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I already find driving in the UK trying because of all the cameras. This big brother stuff might seem like a good idea on the surface but I'm not so sure autom

I already find driving in the UK trying because of all the cameras. This big brother stuff might seem like a good idea on the surface but I'm not so sure automated enforcement cameras are a good thing for humanity.

quadrangle 3y ago
unpopular opinion (which I hold, so I wish it were more popular): anything that makes driving awful is good because the worse it is to drive the more pressure there is for people to move to any other form of transportation, and everything else is better for the world (except maybe flying, depending on the details)
- doxeddaily 3y ago
  I think your opinion is more and more popular. Personally I drive for a hobby, I don't have a commute or anything. Is my few thousand miles of year hobby driving really the issue?
  - Shaanie 3y ago
    There's no single thing you can point to as "the issue" (unless you just point to fossil fuels in general, I guess). Driving a couple of thousand miles per year as a hobby is pretty bad, that's quite a lot of "unnecessary" co2 emissions. Will it cause mass starvation and make environments uninhabitable? No, not by itself, but it'll contribute more than most hobbies. I believe it's in the same ballpark as a round-trip flight across the Atlantic, for reference.
tiedieconderoga 3y ago
I would be okay with automated traffic law enforcement if police officers were forbidden from making traffic stops for the sort of violations that the cameras issue fines for. It would turn the most common motoring offenses into predictable fines, rather than gambles where you can get away with it most of the time, but you might get arrested or shot if somebody is having a bad day. It could also encourage voters to demand that speed limits and road construction reflect the real traffic conditions, ideally reducing the vast stretches of 40mph highways where you'll get tailgated by semi trucks if you're doing less than 70mph. On the downside, it would make license plate scanning a permanent fixture of most roads, but that's already true in many places.
- doxeddaily 3y ago
  Plate scanning is happening everywhere all the time, so yeah it won't help that. This is all big brother stuff, society going into surveillance mode. Goodbye any kind of real freedom of the road.

quadrangle 3y ago

unpopular opinion (which I hold, so I wish it were more popular): anything that makes driving awful is good because the worse it is to drive the more pressure there is for people to move to any other form of transportation, and everything else is better for the world (except maybe flying, depending on the details)

doxeddaily 3y ago
I think your opinion is more and more popular. Personally I drive for a hobby, I don't have a commute or anything. Is my few thousand miles of year hobby driving really the issue?
- Shaanie 3y ago
  There's no single thing you can point to as "the issue" (unless you just point to fossil fuels in general, I guess). Driving a couple of thousand miles per year as a hobby is pretty bad, that's quite a lot of "unnecessary" co2 emissions. Will it cause mass starvation and make environments uninhabitable? No, not by itself, but it'll contribute more than most hobbies. I believe it's in the same ballpark as a round-trip flight across the Atlantic, for reference.

tiedieconderoga 3y ago

I would be okay with automated traffic law enforcement if police officers were forbidden from making traffic stops for the sort of violations that the cameras issue fines for. It would turn the most common motoring offenses into predictable fines, rather than gambles where you can get away with it most of the time, but you might get arrested or shot if somebody is having a bad day. It could also encourage voters to demand that speed limits and road construction reflect the real traffic conditions, ideally reducing the vast stretches of 40mph highways where you'll get tailgated by semi trucks if you're doing less than 70mph. On the downside, it would make license plate scanning a permanent fixture of most roads, but that's already true in many places.

doxeddaily 3y ago
Plate scanning is happening everywhere all the time, so yeah it won't help that. This is all big brother stuff, society going into surveillance mode. Goodbye any kind of real freedom of the road.