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Show HN: Automated license plate reader coverage in the USA

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Re: Show HN: Automated license plate reader coverage in the USA

#111

Post by potato3732842 »

sgc wrote: post #83
yannyu wrote: post #12

I've thought about this a lot as I see more and more reckless driving in the areas I live in. Surveillance is generally a net negative, but it's also bad when you see people speeding around schools, rolling through stop signs, and running red lights. We seem to have a worst of all situations where traffic is getting increasingly difficult to enforce, driving is getting more dangerous year by year, and we're terrified…

Your examples don't seem to represent the leading causes of fatalities from traffic accidents in the US, which remain distracted driving (phones and crappy touchscreen controls, etc) and drunk driving. People rolling through a stop sign / performing a 'California' stop are nowhere near the massive security concern to authorize the ideal surveillance state. To deal with the bigger issues you would have to film peoples…

I get the vibe from his comment that the visible deviance from rules of the state is what he's really concerned with and that the death and destruction is just the reason everyone else is suppose to care.

Re: Show HN: Automated license plate reader coverage in the USA

#113

Post by potato3732842 »

cons0le wrote: post #70
MisterTea wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in NYC. People used to be afraid of double parking. Like you I regularly see the same bat-shit driving and no one seems to care to say or do anything. It's bonkers.

NYC should have been the model to follow. Instead of flock cameras, cities should have bounty systems: record a video of a speed violation with a plate, and get 10% of the ticket revenue. Enforcement would explode. We could of had a system where we used the technology we already had in our hands to democratize speed enforcement, instead of corporatizing it

Pitting people against each other in the service of the state is likely to cause problems at scale and in the long run.

Frankly, I think it's a miracle that nobody has been beaten into a coma or killed over NYC's bounty program yet.

Re: Show HN: Automated license plate reader coverage in the USA

#114

Post by potato3732842 »

derektank wrote: post #40
quamserena wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the public pushback is that people almost always drive the “feels like” speed and not the posted speedlimit. We build 6 lane roads and then wonder why people go 50mph when it’s 35 posted, it’s because it’s 6 lanes and 35 feels slow. Cities profit from this in the form of speed cameras, which is why they’ve been outlawed in a lot of places.

If the speeds aren’t appropriate for the built environment, then the limits should be changed or the environment should be changed. Enforcement of the law should be consistent regardless of the quality of the law.

The speeds are appropriate for the roads generally. I mean, at the lowest level speed limits are a matter of social consensus so the broad public is tautologically correct.

The problem is that knocking the magic number on the sign down by 5-15 and then simply not enforcing it too seriously results in less screeching Karens harassing the politicians who then harass the bureaucracy than taking a hard line about "well akshually this is the engineered speed for the road".

Re: Show HN: Automated license plate reader coverage in the USA

#115

Post by potato3732842 »

asdff wrote: post #56
quamserena wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the public pushback is that people almost always drive the “feels like” speed and not the posted speedlimit. We build 6 lane roads and then wonder why people go 50mph when it’s 35 posted, it’s because it’s 6 lanes and 35 feels slow. Cities profit from this in the form of speed cameras, which is why they’ve been outlawed in a lot of places.

The driver blithely keeping with the flow of traffic is not the one I am worried about. It is the one who is aggressively trying to cut through the flow of traffic while putting everyone and themselves in danger that I worry about.

Upping the speed limit reduces the incidence of the latter because just about everyone has a "fuck this I'm weaving" threshold and the number of people who hit it goes down when you reduce the incidence of rolling clusters of traffic caused by the handful of people who religiously follow the speed limit even when not appropriate.

Re: Show HN: Automated license plate reader coverage in the USA

#116

Post by potato3732842 »

dylan604 wrote: post #66
asdff wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The driver blithely keeping with the flow of traffic is not the one I am worried about. It is the one who is aggressively trying to cut through the flow of traffic while putting everyone and themselves in danger that I worry about.

I love when cities time their lights so that aggressive drivers just get hit with waiting at a red light while driving the speed limit means hitting greens for long stretches.

Sure, some people will get hit with the reds. Some people will learn the timing and learn that you can run just one red and then hit all greens, or that it will save you 5+min if you hammer down and pull a "clearly not ok" pass to get around some idiot who's going too slow to make the green timing.

So yeah, you're reducing speeding, number go up, pat yourself on the back. But you're also increasing the incidence of something rarer than speeding, but way worse.

This is the same problem that 4-way stops at roads that don't deserve them create, you're basically teaching people that the signage is bullshit.

Re: Show HN: Automated license plate reader coverage in the USA

#117

Post by potato3732842 »

dylan604 wrote: post #65
quamserena wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the public pushback is that people almost always drive the “feels like” speed and not the posted speedlimit. We build 6 lane roads and then wonder why people go 50mph when it’s 35 posted, it’s because it’s 6 lanes and 35 feels slow. Cities profit from this in the form of speed cameras, which is why they’ve been outlawed in a lot of places.

Just because a road "feels" like it can handle more speed does not mean that it is. The wider streets are built to handle the volume of cars, not necessarily meant to become a speed way. There are several 6 lane roads in my area while being wide and well built still have many intersections only controlled by stop signs for the smaller streets with multiple intersections controlled by stop lights at the larger cross s…

Speeds are fundamentally a tradeoff between risk and reward. In nominally democratic societies we place these thresholds based on some approximation of social consensus. The general public literally cannot be wrong because their rough consensus, the fat part of the bell curve if you will, is what determines what the right speed is.

Your comment is literally the principal Skinner "no it's everyone else who's wrong" meme.

Re: Show HN: Automated license plate reader coverage in the USA

#119

Post by drunner »

yannyu wrote: post #12

I've thought about this a lot as I see more and more reckless driving in the areas I live in. Surveillance is generally a net negative, but it's also bad when you see people speeding around schools, rolling through stop signs, and running red lights. We seem to have a worst of all situations where traffic is getting increasingly difficult to enforce, driving is getting more dangerous year by year, and we're terrified…

A camera doesn't stop those acts though, it may only discourage those who know about it at a huge cost of privacy and rights.

How about we build better infrastructure and regulate vehicles since those do actually stop this behavior. Most of those red lights and stoplights in the US should be roundabouts. Narrower lanes and other traffic calming measures should be much more pervasive. Vehicle size, specifically bumper height is out of control.

Compare US traffic and pedestrian deaths to the rest of the world, or at least a lot of EU countries. Its embarrassing.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/74/wr/mm7408a2.htm#F1_down

Re: Show HN: Automated license plate reader coverage in the USA

#120

Post by barnas2 »

cons0le wrote: post #70
MisterTea wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in NYC. People used to be afraid of double parking. Like you I regularly see the same bat-shit driving and no one seems to care to say or do anything. It's bonkers.

NYC should have been the model to follow. Instead of flock cameras, cities should have bounty systems: record a video of a speed violation with a plate, and get 10% of the ticket revenue. Enforcement would explode. We could of had a system where we used the technology we already had in our hands to democratize speed enforcement, instead of corporatizing it

NYC already tried Snitching as a Service during COVID, and it went terribly. I grew up with a neighbor who would constantly record people and call the cops over every little perceived infraction. Everyone in the neighborhood hated her, including the cops. I do not want to live in a society that encourages those people.
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