Note: Before reading the following arguments, please understand that they are not what I believe. On Wednesdays, I deliberately argue for wrong ideas, challenging my listeners to call and defend the obvious right answer, which is usually far harder than one would expect. This is a summary of what Wacky Andrew will be arguing, not a representation of what real Andrew believes.~It’s just a ruse for generating more money for the state.
~They cause people to drive more recklessly as they slow way down for only the cameras.
~Law enforcement should not be privatized to non-police entities who operate for profit.
~It heavily encourages people to falsify their license plates.
~Real brains behind the real eyes on the road are necessary for reliable law enforcement.
~How sure are we that all the cameras are accurate all the time?
~How sure are you that the right car gets photographed even for a genuine speeding violation?
~Multiple lanes of traffic seem to make this whole thing just about impossible.
~People actually slow down too far below the limit and become dangerous for that reason because they’re more scared and ignorant.
~Privacy concerns require that the government be incapable of tracking your movements and recording them in public.
~They are wildly unpopular with drivers.
~It’s virtually impossible to mount a defense against one because you aren’t immediately aware that you have been photographed. Even if you suspect that you have, how can you possibly refute one?
~They violate the right to confront your accuser.
~The fact that they feel the need to tell you ½ mile and 300 feet in advance is an admission that something fishy is going on here. They certainly feel no such compulsion when a cop is sitting on the side of the road.
~It runs the risk of inviting camera-based totalitarianism.
~This is the beginning of the end times.
1 comment:
I am a Civil Engineering student at ASU, and my transportation engineering instructor last semester (Dr. Simon Washington) was commissioned by Governor Nepolitano to study the Scottsdale speed cameras on the loop 101 to see if they were effective at reducing accidents and fatalities. It was this report that the state used as justification for implementing the speed cameras.
Dr. Washington presented a summary of this report along with the data he collected from the speed cameras and ADOT crash statistics. During the time when the cameras were active, the number of accidents on that stretch of the 101 was reduced when compared with the same time period the year before (I don't remember any numbers, but it was a pretty significant percentage). The percentage of fatal accidents and the severity of injuries reported fell similarly. This alone seems to be a fairly compelling reason to keep the cameras.
However, I wish the state didn't outsource the operation of the speed cameras to Redflex. This company receives a percentage of the collected speeding fines, and this creates an incentive for dishonesty. As far as I know, there is nothing stopping them from misreporting the speed of drivers (aka "false positives") to increase their revenues. Dr. Washington told us that they provide the state with a video clip of each speeding vehicle so that they can count the number of road stripes the vehicle passes every second. This allows the police to verify the vehicle's speed. However, it is not impossible to doctor these videos to make it appear as though the vehicle is traveling faster than it really is.
Finally, in what is perhaps too "big brother" for my tastes, we learned in another of my classes that at least one company is working on using cameras with license plate recognition technology for speed enforcement. In this system, they would keep track of each vehicle as it moves along the freeways and roadways. In particular, they would keep track of how long it takes the vehicle to reach each camera. If the system determines that the car arrived too quickly, it would generate a speeding ticket.
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