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Red light cameras undermine rule of law
The Hill ^ | 08/18/19 | JOE BARNETT

Posted on 08/18/2019 10:57:14 AM PDT by MarvinStinson

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To: entropy12

They should team the red light cameras to catch people smoking dope and playing with their cell phones!

Burn them all!


41 posted on 08/18/2019 12:04:08 PM PDT by Beagle8U (It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you place the blame.)
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To: entropy12

Consider this reality and red light cameras. Your car, your license plate, and you as the owner gets the ticket. Even if someone else is the one who was driving your car you are the one guilty of running a red light whether you were physically there or not because you are the owner of the car.

You will suffer all the consequences of points on your license, higher insurance rates, Etc. Even though it was not you. Now if it was an officer who physically detains you this possibility is just not there, whoever actually ran the light will get the ticket to their own license and you are not guilty of anything as it should be.

Would you consider this to be an acceptable personal sacrifice on your part to make folks safer?


42 posted on 08/18/2019 12:05:01 PM PDT by Openurmind
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To: entropy12

Oh please.


43 posted on 08/18/2019 12:07:32 PM PDT by sauropod (I am His and He is Mine)
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To: Popman

“A good defensive driving class will TEACH you that GREEN means take your foot off the gas pedal and look before entering the intersection.”

I have a million accident free driving miles.

You nailed it. Never enter a green intersection before looking both right and left. All other drivers are out there to kill you. Nearly all irresponsible drivers can be avoided. A vehicle pulling immediately in front of your vehicle, from a cross street, stopped, is the only thing that cannot be avoided. Most of them have Darwined out though.

But cars drive reckless. It is their nature.

Such as, cars merge into the lane as a group. Instead if they space out, they have a safety buffer. But few car drivers create buffers.

If you ever merged on to the freeway, but needed the emergency lane as a buffer, you are a dangerous group pack driver.

Offset driving is safer, but cars love staying in social packs.

Car drivers have a lot more control over safety than they realize, but few use it. They drive socially unaware of their surroundings.


44 posted on 08/18/2019 12:10:06 PM PDT by TheNext (Diversity: Darker Replaces Lighter)
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To: Ben Mugged

Don’t want bureaucrats in your town to shorten yellow lights to the point it causes lots of accidents?

Texas found that particular problem so ubiquitous that camera tickets had to be banned.


45 posted on 08/18/2019 12:12:53 PM PDT by MrEdd (Caveat Emptor)
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To: billyboy15
re< Really? Why would ANYONE pay a ticket if they were innocent?

Out of state come back and fight it. Cost more than the ticket.

46 posted on 08/18/2019 12:14:36 PM PDT by IC Ken (Stop making stupid people famous)
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To: MarvinStinson
This is how they handle them in europe and the UK:


47 posted on 08/18/2019 12:18:55 PM PDT by cuban leaf (We're living in Dr. Zhivago but without the love triangle)
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To: MarvinStinson

I was visiting Chicago a few months ago and noticed that I actually could tell an intersection was patrolled by a camera by how short the yellow was. People get used to a certain length of time with all the non-camera locations, then get nailed by the cameras. It’s dispicable.

I live in Kentucky. Their solution is simple. The light turns red and then, a couple of seconds later, the other direction’s light goes green.


48 posted on 08/18/2019 12:21:07 PM PDT by cuban leaf (We're living in Dr. Zhivago but without the love triangle)
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To: TheNext
"That is because red & yellow lights are fundamentally a flawed system. The State is too stupid to fix it. Drivers are too ignorant to understand why traffic lights are flawed."

How would you "fix" it?

49 posted on 08/18/2019 12:21:25 PM PDT by MV=PY (The Magic Question: Who's paying for it?)
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To: entropy12

If those camera’s save on life it is worth it.


I’m really not meaning in the least to be attempting snark, but I sincerely assume that was sarcasm.


50 posted on 08/18/2019 12:22:13 PM PDT by cuban leaf (We're living in Dr. Zhivago but without the love triangle)
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To: MarvinStinson

When red light camerss go up:

Angular “T-bone” collisions go down.
Rear end collisions go WAY up.


51 posted on 08/18/2019 12:22:19 PM PDT by lightman (Byzantine Troparia: The "praise choruses" of antiquity.)
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To: Ben Mugged
I would hate to count the times my family and I have almost been killed by red light runners

WHERE DO YOU DRIVE? I've been driving for 60 years and driven over 800,000 miles and only once did I have a close call with a light runner.

52 posted on 08/18/2019 12:26:33 PM PDT by from occupied ga (Your government is your most dangerous enemy)
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To: Ben Mugged

Don’t want a traffic ticket? Don’t break the law.


Though I agree with the sentiment, traffic laws are a unique animal. First, they are not actually “laws” in the normal sense. With the exception of serious infractions, they don’t involve criminality as do all other laws. They are really rules, in the practical sense. And they are rules that are broken all the time by people that don’t mean to and would never intentionally violate laws. And to be clear, most infractions are due to people making a “free right turn” on a red and they simply fail to “come to a full stop with rollback.” i.e. what they did was not the least bit dangerous, but it got them a hefty fine.

I think for most situations, roundabouts would solve the safety issue and also enable traffic to flow smoothly. I love those things.


53 posted on 08/18/2019 12:26:35 PM PDT by cuban leaf (We're living in Dr. Zhivago but without the love triangle)
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To: TheNext

It’s a habit you catch onto real fast after a couple close calls when riding street bikes. Even if you have the right of way and cross traffic has stop signs in quiet neighborhoods.


54 posted on 08/18/2019 12:28:27 PM PDT by Openurmind
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To: Dilbert San Diego

And let’s be frank. Most of those deaths at intersections are not from someone trying to “beat a read light”. They are from someone that didn’t see it. It had been red a long time before they entered. Just watch the crash compilation videos on Youtube.


55 posted on 08/18/2019 12:29:07 PM PDT by cuban leaf (We're living in Dr. Zhivago but without the love triangle)
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To: IrishBrigade

anything more than a moderately busy turn circle is a death trap...


In what way? My experience is that the traffic is not flowing fast enough to result in anything more than, at most, a serious fender bender.

FWIW, I’ve watched hundreds of crash compilation videos. I’ve seen a LOT of obviously fatal accidents at standard intersections, but not a one at turn circles. There simply is not enough kinetic energy involved and, most importantly, the cars are all going, in essence, the same direction.


56 posted on 08/18/2019 12:31:27 PM PDT by cuban leaf (We're living in Dr. Zhivago but without the love triangle)
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To: entropy12

no they are not worth it


57 posted on 08/18/2019 12:32:14 PM PDT by Secret Agent Man (Gone Galt; Not Averse to Going Bronson.)
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To: Alberta's Child

when police officers were directing traffic through red lights along a major road as a traffic control measure after a major event at the Prudential Center.


What makes that interesting to me is that in most locations, as far as I am aware, every single infraction must be reviewed, even if only cursory, by a human being. I tested this at a light in Seattle. Every week I’d go through it on my way home from band practice. My goal was to go fast enough that the computer would think I wasn’t going to stop, and then stop at the last minute, without screeching my tires. I got flashed at least a dozen times, but never received a ticket.

i.e. the one you mentioned suggests something far more nefarious than simply “making a mistake”.


58 posted on 08/18/2019 12:35:15 PM PDT by cuban leaf (We're living in Dr. Zhivago but without the love triangle)
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To: MarvinStinson

For those not familiar with red light cameras, most of the money made is not due to actually nailing people running red lights, it is for the unpardonable sin of putting your front tire on or across the first white line of the pedestrian walk.

The favorite location is one where signs or vegetation blocks your view to the right so you have to pull forward to see to safely make a right turn. That will be $75.

Not to mention previous to red light cameras, when the fire truck came up behind a line of cars they would clear the intersection as it was safe to do so. Now they just plant until the light turns. I don’t blame them a bit.


59 posted on 08/18/2019 12:35:52 PM PDT by Clay Moore (You can vote your way into socialism, but you have to shoot your way out.)
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To: PallMal

I used to follow this stuff really closely. There was one camera in the Chicago area that had the proud distinction of every single ticket it wrote was for failure to come to a full and complete stop before making a right hand turn. And this was a road where there was very little cross traffic and vision was clear for a very long way. i.e. it should have been a “right turn yield” sign anyway.

There is one on the route to return rental cars to O’hare that is brutal. People are in a hurry. There’s obviously no traffic, and they nail you. It almost nailed me once and I knew it was there!


60 posted on 08/18/2019 12:39:44 PM PDT by cuban leaf (We're living in Dr. Zhivago but without the love triangle)
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