11 ms·

Speed radars are good for speed traps, but not so great to prevent speed related incidents. They share the same fatal flaw with all other single-point speed met

Speed radars are good for speed traps, but not so great to prevent speed related incidents. They share the same fatal flaw with all other single-point speed meters: You can just slow down for a minute, while you pass by the speed trap, and then speed up for the rest of your trip. Instead, a 2-point speed meter (i.e. license plate readers every few miles, measuring time between matching reads) system is superior because a) their margin of error is negligible and b) they measure sustained speed over a long distance rather than at a single hot spot, thus making roads safer. I can't believe it's not implanted at least in all interstate freeways.

legohead 12y ago
If you've traveled around the country, you've invariably come across those "speed is monitored by aircraft" signs, and what you described is how they do it (tracking how long it takes cars to go from point A to B)
- onan_barbarian 12y ago
  I've always been a bit nervous about those "speed is enforced by aircraft" signs (as opposed to "monitored"). I always get a mental picture of a aircraft strafing near my car until I slow down...
  - dTal 12y ago
    You may enjoy this image from XKCD then: http://what-if.xkcd.com/imgs/a/87/radar_aircraft.png http://what-if.xkcd.com/imgs/a/87/radar_aircraft.png
- cardiffspaceman 12y ago
  In California the CHP (California Hwy Patrol) plane has to do the same thing the CHP car would have to do: match your speed and then note its own speed. Measuring time between points is forbidden no matter what the observer's vehicle is. Radar is also used from the ground but was not available to CHP when they started using aircraft. The planes are on the inexpensive side so sometimes they have to dive to achieve the speed. Also recently CHP got to use radar statewide so they don't use aircraft so much.
thrownaway2424 12y ago
The fundamental reason is because drivers feel entitled to speed and most voters are drivers. People with expensive cars further believe they've paid for the privilege of violating more laws more often, and those people are also more influential in policy setting. There are lots of expressions of this fundamental reason, such as people throwing a fit about automated license plate reading in the name of privacy. But our all boils down to the fact that a person turns into a sociopathic scofflaw as soon as he gets behind the wheel.
- fossuser 12y ago
  OR it could be because speeding isn't that dangerous and the current limits on most roads don't represent what speed people actually drive at or what speed people could safely drive at. It's different on residential streets, but on freeways I think the way Germany handles it is better. Speeding tickets (and most traffic violations really) are not about safety or curbing behavior they're about generating revenue for the town/city.
  - Liesmith 12y ago
    Speeding is extremely dangerous. It's ludicrous to argue otherwise. A third of crashes (including fatal crashes) involve speeding, and the faster you are driving the more likely you are to die or fatally injure another. Also, changing the speed limits on roads have been studied and it doesn't make a humongous difference. The government usually sets the speed limit at slightly lower than the average speed people actually drive.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - vonmoltke 12y ago
      > Speeding is extremely dangerous. It's ludicrous to argue otherwise. Actually, blanket arguments like "speeding is extremely dangerous" are ludicrous. "Speeding" is exceeding a semi-arbitrary speed threshold. If that threshold is, say, 70 mph I'm OK at 70 but if I go to 71 I am being "extremely dangerous"? 71 is speeding in that case, after all. > A third of crashes (including fatal crashes) involve speeding, If a third or more of all drivers speed, that statistic is meaningless. > the faster you are driving the more likely you are to die or fatally injure another. Indeed, and that statement has nothing to do with speeding. It is a continuum from 0 to whatever the top speed of a given vehicle is. This statement is equally valid when you are under the speed limit. > Also, changing the speed limits on roads have been studied and it doesn't make a humongous difference. The government usually sets the speed limit at slightly lower than the average speed people actually drive. I have seen that happen before, but in my experience that is the exception rather than the rule.
growse 12y ago
Possibly because the cost/benefit just isn't there. In the UK, the data shows that speeding (excessive speed for the conditions above the speed limit) is the primary cause in single digit percentage of accidents. I believe there's data from 1996 and 2007 for this, will dig it out when I'm not on mobile. If you want to spend money on accident prevention, there's much better things to target than speeding.
- selectodude 12y ago
  It's not about saving lives. It's about revenue generation.
  - MichaelDickens 12y ago
    Speed limit laws don't exist to generate revenue. They exist to disincentivize speeding. If speed limit laws didn't exist, can you imagine lawmakers saying, "We need more money. Hey, I know! Let's charge people money for driving over a certain speed!"
    - shoeless 12y ago
      The manufacturers of speed cameras take a percentage, and it is a windfall for the municipality. I live in an area where stationary speed cameras are around every corner (Montgomery Co, Maryland). I've lived here long enough to know that there's no way the county would spend money on the equipment and man power to maintain and operate that network, just to break even for the sake of safety.
    - pyre 12y ago
      The laws aren't put into place with the "let's generate revenue" mentality, but their enforcement is definitely done with respect to that mentality. If it's all about getting people to slow down, then: 1) Why aren't law enforcement more focused on getting people to slow down than writing tickets? 2) Why do traffic cops have monthly quotas for tickets? 3) In places where monthly quotas are against the law, why do 'performance revues' of traffic cops only focus on '# of tickets' as the largest performance metric? (basically a quota by another name) 4) Why is it so easy to bargain down a speeding ticket in a large city, whereas in a small town they are only willing to haggle on the points on your license (hint: because they still want you money)?
stronglikedan 12y ago
Perhaps it's because you're ticketing the vehicle's registered owner, but not necessarily the driver.
- gambiting 12y ago
  That argument works in some countries while in others it doesn't. In UK only people who are explicitly listed on the insurance document can drive the car, and the police can demand that you tell them who was driving the car at the time. In some other EU countries like Poland, you buy insurance for the car,not the driver,so literally anyone can drive it(with your permission of course). Then if you are caught by a speed camera and your face isn't visible you can say that someone else was driving and you don't remember who - in theory there is a penalty for not saying who(200zł = ~$60), but most people opt to pay it instead of the speeding ticket which can be higher - or go to court and dispute that they cannot pay for the crime they didn't commit and they cannot be forced to remember something which they don't remember - and they sometimes win.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - tompko 12y ago
    > In UK only people who are explicitly listed on the insurance document can drive the car That's not entirely true, it depends on your insurance. It's an offence to drive a car without insurance, and an offence to allow someone who is uninsured to drive your car. Some insurance policies do not extend the insurance you took out to driving other peoples cars. However, some fully comprehensive policies do have third party insurance while you are driving someone else's car with their permission. In that case it's fully legal to drive.
    - gambiting 12y ago
      Ok, I didn't know that. Still, it works another way around than it does in countries like Poland - you have to have your own insurance,to drive somebody else's car. While in Poland you only buy insurance for the car,and anyone with a valid drivers licence is automatically covered by the insurance purchased for that car(unless they are doing it without the permission of the owner, in which case the insurance is invalid).
malchow 12y ago
"I can't believe [average speed camera systems are] not implanted at least in all interstate freeways." Possibly because a civil society, favoring the preservation of a measure of basic autonomy, does not implement every measure for tracking, enforcing, circumscribing, and monitoring the people.
- timthorn 12y ago
  In practice, they're actually very good for improving traffic flow on busy roads - because almost everyone is driving at the same speed, jams just don't form in the same way. The utilitarian argument for them is very strong.
  - ghkbrew 12y ago
    Do you have evidence to back up that claim? It seems counterintuitive that slowing down the top few percent fastest drivers would improve traffic. If there's enough traffic to cause congestion wouldn't they be stuck behind slower drivers anyway?
    - timthorn 12y ago
      Anecdotal evidence, but it also makes intuitive sense if you consider that vehicles travelling at a range of speeds and particularly changing lanes to overtake the slower drivers is effectively a turbulent flow. If that flow can be smoothed, as a body it travels faster.
    - saosebastiao 12y ago
      I know the trucking industry regularly criticizes the safety implications of having a separate speed limit for them, as it makes lane changes much more complicated. They aren't impartial to the financial impact of the speed limit though, so there's that.
    - TeMPOraL 12y ago
      As you go faster, your stopping distance (that is, the distance you should maintain between you and cars in front and behind you) increases. This leads to roads having a maximum capacity somewhere in the area that speed limits are set. If you go faster than that, you're reducing efficiency of traffic.
grecy 12y ago
> I can't believe [average speed detector is] not implanted at least in all interstate freeways. They are very common in Australia. It takes a photo of your license plate, then another 10km (or whatever) down the freeway. If the two photos are less than x seconds apart, you get a speeding ticket.
- goodcanadian 12y ago
  I was going to say something similar. However, the ones I have seen are only applied to large trucks. So far, at least, cars can speed through with impunity.
  - grecy 12y ago
    The Melbourne->Geelong road (Australia's busiest, and deadliest) has many, and they will ding regular cars.
- mrdmnd 12y ago
  The Mean Value Theorem strikes again!
- bentcorner 12y ago
  I expect to see a post about time synchronization problems with remote equipment.
- reustle 12y ago
  They also have these in Norway. The 2nd camera has a light on it and will blink yellow if you should expect a ticket in the mail.
Zelphyr 12y ago
Unfortunately, because police departments are often (mostly?) funded by things like tickets[1], they actually have an incentive to care less about traffic safety in this case. If the goal was truly to get people to stop speeding the municipalities could increase fines to a level that actually serves as a deterrent. 1: I only have second-hand/anecdotal knowledge that these departments are funded by fines. Still, I believe my point remains.
- randyrand 12y ago
  I think the punishment should reflect the crime. If fines and or punishments are used primarily as a deterrent, then why not just have huge punishments all over the place? Do you see how that's immoral? Fines should be used as punishment, not deterrence (punishment is a form of deterrence, but is merely a side effect). If I decide to litter, it's because I think "this is not that big of a crime. I'm not harming people very much." It's not anyones natural moral instinct to think, "I would do this, but the penalty is to high" - we're conditioned to think that. But as is all to often, a lot of times people are not even aware that their actions may be illegal, or may not be aware the consequences are vastly harsher than the crime. Do you know what the penalty is for driving with one bad headlight? me neither. I hope its reasonable, especially when I make the decision to do it, but I base the decision off the fact that driving without a headlight does not seem that egregious of a crime. So shouldn't our punishment system be base off the same thing that people use to guide their decisions? The results of our actions? The answer is yes. I don't want to live in the world you are imagining. Even if there is no litter on the ground and no one speeds. If you say, just inform everyone of the laws really really well so they know beforehand when making a decision, that is utterly impossible. Foreigners exist. People are busy. All laws are not even totally known to the lawmakers. It is an impossible task. Back to your point: If the goal was to stop speeding, they would make it physically impossible to speed. Either by really pervasive robotic enforcement, or governors in cars. But they don't do that, they want the money. Still, the punishment should reflect the crime, even in the robotic police world.
jpmattia 12y ago
> I can't believe it's not implanted at least in all interstate freeways. If you're around DC, there are a bunch of automated speed detectors built into the highways, and it's the same story: People slow down for the trap, and then speed up afterwards. If you're from out of town, you're pretty well screwed because you'll be following some guy who will, out of the blue, slow down for no apparent reason.
ylhert 12y ago
In France they have a system that sort of works like this, most/many highways are toll based. There are toll booths at regular intervals(every 100 miles or so). If your time between toll booths is below a certain time, they know you were speeding at some point. To get around this, my always speeding grandpere would just have us stop for gas, un cafe, etc right before each toll booth.
- draven 12y ago
  The one I've seen were not installed on the toll booths themselves (those are only there when entering or exiting the freeway) but on separate kind of portals above the road. A camera records the traffic, a computer extract the plates. Then later you have the same setup, and they can then calculate your average speed between the two. The French name is "radar tronçon".
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  > To get around this, my always speeding grandpere would just have us stop for gas, un cafe, etc right before each toll booth. That sort of defeats the point of speeding. Why endanger your lives and the lives of the others if you even don't get faster to your destination as you make additional stops to "defeat" anti-speeding systems?
  - colanderman 12y ago
    You are supposing he stops for gas when his tank is full?
    - TeMPOraL 12y ago
      I'm supposing he stops for gas when his tank is still more than half-full to top it up, so that he stops exactly enough times to avoid being fined for speeding.
  - ylhert 12y ago
    I don't think his speeding was a logical, reasoned thing
jpollock 12y ago
This can be intentional. If there is a dangerous piece of road where the average speed of traffic is higher than the road will take, then put a trap in to slow the traffic down to the limit. It doesn't have to be over the entire highway system to have an effect on accidents. For example, in NZ, there is a speed camera half-way down Ngauranga gorge in Wellington - a place where there is a blind turn down a steep slope and where the limit goes from 100kph down to 80kph. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ngauranga_Gorge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ngauranga_Gorge
throwaway0010 12y ago
Interestingly the system you describe, marking two points and measuring time between them is illegal in California: Definition of a speed trap: http://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/vctop/d17/vc40802.htm http://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/vctop/d17/vc40802.htm Speed traps are prohibited: https://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/vctop/d17/vc40801.htm https://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/vctop/d17/vc40801.htm
chrisBob 12y ago
2-point speed meters would work especially well on toll highways. They already know exactly what time my car go on and off of the MassPike, but if you cover the 60 miles in 30 minutes then you get charged the same $5 as always.
cge 12y ago
If I recall correctly, for reasons I don't understand, this is not only not implemented in California, but not even legal there.
btbuildem 12y ago
It's not the speed that is the problem - it's the relative difference in speed between two nearby vehicles that you should be concerned. Someone doing 55 in a 55 when everyone else is doing 70 is being a hazard, in their case following the speed limit is outright dangerous. This is of course in context of freeways - residential streets etc do require a hard speed limit.
wastedhours 12y ago
Yeah, but the initial ones in the UK were lane based (SPECS?), meaning if you changed lane at any point during that section, they wouldn't work. I assume this has been fixed now?
colanderman 12y ago
As someone who daily drives a highway [1] that is marked 15 MPH below what it ought to be (as almost all highways are), I hope this system never comes to fruition. Now, automated tagging of morons who stare at their phone while driving? Bring it on. Those fuckers are a plague. [1] The Mass Pike (I-90); which is a toll highway that is marked 65 MPH, on which traffic averages 75 MPH, and 80 MPH is well under the speed the highway can safely support (given attentive drivers).
- hyperbovine 12y ago
  > (given attentive drivers). Good god man, since when is that a given? The situation worsens with each passing day.
  - colanderman 12y ago
    Hence my assertion that police should crack down on such inattentive drivers.
- mokus 12y ago
  On the other hand, as someone who also believes speed limits are too low, I sometimes wish they _were_ enforced to draconian extremes because then the 95% of drivers who just ignore the law instead of trying to change it might actually get off their asses and vote.
  - colanderman 12y ago
    Likewise, I secretly hope vehicle speeds would be electronically limited (say, radio-controlled by highway transmitters) for the same reason.

legohead 12y ago

If you've traveled around the country, you've invariably come across those "speed is monitored by aircraft" signs, and what you described is how they do it (tracking how long it takes cars to go from point A to B)

onan_barbarian 12y ago
I've always been a bit nervous about those "speed is enforced by aircraft" signs (as opposed to "monitored"). I always get a mental picture of a aircraft strafing near my car until I slow down...
- dTal 12y ago
  You may enjoy this image from XKCD then: http://what-if.xkcd.com/imgs/a/87/radar_aircraft.png http://what-if.xkcd.com/imgs/a/87/radar_aircraft.png
cardiffspaceman 12y ago
In California the CHP (California Hwy Patrol) plane has to do the same thing the CHP car would have to do: match your speed and then note its own speed. Measuring time between points is forbidden no matter what the observer's vehicle is. Radar is also used from the ground but was not available to CHP when they started using aircraft. The planes are on the inexpensive side so sometimes they have to dive to achieve the speed. Also recently CHP got to use radar statewide so they don't use aircraft so much.

thrownaway2424 12y ago

The fundamental reason is because drivers feel entitled to speed and most voters are drivers. People with expensive cars further believe they've paid for the privilege of violating more laws more often, and those people are also more influential in policy setting. There are lots of expressions of this fundamental reason, such as people throwing a fit about automated license plate reading in the name of privacy. But our all boils down to the fact that a person turns into a sociopathic scofflaw as soon as he gets behind the wheel.

fossuser 12y ago
OR it could be because speeding isn't that dangerous and the current limits on most roads don't represent what speed people actually drive at or what speed people could safely drive at. It's different on residential streets, but on freeways I think the way Germany handles it is better. Speeding tickets (and most traffic violations really) are not about safety or curbing behavior they're about generating revenue for the town/city.
- Liesmith 12y ago
  Speeding is extremely dangerous. It's ludicrous to argue otherwise. A third of crashes (including fatal crashes) involve speeding, and the faster you are driving the more likely you are to die or fatally injure another. Also, changing the speed limits on roads have been studied and it doesn't make a humongous difference. The government usually sets the speed limit at slightly lower than the average speed people actually drive.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - vonmoltke 12y ago
    > Speeding is extremely dangerous. It's ludicrous to argue otherwise. Actually, blanket arguments like "speeding is extremely dangerous" are ludicrous. "Speeding" is exceeding a semi-arbitrary speed threshold. If that threshold is, say, 70 mph I'm OK at 70 but if I go to 71 I am being "extremely dangerous"? 71 is speeding in that case, after all. > A third of crashes (including fatal crashes) involve speeding, If a third or more of all drivers speed, that statistic is meaningless. > the faster you are driving the more likely you are to die or fatally injure another. Indeed, and that statement has nothing to do with speeding. It is a continuum from 0 to whatever the top speed of a given vehicle is. This statement is equally valid when you are under the speed limit. > Also, changing the speed limits on roads have been studied and it doesn't make a humongous difference. The government usually sets the speed limit at slightly lower than the average speed people actually drive. I have seen that happen before, but in my experience that is the exception rather than the rule.

growse 12y ago

Possibly because the cost/benefit just isn't there. In the UK, the data shows that speeding (excessive speed for the conditions above the speed limit) is the primary cause in single digit percentage of accidents. I believe there's data from 1996 and 2007 for this, will dig it out when I'm not on mobile. If you want to spend money on accident prevention, there's much better things to target than speeding.

selectodude 12y ago
It's not about saving lives. It's about revenue generation.
- MichaelDickens 12y ago
  Speed limit laws don't exist to generate revenue. They exist to disincentivize speeding. If speed limit laws didn't exist, can you imagine lawmakers saying, "We need more money. Hey, I know! Let's charge people money for driving over a certain speed!"
  - shoeless 12y ago
    The manufacturers of speed cameras take a percentage, and it is a windfall for the municipality. I live in an area where stationary speed cameras are around every corner (Montgomery Co, Maryland). I've lived here long enough to know that there's no way the county would spend money on the equipment and man power to maintain and operate that network, just to break even for the sake of safety.
  - pyre 12y ago
    The laws aren't put into place with the "let's generate revenue" mentality, but their enforcement is definitely done with respect to that mentality. If it's all about getting people to slow down, then: 1) Why aren't law enforcement more focused on getting people to slow down than writing tickets? 2) Why do traffic cops have monthly quotas for tickets? 3) In places where monthly quotas are against the law, why do 'performance revues' of traffic cops only focus on '# of tickets' as the largest performance metric? (basically a quota by another name) 4) Why is it so easy to bargain down a speeding ticket in a large city, whereas in a small town they are only willing to haggle on the points on your license (hint: because they still want you money)?

stronglikedan 12y ago

Perhaps it's because you're ticketing the vehicle's registered owner, but not necessarily the driver.

gambiting 12y ago
That argument works in some countries while in others it doesn't. In UK only people who are explicitly listed on the insurance document can drive the car, and the police can demand that you tell them who was driving the car at the time. In some other EU countries like Poland, you buy insurance for the car,not the driver,so literally anyone can drive it(with your permission of course). Then if you are caught by a speed camera and your face isn't visible you can say that someone else was driving and you don't remember who - in theory there is a penalty for not saying who(200zł = ~$60), but most people opt to pay it instead of the speeding ticket which can be higher - or go to court and dispute that they cannot pay for the crime they didn't commit and they cannot be forced to remember something which they don't remember - and they sometimes win.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- tompko 12y ago
  > In UK only people who are explicitly listed on the insurance document can drive the car That's not entirely true, it depends on your insurance. It's an offence to drive a car without insurance, and an offence to allow someone who is uninsured to drive your car. Some insurance policies do not extend the insurance you took out to driving other peoples cars. However, some fully comprehensive policies do have third party insurance while you are driving someone else's car with their permission. In that case it's fully legal to drive.
  - gambiting 12y ago
    Ok, I didn't know that. Still, it works another way around than it does in countries like Poland - you have to have your own insurance,to drive somebody else's car. While in Poland you only buy insurance for the car,and anyone with a valid drivers licence is automatically covered by the insurance purchased for that car(unless they are doing it without the permission of the owner, in which case the insurance is invalid).

malchow 12y ago

"I can't believe [average speed camera systems are] not implanted at least in all interstate freeways." Possibly because a civil society, favoring the preservation of a measure of basic autonomy, does not implement every measure for tracking, enforcing, circumscribing, and monitoring the people.

timthorn 12y ago
In practice, they're actually very good for improving traffic flow on busy roads - because almost everyone is driving at the same speed, jams just don't form in the same way. The utilitarian argument for them is very strong.
- ghkbrew 12y ago
  Do you have evidence to back up that claim? It seems counterintuitive that slowing down the top few percent fastest drivers would improve traffic. If there's enough traffic to cause congestion wouldn't they be stuck behind slower drivers anyway?
  - timthorn 12y ago
    Anecdotal evidence, but it also makes intuitive sense if you consider that vehicles travelling at a range of speeds and particularly changing lanes to overtake the slower drivers is effectively a turbulent flow. If that flow can be smoothed, as a body it travels faster.
  - saosebastiao 12y ago
    I know the trucking industry regularly criticizes the safety implications of having a separate speed limit for them, as it makes lane changes much more complicated. They aren't impartial to the financial impact of the speed limit though, so there's that.
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    As you go faster, your stopping distance (that is, the distance you should maintain between you and cars in front and behind you) increases. This leads to roads having a maximum capacity somewhere in the area that speed limits are set. If you go faster than that, you're reducing efficiency of traffic.

grecy 12y ago

> I can't believe [average speed detector is] not implanted at least in all interstate freeways. They are very common in Australia. It takes a photo of your license plate, then another 10km (or whatever) down the freeway. If the two photos are less than x seconds apart, you get a speeding ticket.

goodcanadian 12y ago
I was going to say something similar. However, the ones I have seen are only applied to large trucks. So far, at least, cars can speed through with impunity.
- grecy 12y ago
  The Melbourne->Geelong road (Australia's busiest, and deadliest) has many, and they will ding regular cars.
mrdmnd 12y ago
The Mean Value Theorem strikes again!
bentcorner 12y ago
I expect to see a post about time synchronization problems with remote equipment.
reustle 12y ago
They also have these in Norway. The 2nd camera has a light on it and will blink yellow if you should expect a ticket in the mail.

Zelphyr 12y ago

Unfortunately, because police departments are often (mostly?) funded by things like tickets[1], they actually have an incentive to care less about traffic safety in this case. If the goal was truly to get people to stop speeding the municipalities could increase fines to a level that actually serves as a deterrent. 1: I only have second-hand/anecdotal knowledge that these departments are funded by fines. Still, I believe my point remains.

randyrand 12y ago
I think the punishment should reflect the crime. If fines and or punishments are used primarily as a deterrent, then why not just have huge punishments all over the place? Do you see how that's immoral? Fines should be used as punishment, not deterrence (punishment is a form of deterrence, but is merely a side effect). If I decide to litter, it's because I think "this is not that big of a crime. I'm not harming people very much." It's not anyones natural moral instinct to think, "I would do this, but the penalty is to high" - we're conditioned to think that. But as is all to often, a lot of times people are not even aware that their actions may be illegal, or may not be aware the consequences are vastly harsher than the crime. Do you know what the penalty is for driving with one bad headlight? me neither. I hope its reasonable, especially when I make the decision to do it, but I base the decision off the fact that driving without a headlight does not seem that egregious of a crime. So shouldn't our punishment system be base off the same thing that people use to guide their decisions? The results of our actions? The answer is yes. I don't want to live in the world you are imagining. Even if there is no litter on the ground and no one speeds. If you say, just inform everyone of the laws really really well so they know beforehand when making a decision, that is utterly impossible. Foreigners exist. People are busy. All laws are not even totally known to the lawmakers. It is an impossible task. Back to your point: If the goal was to stop speeding, they would make it physically impossible to speed. Either by really pervasive robotic enforcement, or governors in cars. But they don't do that, they want the money. Still, the punishment should reflect the crime, even in the robotic police world.

jpmattia 12y ago

> I can't believe it's not implanted at least in all interstate freeways. If you're around DC, there are a bunch of automated speed detectors built into the highways, and it's the same story: People slow down for the trap, and then speed up afterwards. If you're from out of town, you're pretty well screwed because you'll be following some guy who will, out of the blue, slow down for no apparent reason.

ylhert 12y ago

In France they have a system that sort of works like this, most/many highways are toll based. There are toll booths at regular intervals(every 100 miles or so). If your time between toll booths is below a certain time, they know you were speeding at some point. To get around this, my always speeding grandpere would just have us stop for gas, un cafe, etc right before each toll booth.

draven 12y ago
The one I've seen were not installed on the toll booths themselves (those are only there when entering or exiting the freeway) but on separate kind of portals above the road. A camera records the traffic, a computer extract the plates. Then later you have the same setup, and they can then calculate your average speed between the two. The French name is "radar tronçon".
TeMPOraL 12y ago
> To get around this, my always speeding grandpere would just have us stop for gas, un cafe, etc right before each toll booth. That sort of defeats the point of speeding. Why endanger your lives and the lives of the others if you even don't get faster to your destination as you make additional stops to "defeat" anti-speeding systems?
- colanderman 12y ago
  You are supposing he stops for gas when his tank is full?
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    I'm supposing he stops for gas when his tank is still more than half-full to top it up, so that he stops exactly enough times to avoid being fined for speeding.
- ylhert 12y ago
  I don't think his speeding was a logical, reasoned thing

jpollock 12y ago

This can be intentional. If there is a dangerous piece of road where the average speed of traffic is higher than the road will take, then put a trap in to slow the traffic down to the limit. It doesn't have to be over the entire highway system to have an effect on accidents. For example, in NZ, there is a speed camera half-way down Ngauranga gorge in Wellington - a place where there is a blind turn down a steep slope and where the limit goes from 100kph down to 80kph. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ngauranga_Gorge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ngauranga_Gorge

throwaway0010 12y ago

Interestingly the system you describe, marking two points and measuring time between them is illegal in California: Definition of a speed trap: http://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/vctop/d17/vc40802.htm http://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/vctop/d17/vc40802.htm Speed traps are prohibited: https://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/vctop/d17/vc40801.htm https://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/vctop/d17/vc40801.htm

chrisBob 12y ago

2-point speed meters would work especially well on toll highways. They already know exactly what time my car go on and off of the MassPike, but if you cover the 60 miles in 30 minutes then you get charged the same $5 as always.

cge 12y ago

If I recall correctly, for reasons I don't understand, this is not only not implemented in California, but not even legal there.

btbuildem 12y ago

It's not the speed that is the problem - it's the relative difference in speed between two nearby vehicles that you should be concerned. Someone doing 55 in a 55 when everyone else is doing 70 is being a hazard, in their case following the speed limit is outright dangerous. This is of course in context of freeways - residential streets etc do require a hard speed limit.

wastedhours 12y ago

Yeah, but the initial ones in the UK were lane based (SPECS?), meaning if you changed lane at any point during that section, they wouldn't work. I assume this has been fixed now?

colanderman 12y ago

As someone who daily drives a highway [1] that is marked 15 MPH below what it ought to be (as almost all highways are), I hope this system never comes to fruition. Now, automated tagging of morons who stare at their phone while driving? Bring it on. Those fuckers are a plague. [1] The Mass Pike (I-90); which is a toll highway that is marked 65 MPH, on which traffic averages 75 MPH, and 80 MPH is well under the speed the highway can safely support (given attentive drivers).

hyperbovine 12y ago
> (given attentive drivers). Good god man, since when is that a given? The situation worsens with each passing day.
- colanderman 12y ago
  Hence my assertion that police should crack down on such inattentive drivers.
mokus 12y ago
On the other hand, as someone who also believes speed limits are too low, I sometimes wish they _were_ enforced to draconian extremes because then the 95% of drivers who just ignore the law instead of trying to change it might actually get off their asses and vote.
- colanderman 12y ago
  Likewise, I secretly hope vehicle speeds would be electronically limited (say, radio-controlled by highway transmitters) for the same reason.