--- Date: Thu, 5 Feb 2004 00:38:14 -0500 (EST) From: Charles Platt <other@private> To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private> Subject: Re: [Politech] A contrarian reply to red light camera thread [priv] I wonder if Mr. Healy would be satisfied with a red-light camera system that merely made a record without triggering an automatic fine. If running a red light caused the death of innocent people (such as the "young children" whom Mr. Healy seems to feel are somehow more intrinsically valuable than other citizens), then the camera record could be used as evidence in consequent civil and criminal actions. At the same time, since the red-light camera would not generate revenue in the absence of accidents, the camera system would be free from the taint of the profit motive which obviously is a factor, regardless of Mr. Healy's touching belief in the fundamental decency of local government functionaries. --- Date: Thu, 05 Feb 2004 01:40:40 -0500 To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private> From: James Moyer <james@private> Subject: Re: [Politech] A contrarian reply to red light camera thread [priv] In-Reply-To: <6.0.0.22.2.20040204235537.028ac3e8@private> Declan, In 1999 the Ohio legislature had a bill to introduce a pilot program to install red light cameras in several Ohio cities. (Toledo and Dayton have the cameras, independent of state law.) In order to allay a few concerns, the bill was amended so that intersections with the cameras would be marked and that the first ticket issued to the motorist would be a freebie/warning. With the amendments, camera makers and cities said that there would not be enough revenue generated and withdrew their support. As the story goes, a state representative point blanked asked "is this bill about safety or about revenue?" Apparently the answer to that question killed the bill. Mr. Healy's heart is in the right place, but I believe there is simply too much evidence to suggest that the motives for red light cameras are not entirely pure. James --- --- From: "Charbeneau, Chuck" <CCharbeneau@private> To: "'Declan McCullagh'" <declan@private> Subject: RE: [Politech] A contrarian reply to red light camera thread [priv] Date: Thu, 5 Feb 2004 10:27:33 -0500 Declan, use this, don't, I just needed to vent. > From: "Tony Healy"? > To: "Declan McCullagh" <declan@private>, <politech@private> > Subject: RE: [Politech] Another report from red light cam > fight in Chapel > Hill[priv] REMOVEEMAIL > Date: Thu, 5 Feb 2004 10:49:26 +1100 > > It is really unfortunate that we need to have these debates > on road safety. Cars do crash, maim and kill, and about half > the casualties are completely innocent. This includes young children. Snide comment to follow: Road safety?!? This isn't a debate about road safety. Any 'debate' about road safety would include LOCAL research on speed limits, population density, traffic patterns, law enforcement personnel per capita, traffic related deaths, or even incidents, involving red light running per capita, and the comparison of effectiveness of any one technique against other techniques of control and enforcement by an UNBIASED third party that would receive NO FINANCIAL GAIN based on the decision. "There are three types of lies. Lies, damn lies and statistics" --Samuel Clemens The only thing you get from a red light camera is a picture of a license plate at best or the high detail picture of bodies flying out of windshields at worst. So, you'll be able to prosecute the offender, whoop ding. Forcing your constituents to 'obey' through fear versus education, that's a great idea....fact is, I think there was a great book written about the topic by an author name ORWELL, look it up. Isn't it more important to use the money to create an educational environment in which we are teaching new drivers the true dangers of said acts? Or creating REAL studies to learn proper traffic flow and pattern control based on current automobile design, population density and local automobile and foot traffic? Oh, wait, wait.... How about using some of that money to create well thought out PUBLIC transportation models that remove the responsibility of driving from the masses who, apparently, can't be trusted to drive safely, since we are using cameras to track their every move. I work in the auto industry and still it sickens me to see the strength of their lobbying power. Detroit is dying for lack of a decent public transportation model, and still the big three (and their supporters) rail against it. Cameras aren't methods to stop accidents, they are a means to place blame. Seems pretty typical for us Americans, though, placing blame rather than accepting responsibility, doesn't it? What's next? I know...Smoking cams. Cigarettes kill millions of people yearly, and secondhand smoke is directly linked to a few thousand of them. Why don't we put cameras on the outside of all our buildings and start to prosecute the smokers? Bah. A remote police environment that uses technology to track, tag and prosecute it's people is one that lacks morality. When the system removes the human element from it's investigative process, failures in the system evolve. Just look at the intelligence fiasco we are encountering in the middle east. Ask any gvt. employee who actually WORKS in the intelligence environment (not legislators on an intelligence committee) and they'll say that the one major thing lacking is human intelligence (humint) to do their job correctly. You keep reading about it, but it keeps on getting shushed. Why should this issue be any different? People effect people, not machines, not cameras and certainly not companies and local governments whose concerns lie in making money first and protecting the citizenry next. Oh, and teach your kids to NOT play in traffic, to drive responsibly, to OBEY THE LAWs when they are just and to question them loudly and often when they aren't. Chuck Charbeneau --- Subject: RE: [Politech] A contrarian reply to red light camera thread [priv] Date: Thu, 5 Feb 2004 12:46:07 -0800 From: "Paul Bunn" <Paul@private> To: "Declan McCullagh" <declan@private> [please forward to the list if appropriate] This person sure has bought into the red-light camera companies' PR hook-line-and-sinker, or maybe "bought into" is literal and he has stock in one of the companies ... Either way, there is no motive of safety in installing these systems, the motive is purely financial -- these systems generate cash, and have not saved any documented lives, or even prevented accidents. In fact, there is evidence to support that installation of these systems *increases* the number of accidents at the junctions where installed because drivers will often panic-break at yellow lights, resulting in rear-enders, or worse, become too focused on the traffic signal and not pay enough attention to traffic or pedestrians. Any evidence supporting the claim that RLCs cause a decrease in accidents can be attributed to specious claims, or statistical anomalies. In any event the effect on accident rate is marginal. The effect on financial bottom-line is ALWAYS substantial, and always easily measured, and can always be traced as the root motivator. Now, if you REALLY wanted to do something that DID reduce accident rates and save lives, at NO COST -- no cost of privacy, no cost financially, and no cost to our constitutional damage. There is a way to do that today, and best of all it's documented in terms of the actual preventions of red-light running. A 56% reduction in red-light running is not a statistical anomaly. What was this miracle cure ? Simple: Increasing the duration of the yellow light by ONE second. The trouble is that the state doesn't make any money from preventing accidents this way -- they'd rather the accidents happen, that people continue to run red-lights as long as they can earn money while doing so. One light in San Diego generated $1.8M in 18 months! Did it save any lives, did it prevent any accidents ? That's very doubtful. Did it make a lot of money ? You bet. What *is* obscene is how drivers are being bilked for millions of dollars every year under the guise of "safety", with no measurable effect on safety, when such a simple, quantifiable solution to the problem exists that won't cost drivers a penny. Source: http://www.caranddriver.com/article.asp?section_id=27&article_id=3805 --- Date: Thu, 5 Feb 2004 15:00:13 -0600 From: Matthew Hunter <matthew@private> To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private> Subject: Re: [Politech] A contrarian reply to red light camera thread [priv] On Thu, Feb 05, 2004 at 12:08:25AM -0500, Declan McCullagh <declan@private> wrote: > From: "Tony Healy"? > It is really unfortunate that we need to have these debates on road safety. > Cars do crash, maim and kill, and about half the casualties are completely > innocent. This includes young children. > > Funnily enough many people do have strong views about this, especially if > they have actually seen the effects. To impute that these concerns are > nothing more than corporate PR, as your red light camera opponents do, is > obscene. > > The nub of this argument is what civilisation is all about. Roads do not > exist soley for Ben Brunk's enjoyment. He has to share them with 250 million > other people. It's called civilisation. I'm disappointed that you chose to publish this one, Declan. "Save the children" as a means of influencing public policy is as old as politicians kissing babies and as relevant as the boy who cried wolf. If we are going to save the children, shouldn't we be focusing on proven approaches that actually work, rather than using appeals to emotion in defense of a corporation more interested in profitting from the victims of car crashes than actually preventing crashes? Does creating an imaginary crisis of red-light-running help save the children if we could save more children for less money by fixing the speed limits and traffic light settings? Can we really save the children by issuing automated, impersonal traffic tickets, forcibly transferring funds to the government and the camera corporation, thus providing both with a substantial financial incentive to perpetuate the problem? -- Matthew Hunter (matthew@private) Public Key: http://matthew.infodancer.org/public_key.txt Homepage: http://matthew.infodancer.org/index.jsp Politics: http://www.triggerfinger.org/index.jsp --- Please do remove my name and email address if you post this. I'm shopping for a different employer right now. :-) However good a driver you think you are, and however much better cars, tires, and brakes are now than the 1940's, driver skill hasn't improved, and neither has driver attention nor patience. Traffic volume is up, as is horsepower, which really just allows people to get into trouble at higher velocities. The fact that the red light camera salespeople take a portion of the revenue stream generated by fines means they have an interest in inflating, or at least judging less charitably the "shade of yellow" that was up there on the traffic light. Moreover, should't the traffic cameras really be TiVO style devices that record not just one snapshot, but a whole series, thus helping establish that the device is in working order when the infraction ocurred? I know I've seen my share of quick lights, and for four years suffered through a green left-turn arrow that was green for exactly 2 seconds (I timed it), and which the state said was "functioning normally." The problem is we tend to justify our bad driving based upon the few bad traffic lights we encounter. We hold up the example of speed traps as our reason for wanting to be rid of all speeding tickets. The way to change a law is to actually -- change it, or if the law is being applied unjustly, to use the appeals process. I realize that lobbying, protesting, and voting is messy and time-consuming, and unlike laws against marijuana, where there may actually be a medically valid reason for it, there's no medically valid reason for getting to work a couple of minutes earlier. But until the law is repealed, you're just another lawbreaker, no matter how self-justified you feel. Personally, I'm in favor of hydraulically operated speed bumps that turn in to barriers, instead of red lights, but that's just me. I'm one of these annoying people with a spotless driving record, which means either I'm lucky and haven't been caught, or that I drive prudently. The real problem here is that we aren't trying to make traffic control devices any better. Surely there's a way with moving fresnel lenses to show a yellow light to cars farther back, but to show a green to those cars closer to the intersection, and for that line, the transition from yellow to green, to be sweep along at the same speed as traffic. If the glideslope for landing a plane can be assisted with a 2-color light combination.... Another example is speed limits. Right now, they are static. During bad weather, or heavy traffic, shouldn't the limit be lower? On clear days with light traffic, should it be higher? (Wasn't that part of the justification behind the State of Montana using, "reasonable and prudent" as their speed limit?) Should School Zone speed limits be different on weekends or holidays? Should pedestrian crossing signs light up, or blink, when the crosswalk is occupied? --- Tony has cut straight to the heart of the matter: "... half the casualties are completely innocent. This includes young children." Of course, Tony has neglected to mention the great many other things that could be done to protect the innocent - not unusual among proponents of indiscriminate, invasive, and unproven technologies (such as red light, speed, and facial recognition cameras), which further enrich corporations making grand claims about their efficacy with no real data to support those claims. I note that Tony doesn't seem to be aware that running a red light is already illegal, as is speeding, and that if the police in his community would only enforce the law, young, innocent children might be safer today. By enforcing the laws already on the books, the number of violators would be reduced substantially through fear of fine or sanction. However, the courts regularly reduce the penalties or fines of motorists who have been caught speeding and seek representation, as if the circumstances under which they were fined are suddenly suspect if some lawyer represents them. This completely undermines the effectiveness of the courts, reducing traffic fines to the point where they are completely ineffective as a deterrent. The State Police and local police departments claim that they simply don't have the manpower to enforce the law. The interstate (I-64) near my home is the main traffic artery between Richmond and Norfolk. The state police could pay the salary of an officer dedicated to patrolling the road between Richmond and Norfolk in fines alone, but they do not. They simply "don't have the manpower". Frankly, lack of manpower is not the problem. I drive that interstate every day and it's a nightmare. The local paper has run stories about drivers whose licenses have been revoked, who "just like to drive fast", and who have flipped cars on the interstate attempting to evade pursuit. Not only do they have no problem buying a vehicle, they have no problem habitually breaking the law. How is a habitual offender able to find an automobile to drive? Why haven't the courts put them in jail? No. The problem is not lack of technology. It is lack of will. Red light cameras are a convenient way for the police to go about enforcing the law, but they are not 100 percent effective. They allow an unacceptably-high number of false positives to pollute the system. They rely on motorists not contesting the fines. If a significant percentage of motorists contest the fines, costs increase. For some reason, the corporations selling this technology never mention the increase in court costs following the installation of red light or speed cameras that is inevitable. In short, there is no guarantee that the fines will ever be collected, the promised revenue ever delivered. In summary, red light cameras are an unproven technology designed to convert taxpayer dollars slated for law enforcement into corporate profit at the expense of the very "young, innocent, suffering children" of which Tony speaks. Declan, please remove my email address if this is posted. Jason Allen --- From: "Chad W. Didier" <cdidier@private> To: "'Declan McCullagh'" <declan@private>, <politech@private> Subject: RE: [Politech] A contrarian reply to red light camera thread [priv] Date: Fri, 6 Feb 2004 09:25:51 -0500 Organization: C.D. Support Services Message-ID: <002b01c3ecbd$1fedad30$6400a8c0@romulus> Injury and death are a fact of life we all endure whether we are driving on public roads or not. It's unfortunate that some cannot accept the risks of living but, instead feel more restraint and surveillance will prevent that which has been shown to be unaffected by such means as automated traffic law enforcement. I drive the same roads and assume the same risks. I drive the speed limit, mostly, and obey all traffic lights even at 2am, begrudgingly, when mine is the only car at the intersection for the duration of that light's cycle. To have our innocence or guilt rightly or wrongly decided by a device with the intelligence of a pocket calculator even in a matter as trivial as traffic law is an affront to my sense of humanity. I am not an automaton. Law and justice should not be the implementation of some gadget of the day. I am a law abiding citizen as much as the next person and as much as possible being a human being. I accept the risks involved in living. "In the interest of public safety" is not justification enough to submit myself to another form of the proverbial "prison without walls". If you are as concerned about public safety as you profess why not then create a citizen's group and empower yourself and others of like mind to monitor dangerous intersections and report violations if your law enforcement agencies are unwilling or unable to enforce the law? I would have much more respect for your efforts than your promotion of an automated traffic cop. I mean, really, if this is such a trivial matter that the government doesn't see it worth the effort or cost to assign a law enforcement officer to insure the laws are being obeyed and you're not interested enough to make up for your law enforcement agency's deficiencies why then are you so concerned as to feel the necessity to automate it? _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
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