon 6y ago

Smaller punishments with more tickets would still mean having to deal with paying a ticket, which is often more annoying than a small fine. I think moving the goalposts and changing the rules from "any speeding gets you a fine" to "excessive speeding always gets you a fine and lesser speeding can be grounds for an ad-hoc fine by a present officer (who would explain how speeding was dangerous in that particular situation)". It would hopefully get rid of the feeling that unaccountable machines are preying on our missteps while allowing reasonable police officers to discipline unsafe drivers. You could still of course have police who are just out to annoy others, but I'm not sure that something new ticketing laws can fix.

LorenPechtel 6y ago

Yup. The vast majority of what the cameras capture is safe but technically illegal (although in this case I'm not even sure of that--the law says stop, it doesn't say how long you have to remain stopped) behavior. It's only by statistical fiddling that they show any safety improvement. 1) Red light cameras tend to displace the accidents from the intersection to just before the intersection, but they don't reduce accidents or injuries. 2) Regression to the mean--put a camera in a spot with a high accident rate and see the accident rate drop. But blips tend to average out anyway, unless it's a fundamental problem with the spot you would expect the accident rate to drop back to normal. Also, we don't have cameras here but I have observed a pattern to traffic enforcement: I have *never* seen traffic enforcement other than DUI checkpoints at a location where there wasn't a mismatch between the law and the reality on the road. Examples: 1) There used to be a *big* speed trap on the highway northeast of town. One day they finally raised the speed limit there--and I haven't seen a cop there since. 2) One mile is full of houses, narrow, legitimately 35 mph. Then there's a mile built to 45 mph standards, but it has *one* house (which I believe is not occupied) and is 35 mph, even on the southbound side which in the area near the house is isolated from it by a barrier no little kid could cross. The next mile is built to the same standards and is correctly 45 mph. One guess as to where the cop sits. 3) We used to have a stupid law prohibiting turning on red when there were multiple turn lanes. I'm thinking of a T intersection where the road widened to 4 lanes just before the T. Just after the right turn there's good shelter for the cops to hide--and they really rack up a score on people making perfectly safe turns from the rightmost lane. I believe the legislature finally fixed that. Life has changed, I haven't been though that intersection since to see if the trap went away. 4) One that used to apply right near our house. The half-main street is built to 35 mph standards, but when we moved in there was a spot 1/2 mile along it that was undeveloped and thus narrower--25 mph. That resulted in the whole mile being 25 mph. The cop sat 1/4 mile along, where it still looked like a 35 mph road even though it was 25 mph. When the narrow spot was fixed the limit was raised to 35 mph and I haven't seen a cop there since. And the purely abusive: Crosswalk enforcement, I got nailed in a situation where continuing on was completely safe but I'm not sure I could even have made a panic stop before the line, certainly not without asking for being rear-ended. Not only that but the only place served by that crosswalk was closed. Edit: The only legitimate traffic stops I have ever seen involve a cop driving along and witnessing a problem.

geebee 6y ago

incidentally in my country these are called "American" stops Might amuse you to know that in the US, they're often called "California" stops, and in California, they're often called "Hollywood" stops ;)

EricBurnett 6y ago

I'd start by making it uniformly enforced, and with no "cliff" where you can go from being unticketed to owing thousands through a calibration change. In this case, change the ticketing model to have a graduated scale so e.g. going 1mph through a stop sign is $1, going 2 is $3, going 10mph is $100. Ideally, enforce it through technology at all stops. And then anyone who accrues more than say $10 in fines in a month has to pay it, and everyone can see where they are towards that. And then to make it properly "fair" make it equitable, e.g. ticket costs indexed against your personal income rather than a flat rate.