Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Oregon punished an engineer for criticizing red-light cameras. He fought and won

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 325 posts

Re: Oregon punished an engineer for criticizing red-light cameras. He fought and won

#91

Post by notheguyouthink »

vvanders wrote: post #88
simook wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going faster does not improve the speed of traffic. Matter of fact if everyone drove the actual speed limit we wouldn't have such a bad trafffic problem. Our infranstructure was designed to handle a range of speeds, primarily for the timing systems. When people drive outside those limits, that's when traffic patterns become unpredictable and/or unmanageable. The slow drivers are no different than the fast drivers. Bo…

> Going faster does not improve the speed of traffic. The parent never said that. When you merge on onto the freeway to need to merge at the fucking speed of traffic . I've been in so many cases stuck behind a clueless oregon driver merging onto I-5(70mph) at 35-40mph while there's a fucking semi bearing down on us 1/4-1/8th of a mile away. It's goddamn dangerous and putting people in situations where someone is goin…

edit: Apparently wanting to see data is offensive to drivers on HN. /shrug

Re: Oregon punished an engineer for criticizing red-light cameras. He fought and won

#92

Post by slantyyz »

Buttons840 wrote: post #85
slantyyz wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> He is an engineer, changing the title as you suggest makes it sound like he isn't. Is he really though? He has an engineering education, but in Oregon he's not officially an engineer. In a lot of jurisdictions, you can't call yourself an engineer unless you've been certified by the professional body. A Canadian politician had to apologize for calling himself an engineer because he was no longer certified [1]. I ge…

If the goal is to ensure that qualified people are hired then perhaps background checks and validating certifications would be enough without having to make a word illegal to use by the majority of the population.

True, but I'm only pointing out how it is, not how it should be.

Unfortunately, not liking an outdated law doesn't invalidate it or prevent it from being enforced. That's a separate issue.

Re: Oregon punished an engineer for criticizing red-light cameras. He fought and won

#93

Post by DoubleGlazing »

skadamou wrote: post #10

The whole business of red light cameras is pretty dubious to begin with. It seems more like a tool local municipalities use to tax through traffic rather than a means of protecting public safety. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/08/13/211723717...

I live in Ireland and recently my wife got a speeding ticket having supposedly been caught by a mobile speed detector van. She was pretty certain that she hadn't been speeding as she knows the particular stretch of road is notorious for hidden speed traps.

The court summons photo had the GPS co-ordinates of the vans location embedded in the corner. So I types them in to Google Maps and it supposedly showed that the van was 50 meters away from the road in a farmers field. I tried again with other mapping sources including Ordnance Survey Ireland - all produced the same result.

So our case was simple, if the GPS in the van was so inaccurate then that called in to question the accuracy of the rest of the attached equipment - including the speed detection gear.

So I built up a portfolio of documents from both government, commercial and academic sources stating that the GPS equipment in the van should have been more accurate - to at least 5m and ideally more than that. I was also able to call upon my experience having worked on various GIS systems and on the development of lone worker emergency beacons in the past.

When I spoke for my wife in court the prosecutor asked me if I was was a certified GPS engineer. I said that I didn't believe such a title existed and that I was offering evidence based on my professional experience. But that was enough to sway the judge who said that unless I had someone from "GPS" [sic] with me than my evidence counted for nothing.

Fair play to the guy in the article for putting up a fight.

Re: Oregon punished an engineer for criticizing red-light cameras. He fought and won

#94

Post by davidgay »

uniformlyrandom wrote: post #65
ajmurmann wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most annoyingly, as someone who lives in Oregon I don't want to pay for this. I certainly want the poor guy who tried to fix something broken to be hugely compensated. However, I want whoever did this to pay for it. I also want then to stop focusing traffic tickets on speeding and instead fine people who cause traffic jams by not accelerating when entering the freeway or go unnecessary slow. But well that's of course…

> most native Oregonians would be fine constantly because they drive insanely slow And this is why they do not want you to drive slow. The difference of speed between cars is what causes accidents. This is why speed limits are raised based on 90th percentile speeds. And this is why everyone in California drives 80 in 65, and CHP are apparently OK with that.

> The difference of speed between cars is what causes accidents.

A cause, but most definitely not the cause. There's the not-so-trivial factors of reaction time (separation / speed) and breaking distance (proportional to the square of the speed) too. And many other factors too, of course.

Re: Oregon punished an engineer for criticizing red-light cameras. He fought and won

#95

Post by revelation »

0x445442 wrote: post #28

Photo traffic tickets are just another tool for those with a monopoly on force to steal money from people. Fortunately, in Arizona the state is still required to serve in person in order for the ticket to be binding. My wife and I have got for or five of these tickets in the mail over the years. We just throw them in the trash.

You run red lights and think it's a "money grab"? And are happy about non-enforcement?

I believe you lack the maturity to operate multi-ton vehicles on public streets.

Re: Oregon punished an engineer for criticizing red-light cameras. He fought and won

#96

Post by kejaed »

xigency wrote: post #43

I'm interested in this because I know PE exams exist and there are licensing bodies for engineers. But what I've heard from most people is that they are a waste of time and money for someone holding an engineering degree unless you are the person who rubber stamps things at the end. Does someone who knows more about professional engineering know if this law in Oregon is uncommon? Beyond a free speech argument, it see…

It is the same thing in Canada. "Engineer" is a protected term so that people can trust that when someone calls themselves an engineer, or does "engineering work", offering services to the public, they can trust that means something.

One difference is that the profession is 'Self Regulating', meaning Professional Engineers Ontario is a non-governmental body made up of Professional Engineers that is trusted by the government to manage the profession. The Quebec version of this organization, Ordre des ingénieurs du Québec, was put under "trusteeship of the provincial government" when the government lost that trust after some infrastructure accidents [0].

The question of what constitutes "engineering work" is well defined in the Professional Engineers Act (Ontario) and would probably cover a lot of what you mentioned as 'science, math, software' not having licensing. So according to Professional Engineers Ontario, some of the types of work that those types of people could produce could require the sign-off of a Professional Engineer if it falls under the definition of "engineering work" by the PEO:

[1] Under the Professional Engineers Act, the “practice of professional engineering” means “any act of planning, designing, composing, evaluating, advising, reporting, directing or supervising that requires the application of engineering principles and concerns the safeguarding of life, health, property, economic interests, the public welfare or the environment, or the managing of any such act”.

To determine whether you are practising professional engineering, ask yourself three questions:

Are you planning, designing, composing, evaluating, advising, reporting, directing or supervising, or managing any of these acts? Are engineering principles required to carry out the act? Does the act concern the safeguarding of life, health, property, economic interests, the public welfare or the environment?

As a licensed engineer in Ontario, I'm to display my licence at my place of work. I also keep another image close by to make sure we all remember not to take ourselves too seriously.

https://imgur.com/Rd3XFyy

[0] http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-engineers-regu... [1] http://www.peo.on.ca/index.php?ci_id=1848&la_id=1

Re: Oregon punished an engineer for criticizing red-light cameras. He fought and won

#97

Post by takk309 »

xigency wrote: post #43

I'm interested in this because I know PE exams exist and there are licensing bodies for engineers. But what I've heard from most people is that they are a waste of time and money for someone holding an engineering degree unless you are the person who rubber stamps things at the end. Does someone who knows more about professional engineering know if this law in Oregon is uncommon? Beyond a free speech argument, it see…

I am a licensed engineer in Montana and can say that we have a similar law as Oregon. The law is essentially states that one cannot claim to be or practice engineering without proper licensing. One question that often comes up is, "how can a college grad work as an engineer without calling themselves an engineer?" This is accomplished by registering as an Engineering Intern (EI). Until I got my PE, my title was Engineering Technician.

Re: Oregon punished an engineer for criticizing red-light cameras. He fought and won

#99

Post by En_gr_Student »

I think the guy was out of line. I'm an engineer. I had to put at least a decade of my life, 1/8 if stats are right, into freaking hard work to earn the right to use the title, and the skill-set to not kill people while doing it.

That guy is a slap in the face to every engineer who had to work for their credentials instead of "name it and claim it" in the name of "free speech".

This is like shouting "fire in a theater" - it causes harm. Claiming to be an engineer, and driving public opinion based on that false credibility, is dangerous. Setting a precedent for it absolutely and without a single doubt has already cost many people their lives (look at Mexico deaths from earthquakes) and absolutely and without a doubt stages for more people to lose life and substantial property.

If one falsely claims to be a police officer, and extorts a fine, it is a crime. I see this as being on the same order of harm to the society.

Re: Oregon punished an engineer for criticizing red-light cameras. He fought and won

#100

Post by dsfyu404ed »

manyxcxi wrote: post #75
ajmurmann wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most annoyingly, as someone who lives in Oregon I don't want to pay for this. I certainly want the poor guy who tried to fix something broken to be hugely compensated. However, I want whoever did this to pay for it. I also want then to stop focusing traffic tickets on speeding and instead fine people who cause traffic jams by not accelerating when entering the freeway or go unnecessary slow. But well that's of course…

Growing up in Oregon I was always annoyed by the slow as hell left lane campers. Having spent a half decade elsewhere and recently moving back it has escalated from annoyance to blood boiling seething rage. When I left Seattle, the state of WA was really making a push to get slowpokes out of the left lane with a media campaign and instituting tickets for people who are slowing traffic down. I LOVE the idea.

>hell left lane campers.

It's 2017. We have cameras, "repeated failure to move right for faster traffic" should not be a hard ticket to write to a high standard of proof.

Post reply on HN