It’s insane the lengths that some people will go to save a few seconds on their commute, while also endangering others.
I don’t understand why these people can’t see the cameras are there to protect everyone - including drivers.
Maybe because cameras can’t protect anyone. They gather evidence for incrimination, not prevention.
From 1992 to 2016, speed cameras reduced accidents by between 17 to 39 per cent and fatalities by between 58 to 68 per cent within 500 metres of the cameras.
That’s a report on a single study in the UK. We cannot necessarily assume that the outcome will be the same or even similar in all jurisdictions and social driving norms. The US, for instance, doesn’t have speed cameras, but the use of red light cameras has no effect in the rate of accidents at best and an increase in the rate of accidents at worse and it’s not clear what impact the introduction of such cameras to the US would have. Meanwhile the UAE does have speed cameras, but they do nothing to limit the speed of the Emirate citizens and only the threat of harsh fines, punishment, or deportation keeps the immigrant and working population in line.
While this camera was in a location which already has cameras, the claim quoted was not that “UK cameras protect UK drivers,” but one of “Cameras [in general] protect everyone” which is simply not true. Cameras have only the mechanisms necessary to record and report, they have no mechanism by which they can divert, slow, or stop a car or pedestrian and no mechanism they can use to stop an accident.
The cameras in question are on the UK, and cameras change behaviour because they enforce rules, as the study shows.
Speed cameras do prevent speeding, they are used to trap in some cases, but almost always they are sign posted, which causes people to slow down.
That sounds like the signs have a correlated impact more than the cameras having a causal relationship.
The signs work because people are scared of speeding cameras.
If you put up signs everywhere without backing them up with cameras people will obviously ignore them.
The cameras are doing the real work, the signs are just for people new to the area.
There’s not much point arguing with these people my guy. There’s no rational thinking.
How so? Isn’t knowing the consequence a form of prevention?
Not really. Awareness of punishment does little to abate crime in general and while increasing the chances of getting caught (say by automatic cameras) does discourage crime in a meaningful way it does not prevent it.
Even so, the camera itself is not offering protection. It has no mechanism to control traffic or stop an accident.
I see this language far too often around cameras, but the fact remains they serve only to incriminate after the fact, not to prevent before the fact.
If you want protection, reduce lane sizes, make drives less straight, install speed tables, incentive alternate arterial routes, make sure alternate forms of transportation are effective and available. Hell, install the cameras even, but don’t be dissolutioned that they are what is actually doing anything.
Speed cameras do work though. Here they are often used in specific places where people are driving too fast, especially if near schools and other places where it’s extra dangerous.
For example close to where I live there is a steep hill with a road that goes straight down and after there is a completely straight road and then a really small bridge with a bump.
Some people like to speed down the hill and basically “jump” the bridge bump. Fortunately a speed camera was installed at the bridge and they warn about it well in advance.
While you could technically redesign the road, it would be very costly compared to a camera and that road is a very small road with low traffic and private farmland (or grazing land, I don’t remember) on both sides.
Here the cameras aren’t even activated all the time just enough to achieve their goal of reducing traffic.
These are all better options, but that’ll require closing the road for a while and more money to spend, which have been gambled on leaving the EU from my American understanding of modern British history. Speed cameras are much cheaper, will not require road closure, and there have been studies indicating a 22% effectiveness after installation.
That is a bad take.
TL;DR: If you do incriminating stuff, you should be incriminated.
There are rules that every driver has to adhere to. The rules are there for protection of the drivers and the people that rely on the drivers driving safely. But the thing is: without consequences, some people show bad behaviour, one being ignoring the rules which are made to keep people safe. In order to suppress such behaviour, fines and punishment are used.
I have been driving cars for around 10 years and have gotten a fine three times. The amount I paid for it in total was roughly 10 Euros per year, which is less than 1 Euro per month. And I could have avoided having to pay this by just being mindful and acting according to the rules, which I did not.
If people feel like they should drive 120 kmh in a 50 kmh zone or even worse, without any proper justification, they do not belong behind the wheel of a car.
People would be less upset about the cameras if a) we weren’t already the most surveilled western country already. B) the fine for minor speeding was minor. as you mentioned you paid 100 euros for 3 fines. In the uk you can be fined for doing 33 in a 30, and the fine will be 100 euros per time, plus points that makes your insurance go up as well. And c) there weren’t so god slam many of them. I live in Europe now, but went back to the uk to visit friends and family and honestly there have to be about 40-50 times many cameras in the uk than in Germany!
Just drive the speed limit and there’s no problem. Driving massive multiple ton killing machines is already a massive privilege, if you can’t adhere to simple rules of the road, you shouldnt be driving at all.
Self righteous much? You talk like it’s not possible to stray a bit over the speed limit and still be safe. Honestly imo, anyone timid enough to feel like 35mph in a 30 is genuine,seriously dangerous should not be allowed to drive. You should be confident and commanding of said multiple ton machine.
If that is your mindset, then just pretend every speed limit is 5mph lower than it is, so when you are going 5mph faster, you are still driving within the limit. It’s a matter of moving your own personal goalposts if you can’t follow a very simple limit. Not wanting to follow such a basic rule as stay within the speed limit tells me you shouldn’t be allowed to drive and if you cannot understand what a limit is, you should be retaking your test.
You are saying it should be fine to drive 5mph over the limit, okay so let’s say we make that legal. Now you are caught doing 37, that’s only 2mph over the 5mph extra we allow, so should you be punished? All you have effectively done is increase the speed limit by 5mph. The 30 on the sign, that’s all it is, a speed limit. It’s not saying “drive around this number”, it’s saying: do not drive above this number, that’s what a limit is. There’s already a 10% leniency on speed limits to account for things like instrumental errors and minor mishaps, but that doesn’t mean you should be knowingly driving 10% faster than the limit.
I am going to take my own advice and not engage with this any further as it’s a very simple subject of just following the rules of the road and arguing/encouraging otherwise is just illegal and dangerous advice. If you have a problem with a speed limit on a road, you should take that up with your local government and not drive over the limit.
I’m not saying they should abolish or raise speed limits at all. But I’m just sick of this sub randomly popping up on /all and everyone here freaking out that straying over the speed limit by a few mph is a heinous crime when realistically it makes little difference. Again, talking about 30-35 in a 30 not 40 or 50 or something. Makes me worried all these pussies are super jumpy and jittery behind the wheel instead of calm and collected, which imo would cause my accidents than people driving assertively and confidently.
Governments are clamping down on protests against climate change: * silence *
Some idiots cut down speed cameras the people living there specifically asked for: YEAH! Fuck the police!!!1! Rage against the machine!!!1! Fuck mass surveillance!!!1!
Priorities , I guess.
Its easy to cut down a camera… How the fuck would you even go about trying to fix the first one a petition or someshit? Booooring fires up chainsaw
Not that I would ever seriously suggest this, but we could start crowdfunding the sabotage of polluting factories. Payout goes to whichever anonymous person correctly “guesses” the downtime. Just joking of course.
Man I would love to see that happen in a video game
Rocks are everywhere.
Power poles seem pretty vulnerable.
“Speed trap” cameras are an entirely apt name. The solution to speeding isn’t cameras, or patrols, or administrative controls, it’s traffic calming, and that reduces capacity, so it’s not considered. The trap is driving on the road at speeds they seem to be designed for, with speed limits significantly lower.
Fuck cars, but fuck cops more. We don’t need to live in a panopticon. These cameras are a step in the wrong direction, and while I don’t think the person who cut them down is doing the right thing for the right reasons, they are doing the right thing.
Cameras are enforcement without the discrimination and potential for violence that cops bring.
Traffic calming is great but it’s also more expensive. Maybe drivers should just try driving below the speed limit.
Incorrect; they discriminate disproportionately on poor people
Unless the fines are proportional to wealth, I don’t see how you can argue that they’re not disproportionally punishing the poorest who are caught.
I agree the fines should be proportionate, but a police officer doing the enforcement can stop whoever they don’t like the look of whether or not they are actually speeding whereas a camera will only target those who are actually, you know, speeding.
I didn’t say pigs are any better.
My point is if someone has the wealth to not feel the fine, the camera does nothing to influence their behaviour and such target those who can’t afford it.
If not cameras and not police then it’s what? Just let people drive as fast as they want?
Shrug a better solution? Most roads have neither, why are you speaking as if it’s a requirement?
Speeding drivers get points on their licence regardless of their wealth.
So they get a few opportunities before feeling any kind of punishment?
I’ve had a speeding ticket where I was offered a “no points” option to pay a higher fine. That was only offered after I showed up in court. This would discriminate against poorer drivers.
However it throws hundreds of people through the equally discriminatory criminal justice system, and allows car insurance companies to jack up rates. Functioning even more effectively as a tax on being different than regular cops do. It also creates a financial incentive for the government not to fix the underlying cause of the problem of speeding.
Wishing and hoping for people to be better than they are isn’t a solution. Just because traffic calming is more expensive, that’s not a reason to not do it. It is something that needs to be done if you want to break car dependency.
Wishing and hoping for people to be better than they are isn’t a solution. Just because traffic calming is more expensive, that’s not a reason to not do it. It is something that needs to be done if you want to break car dependency.
We should be doing that, but local councils don’t have the money after more than a decade of tory austerity. I also believe that driver’s should be able to drive below the speed limit even if the road isn’t correct for it, because there will always be places like that (around construction, for example), and like you say we can’t just wish and hope for them to follow that rule so some enforcement is needed.
In engineering, there is an idea called hierarchy of controls.
Traffic calming is a “substitution” of the hazard. It, like unexpected construction, forces drivers to slow down due to the road not being psychologically safe to drive fast on.
Speed limits are an “administrative control” on the other hand.
People will drive as fast as they (possibly incorrectly) feel is safe, and a lot goes into that, of which speeding fines are only one very small part. If you really want safe streets for pedestrians and motorists, it is just not as effective an option.
Additionally, I’m level certain that Tory austerity is not really a viable excuse here, because I’m sure that there are ongoing efforts to “alleviate the traffic problem” by adding capacity. It’s not that the money doesn’t exist, it’s that the money doesn’t exist for this. Because elected officials aren’t interested in this, because they’re more interested in fine revenue and keeping car people happy.
You will unconsciously drive as fast as the road allows you unless you keep checking your speedometer. Some cars too can insulate you from the noise and sense of speed that you will drive faster than you’d typically do in another car.
Spoken as someone who doesn’t drive.
Did you know that keeping track of your speed is easy and a critical part of driving?
Some cars too can insulate you from the noise and sense of speed that you will drive faster than you’d typically do in another car.
How about electric cars?
Theres an interesting argument by Chuck Mahron against speed cameras: https://podcast.strongtowns.org/e/the-arguments-for-speed-cameras…and-why-they-don-t-hold-up/
The core of his argument is that it’s bad to punish normal behavior, instead you should just do traffic calming, even cheap traffic calming
and while I don’t think the person who cut them down is doing the right thing for the right reasons, they are doing the right thing.
So you think they are doing the right thing for… the wrong reasons?
Yeah, the omnipotentEntity seems to lack a bit of reasoning here.
Good. Speed cameras are an abominable hypocrisy. The claim that they’re there because safety is important is undermined by the total lack of action Devon and Cornwall police take against actual unsafe drivers.
I drove past a police officer standing with a speed camera recently at 20mph with another car driving less than two feet from my bumper.
Had I been speeding I’d have gotten a ticket, meanwhile the police watch this actually dangerous driver sail past them without taking any action.
Half a mile later I have to drive onto the wrong side of the road around a lorry parked on a corner, with almost no visibility of oncoming traffic.
Their moral authority is destroyed and their pretence shattered by their own inaction and ineffectiveness.
So tear down the speed cameras if it highlights their fiction. Devon and Cornwall police are great at many things. Traffic is not one of them.
I don’t really get your argument.
Speed cameras are designed to do one thing – issue citations for speeding.
The job of the police officer is to identify a wide array of crimes and issue citations for them, when they observe them.
The incident where a car was tailgating you and the incident where a lorry was creating an unsafe driving situation have absolutely nothing to do with the speeding camera. Both of those situations are the responsibility of a policy officer, if they are alerted to the crime or observe it themselves. You have a valid complaint about the complacency of your local law enforcement, but what does your argument have to do with the speed camera?
The basis for the rationale for putting up speed cameras depends on the police to act with an unquestionable moral authority.
By acting with inconsistent moral principles they demonstrate their stated and genuine motives differ which undermines the moral authority they need to police by consent.
The basis for the rationale for putting up speed cameras depends on the police to act with an unquestionable moral authority.
No, it doesn’t?
Yes it does
It explicitly takes control away from the police and moves it to simple sensors and circuits, as well as simple bureaucratic mailing lists. If it screws up, you can either request a manual review of the footage or spend an afternoon to bring your own evidence it in front of a judge. The police have nothing to do with it.
Except when the camera is in the policeman’s hand and when they run the training courses you mean?
Well, we are talking about a pole mounted camera, and if it was misscalibrated is would be very easy to prove, so yes?
A place where I lived they installed eur 600k worth of cameras. I mean every little corner was covered.
Well one day I got beaten up and the police didn’t care when I tried to report it. And another day I found a backpack so I brought it to the police and this woman was incredibly rude to me.
I mean for 600k they could have a full time patrol there!
Speed cameras are known to decrease safety. There have been many studies on this.
I had a look earlier and only saw the opposite (see https://www.lse.ac.uk/News/Latest-news-from-LSE/2017/10-October-2017/Speed-cameras-reduce-road-accidents-and-traffic-deaths-according-to-new-study), do you have any links?
“There have been many studies”
Then cites no studies
Lol when I read the title I was happy for them
They should put up a new one for each one vandalised
Unlimited funding for speed camera’s and kickbacks, zero funding for road redesign? That sounds really safe!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A speed camera that was only recently replaced was among two cut down overnight in Cornwall.In the latest attack on the county’s speed traps, police said the speed camera at Perranarworthal had been cut down for a second time after it was first vandalised in October 2023 and replaced in November.Another camera was also attacked on Tregolls Road in Truro at about 03:10 GMT, officers said.Devon and Cornwall Police said those responsible had left the scene before officers arrived.
The cameras in Perranarworthal were installed in March 2023 after campaigning from residents.Cornwall Councillor Peter Williams, who represents Perranarworthal, said: "It is absolutely horrendous why people go and do these things under the noses of where people live.
The speed camera on Tregolls Road in Truro had more than 17,000 activations the year after it was installed, according to police.Loic Rich, Truro City Councillor for the Tregolls Ward, said parents had complained about the dangers of speeding in the area.He said: "Where the speed camera is, or was, it’s used by parents taking their children to two primary schools … it’s one of the busiest crossings in Truro and there’s been a number of quite bad accidents.
"For hundreds of people in that area, the speed cameras actually had a really positive effect on their quality of life.
"Whoever’s cut down the speed camera, and I don’t know why they’ve done that or what they’re trying to achieve, I think it’s a real shame.
Cornwall Council and Devon and Cornwall Police, both members of the Vision Zero Road Safety partnership, said in a joint statement that they were disappointed to see “yet more mindless vandalism targeted at safety cameras”.They said: “These devices were installed at the wishes of the community to improve road safety in areas, which had previously experienced high speeds and several serious and fatal collisions.“While these cameras are inactive, these communities no longer have the protection they were once afforded, which is really saddening.“The cost of replacing these cameras is also a burden which has to be footed by the taxpayer, making these attacks all the more bizarre.”
The original article contains 434 words, the summary contains 350 words. Saved 19%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Alright, I gotta ask. What’s the speed limit, and what’s the threshold that you get mailed a ticket?
I’m asking because in the state where I live in the US, speed cameras were outlawed unless a police officer was stationed to sit there and watch it all day. The reason being is that people were getting mailed $200 tickets for going 1 mph over the speed limit. This was problematic because no car’s speedometer is perfectly calibrated, and people who tried to do the right thing were getting a dozen tickets in the mail before they even realized they’d done something wrong.
Also, cameras were disproportionately being installed in poor neighborhoods, punishing more people without the means to pay the tickets. Which is obviously not a safety measure, but a punitive measure.
The tolerance is usually 10% + 2 mph in the UK.
So going 39mph in a 35mph zone gets you a ticket? I’d probably cut down the camera too, in that case. You’d spend more time watching the speedo than the road, which would make the road less safe.
Um, you do know that being able to acutely control your speed is a critical prerequisite for being able to operate a motor vehicle, right? Being unable to keep it within a 2-3 mph range is not normal, and may indicate a minor neurological condition or lack of patrice and training. You should not be getting task saturated monitoring your speed, as beyond watching for people entering the road before you, monitoing for lights and signs, and monitoring the space between the vehicle in front of you, speed control is the fourth most important thing to keep an eye on while using our shared pubic road infrastructure.
Cruise control exists, and is an very useful way to reduce task saturation if you need to, but if you don’t have that in your vehicle may I suggest the radical idea of aiming for a speed slow enough you won’t unknowingly cross the limit by that much. The speed limit is the upper bound, not lower. Like just do try and do 30 or 25 if you can’t tell the difference. Thanks to how travel times work, it won’t even have that much impact on your arrival time at ranges short enough to be done on 35mph streets.
You are operating an device that can kill innocent unrelated strangers in an instant, it is YOUR job to do so safely within the bounds of the road networks design. If you are unable to do so, then you are unable to do so. There is no shame in that, much like there is no shame in needing glasses, but please, adjust your life so that you don’t risk killing innocent people at risk for your own convenience.
Being too attentative (distracted) to the speedometer is far more dangerous than the harm of going 5-9 mph over in many cases. And like mentioned earlier in tbe thread, many cars have a spedometer only accurate within 2-4 mph.
Being able to tell how fast your vehicle is moving to within a 2 to 4 mph range, what the law in question id designed to accommodate for, is not being too attentive to the speedometer. It is part of the very basic foundation of being able to control a motor vehicle. Again, I’m sorry you are only leaning this now, but being unable to do so is not normal for a driver.
Our common roads, vehicles, insurance, and laws are all designed under the assumption that going five over is an intentional act because for nearly all drivers it very much is.
I worry that like much like it might be hard for a child to realize they need glasses becuse they assume their normal and everyone else’s vision is as bad as their’s, you are assuming that everyone struggles with monitoing their speed to within five to ten miles an hour, they don’t. That’s one of the things that a drivers test is soposed to test for in the first place.
A speedometer that is only accurate to within 2 to 4 mph is still only off by 2 mph at most on average, given that the center of that range is going to be on the vehicle’s real speed.
At the speeds we’re talking about, being nine over is equivalent to an extra half a vehicle’s worth of kinetic energy on top of what the road was designed for, which has a very big impact on whether or not your vehicle’s breaks can act to dissipate that energy in the time the civil engineers who designed the road system assume it will.
Please provide a source that going 44 in a 35 is far less dangerous than what should be a subconscious part of driving. All I could find was this study, which shows that if you don’t see them come out from behind a parked car on the side of the road in time, and if you are struggling to monitor the speedometer that is likely, going from an impact speed of 32mph to 42 mph, doubles the odds of killing the person you just hit.
There are no 35mph zones in the UK. They’re all multiples of 10. The limits are well known and we’re taught how to follow them, it’s not the problem you’re making it out to be.