Heaven forbid people should have to obey traffic laws.
Look, I have no patience for libertarians, but I DO have a problem with all the cameras the police are putting up here in NYC. If they can prove somebody is using this product to deliberately break they law, I say "have at it." Otherwise, the only thing outlawing this product will do is encourage somebody else to sell it in an art-supply store under another name.
Fine - but the cameras rarely get a picture of the driver, and you get a ticket and fine assessed, plus a notation on your record without a trial.
I could put fake tags with your number on a car that looks like yours, run every monitored red light in the city, and you'd get a bunch of tickets that you'd have to pay - for offenses you didn't commit. Or you piss off your spouse when you're going through a divorce, and she runs all the lights in town in 'your' car. This has actually been done in at least two cases I can think of. You think that might be a problem? Something about "so much for the right of trial by jury"?
Unfortunately, installation of traffic cams go hand-in-hand with reduced yellow light timing to increase revenue.
Government can't be trusted when it comes to money. Not too mention the processing fee that the camera company gets per
a citation.
From my experience, when an intersection becomes problematic vis-a-vis safety, an officer stationed there for a week
usually brings about the desired result. Not to mention reminding people, by his very presence, of the need to
err on the side of safety.
Some of these lights are deliberately timed such that running the light is made extremely tempting (e.g., light way too short, or light way too long).
The national pilot program for red light cams was in my neck of the woods (years ago), and one of the intersections had notoriously bad light timings.
I was nabbed on a Saturday morning, 7AM, literally no other traffic near me or in any other direction, because I sat there so long I thought the light was broken, and finally took off.
"We have no government armed in power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Our Constitution was written for a religious and moral people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other." ~ John Adams
Either people control themselves (internally) or the "lawless" will be controlled externally - (inviting more and more power to be put into the hands of "law-enforcement") if we are to have a safe, orderly society.
That's just the way it works, whether "libertines" (who falsely call themselves "libertarians") like it or not.
Traffic laws fine, obey them. Big brother and his cameras making electronic arrests, you gotta be kidding me. Basic common sense says it is a bad idea. Not to mention creating a cottage industry where cameras are paid for through the revenue stream they generate. This creates an incentive to "tweak" the lights to get more revenue. Like someone else said, screw the government and it's insatiable thirst for revenue. I will never understand conservatives who support big government in the form of traffic laws. When my house was burglarized, I could not even get the investigating officer to return my phone calls. Where I live the PD is run like a business. You can't make any money investigating burglaries. The cops are out on the street harassing grandma on the way to church. You can get a positive revenue stream on traffic duty, whilst investigating crime does not pay. But people like you are constantly petitioning the mayor and city council for more of this overt nonsensical big brother behavior from the city. Sigh...I wish you big government types would just go back to being Democrats.
It is a well-documented fact that if you make the yellow long enough, few people run a red light.
Many municipalities shorten the duration of the yellow after installing stop-light cameras specifically to increase revenue.
Stop light cameras can actually increase the occurrence of accidents.
They would obey them more if there weren't so draconian.
Realistically, how fast do you think 25 mph is, which is the most common speed limit on most city streets? I mean, that's barely touching the accelerator speed.
Plus school zones. I can see slowing down on school days, but even on weekends and evenings these are still enforced. Nothing but cash cow for local governments.