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New York is using cameras with microphones to ticket loud cars

roadandtrack.com

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Re: New York is using cameras with microphones to ticket loud cars

#271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What shitty red light cameras are these where the data is all secret? In my city, tickets from red light cameras include a video of the incident, which clearly shows the car and traffic light. Is that really how it works elsewhere, they just send you a ticket saying "we caught you running a red light, please pay fine"? What happens if you show up to court to contest, can't you just point out they have literally no ev…

it is extremely easy to edit a green light to a red light, just partially delay the feed. Data is meaningless.

If they actually did it at scale they would run into conflicting dashcam footage very quickly, and the whole conspiracy would go belly up before bearing any fruit.

If you think data is meaningless we should also remove police cruisers' dashcams and stop the rollout of body cams, I guess? Those aren't conspiracy-proof either.

Re: New York is using cameras with microphones to ticket loud cars

#272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who defines what a "normal, reasonable" person looks like?

At some point you have to let people make decisions. You can't "logic" your way out of everything. But... the mistakes! Yeah, so what? What about the mistakes of the rules that a human at the scene is not allowed to overrule? We have that at quite a few workplaces, where employees are not allowed to make any decisions, only work through an algorithm. It's not pretty. Think customer support of very large companies. Or…

Except it's usually not "mistakes", it's intentional bias. A "normal, reasonable" person is someone who has a "donated to the police officer's association" sticker in their car window, and "assholes" are everyone else.

Re: New York is using cameras with microphones to ticket loud cars

#273

A better solution for everyone is less dense living, and a culture of respect for not engaging in anti social behavior.

Loud vehicles are just as much of a problem in rural areas as in cities. Nothing spoils a country road like a load, speeding vehicle. I agree people should have a better sense of respect, but here we are.

Re: New York is using cameras with microphones to ticket loud cars

#274
post #226
post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The example she gave is that police now cannot intervene if they see an armed individual approaching a school. That sounds unbelievable but that's straight from the mouth of the local chief of police. It’s not true but it makes more sense if they’re saying that as a negotiating tactic: the police are banking that if the media coverage is dominated by stories about crime rising there will be a big reduction in suppo…

What inside knowledge do you have that indicates it's not true? You can't just assume something is false because it contradicts what you want to be true.

I notice that you didn’t demand a citation for the original anecdote. Consider what it would take for it to be true: did California pass a law treating police officers like sex offenders, prohibiting them from being within a certain distance of a school? Seems unlikely given that they still have resource officers assigned to schools and there’s no way that wouldn’t be a major national news story. Now, given our national obsession with gun rights it may be that they couldn’t stop someone white with a gun from walking near a school[1] but there’s a 0% chance they couldn’t monitor the situation and make their presence known the way they do every day for teenagers with skateboards or the wrong colors on their clothes.

Note to the deleted comment: note that I'm not saying that it's definitely untrue but simply that we have no way of evaluating it without something like a reference to a specific law or policy document, public comment from a named spokesperson, etc. There are enough levels of removal that the potential for misunderstanding would be high even if this wasn't touching on several of the hottest political issues at the moment, and that lack of context also affects how a lot of people might feel about it. For example, if this is true as written is that because there was a legal restriction passed setting a burden of proof for a police officer to interact with members of the public or was it something like the local sheriff not wanting to have an incident when a provocative local gun owner is insisting on their rights to free carry anywhere? A lot of people might have different opinions on the appropriate course of action based on context like that.

1. I realize some people might find this provocative but I'm thinking about how at two of the high schools I went to I had at least one classmate who'd brought a gun to school, and the second one had a mass shooting a few years after I graduated when some warning signs were apparently ignored. It's quite the contrast with the way hispanic students were “randomly” searched, and really didn't want to be found to have anything even as dangerous as a Swiss Army knife.

Re: New York is using cameras with microphones to ticket loud cars

#275
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me most traffic citations ought to be issued by mail based on dashcam footage now that the technology to do so is widespread. It would also reduce traffic stops as a pretext for searches, which act as an end-run around legal protections from unreasonable search. Traffic stops could then be relegated to imminent dangers like drunk or otherwise reckless drivers, and serious crimes.

They used to do this when red light cameras were popular in California. You could just write a letter saying the person in the pic wasn't you. As long as the ticket is tied to a driver you can basically get away with it via this route. If the ticket is for the vehicle owner then yes I could see this working. Perfect for emissions violations and vehicle code violations. You could also double-check for stolen license p…

>You could just write a letter saying the person in the pic wasn't you. As long as the ticket is tied to a driver you can basically get away with it via this route.

That seems like an asinine way to apply that law. If the vehicle is registered to you, it's your responsibility. Lent it to your uncle and he rolled a stop? Well, the car's registered to an owner, that's their problem to sort out.

Re: New York is using cameras with microphones to ticket loud cars

#276
post #4

One egregiously loud motorcycle rolling through manhattan can be a nuisance to literally millions of people. This is unreasonable and a ticketing system like this makes a ton of sense. Police enforcement could probably solve the issue just as effectively. Cops ignore loud honking and loud cars when its right in front of them. If they would just stop ignoring such things the frequency would surely go down as well.

I really don't get why motorcycles are legal at all - loud, terrible emissions, used for crimes, huge fatality rate, usually driven by a psychopath who loves revving his toy at 5AM at a residential neighbourhood.

I really don't get why computers are legal at all - create excess emissions from all the power use, used for crimes, generate hard to process waste, usually used by a psychopath who loves Tweeting about hatred for people not like them.

Re: New York is using cameras with microphones to ticket loud cars

#277
post #57
post #4

One egregiously loud motorcycle rolling through manhattan can be a nuisance to literally millions of people. This is unreasonable and a ticketing system like this makes a ton of sense. Police enforcement could probably solve the issue just as effectively. Cops ignore loud honking and loud cars when its right in front of them. If they would just stop ignoring such things the frequency would surely go down as well.

There's a freeway about a mile from my house. Summer nights with the windows open, I can easily be awakened by a very loud motorcycle. The freeway is raised and I'm in a sort of canyon (no line of sight to freeway, though!!). Maybe the acoustics are just perfect for my bedroom, but I doubt it's just me. There are probably a million people within earshot of this noise. Lest people think I'm a motorcycle hater: I owned…

We live down the street from a biker club clubhouse. Even one of them riding by wakes us up (we'll often hear them well after midnight), scares our cats, and sometimes sets off car alarms. My faith in the police ever doing anything about this is effectively nil.

I, too, am not a motorcycle hater. While I don't own one, I'm licensed to operate one, and have several friends who are avid riders. They have stock, quiet exhaust on their bikes, like normal people who actually care about people around them.

Re: New York is using cameras with microphones to ticket loud cars

#278
post #4

One egregiously loud motorcycle rolling through manhattan can be a nuisance to literally millions of people. This is unreasonable and a ticketing system like this makes a ton of sense. Police enforcement could probably solve the issue just as effectively. Cops ignore loud honking and loud cars when its right in front of them. If they would just stop ignoring such things the frequency would surely go down as well.

I moved to the city for peace and quiet! I didn't know there would be so many people around!

There would be peace and quiet if it wasn’t for people with modded cars and motorbikes. A very tiny % of people are responsible for almost all the noise.

Re: New York is using cameras with microphones to ticket loud cars

#279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't get why motorcycles are legal at all - loud, terrible emissions, used for crimes, huge fatality rate, usually driven by a psychopath who loves revving his toy at 5AM at a residential neighbourhood.

> used for crimes This gave me a chuckle. I have absolutely no data but I'm quite certain cars are "used for crimes" at a much higher rate than motorcycles. Motorcycles are almost all manual, nearly invisible to other drivers, and prone to issues with the smallest of road hazards/obstacles, making them really risky to use as a getaway vehicle seeing as you'd need to be outpacing law enforcement much of the time. Add…

I think the OP is a little hyperbolic, but I wouldn't be so dismissive of the idea. My metro has a no-chase policy for motorcycles. Sure, it's a heck of a dangerous way to make a getaway, but as long as you can shake the first guy, a rider is pretty well free to make a getaway as long as there is no helicopter in pursuit.

Re: New York is using cameras with microphones to ticket loud cars

#280
post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a motorcycle forum, someone asked whether they should upgrade their suspension or their exhaust. I suggested that an upgraded suspension affects your quality of life, an upgraded exhaust affects everyone else. We don't need the windows open to hear the cars and such around here (and they're modern windows). We're near a freeway, but it's not the only culprit. The freeway is either silent or quite noisy depending o…

To be fair, riding a quiet motorcycle is likely to get you sideswiped more if the people can't hear you at all. I've noticed the difference of head movements when changing the exhaust on my new motorcycle, from stock to a louder aftermarket. Prior, people would just veer into my lane without even checking. Anecdotal, but very noticeable difference for myself.

Anecdotally, over 25 years of riding in most every condition you can think, including several years of one-way 30 mile commute in to downtown LA, I have not noticed this.

As a corollary anecdote, I've seen (and heard), on several occasions, the rev bombing riders revving louder and longer since the person that's "in their way" is not moving out of it.

I've also, personally, jerked and swerved (a little) when startled by a loud exhaust "suddenly" appearing next to me. These events are typically followed by a crude exclamation that isn't worth sharing here.

At one point I did have a bike with a louder exhaust (I didn't keep the citation I got because of it). But the majority of my bikes are stock exhausts and quiet.

Cars swerve in to anything and everything. Especially today, the modern car cockpit is overwhelmed with distractions. But even pre-cell phones I've had to contend with kids, coffee, balloons, and animals apparently designed to convert the car drivers in to motorcycle seeking missiles.

Keep it on two, stay safe, they're not out to get you but they make a good show of it anyway.

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