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Red-light camera grace period goes from 0.1 to 0.3 seconds, Chicago to lose $17M

arstechnica.com

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Re: Red-light camera grace period goes from 0.1 to 0.3 seconds, Chicago to lose $17M

#51

Post by rl3 »

jakobegger wrote: post #34
rl3 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I've only ever received one red light violation, and that was because I intentionally rolled through a red light at low speed on a three-way intersection making a right turn. It was early Sunday morning in clear conditions, with clear visibility in all directions for about a quarter mile, not a car in sight. My trusty crapmobile had been stalling while resting at complete stops, and the destination was my me…

If your car can't stop safely at an intersection, you should have had it towed in the first place, instead of endangering everyone else on the road. The way you tell this story, those $100 were absolutely justified.

Stopping safely wasn't a problem. The issue was getting going again, because it'd stall out at a complete stop. Considering I'd chosen a time when the roads were virtually empty, and a route that consisted entirely of four lane roads, I wasn't endangering anyone.

I'd also already blown through my tow insurance by having it towed several times to local shops who couldn't diagnose or correct the issue, so I'd have had to foot the bill for a long distance tow on something that three shops found no issue with, which was rather difficult being completely broke at the time.

Re: Red-light camera grace period goes from 0.1 to 0.3 seconds, Chicago to lose $17M

#52

Post by cwyers »

jakobegger wrote: post #32
cwyers wrote: post #16

The moral hazard that comes from cities using fines for offenses to generate revenue is awful and despicable, and it causes all sorts of injustices, big and small. Red light cameras are a part of this, and they're awful.

How is it an injustice to make people pay when they make our roads unsafe? People drive reckless, ignore speed limits, race over intersections in the last possible moment, ... ... and then it's an injustice when someone fines them?

So, that's an open question -- do the sorts of infractions that red light cameras catch make roads less safe? Does the installation of red light cameras make roads more safe? As it turns out, no. The installation of red light cameras in Chicago has actually increased rear-end collisions that result in injury by 22%.[1]

And that's what I mean by moral hazard. Revenue generation by these means changes the city's incentive. Rather than having traffic laws and enforcement designed to increase safety, you have laws and enforcement designed to turn the greatest part of your city's population into offenders as possible, in order to maximize your revenue generation, at the expense of public safety.

And it's an injustice because the well-off simply pay their fines and move on, while the poor end up trapped in a neverending cycle of fines and punishments, because the inability to pay the first fine leads to a cascade of involvement with a court system pressured to produce revenue, not justice or fairness.

1) https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/12/major-chicago-st...

Re: Red-light camera grace period goes from 0.1 to 0.3 seconds, Chicago to lose $17M

#53

Post by ascagnel_ »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #41
jakobegger wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it an injustice to make people pay when they make our roads unsafe? People drive reckless, ignore speed limits, race over intersections in the last possible moment, ... ... and then it's an injustice when someone fines them?

It's not an injustice inherently, it's just a moral hazard that may lead to injustice (or other poor behavior). E.g. I remember hearing about a city that, after implementing red light cameras, shortened the yellow time, thus technically increasing the number of people who ran reds and gaining revenue (at the expense of actual safety since short yellows are more dangerous).

Some of the comments in the linked thread go into this, but nobody was able to provide hard evidence of short yellows.

Re: Red-light camera grace period goes from 0.1 to 0.3 seconds, Chicago to lose $17M

#54

Post by matt4077 »

draw_down wrote: post #44
mbroshi wrote: post #25

A big plus of automating tickets is that it's no longer biased. You're not more likely to get a ticket in a poorer, more high crime neighborhood, just because there happen to be more police there. This way, rich white people in the Loop are just as likely to get tickets as poor black people in Woodlawn. To me this democratization seems like a big plus.

Mmm, where they're placed (and more to the point, where they're not placed) is still a political decision.

It's much harder to hide racial bias in fixed camera installations, which can be nicely illustrated on a map, than in the day-to-day decisions of individual police units.

These decisions are also made by different groups of people, and a city's elected leadership tends to better reflect the population's diversity than the police department.

Re: Red-light camera grace period goes from 0.1 to 0.3 seconds, Chicago to lose $17M

#55

Post by wcummings »

djsumdog wrote: post #37
cwyers wrote: post #16

The moral hazard that comes from cities using fines for offenses to generate revenue is awful and despicable, and it causes all sorts of injustices, big and small. Red light cameras are a part of this, and they're awful.

That goes to the more general problem of fines, cities and people. It is terrible that peoples' mistakes are used to fund a city. They really shouldn't. Furthermore anything that could reduce the fine aspect, say an advanced parking system that auto-charges you and warns you via text when you're close to your daily time limit, wouldn't make any money and would never get approved. I use to be a sys admin for a debt co…

>These types of revenue generators, whether they're run by a state or a private interest, rarely ever benefit society.

This is ridiculously conspiratorial. Traffic enforcement has a real benefit for people living in these cities who prefer not to be hit at intersections. Here's the conclusion of a study about the red light cameras (RLCs) in Chicago:

>Quantitative studies conducted in this project demonstrate significant safety benefits of the current RLC program. As a result, it is appropriate to recommend continuation of the program. Most of the intersections have experienced an improvement in safety, particularly in terms of severe angle and turn crashes, albeit with an accompanying increase in less severe rear-end crashes. The safety benefits extend beyond the immediate vicinity of the RLC intersections, evidenced by a significant spillover effect. However, some intersections appear to experience no significant safety impact. Recognizing that crashes are the result of complex interactions amongst many factors, and subject to considerable randomness, these deviations should be used as opportunities for detailed investigation and learning to design and deploy more effective automated enforcement programs

http://www.transportation.northwestern.edu/research/report-r...

Similar benefits have been demonstrated in NYC and other cities. Personally, I can't wait for speed cameras to see wider deployment, automated enforcement is our best chance to eradicate reckless driving. It also has the benefit of being unbiased (assuming they're deployed uniformly). Cameras don't make judgment calls about which motorists to pursue, so there's less room for discrimination by police officers.

>an advanced parking system that auto-charges you and warns you via text when you're close to your daily time limit, wouldn't make any money and would never get approved.

Some meters in Boston let you pay by phone, it can't be the only city, I'm sure stuff like this gets approved all the time.

Parking is an excellent example of why you need punitive fines, since it's expensive the fine has to at least be as higher than the legitimate cost of parking for it be an effective deterrent. There are already cities where people just "pay the ticket tax" and eat up on-street spaces to warehouse their cars. Being frank, if you're getting cheap (government subsidized) metered parking and not paying market rate, hundreds of dollars a month, you're getting a sweet deal and have no right to complain.

Parking enforcement benefits drivers who are looking for spaces, higher turnover on parking spots improves availability, and decreases traffic (fewer people on the street looking for spots). The incentive for city planners is to get people out of the spots, not trick them into "overstaying".

Re: Red-light camera grace period goes from 0.1 to 0.3 seconds, Chicago to lose $17M

#56

Post by rl3 »

vlan0 wrote: post #43
jakobegger wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your car can't stop safely at an intersection, you should have had it towed in the first place, instead of endangering everyone else on the road. The way you tell this story, those $100 were absolutely justified.

Huh, I didn't interpret stalling while idling at a stop as a danger to others on the road. Especially when the car can be started again. The same principle applies if I accidently stall my manual vehicle.

To play devil's advocate it can be an issue if you're stalled out long enough that cars start moving around you on narrow roadways with oncoming traffic, but in my case that was completely mitigated by choosing the route and time carefully. Wide, empty roads are ideal.

Re: Red-light camera grace period goes from 0.1 to 0.3 seconds, Chicago to lose $17M

#57

Post by matt4077 »

rl3 wrote: post #51
jakobegger wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your car can't stop safely at an intersection, you should have had it towed in the first place, instead of endangering everyone else on the road. The way you tell this story, those $100 were absolutely justified.

Stopping safely wasn't a problem. The issue was getting going again, because it'd stall out at a complete stop. Considering I'd chosen a time when the roads were virtually empty, and a route that consisted entirely of four lane roads, I wasn't endangering anyone. I'd also already blown through my tow insurance by having it towed several times to local shops who couldn't diagnose or correct the issue, so I'd have had…

Would it be allowed in the US to drive a vehicle on public roads that is not able to start on it's own? Because your explanation sounds awfully like "Very sorry, office – I'm kinda in a hurry because I want to get rid of this body in the back before it starts smelling".

Re: Red-light camera grace period goes from 0.1 to 0.3 seconds, Chicago to lose $17M

#58

Post by dragonwriter »

mbroshi wrote: post #25

A big plus of automating tickets is that it's no longer biased. You're not more likely to get a ticket in a poorer, more high crime neighborhood, just because there happen to be more police there. This way, rich white people in the Loop are just as likely to get tickets as poor black people in Woodlawn. To me this democratization seems like a big plus.

> A big plus of automating tickets is that it's no longer biased.

Yes, it is.

> You're not more likely to get a ticket in a poorer, more high crime neighborhood, just because there happen to be more police there.

IME, you (the same person) are more likely to get a traffic ticket in a rich, low-crime neighborhood, because the police that are there are more likely to be concerned with writing traffic tickets.

People who live in poorer, high-crime areas are more likely to get tickets (in either poor or rich neighborhoods), but that's a different problem. (And, unlike the one you identify, one that automation might actually help.)

But, in any case, there's as much opportunity for bias (and by the same people) in placing devices that automatically issue tickets as their is in placing officers, plus automated devices don't mean that human officers can no longer issue tickets, so no matter which direction it operates in, the source of bias you identify (that is, inequity based on choices of deployment of officers) is not addressed by automation.

Re: Red-light camera grace period goes from 0.1 to 0.3 seconds, Chicago to lose $17M

#59

Post by TulliusCicero »

SteveNuts wrote: post #27
aggie wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious to hear why you think it's unconstitutional. It's unobtrusive surveillance in a public setting, so there's no expectation of privacy. It's punishing people for breaking a public-safety law. In most cases they even have signs alerting you to the presence of an enforcement camera. Now I can definitely see how automated enforcement ripe for abuse when there are revenues to be had, and it's concerning when op…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confrontation_Clause

So if the only evidence linking me to a midnight bank robbery is camera footage clearly showing me breaking in and stealing money, I'm in the clear?

A camera isn't a 'witness', it's evidence, and the relevant authorities can serve as a witness.

Re: Red-light camera grace period goes from 0.1 to 0.3 seconds, Chicago to lose $17M

#60

Post by ferentchak »

omegaworks wrote: post #36
mbroshi wrote: post #25

A big plus of automating tickets is that it's no longer biased. You're not more likely to get a ticket in a poorer, more high crime neighborhood, just because there happen to be more police there. This way, rich white people in the Loop are just as likely to get tickets as poor black people in Woodlawn. To me this democratization seems like a big plus.

The red light cameras are not distributed equally. You'll find more of them in minority neighborhoods. Look at what redlining hath wrought: http://www.radicalcartography.net/chicagodots_race_big.jpg http://www.photoenforced.com/chicago.html#.WNKlsxLyufc

I know it's an anecdote but in Denver they are only in the very wealthy neighborhoods. Usually here those parts have the city have much lower speed limits than a comparable street in a poorer neighborhood would have so they can generate more revenue from them.
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