“Nowhere was it more apparent than on Geneva Avenue between Prague Street and Brookdale Avenue, where one camera averaged 1,779 violations a day, according to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency. Another camera on Bryant Street, between Second and Third streets, zapped 944 speeding drivers a day.”
Nearly TWO THOUSAND speeding violations in one day, in the heart of a major city. These people drive like morons.
I much prefer speed traps to red light cameras that are often predatory and don’t make intersections safer.
None of that nonsense. Implementing actual, physical traffic-calming infrastructure is where it’s at. And bollards. Lots of bollards.
💯 A better solution through design instead of applying a technological Band-Aid.
I think both can be useful.
The most effective speed management I’ve seen are the average speed camera zones. There’s a 50+ mile stretch with a 70mph limit near me, and very few (if any) folk ignore them and exceed the limit - as opposed to static cameras which involve someone doing excess speed; slamming on the anchors on approach to the camera; before hooning it back up to whatever speed they were doing before.
The downside to avg speed zones is that it encourages drivers to pop on a cruise control technology and zone out, but then I would imagine that people in that category would tune out on cruise control whether they were in a speed zone or not.
We just need walkable cities and to gradually increase to acreage of car-free zones.
Nothinh predatory about rule enforcement! Hell yeah SF
In my town, the red light cameras tend to cause drivers to slam on the brakes when the light changes. The equipment is often owned by a third-party that loans it to the city and places stipulations like very short light times to produce more profit.
It does look like there’s significant evidence that speed traps do improve safety.
This probably invalidates the tickets under the definition of a “crime” in basically every common law system. Crimes has to be willful.
If only it worked like that in practice everywhere. It’s a pretty addictive revenue stream, and the district is incentivized to bend the rules to collect their money.
Of course, I write this from the US, which is currently at critical levels of internal corruption, so this could be a factor.
Yes, yet another way even the requirement to show up in court is used to suppress regular people.
Many crimes have “Strict Liability” where criminal intent is not necessary for one to be guilty.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strict_liability
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strict_liability_(criminal)
FYI, these are speed cameras, not red light cameras. They’re set such that you’d need to be doing 36+ mph in a 25 mph zone.