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

washingtonpost.com

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

#221

Post by thomastjeffery »

tantalor wrote: post #30
rgbrenner wrote: post #2

That's just insulting... the state says they acted unconstitutionally.. so they offered him $500 -- which is just a refund of the fine he already paid -- and asked the court to dismiss the case. After he had to pay 4 years of lawyers fees, take them to court, etc. It's just a big FU, and I have no doubt they won't change a thing if they successfully get the court to dismiss it. If the court allows this, then the stat…

Unsurprisingly, exceeding one's authority is not a crime.

It's ludicrous that the word "engineer" was defined to be considered "authority".

If you understand the nuances of a subject, you likely want to explain why you do, so that your thoughts aren't totally disregarded.

The problem is that the state wanted to disregard his (or anyone's) thoughts, so they defined "engineer" to carry authority, and levied a fine for anyone who sought to use the word.

This is a reasonable thing to do for professions like Medical Doctor, or EMT, where your title demands specific education. It is not reasonable for ambiguous words like "engineer".

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

#222

Post by rconti »

czep wrote: post #186
briffle wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I moved back to OR from the Midwest last spring.. its maddening that all 3 lanes seem to travel within 3-5 mph of each other, usually right at the speed limit (or lately, in the dark at 5pm, under it), and nobody passes anyone..

Maddening? That sounds perfectly peaceful to me! It sounds like everyone just wants to get where they're going, safely. Why do you feel so driven (!) to go so fast? Given the choice between what you describe---an orderly set of traffic at near the speed limit---or a free-for-all in which inevitably an aggressive lane-changer clips someone at 85mph spreading blood and metal all over the highway and stopping traffic fo…

Occasionally people need to change lanes, which is impossible when every lane is packed with cars going nowhere.

Driving slow as shit and obliviously or passive-aggressively blocking traffic impedes traffic flow, causes tailgating, incites road rage, and does nothing pleasant whatsoever.

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

#223

Post by valuearb »

cname wrote: post #204
sandermvanvliet wrote: post #22

Out of curiosity (and not really related to the article) but I’m kind of surprised to hear there is a formula for calculating how long(?) yellow lights are on and that it relates to a red light camera. AFAIK those cameras are hooked into the control system and only activate when the light is red, which seems like a pretty binary decision. Can someone shed some light on this?

In Oregon, yellow essentially means stop. A lot of Oregon transplants (and apparently many commentators in this thread) aren't aware of this. http://www.oregonlive.com/commuting/index.ssf/2014/02/joseph... https://www.oregonlaws.org/ors/811.260

Oregon has lost of dumb laws. This one makes people less safe.

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

#224

Post by rconti »

subhobroto wrote: post #105
uniformlyrandom wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> why everyone in California drives 80 in 65, and CHP are apparently OK with that. Absolutely untrue. My wife was ticketed by the CHP for driving at 80 on an empty I5 early in the morning. There was no traffic and she was the only other car on that stretch of the I5 at that time. We seriously considered figting the ticket but I was unable to collect any data to prove that 90 percentile of the traffic drives at 80 alt…

If you find the CHP treatment to be unfair, you should try visiting anywhere else in the country. When I first moved to CA, I could't help but laugh whenever someone said they got a ticket and they were 'barely even speeding' when they were going 85 in a 65. It's so much more pleasant here in CA. Hell, I've been here for 15 years and never even been pulled over. You've really gotta have bad luck to catch the attention of the CHP -- for better or worse.

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

#225

Post by trvlngwlbry »

ndespres wrote: post #193
trvlngwlbry wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've felt the same way about "slow as hell left lane campers" for years and thought that maybe — if states never did anything to fix it — there might be a commercial solution to fixing this. The idea I came up with awhile ago was to build a network of motorcyclists willing to attach a sign to the back of their bike, that reads (something like), "You're causing traffic by being in this lane at your speed - please move…

Are you seriously proposing that motorcyclists get in FRONT of drivers on the highway with a sign on their back to provoke the drivers into going faster, for a micropayment? Motorcyclists have enough trouble as it is.

No. If you read the comment you'll see that I'm not proposing that the slow drivers speed up -- but just that they get out of the passing lane. In fact, to your point about motorcycle safety, I'd encourage them to maintain their slow speed if that's where their comfortable, but just move to the right (when it's safe).

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

#226

Post by valuearb »

slantyyz wrote: post #78
testvox wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He is an engineer, changing the title as you suggest makes it sound like he isn't.

>> 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…

He's officially an engineer. A jurisdiction can't change that.

Words can't be protected by law. It's called freedom of speech.

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

#227

Post by thomastjeffery »

takk309 wrote: post #127
coding123 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am an engineer. I am not a "registered professional traffic engineer". I am a software engineer. If I wrote a paper on traffic signaling (which is also huge in software) I should be able to call myself an engineer - yes I won't call myself a "registered professional traffic engineer".

As long as you are clearly stating that you are a software engineer and not purporting to have expertise in traffic engineering, I agree with you.

The problem is that traffic lights are not a complicated nuanced subject where there is one small set of correct methods, and a large subset of dangerous methods.

Titles like "Medical Doctor" or "EMT" carry authority, because they require specific training, so that you know how not to kill someone while you are trying to help them. For these professions, it is necessary for the state to demand a set of requirements from those who carry those titles.

Saying someone must be specific about what kind of engineer they purport to be is quite unreasonable, and unnecessary.

In this case, the state created the "title" so that they could ignore anyone who didn't pay for the title. Since it is totally normal to call oneself an "engineer" without worrying about that title carrying a dangerous authority, it was unexpected, and malicious for the state to redefine the term.

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

#228

Post by mikestew »

drewmol wrote: post #212
mikestew wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often see people refuse to move from far right lane and refuse to adjust their speed to accommodate drivers merging onto a 3+ lane highway/freeway. In Seattle, often times you can't move out of the lane, traffic's too thick. Which is why the person in the right lane needs to make accomodations to those merging, and the person merging needs to do their part by accelerating to speed of traffic. It's a cooperation, an…

In the states I've lived they have no obligation, but it's incredibly helpful to keeping traffic flowing. Often a +/- 5MPH adjustment can help a whole lot. I know it's not mandatory, but if you are aware of a merging vehicle I don't think it's unreasonable to expect someone to be bothered to make a minor adjust to ease the process, and often/most times they don't. That's all I was getting at.

I think we're talking past each other while in mostly agreement. The minor adjustments you talk about, I'm happy to make them in any other area of the country. Like I've been saying, if we all co-operate, we all get home sooner. But in the Seattle area it appears that some are not only taking advantage of that co-operation, they now take it to be their right, alleviating all responsibility on their part. I dunno, maybe you're not anywhere near the Seattle area. Because again, I absolutely agree with what you say for most of the U. S., but maybe one needs to take a trip down WA520 to really get what I'm talking about. This not a case of "there are bad drivers everywhere", as from my POV it is truly unique to this area.

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

#229

Post by valuearb »

En_gr_Student wrote: post #99

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 theate…

People with professional engineering titles are the dregs of the engineering profession, they couldn't get work without certification. So they got it and parade it around like self important dweebs, so that people hopefully won't realize how poorly qualified they actually are.

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

#230

Post by valuearb »

cname wrote: post #209
mirceal wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is talking about this going to kill people? Does this guy get to decide how to set the traffic cameras? He is just expressing his opinion. + he wasn't trying to commit a crime, he was trying to have a discussion with the state about their scummy practices. the "is/is not engineer" was just a pretext to tell him to STFU. Personally I don't think that being an engineer changes anything he said/did. If random Joe wa…

I think the argument is something along the lines of: the public hears that an engineer is making certain claims and then push for the laws to be changed. Running of yellow/red lights ends up killing a lot of people. Perhaps without this passive enforcement, more people would die. Having read some local news about the incident, it sounds like his wife blatantly ran a light according to the laws of Oregon and he attem…

His arguments actually were very good. Response time is never instantaneous. Oregon's yellow light law is incredibly dangerous. No one knows when it will end, stopping in the middle of an intersection can create an accident too.
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