Another example of draconian enforcing the letter of the law in the name of making things "safer", then Goodhart's lawwing themselves into thinking they're succeeding. At least for myself, when I've got to deal with some kind of traffic control device and optimize my driving around that (say a speed bump), it takes my view/attention/focus away from looking for pedestrians elsewhere.
There's also the general problem with stop signs that if you do stop before the line as you're technically supposed to, then most times you can't actually see oncoming vehicle traffic. So most people stop over the line where they will be able to see, which means they're not planning on stopping where pedestrians walk. But fixing intersections is expensive meticulous work, while fining drivers for dealing with what they've been given is profitable.
If this were targeted at flagrant violations with warnings for a percentile of marginal cases (ie getting people who don't stop at all, and warning those who strain the idea of a rolling "stop"), then I could see it. But as it's worded, and as speed/red light cameras have been implemented, it just seems like another dynamic of a dystopian hellhole.
Nothing wrong with a "rolling stop" if the sight lines are good and there are no pedestrians or crossing traffic. The point of a stop is to allow traffic to cross the intersection in a safe and orderly fashion. If you slow down, and verify that everything is clear, then that objective is achieved even if you don't come to a complete stop.
If these cameras were smart enough to issue citations when pedestrians or cross-traffic is present I could support it. But issuing a citation at a deserted intersection when no risk is created is just absurd.
Worse than that is in my city they decided to add a forced stop to pedestrians crossing a round a bout so if you’re in the roundabout and a pedestrian wants to cross you have to stop before exiting the round about which defeats the purpose of a roundabout…
There's nothing wrong with pointing an unloaded gun at someone. There's no bullets in it, so what's the harm. You can even put your finger on the trigger without any real danger
Jokes on them, my city doesn’t enforce cars without license plates very commonly visible [1]. So these plate readers are useless and people are regularly getting murdered on the streets with little to no consequences and to hit and run is the most advantageous position.
In southern CA, traffic cameras were rolled out in tons of cities at basically every major intersection. They were a huge headache, did effectively nothing but waste taxdollars, and were scrapped for the purpose of issuing tickets. Except they weren't actually scrapped. They now feed data into several location-for-sale data brokers' pool which is queried by police. You're a little bit of a fool if you think this is about about "safety." Imagine the current license plate scanner tech combined with advanced facial recognition - if this isn't happening somewhere already - and tell me with a straight face cops aren't more excited about that dystopian future than stopping a few fender benders and generating meager city revenue (which they won't see anyway).
The dead giveaway to all these blatantly dishonest "safety" measures is they always, nearly without fail invoke safety "for the children." After all, who could be against that?
If they actually cared about safety they'd license it to auto manufacturers and let people roll stop signs when it's safe and warm them when it's not. Or just put cheap traffic lights everywhere to speed up traffic. This is about earning revenue for municipallitues with micro enforcement zones.
(note/edit) I'm talking about flashing lights in the cab like when my car thinks I need to break. Forcing me to break unless I'm about to kill someone. Or just re-thinking the stop sign. The point of stop signs is they're effing cheap. If you're going to put AI cameras on all of them that is no longer cheap, could you not just turn them into lighted intersections that give the green to the right person and remove confusion and detect or have slappers for the pedestrians and just smooth out traffic everywhere? Or is the unsaid thing that stop signs are actually smoother because well you can roll them using your human brain to make decisions?
> But instead of automating the entire setup, local governments review potential infractions before any citations are issued, ensuring a human is always in the loop.
IIRC, California abandoned automated traffic enforcement systems like these in the past because at the end of the day they were revenue negative. Having a human in the loop reduces the false positive rate, but drives up operating expenses to the point that it isn't sustainable.
Wondering what the opinion is about "Vision Zero." My little town is all over this. I think it's a bad idea. Goals should be realistic, and I think it's unrealistic to get to literally zero traffic deaths. There will always be random events leading to accidents and you can spend as much money as you want but you will never be able to prevent them all. At some point you're committing statistical murder by spending money that could be better used on ther things.
People don't want automated ticketing, so governments don't implement it.
In addition, there are many laws that aren't enforced and would generate instant outcry if they were. For example: it's illegal for someone of any age to ride a bicycle on the sidewalk, as opposed to the roadway, in many cities (in some cities it's the opposite).
Comments about rolling stops might ignore the fact that traffic lights are not only for safety, but they also work as a traffic distribution system. Where I live there are many common stop lights that are taken as suggestions and they cause huge gridlock issues in other streets.
If you have drivers that are taking stoplights as "suggestions" aka running stop lights. Those drivers themself are going to be a bigger contributor to the gridlock problem than this perceived cause, as they clearly have no regard for any traffic laws.
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[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 48.9 ms ] threadThere's also the general problem with stop signs that if you do stop before the line as you're technically supposed to, then most times you can't actually see oncoming vehicle traffic. So most people stop over the line where they will be able to see, which means they're not planning on stopping where pedestrians walk. But fixing intersections is expensive meticulous work, while fining drivers for dealing with what they've been given is profitable.
If this were targeted at flagrant violations with warnings for a percentile of marginal cases (ie getting people who don't stop at all, and warning those who strain the idea of a rolling "stop"), then I could see it. But as it's worded, and as speed/red light cameras have been implemented, it just seems like another dynamic of a dystopian hellhole.
If these cameras were smart enough to issue citations when pedestrians or cross-traffic is present I could support it. But issuing a citation at a deserted intersection when no risk is created is just absurd.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/oakland/comments/4wdd57/whats_the_d...
There is a clear need to change a lot of things, whether it be (automatic) enforcement, redesigning infrastructure, and driver mentality.
[1] https://www.iihs.org/research-areas/fatality-statistics/deta...
[2] https://transport.ec.europa.eu/news-events/news/eu-road-fata...
The dead giveaway to all these blatantly dishonest "safety" measures is they always, nearly without fail invoke safety "for the children." After all, who could be against that?
(note/edit) I'm talking about flashing lights in the cab like when my car thinks I need to break. Forcing me to break unless I'm about to kill someone. Or just re-thinking the stop sign. The point of stop signs is they're effing cheap. If you're going to put AI cameras on all of them that is no longer cheap, could you not just turn them into lighted intersections that give the green to the right person and remove confusion and detect or have slappers for the pedestrians and just smooth out traffic everywhere? Or is the unsaid thing that stop signs are actually smoother because well you can roll them using your human brain to make decisions?
IIRC, California abandoned automated traffic enforcement systems like these in the past because at the end of the day they were revenue negative. Having a human in the loop reduces the false positive rate, but drives up operating expenses to the point that it isn't sustainable.
People don't want automated ticketing, so governments don't implement it.
In addition, there are many laws that aren't enforced and would generate instant outcry if they were. For example: it's illegal for someone of any age to ride a bicycle on the sidewalk, as opposed to the roadway, in many cities (in some cities it's the opposite).
They may, but once something becomes a revenue stream, their successors won't.
Curious sentence, that.