Anyone fight, and win, a camera speeding ticket in DC?
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Anonymous
| If you speed it is your fault. Not the one world government and their black helicopters. It is not a conspiracy against you. WNMSC(We need more speed cameras) |
Anonymous
You are an idiot indeed. |
Anonymous
Not the PP you're responding to, but the definition of screed is, in pertinent part, "A long speech or piece of writing, typically one regarded as tedious." I suppose we could debate whether your post qualifies as long, but I don;t think there's any doubt about tedious. If the shoe fits . . . but unsound traffic engineering is unsound engineering no matter where it is done. Are you suggesting that what constitutes "unsound traffic engineering" is the same in Washington, DC, rural Kansas, NYC, Reston, Va., or anywhere on the interstate highway system?
Professionals in the field? Such as former traffic court judges in other jurisdictions? Well, of course you're right. Pardon me while I go genuflect . . . |
Anonymous
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Anonymous wrote:
If you speed it is your fault. Not the one world government and their black helicopters. It is not a conspiracy against you. WNMSC(We need more speed cameras) You are an idiot indeed. oh I see your point...not! |
Anonymous
I'm under the impression that "professionals in the field" would be urban planners, who are most likely to recommend traffic calming measures to encourage pedestrian safety and sidewalk-level neighborhood health. This is appropriate prioritizing for DC streets, which, after all, form part of a living city and not merely a suburban commuter pass-through. |
Anonymous
If you think the average new resident is an "urbanist", dream on. For the most part you are car driving suburbanites with a different zip code. The numbers do not lie. |
Anonymous
I hate black and white thinking. Yes, speeding is GENERALLY wrong. However, there may be an instance where it can't be avoided. Such as if you were in your own car following an amulance that had your child inside. Or sped up to avoid a car accident, and so forth. And who says that these machines are calibrated properly? Or work the right way? Or capture a picture of the right car? And what if your nanny is driving the car- you're still responsible for the ticket! Ahhhh! |
Anonymous
Yes you are right! We just started driving cars a few months ago and all these things have to be given a lot of thought. PS only the ambulance can go through traffic lights and they usually don't speed...you know safe speed is the speed limit. If you are not speeding, you have a better chance to avoid accidents b/c your car with be under control...you know safe speed as set by the professionals. Some how these machine caught only people who are speeding...weird if they are not calibrated or working right? Right car...yes we should put some sort of tag to identify which car belong to which people! So your nanny speeds? Recent studies show that driving even a few kilometres per hour above the speed limit greatly increases the risk of an accident. Many of us cheat a little when driving. We figure that while the speed limit is 60 kilometres per hour the police won't pull us over if we sit on 65. So we happily let the speedo hover just above the speed limit, unaware that by so doing we are greatly magnifying our chances of crashing. Using data from actual road crashes, scientists at the University of Adelaide estimated the relative risk of a car becoming involved in a casualty crash – a car crash in which people are killed or hospitalised – for cars travelling at or above 60 kilometres/hour. They found that the risk doubled for every 5 kilometres/hour above 60 kilometres/hour. Thus, a car travelling at 65 kilometres/hour was twice as likely to be involved in a casualty crash as one travelling at 60. For a car travelling at 70 kilometres/hour, the risk increased fourfold. For speeds below 60 kilometres/hour the likelihood of a fatal crash can be expected to be correspondingly reduced. Reaction time One reason for this increased risk is reaction time – the time it takes between a person perceiving a danger and reacting to it. Consider this example. Two cars of equal weight and braking ability are travelling along the same road. Car 1, travelling at 65 kilometres/hour, is overtaking Car 2, which is travelling at 60 kilometres/hour. A child on a bicycle – let's call him Sam – emerges from a driveway just as the two cars are side-by-side. The drivers both see the child at the same time and both take 1.5 seconds before they fully apply the brakes. In those few moments, Car 1 travels 27.1 metres and Car 2 travels 25.0 metres. The difference of 2.1 metres might seem relatively small, but combined with other factors it could mean the difference between life and death for Sam. The figure of 1.5 seconds is the reaction time of average drivers. A driver who is distracted (eg, listening to loud music, using a mobile phone or has drunk alcohol) may take as long as 3 seconds to react. Braking distance The braking distance (the distance a car travels before stopping when the brakes are applied) depends on a number of variables. For example, the slope or grade of the roadway is important – a car will stop more quickly if it is going uphill because gravity will help. The frictional resistance between the road and the car's tyres is also important – a car with new tyres on a dry road will be less likely to skid and will stop more quickly than one with worn tyres on a wet road. If slope and frictional resistance are equal, the factor that has most influence on braking distance is initial speed. The formula used to calculate braking distance can be derived from a general equation of physics: where Vf is the final velocity, V0 is the initial velocity, a is the rate of deceleration and d is the distance travelled during deceleration. Since we know that Vf will be zero when the car has stopped, this equation can be re-written as: From this we can see that braking distance is proportional to the square of the speed – which means that it increases considerably as speed increases. If we assume that a is 10 metres per second per second and assume that the road is flat and the braking systems of the two cars are equally effective, we can now calculate braking distance for cars 1 and 2 in our example. For car 1, d = 16.3 metres, while for Car 2, d = 13.9 metres. Adding reaction distance to braking distance, the stopping distance for Car 1 is 27.1 + 16.3 = 43.4 metres. For Car 2, stopping distance is 25 + 13.9 = 38.9 metres. Car 1 therefore takes 4.5 more metres to stop than Car 2, a 12 per cent increase. We can now see why Car 1 is more likely than Car 2 to hit Sam. If Sam is 40 metres from the cars when the drivers see him, Car 2 will stop just in time. Car 1, though, will plough straight into him. By re-writing the first equation, we can calculate the speed at which the collision occurs: (where d = 40 metres minus the reaction distance of 27.1 metres = 12.9 metres). Thus, the impact occurs at about 30 kilometres/hour, probably fast enough to kill Sam. If the car's initial speed was 70 kilometres/hour, the impact velocity would be 45 kilometres/hour, more than fast enough to kill. These calculations assume that the driver has an average reaction time. If the driver is distracted and has a longer than average reaction time, then he or she may hit Sam without having applied the brakes at all. Impact on a pedestrian Because the pedestrian, Sam, is so much lighter than the car, he has little effect upon its speed. The car, however, very rapidly increases Sam's speed from zero to the impact speed of the vehicle. The time taken for this is about the time it takes for the car to travel a distance equal to Sam's thickness – about 20 centimetres. The impact speed of Car 1 in our example is about 8.1 metres per second, so the impact lasts only about 0.025 seconds. Sam must be accelerated at a rate of about 320 metres per second per second during this short time. If Sam weighs 50 kilograms, then the force required is the product of his mass and his acceleration – about 16,000 newtons or about 1.6 tonnes weight. Since the impact force on Sam depends on the impact speed divided by the impact time, it increases as the square of the impact speed. The impact speed, as we have seen above, increases rapidly as the travel speed increases, because the brakes are unable to bring the car to a stop in time. Once a pedestrian has been hit by a car, the probability of serious injury or death depends strongly on the impact speed. Reducing the impact speed from 60 to 50 kilometres/hour almost halves the likelihood of death, but has relatively little influence on the likelihood of injury, which remains close to 100 per cent. Reducing the speed to 40 kilometres/hour, as in school zones, reduces the likelihood of death by a factor of 4 compared with 60 kilometres/hour, and of course the likelihood of an impact is also dramatically reduced. Modern cars with low streamlined bonnets are more pedestrian-friendly than upright designs, such as those found in 4-wheel drive vehicles, since the pedestrian is thrown upwards towards the windscreen with a corresponding slowing of the impact. Cars with bullbars are particularly unfriendly to pedestrians and to other vehicles, since they are designed to protect their own occupants with little regard to others. Impact on a large object If, instead of hitting a pedestrian, the car hits a tree, a brick wall, or some other heavy object, then the car's energy of motion (kinetic energy) is all dissipated when the car body is bent and smashed. Since the kinetic energy (E) is given by E = (1/2) mass × speed2 it increases as the square of the impact velocity. Driving a very heavy vehicle does not lessen the effect of the impact much because, although there is more metal to absorb the impact energy, there is also more energy to be absorbed. Less control At higher speeds cars become more difficult to manoeuvre, a fact partly explained by Newton's First Law of Motion. This states that if the net force acting on an object is zero then the object will either remain at rest or continue to move in a straight line with no change in speed. This resistance of an object to changing its state of rest or motion is called inertia. It is inertia that will keep you moving when the car you are in comes to a sudden stop (unless you are restrained by a seatbelt). To counteract inertia when navigating a bend in the road we need to apply a force – which we do by turning the steering wheel to change the direction of the tyres. This makes the car deviate from the straight line in which it is travelling and go round the bend. The force between the tyres and the road increases with increasing speed and with the sharpness of the turn (Force = mass × velocity squared, divided by the radius of the turn), increasing the likelihood of an uncontrolled skid. High speed also increases the potential for driver error caused by over- or under-steering (turning the steering wheel too far, thereby 'cutting the corner', or not far enough, so that the car hits the outside shoulder of the road). Killer speed All these factors show that the risk of being involved in a casualty crash increases dramatically with increasing speed. In the University of Adelaide study referred to earlier, this was certainly true in zones where the speed limit was 60 kilometres/hour: the risk doubled with every 5 kilometres/hour above the speed limit. A corresponding decrease is to be expected in zones with lower speed limits. Is the risk worth it? In our hypothetical case, the driver of Car 2, travelling at the speed limit, would have had a nasty scare, but nothing more. The driver of Car 1, driving just 5 kilometres/hour above the limit, would not be so lucky: whether Sam had lived or died, the driver would face legal proceedings, a possible jail sentence, and a whole lifetime of guilt. 
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RantingAtheist
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You must live outside of the US. In our country, the driver who killed Sam while speeding would likely face no penalty whatsoever. In fact, they'd probably be offered free counseling to get over the trauma of them killing a pedestrian. After all, killing pedestrians is just a unavoidable tragedy that could happen to anyone. The reason we have so many dead at the hands of drivers in this country is that we have zero accountability. |
Anonymous
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At 14:36:
Who ARE you? Good lord!! Someone has some spare time on their hands! |
Anonymous
You really read all that? -Someone improperly accused of being the Ranting Atheist |
Anonymous
Yes, of course you're right. We should eliminate speed cameras because sometimes children must be taken to the hospital, and their parents might get a ticket as they follow the ambulance. In fact, they shouldn't even have to concern themselves that they're breaking the law - let's just eliminate speed limits altogether. |
Anonymous
| I would love to see DC install more speed cameras in Cleveland Park, on Connecticut Avenue and Reno/34th Street! |
Anonymous
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RantingAtheist
Member Joined: 02/17/2012 12:45 Messages: 10 Online whether Sam had lived or died, the driver would face legal proceedings, a possible jail sentence, and a whole lifetime of guilt. You must live outside of the US. In our country, the driver who killed Sam while speeding would likely face no penalty whatsoever. In fact, they'd probably be offered free counseling to get over the trauma of them killing a pedestrian. After all, killing pedestrians is just a unavoidable tragedy that could happen to anyone. The reason we have so many dead at the hands of drivers in this country is that we have zero accountability. What about bikers? They use the road. We have to drive slow for them! |
Anonymous
| First and foremost the disrespect is not needed so if you're going to respond to anything I write please refrain from using profanity smh. The camera is just a computer and computers make mistakes. The cameras can snap the incorrect vehicle if there are three lanes of traffic and there's three cars the camera doesn't know who's speeding or if I speed by between two 18 wheelers one of them will get the ticket because the trucks blocked me from getting caught by the camera. There's a lot of room for error with those cameras and speeding is speeding regardless if you're going 1 or 15 miles over so I guess we are all guilty of that crime so I guess you should slow down too. If you can actually comprehend what I wrote instead of trying to be sarcastically you would've picked up the part about me not condoning speeding and neither myself nor my bf speeds so clearly the wasn't meant for me. The camera doesn't click if you're going 1-10miles over but if you're going 11 or above it does. Clearly speeding is speeding so why not ticket everybody? I still think they're rigged. |