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I also think the laws need to change with changing technology. Take something like speeding. We have speed limits and fines set based on the idea that cops won

I also think the laws need to change with changing technology. Take something like speeding. We have speed limits and fines set based on the idea that cops won't catch most speeders and that cops can give leeway based on the situation (driving 10 mph over the speed limit on an empty straight highway is different than driving 10 mph over the speed limit weaving in heavy traffic). We set a relatively low max speed and a high penalty, because you are only going to be pulled over a fraction of the time. Then we roll out speed cameras which can catch people EVERY time they speed. It doesn't make sense to have the limits as low and the fines as high when every single person that goes over the limit can be fined. We have to tune the laws for perfect enforcement. This is true for a lot of laws... most are designed based on the enforcement capabilities of the time. We need to adjust for technology.

lancesells 2y ago
> We set a relatively low max speed and a high penalty I'm in the US and speeding is a leading cause of death. Driving deaths are increasing so I don't know if having less or no cameras is a good thing.
- bongodongobob 2y ago
  It most certainly is not. Plus, I'd imagine this is more for accidents "in town" rather than on straight interstate highways where these cameras are normally set up. Take out alcohol and poor conditions and it's basically a non-issue. https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/motor-vehicle-safety-issues/speeding/ https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/motor-vehicle-safe...
- jgeada 2y ago
  Not sure if speeding is the leading cause of death or just gets the blame. The standard of driving in the US is abysmal and getting worse. US rates of accidents and deaths are much much higher than anywhere in Europe. In my state, everyone speeds 10-15mph above the posted limits on highways. But the people that cause everyone around them to maneuver aren't the speeders, it is the people driving the posted limits and creating a bottleneck on the highway. And the number of rear end collisions caused by distracted drivers looking at screens instead of paying attention to their driving is the type of driving incident I see most often.
  - shadowgovt 2y ago
    IIUc in a lot of cases, they can now know speeding was a factor because (ironically given this post's topic) the black boxes in the vehicles involved plus nearby surveillance tools the vehicles passed or had an accident in view of give hard evidence someone was speeding. i.e. "We used to believe lies about how people drive, but thanks to the presence of more concrete evidence we are disproving those false assumptions." One of the things Alphabet discovered early on in the Waymo experiment that was an eye-opener to the whole industry is that auto accidents were probably underestimate by a factor of three. When they started rolling out vehicles on the road, the best numbers available for accidents-per-mile were insurance reports and NHTSA incident records. Having vehicles with cameras on the road continuously revealed that there were 300% more accidents than those numbers suggested because humans are bumping into each other due to mis-estimates at stoplights all the time, but nobody wants their insurance rates to go up so they just don't report those incidents. What if ubiquitous mass surveillance is good actually because it forces us to come to grips with realities we'd rather pretend are otherwise?
    - furyofantares 2y ago
      > IIUc in a lot of cases, they can now know speeding was a factor because (ironically given this post's topic) the black boxes in the vehicles involved plus nearby surveillance tools the vehicles passed or had an accident in view of give hard evidence someone was speeding. Base rate matters though; for example if literally everyone is speeding because speed limits are too low then every accident will involve someone speeding.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - dylan604 2y ago
        > for example if literally everyone is speeding because speed limits are too low is that really the case though, or is it people are so self involved that they feel they are too important to have to move that slowly? Just because everyone else is speeding does not automatically mean that faster speed is safe. It could also just be that people are assholes and they do what they want.
- meowster 2y ago
  Do you have a citation? Every time I've heard that, it was a factor, not the cause.
- cortesoft 2y ago
  Speeding is dangerous, but almost all traffic engineers say that speed limits don't always match what the safe driving speed is. I think you are already doing subconciously what i am talking about; you are thinking of speeding, but I doubt you are thinking of someone driving 50 mph in a 45mph zone. That is not the type of speeding that kills, but would be the type that could be caught with perfect enforcement.
  - MereInterest 2y ago
    > but I doubt you are thinking of someone driving 50 mph in a 45mph zone. That is not the type of speeding that kills I know you're pulling this up as an example of a small infringement, but there are studies that quantify the fatality rate as a function of velocity. The numbers you picked are right in the steepest part of the increase. Using equation 2.3 from [0] (with conversions from mph to kph), there's a 64% chance of fatality at 45mph, but a 83% chance of fatality at 50mph. [0] https://nacto.org/docs/usdg/relationship_between_speed_risk_fatal_injury_pedestrians_and_car_occupants_richards.pdf https://nacto.org/docs/usdg/relationship_between_speed_risk_...
  - astrange 2y ago
    US traffic engineers can't be trusted on anything about safety. If they designed roads to make speeding as easy as possible and to kill as many pedestrians as possible, it would look no different from what they do today. Speeding/speeds would be reduced if they simply designed roads to be harder to drive above the speed limit on, like being narrower and less straight. They don't do this.
- hn8305823 2y ago
  Traffic accidents and deaths are rising because of phones. I think we actually "won" the war on drunk driving, only to have a new more vicious war set upon us. Collision energy and thus damage increases with the square of speed (or ~speed^4 for head-on) so there is still an interest in controlling speed. Most drivers (especially those over 35yo) will auto-regulate their speed to the optimal (safety vs throughput) for the road design. The problem is the ones who don't. Speed limits are set lower than this optimal speed, partly to make it easier to stop and charge drivers that can't auto-regulate well. Most of the time you will be ignored for going 5-10mph over. If you are over that, it is seen as deliberate defiance and "you are asking to be pulled over". Automatic enforcement turns this de facto road law on it's head however. During the 1970's oil crisis, highway speeds were capped at 55 mph nationwide. It took several decades for this to reverse and only after safety studies showed that differential speeds (those obeying and those going the optimal natural speed for the road) is a significant contributing factor in crashes. Unfortunately, speeds limits are still often below optimal because of an assumption that every driver will always go at least 5mph over the limit (which is incorrect). On 70 mph interstates away from urban/commuter traffic (where time pressures often affect driving), It's not unusual to see some cars going 5mph below the limit. That is a sign that these Interstate segments have the optimal natural speed.
  - aners_xyz 2y ago
    Every other nation has cell phones so I fail to see how the cell phone argument holds water. Also the safety of speed for a given environment should include pedestrians. Many advocates for urban areas rightfully push for 25 mph limits for exactly that reason. If you want to successfully convert in town urban roads that are wide and have high speeds to 25mph there are two good options: speed calming measures or speed cameras.
    - latentsea 2y ago
      I live in NZ and they introduced laws here where you can be fined and potentially lose your license for using your phone while driving citing it as being dangerous.
- happypumpkin 2y ago
  I suspect the two major drivers of this are vehicles getting larger over time and smartphones.
- thegrim33 2y ago
  The population is also increasing. If you're not using deaths per mile driven, and instead just the raw absolute number of deaths, your viewpoint is meaningless and just adding FUD into something that should be an extremely easily data-driven topic.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
matsemann 2y ago
I disagree strongly with your example, which also ruins your point for me. I think you should find a different example than one based in motornormativity, saying some laws are fine to break as long as it's behind a wheel.
- nradov 2y ago
  I have no problem with strict enforcement of current speed limits in residential areas. But speed limits on controlled access highways in many states are set ridiculously low. When government officials try to claim that a 65mph limit on a flat, straight freeway is necessary for "safety" it's obvious that they're being disingenuous and this is just a revenue grab. It breeds contempt for the law among the driving public and is ultimately counterproductive.
  - xerox13ster 2y ago
    The emissions and efficiency difference between 55, 60, 65, and 70mph are significant and cannot be understated. It makes such a real difference for air quality that TEXAS (the state that hates regulation and built the monstrosity called the Katy freeway) has a reduced speed limit in some metro areas for air quality reasons. In fact, the reason most national highways have a speedlimit of 50mph, even out in the boonies in Kansas where everything is flat and straight, is because of the fuel crisis of the 70s. When I was a child, I was curious why highways were 50mph but the interstates had a speedlimit of 65-70mph, so I went and found out instead of assuming it was a disingenous revenue grab. Most interstates were generally built after the fuel crisis, and they modified the national speed limit in 1988, setting the speed to 65mph, again for efficiency reasons. It was repealed in 1995. Perhaps 65mph is what was considered safe for the road and vehicular technology at the time, and no one has had the political or municipal capital to do a new study ever since. You want that speed limit changed, contact your reps, I guess.
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > emissions and efficiency difference between 55, 60, 65, and 70mph are significant and cannot be understated Wouldn't this be an argument for a higher EV speed limit?
chgs 2y ago
We’ve had speed cameras for decades in the UK without problems. I speed constantly yet had been caught twice in 25 years of driving.
- dguest 2y ago
  They have speed cameras all over Europe too, but the speed limit is often 130 km/h (about 80 mph). Most of the population of the US lives in states where the speed limit is 70 mph or lower. Obviously this is an oversimplification, Switzerland and Spain are 120 km/h (75 mph), Germany often has no upper limit, a few places are 140 or higher. But in general it seems like most of Europe sets the limit at the speed Americans actually drive.
  - chgs 2y ago
    And int he uk the highest speed limit is 70, and in busy areas it’s usually 60 or 50 on highways from average speed camera enforcement of variable speed limits. In towns it’s 30 and there’s plenty of cameras, for speed, red lights, bus lanes etc. The world doesn’t end.
  - graftak 2y ago
    I know from experience that raising the speed will immediately raise the speed speedsters are willing to go. When the highway in my country went from 100 to 130km/h, people who drove 120 then started to drive 150.
- cortesoft 2y ago
  This is likely because the cameras have limits that are higher than the actual law, for exactly the reason I stated.
- hellojesus 2y ago
  The UK has the best system for speeding prevention I've seen. The cameras are established to clock you at position X1 at time Y1. Then the next cameras a handful or more miles down the road clock you at position X2 at time Y2. You get a ticket if (X2 - X1) / (Y2 - Y1) > Limit + e. You can speed all you'd like between those cameras, but unless you're exiting before the next set, you'll have to pull over and wait the amount of time necessary to bring you back to the speed limit for that area, achieving zero reduction in total trip time.
the_other 2y ago
> It doesn't make sense to have the limits as low and the fines as high when every single person that goes over the limit can be fined Surely this is only reasonable for large, out of town roads. Within cities, you definitely still want low speed, high fine.
- cortesoft 2y ago
  I am not making a blanket statement that all speed limits are too low, just that they are set based on the implicit assumption that enforcement rates are going to be low and that police are going to be using their judgement to determine if someone is driving at an unsafe speed.
  - amanaplanacanal 2y ago
    I don’t think an individual police judgement is the proper measure of what is an unsafe speed.
itake 2y ago
Low fines would turn the entire highway into a paid express lane, with the only limit being the driver's personal safety risk limit.
Animats 2y ago
> Then we roll out speed cameras which can catch people EVERY time they speed. Hikvision, in China, has a comprehensive system for this.[1] Hikvision has other monitoring tools. Here's their Behavior Analysis Server data sheet. It's a 1U server for monitoring people.[2] Hikvision Behavior Analysis Server Based on the latest intelligent algorithm of deep learning, Behavior Analysis Server with a high-density GPU architecture supports the detection of behavior events in the perimeter, street, densely populated areas, indoor and other places, and triggers alarms in a timely manner, which can effectively improve the security of various places. Behavior Analysis Server can detect the specific behaviors of individuals and groups in the perimeter, street, densely populated areas, indoor and other places, and provide professional video intelligent analysis applications: * Perimeter Protection -- Real-time detection and alarming of events such as line crossing, area intrusion, region entrance/exiting, loitering, parking, unattended baggage or object removal. * Trend Analysis -- Real-time detection and alarming of people density, real-time people counting statistics and people counting statistics. * Street Behavior Detection -- Real-time detection and alarming of events such as fast moving, physical conflict, people gathering or falling down. * Indoor Behavior Detection -- Real-time detection and alarming of events such as getting up, key person getting up, climbing, absence or sleep on duty, abnormal number of people, overstaying, sudden change of sound intensity, regional overstaying, physical conflict, standing up, sitting, or people counting. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uh8DBYuDZyo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uh8DBYuDZyo [2] https://www.hikvision.com/content/dam/hikvision/products/S000000001/S000000002/S000000014/S000000015/OFR003337/M000007567/Data_Sheet/Behavior-Analysis-Server_DS-IE10XX-03U-BA_datasheet_V3.2.4_20190815.pdf https://www.hikvision.com/content/dam/hikvision/products/S00...
akira2501 2y ago
> have speed limits and fines set based on the idea that cops won't catch most speeders I don't think there is any truth to this at all. > We set a relatively low max speed We made the mistake of mixing vehicle and pedestrian infrastructure. Our speed choices have way more to do with this than with imagined enforcement outcomes. > because you are only going to be pulled over a fraction of the time. Many cites engage in "zero tolerance traffic enforcement" programs. This is where they patrol a single stretch of road and stop every single person who is even 1mph above the limit. > most are designed based on the enforcement capabilities of the time. Most are "designed" (a.k.a rapidly created and pushed into existence) in reaction to disasters that occurred and people broadly feel could have been prevented if there was a law curtailing the behavior that led up to the accident. We didn't make speeding laws based upon "enforcement capabilities" we made them in response to "wasteful deaths."
- ApolloFortyNine 2y ago
  A lot of your post wreaks of 'citation needed' but I'll choose this one. >Many cites engage in "zero tolerance traffic enforcement" programs. This is where they patrol a single stretch of road and stop every single person who is even 1mph above the limit. Searching this all I find is Virginia where over 80 is an automatic reckless driving, but the highest speed limit in the state is actually 70. I've never heard of anyone being pulled over for 1mph over the limit.
  - akira2501 2y ago
    It's called "STEP." The NHTSA encourages states to do it. Several California cities engage in it once a month. Search a little harder before you victoriously declare "citation needed!" https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/hs810851.pdf https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/hs810851.pdf
    - digging 2y ago
      > Search a little harder before you victoriously declare "citation needed!" FWIW, that's the opposite of how citation requests work. Support your claims
mike_hock 2y ago
> We need to adjust for technology. We adjust for technology 100% of the time when technology has made enforcement harder. We adjust for technology 0% of the time when technology has made enforcement easier.
nox101 2y ago
Lol, I think they should be low and stay low and there should be more enforcement For me, I live in a quiet neighborhood. The residential street outside my apartment has speed limit signs of 20mph. People are trying to walk their dogs and kids. 9 out of 10 cars go 40-50mph. Part of that is road design. The road is new, straight, barrier and speed bump free. Worse, if you try to obey the law and go 20 the person behind you will get road rage and then illegally pass on the left (going into the opposite lane) or pass on the right and swerve around to get to the left turn lane. That said, a street a block over is 25mph with speed bump and at least 1 of 3 cars races to each bump. And 1 of 20 just flies over the bumps. This is a street with apartments and condos one one side and a park and elementary school on the other. There might be some roads that don't need enforcement (somewhere in Nevada) but even in outside of the city, say LA to Vegas or SF to LA there's enough traffic that speeders cause accidents. There's also a great video I stumbled across yesterday https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3D7XYQExt0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3D7XYQExt0 Summary: Kinetic energy = 1/2 * mv^2 So if have a car going 70mph and they slam on their breaks to avoid an accident. When they stop they'll have expended 4900 units of kinetic energy. Another car, same weight, going 100mph slams on the breaks. When their car has expended 4900 units of kinetic energy they still have another 5100 units to get rid before their car will stop because 70^2 = 4900, and 100^2 = 10000. In other words, after they've applied as much stopping force as the 70mph car required to come to stop they're still going over 70mph The point being, speeding issues scale exponentially, not linearly.
- sokoloff 2y ago
  Quadratically, not exponentially.
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    Brakes, not breaks.
- BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago
  Yeah but as a counterpoint, its too damn slow man. We don’t need to treat drivers like imbeciles.
satvikpendem 2y ago
> It doesn't make sense to have the limits as low and the fines as high when every single person that goes over the limit can be fined. Oh it makes sense alright...for police departments mandating a ticket quota and receiving direct revenue from speed camera fines.

lancesells 2y ago

> We set a relatively low max speed and a high penalty I'm in the US and speeding is a leading cause of death. Driving deaths are increasing so I don't know if having less or no cameras is a good thing.

bongodongobob 2y ago
It most certainly is not. Plus, I'd imagine this is more for accidents "in town" rather than on straight interstate highways where these cameras are normally set up. Take out alcohol and poor conditions and it's basically a non-issue. https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/motor-vehicle-safety-issues/speeding/ https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/motor-vehicle-safe...
jgeada 2y ago
Not sure if speeding is the leading cause of death or just gets the blame. The standard of driving in the US is abysmal and getting worse. US rates of accidents and deaths are much much higher than anywhere in Europe. In my state, everyone speeds 10-15mph above the posted limits on highways. But the people that cause everyone around them to maneuver aren't the speeders, it is the people driving the posted limits and creating a bottleneck on the highway. And the number of rear end collisions caused by distracted drivers looking at screens instead of paying attention to their driving is the type of driving incident I see most often.
- shadowgovt 2y ago
  IIUc in a lot of cases, they can now know speeding was a factor because (ironically given this post's topic) the black boxes in the vehicles involved plus nearby surveillance tools the vehicles passed or had an accident in view of give hard evidence someone was speeding. i.e. "We used to believe lies about how people drive, but thanks to the presence of more concrete evidence we are disproving those false assumptions." One of the things Alphabet discovered early on in the Waymo experiment that was an eye-opener to the whole industry is that auto accidents were probably underestimate by a factor of three. When they started rolling out vehicles on the road, the best numbers available for accidents-per-mile were insurance reports and NHTSA incident records. Having vehicles with cameras on the road continuously revealed that there were 300% more accidents than those numbers suggested because humans are bumping into each other due to mis-estimates at stoplights all the time, but nobody wants their insurance rates to go up so they just don't report those incidents. What if ubiquitous mass surveillance is good actually because it forces us to come to grips with realities we'd rather pretend are otherwise?
  - furyofantares 2y ago
    > IIUc in a lot of cases, they can now know speeding was a factor because (ironically given this post's topic) the black boxes in the vehicles involved plus nearby surveillance tools the vehicles passed or had an accident in view of give hard evidence someone was speeding. Base rate matters though; for example if literally everyone is speeding because speed limits are too low then every accident will involve someone speeding.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - dylan604 2y ago
      > for example if literally everyone is speeding because speed limits are too low is that really the case though, or is it people are so self involved that they feel they are too important to have to move that slowly? Just because everyone else is speeding does not automatically mean that faster speed is safe. It could also just be that people are assholes and they do what they want.
meowster 2y ago
Do you have a citation? Every time I've heard that, it was a factor, not the cause.
cortesoft 2y ago
Speeding is dangerous, but almost all traffic engineers say that speed limits don't always match what the safe driving speed is. I think you are already doing subconciously what i am talking about; you are thinking of speeding, but I doubt you are thinking of someone driving 50 mph in a 45mph zone. That is not the type of speeding that kills, but would be the type that could be caught with perfect enforcement.
- MereInterest 2y ago
  > but I doubt you are thinking of someone driving 50 mph in a 45mph zone. That is not the type of speeding that kills I know you're pulling this up as an example of a small infringement, but there are studies that quantify the fatality rate as a function of velocity. The numbers you picked are right in the steepest part of the increase. Using equation 2.3 from [0] (with conversions from mph to kph), there's a 64% chance of fatality at 45mph, but a 83% chance of fatality at 50mph. [0] https://nacto.org/docs/usdg/relationship_between_speed_risk_fatal_injury_pedestrians_and_car_occupants_richards.pdf https://nacto.org/docs/usdg/relationship_between_speed_risk_...
- astrange 2y ago
  US traffic engineers can't be trusted on anything about safety. If they designed roads to make speeding as easy as possible and to kill as many pedestrians as possible, it would look no different from what they do today. Speeding/speeds would be reduced if they simply designed roads to be harder to drive above the speed limit on, like being narrower and less straight. They don't do this.
hn8305823 2y ago
Traffic accidents and deaths are rising because of phones. I think we actually "won" the war on drunk driving, only to have a new more vicious war set upon us. Collision energy and thus damage increases with the square of speed (or ~speed^4 for head-on) so there is still an interest in controlling speed. Most drivers (especially those over 35yo) will auto-regulate their speed to the optimal (safety vs throughput) for the road design. The problem is the ones who don't. Speed limits are set lower than this optimal speed, partly to make it easier to stop and charge drivers that can't auto-regulate well. Most of the time you will be ignored for going 5-10mph over. If you are over that, it is seen as deliberate defiance and "you are asking to be pulled over". Automatic enforcement turns this de facto road law on it's head however. During the 1970's oil crisis, highway speeds were capped at 55 mph nationwide. It took several decades for this to reverse and only after safety studies showed that differential speeds (those obeying and those going the optimal natural speed for the road) is a significant contributing factor in crashes. Unfortunately, speeds limits are still often below optimal because of an assumption that every driver will always go at least 5mph over the limit (which is incorrect). On 70 mph interstates away from urban/commuter traffic (where time pressures often affect driving), It's not unusual to see some cars going 5mph below the limit. That is a sign that these Interstate segments have the optimal natural speed.
- aners_xyz 2y ago
  Every other nation has cell phones so I fail to see how the cell phone argument holds water. Also the safety of speed for a given environment should include pedestrians. Many advocates for urban areas rightfully push for 25 mph limits for exactly that reason. If you want to successfully convert in town urban roads that are wide and have high speeds to 25mph there are two good options: speed calming measures or speed cameras.
  - latentsea 2y ago
    I live in NZ and they introduced laws here where you can be fined and potentially lose your license for using your phone while driving citing it as being dangerous.
happypumpkin 2y ago
I suspect the two major drivers of this are vehicles getting larger over time and smartphones.
thegrim33 2y ago
The population is also increasing. If you're not using deaths per mile driven, and instead just the raw absolute number of deaths, your viewpoint is meaningless and just adding FUD into something that should be an extremely easily data-driven topic.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

matsemann 2y ago

I disagree strongly with your example, which also ruins your point for me. I think you should find a different example than one based in motornormativity, saying some laws are fine to break as long as it's behind a wheel.

nradov 2y ago
I have no problem with strict enforcement of current speed limits in residential areas. But speed limits on controlled access highways in many states are set ridiculously low. When government officials try to claim that a 65mph limit on a flat, straight freeway is necessary for "safety" it's obvious that they're being disingenuous and this is just a revenue grab. It breeds contempt for the law among the driving public and is ultimately counterproductive.
- xerox13ster 2y ago
  The emissions and efficiency difference between 55, 60, 65, and 70mph are significant and cannot be understated. It makes such a real difference for air quality that TEXAS (the state that hates regulation and built the monstrosity called the Katy freeway) has a reduced speed limit in some metro areas for air quality reasons. In fact, the reason most national highways have a speedlimit of 50mph, even out in the boonies in Kansas where everything is flat and straight, is because of the fuel crisis of the 70s. When I was a child, I was curious why highways were 50mph but the interstates had a speedlimit of 65-70mph, so I went and found out instead of assuming it was a disingenous revenue grab. Most interstates were generally built after the fuel crisis, and they modified the national speed limit in 1988, setting the speed to 65mph, again for efficiency reasons. It was repealed in 1995. Perhaps 65mph is what was considered safe for the road and vehicular technology at the time, and no one has had the political or municipal capital to do a new study ever since. You want that speed limit changed, contact your reps, I guess.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > emissions and efficiency difference between 55, 60, 65, and 70mph are significant and cannot be understated Wouldn't this be an argument for a higher EV speed limit?

chgs 2y ago

We’ve had speed cameras for decades in the UK without problems. I speed constantly yet had been caught twice in 25 years of driving.

dguest 2y ago
They have speed cameras all over Europe too, but the speed limit is often 130 km/h (about 80 mph). Most of the population of the US lives in states where the speed limit is 70 mph or lower. Obviously this is an oversimplification, Switzerland and Spain are 120 km/h (75 mph), Germany often has no upper limit, a few places are 140 or higher. But in general it seems like most of Europe sets the limit at the speed Americans actually drive.
- chgs 2y ago
  And int he uk the highest speed limit is 70, and in busy areas it’s usually 60 or 50 on highways from average speed camera enforcement of variable speed limits. In towns it’s 30 and there’s plenty of cameras, for speed, red lights, bus lanes etc. The world doesn’t end.
- graftak 2y ago
  I know from experience that raising the speed will immediately raise the speed speedsters are willing to go. When the highway in my country went from 100 to 130km/h, people who drove 120 then started to drive 150.
cortesoft 2y ago
This is likely because the cameras have limits that are higher than the actual law, for exactly the reason I stated.
hellojesus 2y ago
The UK has the best system for speeding prevention I've seen. The cameras are established to clock you at position X1 at time Y1. Then the next cameras a handful or more miles down the road clock you at position X2 at time Y2. You get a ticket if (X2 - X1) / (Y2 - Y1) > Limit + e. You can speed all you'd like between those cameras, but unless you're exiting before the next set, you'll have to pull over and wait the amount of time necessary to bring you back to the speed limit for that area, achieving zero reduction in total trip time.

the_other 2y ago

> It doesn't make sense to have the limits as low and the fines as high when every single person that goes over the limit can be fined Surely this is only reasonable for large, out of town roads. Within cities, you definitely still want low speed, high fine.

cortesoft 2y ago
I am not making a blanket statement that all speed limits are too low, just that they are set based on the implicit assumption that enforcement rates are going to be low and that police are going to be using their judgement to determine if someone is driving at an unsafe speed.
- amanaplanacanal 2y ago
  I don’t think an individual police judgement is the proper measure of what is an unsafe speed.

itake 2y ago

Low fines would turn the entire highway into a paid express lane, with the only limit being the driver's personal safety risk limit.

Animats 2y ago

> Then we roll out speed cameras which can catch people EVERY time they speed. Hikvision, in China, has a comprehensive system for this.[1] Hikvision has other monitoring tools. Here's their Behavior Analysis Server data sheet. It's a 1U server for monitoring people.[2] Hikvision Behavior Analysis Server Based on the latest intelligent algorithm of deep learning, Behavior Analysis Server with a high-density GPU architecture supports the detection of behavior events in the perimeter, street, densely populated areas, indoor and other places, and triggers alarms in a timely manner, which can effectively improve the security of various places. Behavior Analysis Server can detect the specific behaviors of individuals and groups in the perimeter, street, densely populated areas, indoor and other places, and provide professional video intelligent analysis applications: * Perimeter Protection -- Real-time detection and alarming of events such as line crossing, area intrusion, region entrance/exiting, loitering, parking, unattended baggage or object removal. * Trend Analysis -- Real-time detection and alarming of people density, real-time people counting statistics and people counting statistics. * Street Behavior Detection -- Real-time detection and alarming of events such as fast moving, physical conflict, people gathering or falling down. * Indoor Behavior Detection -- Real-time detection and alarming of events such as getting up, key person getting up, climbing, absence or sleep on duty, abnormal number of people, overstaying, sudden change of sound intensity, regional overstaying, physical conflict, standing up, sitting, or people counting. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uh8DBYuDZyo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uh8DBYuDZyo [2] https://www.hikvision.com/content/dam/hikvision/products/S000000001/S000000002/S000000014/S000000015/OFR003337/M000007567/Data_Sheet/Behavior-Analysis-Server_DS-IE10XX-03U-BA_datasheet_V3.2.4_20190815.pdf https://www.hikvision.com/content/dam/hikvision/products/S00...

akira2501 2y ago

> have speed limits and fines set based on the idea that cops won't catch most speeders I don't think there is any truth to this at all. > We set a relatively low max speed We made the mistake of mixing vehicle and pedestrian infrastructure. Our speed choices have way more to do with this than with imagined enforcement outcomes. > because you are only going to be pulled over a fraction of the time. Many cites engage in "zero tolerance traffic enforcement" programs. This is where they patrol a single stretch of road and stop every single person who is even 1mph above the limit. > most are designed based on the enforcement capabilities of the time. Most are "designed" (a.k.a rapidly created and pushed into existence) in reaction to disasters that occurred and people broadly feel could have been prevented if there was a law curtailing the behavior that led up to the accident. We didn't make speeding laws based upon "enforcement capabilities" we made them in response to "wasteful deaths."

ApolloFortyNine 2y ago
A lot of your post wreaks of 'citation needed' but I'll choose this one. >Many cites engage in "zero tolerance traffic enforcement" programs. This is where they patrol a single stretch of road and stop every single person who is even 1mph above the limit. Searching this all I find is Virginia where over 80 is an automatic reckless driving, but the highest speed limit in the state is actually 70. I've never heard of anyone being pulled over for 1mph over the limit.
- akira2501 2y ago
  It's called "STEP." The NHTSA encourages states to do it. Several California cities engage in it once a month. Search a little harder before you victoriously declare "citation needed!" https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/hs810851.pdf https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/hs810851.pdf
  - digging 2y ago
    > Search a little harder before you victoriously declare "citation needed!" FWIW, that's the opposite of how citation requests work. Support your claims

mike_hock 2y ago

> We need to adjust for technology. We adjust for technology 100% of the time when technology has made enforcement harder. We adjust for technology 0% of the time when technology has made enforcement easier.

nox101 2y ago

Lol, I think they should be low and stay low and there should be more enforcement For me, I live in a quiet neighborhood. The residential street outside my apartment has speed limit signs of 20mph. People are trying to walk their dogs and kids. 9 out of 10 cars go 40-50mph. Part of that is road design. The road is new, straight, barrier and speed bump free. Worse, if you try to obey the law and go 20 the person behind you will get road rage and then illegally pass on the left (going into the opposite lane) or pass on the right and swerve around to get to the left turn lane. That said, a street a block over is 25mph with speed bump and at least 1 of 3 cars races to each bump. And 1 of 20 just flies over the bumps. This is a street with apartments and condos one one side and a park and elementary school on the other. There might be some roads that don't need enforcement (somewhere in Nevada) but even in outside of the city, say LA to Vegas or SF to LA there's enough traffic that speeders cause accidents. There's also a great video I stumbled across yesterday https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3D7XYQExt0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3D7XYQExt0 Summary: Kinetic energy = 1/2 * mv^2 So if have a car going 70mph and they slam on their breaks to avoid an accident. When they stop they'll have expended 4900 units of kinetic energy. Another car, same weight, going 100mph slams on the breaks. When their car has expended 4900 units of kinetic energy they still have another 5100 units to get rid before their car will stop because 70^2 = 4900, and 100^2 = 10000. In other words, after they've applied as much stopping force as the 70mph car required to come to stop they're still going over 70mph The point being, speeding issues scale exponentially, not linearly.

sokoloff 2y ago
Quadratically, not exponentially.
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  Brakes, not breaks.
BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago
Yeah but as a counterpoint, its too damn slow man. We don’t need to treat drivers like imbeciles.

satvikpendem 2y ago

> It doesn't make sense to have the limits as low and the fines as high when every single person that goes over the limit can be fined. Oh it makes sense alright...for police departments mandating a ticket quota and receiving direct revenue from speed camera fines.