This is automation of a dangerous job that is expensive to pay the labor costs of. That's our thing, folks! That's what tech is all about!
If you think the speed limits should be higher so you can drive faster, fine, but that's completely orthogonal to the point here.
Better enforcement of road laws, fewer police deaths from road accidents, lower cost to achieve these goals. I see this as entirely beneficial.
The only people complaining are the ones who want to disregard road laws because they don't care about the danger they pose to others, and like that there's barely any enforcement.
It takes away my discretion. If I drive 60 in dense traffic and weave between lanes this system would mark me as legal but I would be putting other people in incredible danger. If I drive 75 on empty roads I would be marked as illegal and dangerous.
Sure people are irresponsible but these black and white automated solutions are scary and not smart enough to be throwing out $500+ fines. Plus with the insurance adjustment going 75 on an empty road could end up costing you $2000+ over a few years.
I don't think you have a reasonable expectation of privacy when you're driving your licensed car on a public road anyways.
But putting in place a system which distorts incentives around setting speed limits, seems like a bad idea.
Just like how yellow/caution light times were shortened where there were red light cameras. The financial incentives made intersections less safe.
Same with cameras. People learn where they are and engage in unexpected breaking to avoid fines.
And, btw, same argument could be made for cameras on sidewalks to do facial recognition and drug use.
Friction in law enforcement is a feature, not a bug.
I question whether or not this will lead to safer roads. It doesn't stop people from getting where they want to go at unsafe speeds, it just adds a toll that many will be happy to pay. It doesn't and can't always impact the actual driver, either, because the system can only fine the owner. There ya go, someone not interested in disregarding road laws.
Automation can't solve what good government and good civil engineering can. This didn't roll all the way over to us because anyone sane actually thinks we're going to solve jack shit.
This assumes that speeding laws are mainly there to prevent danger to others.
That's not true.
If you just send the ticket to whomever is the easiest to target (regardless of guilt), then it’s more about revenue than safety.
I also hope California takes the French and German approach (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-46822472) (http://thenewspaper.com/news/29/2975.asp)
What a fantastic idea I thought. Should be a requirement in North America too, given our unreliable vehicles and expanses of unlit roads.
But thanks to the French making it a protest tool, I don’t see it ever happening.
I don't think this is really necessary if implemented in california. Here, with the driving culture we have, the driver is going to be 99.9% the owner of the vehicle or their spouse.
If it's a rental car, just charge the rental company and they'll pass it to whoever was renting at the time.
No need to have some kind of investigation that ends the same way each time.
If you lend your car to someone, you are taking responsibility for the way they drive that car. If you can't do that, you shouldn't lend them your car.
No I’m not, they are.
Of course, if YOU try following the limits, even on the rightmost lane, lots of drivers will drive aggressively around you as if you're the one in the wrong!
Dont let the camels nose under the tent.
Then in a few years you likely will find it outsourced to a third party contractor, who has helpfully worked with the city or county to place the cameras in convenient spots that just happen to generate a ton of revenue.
I'm not totally against the idea, but at least where I live these red light and speeding cameras have devolved into ways to gain revenue vs. safety just by taking note of where they happen to be placed (and not).
There also has been an overall push to slowly reduce the threshold for activation of the cameras. Started as egregious speeding, now it's 6 over. The outcome is of course exactly what you would predict: everyone figures out where the cameras are and slams on the brakes for that block only. Super safe!
1.) Make any private or commercial car going over 80mph illegal. No exceptions except law enforcement and emergency services, no grandfathering in, no aftermarket upgrades.
2.) Enforce lower limits by geofencing and active beacons, to be strictly observed by mandatory driver assistance systems. Issue immediate death penalty for circumvention by automated rocket launchers at the next possible free spot.
3.) Also limit the maximal acceleration, no matter if ICE supercar or EV, don't want to have unnecessesary microplastics by needlessly burnt rubber, aren't we?
4.) Do the same for acoustics.
5.) Enjoy.
6.) Move all opposers by force to live in the fenced reservations of the race tracks.
It would make California the 19th state to install cameras that would automatically issue tickets to the owners of vehicles that are spotted exceeding the speed limit by at least 11 miles an hour.
[...]
The fines could be reduced if the vehicle owner is unable to pay.
[...]
“We’re out to change behavior. We’re not out to be punitive.”
---
So:
1. The unintended consequence is that more people may feel comfortable going 8-10 mph over the limit.
2. Those who can afford the $50 fine (which, knowing CA, is a big part of the population) without any other consequences will end up ignoring it and just paying the fee or using their significant wealth to fight the fees.
3. The rest of the people just won't pay it because they cannot afford it.
Didn't LA get rid of their cameras recently? Linked a YouTube video about this from an engineer.
1. they do not have it yet
2. it is in the news
However, speeding does have a significant impact on the severity of the accidents, making it an important issue. A little bit of speeding can be the difference between a fatal and non-fatal accident. Speeding is estimated to cause 30,000 deaths a year in the US.
https://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/speedmgt/ref_mats/fhwasa1304/Res...
That's why fines should always be proportional to income. They are not the price of a product, they are the price that should make a behaviour equally unaffordable for everyone.
They are more like parking tickets than a speeding ticket.
I imagine this varies some by state, but I believe it to be a fundamental constitutional issue at play.
The fine is practically meaningless compared to what it does to your insurance rates.
Is that more or less than the current status quo? I'm not in California but it sounds like everyone feels comfortable doing that anyways.
Also you can still enforce 1-10 mph over the old fashioned way.
> Those who can afford the $50 fine (which, knowing CA, is a big part of the population) without any other consequences will end up ignoring it and just paying the fee or using their significant wealth to fight the fees.
Doing this every time you speed would add up very quickly. Also if you're talking about middle class people $50 is not amount that feels like nothing to them.
> The rest of the people just won't pay it because they cannot afford it.
Like you said, this is a very small number of people that we probably don't need to be punished any more by society.
I'm dubious of schemes that have disparate impact based on the target's ability to bring about change-- good at politics and paperwork? reduced fine. Not so good? continued death by 1000 bureaucratic cuts.
I'm also dubious of schemes that have low to zero enforcement costs, since the allocation of enforcement resources is one of the most important protections to assure that state intrusion is being directed to matters of actual public consequence.
I'm all for ticketing drivers who are putting the public at risk, but if the risk they're creating isn't worth deploying a citing officer is it really worth the imposition on the recipient of the citation?
and I'm also pretty dubious of schemes with latency and ones where you'll get tripped up without random local knowledge. Go to visit a friend in another city then end up with a dozen fines and a suspended license before you know what hit you.
... and lets not even get into the latent surveillance potential, mass monitoring people's movements on an industrial scale at low marginal cost.
It's very difficult to quantify the harm that jail does to you. It depends on a lot of factors, some of which are entirely personal, and besides, jail has multiple functions (in short: dissuasion, retribution, prevention and re-education). A fine exists mostly for dissuasion, and has a very precise economical value that is easy to gauge on the income/ wealth of the person fined.
I know you were being facetious but, due to how the US legal system works, if you don't have a job/income, you likely have worse legal representation, which means you get a worse plea deal, and do go to jail longer.
And having children/family to care for usually does affect sentencing.
So you inadvertently described the current system in the US.
Impact on career and family (kids, mostly) is a major consideration when it comes to sentencing. For better or worse.
money outside of the big city can make very unlikely partnerships
Good government shouldn't backseat drive civil engineers to make dumb decisions that hurt public safety.