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Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional

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Re: Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional

#581

Post by furyg3 »

sowbug wrote: post #298
hamdingers wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

California's new speed camera pilot (AB 645) explicitly solves for this. Tickets issued by these cameras are civil penalties issued to the owner of the vehicle, like parking tickets, rather than a criminal moving violation. This means the tickets are just as constitutional as parking tickets. It also means penalties are limited to fines and can't impact your driving privilege or insurance. Hopefully other states can…

Consistent, low-impact enforcement is better at preventing unwanted behavior than the rare and severe but also capricious enforcement performed by human police. It can also give permission for unwanted behavior. Cf. the Haifa study, where the rate of late pickups increased when daycares added a fine. One explanation is the fine turned a complex moral obligation into an ordinary financial transaction.

I grew up in Fremont, CA, which pioneered the use of red-light cameras and terrible red-light camera practices (e.g. shortening yellow light times to increase revenue and giving a cut of the fines to the companies installing cameras). I hated cameras, the idea of speed cameras felt like big brother, and the basic principal of attributing a violation to a car and not a person (and thus requiring a person to rat out the driver) felt like a huge civil rights issue.

I then moved to Amsterdam and became the biggest fan of continuous, always-on ANPR speed cameras. On some freeways, your car is recorded at certain checkpoints and EVERYONE driving over the speed limit ALWAYS gets a fine.

Why? Because they are properly implemented (only high-risk areas), very well communicated (tons of signage), consistently applied (no crying your way out of a ticket, no racial profiling), purpose targeted (you get a speeding ticket, not a bunch of other fines at the whim of a cop), and correctly incentivized (ticket revenue does not immediately go to the local police or city).

Re: Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional

#582

Post by presentation »

Orygin wrote: post #579
fennecfoxy wrote: post #573

Lmao why. Stop driving through red light, stop speeding. Ya fuckers. In the UK it's ridiculous, barely any speed cameras and those that are there are clearly marked (legally have to be). Everyone just slows down for the speed cameras and then start speeding again after. I've actually heard people say that the above is effective because it makes people slow down where it's important. Or, you know how about people just…

Except cameras don't increase safety. You say it yourself that everyone just speeds up after the camera. Getting a ticket also does nothing to prevent you from speeding in the first place (the ticket does not arrive to you instantly, you're still speeding on the road). Road safety is an infrastructure problem, but it is always easier and cheaper to just put a camera and collect money. While designing roads that you c…

One time when I was living in Shanghai, I accidentally took the train to the wrong airport and had to take a cab to the other one. The cabbie was driving on the highway right at the speed limit, and I was worried I wouldn’t make my flight. I asked him if he could rush a bit, but he replied that he would not speed because 100% he would get a ticket.

It only doesn’t work if the system is half assed. But I agree that in low speed pedestrian areas, the built form is a better solution, but knowing you will get caught is also effective (if you accept the privacy tradeoffs).

Re: Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional

#583

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #464
andrepd wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's ridiculous, a radar that snaps a photo when a car goes over the speed limit is not , by any conceivable definition, a surveillance array. There are real surveillance arrays, please worry about those instead.

It absolutely is a surveillance array. It is trivial to record the time and license plates of every vehicle captured by the camera and fully map out their movements.

The government is already doing this using your phone.

Re: Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional

#584

Post by Frieren »

sowbug wrote: post #298
hamdingers wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

California's new speed camera pilot (AB 645) explicitly solves for this. Tickets issued by these cameras are civil penalties issued to the owner of the vehicle, like parking tickets, rather than a criminal moving violation. This means the tickets are just as constitutional as parking tickets. It also means penalties are limited to fines and can't impact your driving privilege or insurance. Hopefully other states can…

Consistent, low-impact enforcement is better at preventing unwanted behavior than the rare and severe but also capricious enforcement performed by human police. It can also give permission for unwanted behavior. Cf. the Haifa study, where the rate of late pickups increased when daycares added a fine. One explanation is the fine turned a complex moral obligation into an ordinary financial transaction.

> One explanation is the fine turned a complex moral obligation into an ordinary financial transaction.

Income proportional fines solve the problem. The fine should be a deterrent, but not create crippling debt. That is impossible without taking into account the income of the infractor.

Re: Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional

#585

Post by tda »

furyg3 wrote: post #581
sowbug wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consistent, low-impact enforcement is better at preventing unwanted behavior than the rare and severe but also capricious enforcement performed by human police. It can also give permission for unwanted behavior. Cf. the Haifa study, where the rate of late pickups increased when daycares added a fine. One explanation is the fine turned a complex moral obligation into an ordinary financial transaction.

I grew up in Fremont, CA, which pioneered the use of red-light cameras and terrible red-light camera practices (e.g. shortening yellow light times to increase revenue and giving a cut of the fines to the companies installing cameras). I hated cameras, the idea of speed cameras felt like big brother, and the basic principal of attributing a violation to a car and not a person (and thus requiring a person to rat out th…

The best thing about the average speed cameras is that between the checkpoints all cars drive at almost exactly the same speed. No one trying to overtake, just 5 lanes of traffic at 1km/h below the speed limit

Re: Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional

#586

Post by abcd_f »

hamdingers wrote: post #253
fusslo wrote: post #198

After reading the 21 page order, I do tend to agree with the judge The judge frames the red light camera scheme as a revenue generating scheme, not a public safety measure. Additionally, "A distinctive feature of the statutory scheme is its assignment of guilt to the registered owner rather than the driver of the vehicle". and "If there are multiple registered owners, the citation is issued to the 'first' registered…

California's new speed camera pilot (AB 645) explicitly solves for this. Tickets issued by these cameras are civil penalties issued to the owner of the vehicle, like parking tickets, rather than a criminal moving violation. This means the tickets are just as constitutional as parking tickets. It also means penalties are limited to fines and can't impact your driving privilege or insurance. Hopefully other states can…

> can't impact your driving privilege

Unlike improper parking, running red lights should impact said privilege as potential consequences are way more serious.

Re: Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional

#587

Post by cucumber3732842 »

troupo wrote: post #571
matheusmoreira wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's impossible to get hit by cars if there are no cars around you. Vehicles are not going to materialize out of nowhere and crash into you. They are going to be funneled into your path by the roads. If you look at the road and see zero traffic, then you cannot be hit by traffic. Even if you run a red light. Obviously, if you can't see the road where the cars will come from, then you cannot know if there are any cars…

> Vehicles are not going to materialize out of nowhere and crash into you. At 60kmh a vehicle travels 16 meters per second. In freedom units: at 37mph a vehicle travels 54 feet per second. A vehicle will materialize out of nowhere and crash into you.

>A vehicle will materialize out of nowhere and crash into you.

God I hate these sort of responsibility shirking opinions and their peddlers.

I do this several times a day in a major US city for close to a decade now and I've never had a close call closer than the "two people trying to pass each other in the hallway" routine with a driver trying to take a right on red.

Vehicles and everything else on this rock flying through space obey the same laws of physics.

If the traffic on a road goes X miles per hour, then simply don't cross it where you don't have a sufficiently long line of sight. If crossing where the lines of sight are sufficient is not tractable due to traffic volumes or road construction then cross at a marked crossing, intersection that interrupts traffic flow or use proper body language and someone will stop for you.

Sure, you might get exceptionally unlucky and choose to cross at the exact minute some car that's a few standard deviations above the norm but you might also get hit by lightening.

Re: Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional

#588

Post by nashashmi »

fusslo wrote: post #198

After reading the 21 page order, I do tend to agree with the judge The judge frames the red light camera scheme as a revenue generating scheme, not a public safety measure. Additionally, "A distinctive feature of the statutory scheme is its assignment of guilt to the registered owner rather than the driver of the vehicle". and "If there are multiple registered owners, the citation is issued to the 'first' registered…

If the core of the reasoning is the fines and penalties then surely the remedy is to temper the punishment to just fees that need to be fulfilled upon renewal or registration.

Re: Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional

#590

Post by AyyEye »

Larrikin wrote: post #489
matheusmoreira wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use your eyes, your situational awareness and your best judgement. The traffic light is not god's word. In my neighborhood there used to be a traffic light that would be red for a long time despite not usefully regulating any traffic whatsoever. It stopped traffic despite the fact no other traffic could possibly conflict with it. People realized this and routinely ran that light with zero consequences. At some point…

Stop training yourself to run red lights before you kill some body. The correct action is to constantly bug your local representative to fix the problem, not break a law written in blood.

I understand the desire to act holier than thou and pretend that going through a red light with no traffic is murder in the making, but the situation they advocate for (running when clear) is even written into law in some states (at least for motorcycles/bicycles). Some vehicles don't trigger the sensors and the lights never change, so you are allowed to go after a full stop. I would not be surprised in the least if there were some states where the wording of the law applied to cars as well.
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