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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

#71

Post by enraged_camel »

bigchewy wrote: post #57
vermontdevil wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Umm no. Not all lawyers. They do take time because they want to win. And sometimes they have to be sure as some cases can be complicated.

Ummm unless lawyers somehow have evolved different brains than the rest of us, they, too, prefer to make more money vs less. So if they are billing hourly, then yes they all do want to spend more time. Now, they might fight against that urge (E.g. believing that spending less time on Client A will improve their reputation and lead to more clients) but your statement is naive re how incentives work

Just because you bill a client hourly doesn't mean it's in your best interest to drag things on. This is true across all professions, not just legal.

The only thing hourly billing does is shift the risk to the client.

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

#73

Post by lovich »

islanderfun wrote: post #67
TomK32 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Admitting failure is extremely hard for any human, wether it is such cases or infrastructure projects that took decades of planning and discussion: no one wants to admit that they followed the wrong path.

I can't agree with this more. It really holds us back (since the beginning). From school boards, local government, and even HOAs. Humans are so prideful, they rather find ways to defend their wrong decision than fix the underlying issue.

I don't know that it's all pride. I don't have much of a problem admitting mistakes amongst friends and most co-workers, but I've definitely worked with a few people you could never admit failure to. They were either the type of people who felt everything needed to have someone to blame and who would be punished for the failure, or people who could use any mistake as ammunition in office politics.

The government here may have refused to back down out of fear of setting a precedent that would be used in other cases where they were actually in the right

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

#74

Post by ascendantlogic »

program_whiz wrote: post #55

This is a clear case of using "well intentioned" laws to silence free speech. This supports the libertarian idea that we should reduce the size of government and regulation if possible, because given long enough and enough bureaucrats, fallible humans will exploit whatever mechanisms are available to them. People don't like criticism, especially when the criticism is of their work/policies and potentially threatens t…

Land of the Free*

* must pay applicable fees to be licensed for practicing freedom

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

#75

Post by manyxcxi »

ajmurmann wrote: post #51
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…

Most annoyingly, as someone who lives in Oregon I don't want to pay for this. I certainly want the poor guy who tried to fix something broken to be hugely compensated. However, I want whoever did this to pay for it. I also want then to stop focusing traffic tickets on speeding and instead fine people who cause traffic jams by not accelerating when entering the freeway or go unnecessary slow. But well that's of course…

Growing up in Oregon I was always annoyed by the slow as hell left lane campers. Having spent a half decade elsewhere and recently moving back it has escalated from annoyance to blood boiling seething rage.

When I left Seattle, the state of WA was really making a push to get slowpokes out of the left lane with a media campaign and instituting tickets for people who are slowing traffic down.

I LOVE the idea.

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

#76

Post by carlmr »

wonderwonder wrote: post #16

This is a pretty great way to stifle innovation and one of the most blatantly authoritarian programs I have seen. They are essentially saying that no one is allowed to advance technology within their state unless they adhere to their arbitrary rules including passing a test and "a work record of four years or more of technical work or engineering work under the supervision and control of a professional engineer." 4 y…

I understand this for bridge building, not for public discussion.

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

#77

Post by flyinghamster »

uniformlyrandom wrote: post #65
ajmurmann wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most annoyingly, as someone who lives in Oregon I don't want to pay for this. I certainly want the poor guy who tried to fix something broken to be hugely compensated. However, I want whoever did this to pay for it. I also want then to stop focusing traffic tickets on speeding and instead fine people who cause traffic jams by not accelerating when entering the freeway or go unnecessary slow. But well that's of course…

> 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.

75-80 in a 65 (or even 55) is common in the Chicago area too, except in traffic jams. If you're not going at least 70 when you merge onto the highway, you're gonna get run down.

I think the cops are fine with it, since it provides a perfect pretext for a traffic stop if they want you for some other reason.

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

#78

Post by slantyyz »

testvox wrote: post #52
exabrial wrote: post #37

Hey guys, can we correct the title? It should be "Oregon punished man for Engineer claim, after criticizing their red-light cameras. He fought and won". The current title is very misleading.

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 get that we in the tech industry like to be fast and loose with words like "architect" and "engineer", but those words can be protected by law. I assume the reasoning behind that is for consumer protection -- to ensure people are hiring people who meet a certain standard.

At some jobs I held, I used to have the word "architect" in my title, and everyone outside of tech would ask me if I designed buildings when I gave them my business card. I tend to think that if I had the word "engineer" in my title that a layperson would think I have an engineering education and certification.

[1] https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2016/11/14/liberal-mp-ap...

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

#79

Post by manyxcxi »

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…

Some of the original articles (that I’m too lazy to dig up and cite) stated that Oregon was telling him not to SAY that he was an engineer in his correspondence with them and in media portrayals because it’s a licensed profession.

At some point people started reporting about how the state has basically used this licensing requirement as a way to gag people from publicly disclosing any kind of ‘technical’ information, and that’s where people started really jumping on board with his case.

Kudos to him for sticking it through. Hopefully it leads to a change in our traffic laws AND our laws regarding ‘technical’ information and engineering licensing.

A HUGE F you to the state/county/city beaureacrats and lawyers that just pissed away tens (or more) of thousands of dollars just because they could.

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

#80

Post by simook »

ajmurmann wrote: post #51
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…

Most annoyingly, as someone who lives in Oregon I don't want to pay for this. I certainly want the poor guy who tried to fix something broken to be hugely compensated. However, I want whoever did this to pay for it. I also want then to stop focusing traffic tickets on speeding and instead fine people who cause traffic jams by not accelerating when entering the freeway or go unnecessary slow. But well that's of course…

Going faster does not improve the speed of traffic. Matter of fact if everyone drove the actual speed limit we wouldn't have such a bad trafffic problem. Our infranstructure was designed to handle a range of speeds, primarily for the timing systems. When people drive outside those limits, that's when traffic patterns become unpredictable and/or unmanageable.

The slow drivers are no different than the fast drivers. Both of you are outliers and aren't easy to calculate in the timing algorithms.

imo, people are selfish when it comes to driving.

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