They recently started doing a lot more digital surveillance/enforcement around here. PD and FD now have drones. My buddy lives by the fire station and we saw it take off and land a few times when we were having a BBQ the other day. Parts of the state now use photo radar on the freeway and it’s coming to the rest of the state soon. We also have toll lanes and red light cameras. Flock has a presence, but I’m not sure how widespread. I’ve been riding my bikes because at least nobody bugs me on the trails apart from the occasional raccoon or flock of geese. I think it’s a real privacy concern and we need to slow down before we let this tech replace the current ways of doing things.
I do see the sentiment against enforcement, but that absolutely extends to Officer Clanker. I think we should shift to enforcement by design. Too many roads are built in ways that encouraged speeding and make it feel comfortable. If you put rumbly bricks in school zones, no one will miss a sign.
Too many roads are built in ways that encouraged speeding and make it feel comfortable.
A big part of the problem here is that speed limits are specified as the maximum speed on which the largest vehicle can safely traverse the road.
Example: Design a road where you can comfortably cruise at 35-40MPH, curves and everything, in a minivan full of kids and gear? Well too bad, that road is now 25MPH and radar-patrolled because a tractor-trailer can’t do 40MPH around one of the curves.
So you have these great, swooping roads with ridiculously low speed limits, because one trucker somewhere is a brainless dumbfuck and refuses to understand how physics works.
Interesting. Here we use the 85th percentile limit to set speed limits. Every few years the city does a speed study. By law (I think) they are supposed to set the limit at the speed 85% of drivers are at or under. If they don’t, they’re supposed to provide a justification for deviating from the rule. The idea is that people naturally drive at whatever speed they feel comfortable driving, instead of fighting it, we cut off the top 15% of speeders and set the limit there to minimize speed differential which is a big cause of crashes. We use yellow advisory plates when trucks need to slow down for a sharp curve or something.
That’s all theory. In practice we have 5 patrol deputies at any point for the entire county and I rarely ever see city cops. No one has respect for the law. Right of way and speed limits are determined by your bravado, risk tolerance, and your full-sized pickup of choice (provided you make the requisite exhaust modifications to spew thick black clouds of freedom every time you tap the throttle). We call them accidents, but crashes are frequently the result of people not exercising due care when driving. The city keeps building 6 lane 45mph roads with 11-12 foot lanes that make people want to drive 60. I hope the next generation of traffic engineers do a better job of segregating fast roads and slow streets.
They recently started doing a lot more digital surveillance/enforcement around here. PD and FD now have drones. My buddy lives by the fire station and we saw it take off and land a few times when we were having a BBQ the other day. Parts of the state now use photo radar on the freeway and it’s coming to the rest of the state soon. We also have toll lanes and red light cameras. Flock has a presence, but I’m not sure how widespread. I’ve been riding my bikes because at least nobody bugs me on the trails apart from the occasional raccoon or flock of geese. I think it’s a real privacy concern and we need to slow down before we let this tech replace the current ways of doing things.
I do see the sentiment against enforcement, but that absolutely extends to Officer Clanker. I think we should shift to enforcement by design. Too many roads are built in ways that encouraged speeding and make it feel comfortable. If you put rumbly bricks in school zones, no one will miss a sign.
A big part of the problem here is that speed limits are specified as the maximum speed on which the largest vehicle can safely traverse the road.
Example: Design a road where you can comfortably cruise at 35-40MPH, curves and everything, in a minivan full of kids and gear? Well too bad, that road is now 25MPH and radar-patrolled because a tractor-trailer can’t do 40MPH around one of the curves.
So you have these great, swooping roads with ridiculously low speed limits, because one trucker somewhere is a brainless dumbfuck and refuses to understand how physics works.
Interesting. Here we use the 85th percentile limit to set speed limits. Every few years the city does a speed study. By law (I think) they are supposed to set the limit at the speed 85% of drivers are at or under. If they don’t, they’re supposed to provide a justification for deviating from the rule. The idea is that people naturally drive at whatever speed they feel comfortable driving, instead of fighting it, we cut off the top 15% of speeders and set the limit there to minimize speed differential which is a big cause of crashes. We use yellow advisory plates when trucks need to slow down for a sharp curve or something.
That’s all theory. In practice we have 5 patrol deputies at any point for the entire county and I rarely ever see city cops. No one has respect for the law. Right of way and speed limits are determined by your bravado, risk tolerance, and your full-sized pickup of choice (provided you make the requisite exhaust modifications to spew thick black clouds of freedom every time you tap the throttle). We call them accidents, but crashes are frequently the result of people not exercising due care when driving. The city keeps building 6 lane 45mph roads with 11-12 foot lanes that make people want to drive 60. I hope the next generation of traffic engineers do a better job of segregating fast roads and slow streets.