DC traffic cameras issued 3.3 MILLION tickets last year

Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
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Anonymous wrote:Traffic fatalities spiked the year that cameras, and all the assorted other measures, went in but have since fallen back in line with the long term historical range.

That doesn't show what you think it shows.


What "long term historical range" are you talking about?

If current trends continue, DC will record about 19 traffic fatalities in 2025.

You can view the 20 year traffic fatality trend here: https://mpdc.dc.gov/page/traffic-data

In the past 20 years, there is only year (2012) when DC recorded less than 20 traffic deaths. Most years are substantially higher than that.


The numbers seem relatively stable until a big spike in '23 and '24. That coincides with the massive increase in cameras and other measures which is ironic.


If I had to guess, I would have expected more fender benders with the distracted braking hard when seeing the camera to be rear-ended by the following distracted driver. However, this is about traffic deaths, and rear-end accidents aren't deadly to pedestrians.

IMHO, pedestrians are really bad at judging speeds of approaching vehicles. Also, more slower, more road rage.


Both accidents and deaths increased substantially after they implemented these measures.


Not in DC.


Yes, in DC. Most of the measures were proposed in 2022 and implemented in 2023 and 2024.


The explosion in ticketing began in 2014.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Traffic fatalities spiked the year that cameras, and all the assorted other measures, went in but have since fallen back in line with the long term historical range.

That doesn't show what you think it shows.


What "long term historical range" are you talking about?

If current trends continue, DC will record about 19 traffic fatalities in 2025.

You can view the 20 year traffic fatality trend here: https://mpdc.dc.gov/page/traffic-data

In the past 20 years, there is only year (2012) when DC recorded less than 20 traffic deaths. Most years are substantially higher than that.


The numbers seem relatively stable until a big spike in '23 and '24. That coincides with the massive increase in cameras and other measures which is ironic.


If I had to guess, I would have expected more fender benders with the distracted braking hard when seeing the camera to be rear-ended by the following distracted driver. However, this is about traffic deaths, and rear-end accidents aren't deadly to pedestrians.

IMHO, pedestrians are really bad at judging speeds of approaching vehicles. Also, more slower, more road rage.


Both accidents and deaths increased substantially after they implemented these measures.


Not in DC.


Yes, in DC. Most of the measures were proposed in 2022 and implemented in 2023 and 2024.


Huh? All this stuff goes way further back than that. Per DDOT, the number of traffic tickets issued between 2014 and 2022 grew by a factor of four. It doubled again after that, but that was only the most recent doubling.
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Anonymous wrote:Did you know there's almost no stop sign cameras west of the park? I wonder how that happens....


There's 17 speed cameras in Ward 3. In Ward 7, there's almost 60.


Listing this without listing data on accidents or fatalities isn’t that useful.
Traffic accidents, injuries, and fatalities are FAR higher in ward 7 than 3. This isn’t the racist “gotcha” that you think it is.



Actually it is.

https://www.propublica.org/article/chicagos-race-neutral-traffic-cameras-ticket-black-and-latino-drivers-the-most


Accidents and fatalities are much higher in majority black zip codes. Should city officials defer to those who break the law or those who are victimized by law breakers?

The underlying problem is that road infrastructure is generally much more conducive to speeding in black majority zip codes. The solution is more traffic calming etc..


Accidents and fatalities are rare in every section of the city. The city should not bombard people with tickets that cost them lots of money and make no difference to accident rates.


No one is bombarding you. You are actively breaking the law. You can choose to stop.


It would make more sense if we just had the cops give out the tickets. So many of the camera tickets are bullshit-y foot fault tickets. It's just harassment.


The cops do not give a crap. They never did.

And what the is a foot fault ticket?? Did you follow the law or not? Sounds like no, but you want to whine about it


A lot of the tickets are for trivial offenses. For example you stopped at a stop sign, but the nose of your car was beyond the stop sign pole when you stopped, so they say you didnt stop at the stop sign.


The stop sign cameras record your speed going over the line and will automatically cancel the ticket if it's under a certain speed, specifically to avoid this situation. If the automatic cancellation doesn't happen for some reason you can appeal and presuming you were actually just inching over the line your ticket will be dismissed because they have not only your speed recorded but a video of the infraction that a human can review for an appeal.

People love to say "oh I was just doing this reasonable thing and the mean old speed camera punished me!" But in reality it's usually either a straight up lie or they have an utter lack of self-awareness of what they are doing in their vehicle, rolling through the stop sign at 8mph but in their mind they "barely inched over."


It would be great if it actually worked like this, but that hasn't been my experience at all. Most of the traffic camera tickets I have ever gotten (and there's been a few) are penny ante complaints about how I stopped but not in precisely the right place because my bumper was over the crosswalk or something.


That is literally how it works. It's right there on the DDOT website if you had ever bothered to take 2 seconds to look it up:

Drivers must come to a complete stop prior to the stop bar at an intersection controlled by a stop sign or traffic signal. This allows the driver to look around and ensure that they have the right of way before continuing. The stop signs units use radar to detect if a vehicle stopped at, rolled through, or ran a stop sign. Tickets will be issued when vehicles fail to make a complete stop at a stop signs.

The stop sign enforcement camera system predicts using advance algorithms, when a stop sign violation is occurring and captures the violation event with digital camera and high-resolution video.

Step 1 The first image of the violation is taken BEFORE the vehicle passes the stop line.
Step 2 The second image is taken AFTER the vehicle passes the stop line.
Step 3 The license plate is taken from a close-up of the images captured.
Step 4 In addition, a high-resolution video of the violation event is captured as a validation tool.
Step 5 Additional data collected includes the time, date, speed, location, lane, and direction of the travel.


https://asc.ddot.dc.gov/


They send you a video when you get a ticket. No one needs to look anything up. You can see how silly the tickets are in the video they send you.


If the ticket is "silly," i.e. not video evidence of you breaking the law and deservedly getting the ticket, then you can easily get the ticket dismissed.

If the ticket is in fact video evidence of you breaking the law then the ticket is not "silly."

So what's the problem?


Tickets have increased 10 fold. They doubled in the past year alone. Last year there 3.3 million tickets for a city of 700,000. Speeding deaths have not gone down at all, despite the massive increase in ticketing. How is that possible? Lots and lots of tickets for trivial offenses.


You picked the wrong year to make this argument. Traffic deaths are down 60% year-on-year after the number of cameras were doubled last year. You need to find a new hobby.


The number of speeding related deaths have gone up and down each year, without any clear pattern. If increasing tickets by 10 times over the past decade actually made a difference, you'd see a pattern.

2023: 22
2022: 9
2021: 12
2020: 15
2019: 10
2018: 9
2017: 12
2016: 8
2015: 11
2014: 12
2013: 11


You can keep posting lies and I will keep calling you out for the liar that you are. You know that these numbers do not include many people killed by speeding drivers and yet you continue to claim otherwise. Why?


You can look them up yourself. They come from the DC police department. The reports are here: https://mpdc.dc.gov/page/mpd-annual-reports


I hate it when people make me repeat myself and you are making me repeat myself over and over again because you insist on spreading misinformation.

It states very clearly in the main table on page 44 on the 2023 report that the numbers constitute the “Predominant Cause of Traffic Fatality”.

I cannot believe that you do not understand the difference between a factor being determined to be a predominant cause and a contributing factor.

Therefore, I can only conclude that you are deliberately seeking to mislead the public in service of your hideous crusade against speed cameras, which persists in spite of all evidence that they save lives.

Do you want people to die on the streets of DC? Is that your goal here?


Everything has multiple causes. There are multiple reasons why I had eggs for breakfast. But the police investigated these crashes. They interviewed people in the crashes. They interview people who saw the crashes. They examined the physical evidence. Then they reported the primary reason for the crash and that was used in some cases to put people in prison. You can pretend you know better than the people who actually did the work, but it seems like it would be better for everyone if you just shut the fkc up.


So you do understand how traffic cameras can be effective at reducing fatal crashes even though the number of fatal crashes is not changing in accordance with the expansion of those cameras? Because it doesn't sound like you want to admit that you understand that.

That said, it is kind of silly to expect that cameras will make a difference to how people drive across the city when there are only 500 cameras for 8,000+ city blocks and drivers by and large know exactly where the cameras are. Cameras aren't going to work in places where there are no cameras.

If the city cared about saving lives, there would be traffic cameras on every block. They are cheaper enough to buy and operate that cost can no longer be cited as a factor in preventing the city from acquiring more of them. With AI, the cameras could also catch not only speeding but also drunk driving, double parking, red light running and so on.

How wonderful it would be to live in a city where drivers actually obeyed the law.


You sound like Trump pretending that DC is a crime ridden hell hole.

The reality is traffic accidents in DC are rare. Very, very few people die in traffic accidents. The vast majority of people are safe drivers, just like the vast majority of people do not commit crimes. Probably because so few people die in traffic accidents, it's hard to move the needle in further reductions which is why the numbers don't change that much from year to year.

You can blanket the city with tickets, but when you're issuing 3.3 million tickets to a city with a few hundred thousand drivers, you're mostly just giving tickets to safe drivers who make minor mistakes. That has no impact on safety. It's just harassment. It's like Trump putting National Guard troops on every corner, giving everyone tickets for jaywalking and then pretending you're reducing crime.


Are you nuts? The tickets are going to drivers who are speeding at least 11mph over the limit through residential neighborhoods? Only a true buffoon would describe that as a “safe driver making a minor mistake”. That you believe that drivers who break the law and endanger others constitutes “harassment” shows just how deranged you truly are. That you are trying to devalue the deaths of hundreds of people who would have been with us today were it not for such “safe drivers” who made “minor mistakes” is ghoulish. Please go away.


There's a lot of streets in DC with speed limits that are so low that they are a joke. I drive on a lot of roads that, if they were in any other city, would be set at 35mph. DC puts them at 20mph, and then gives you a ticket for speeding for going 31mph, even though if that exact same street was in any other city, you'd be driving below the speed limit. A lot of what DDOT is just dumb.


DC reduced the speed limits to save lives. Because the evidence shows that reducing speed limits to 20mph saves lives, a lot of them. Here is the research on that: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002243752400152X

And what other cities do you have in mind? Maybe, Kensington, MD? The place where pedestrians are being killed left and right by speeding drivers (ICYMI: https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1293666.page)

Why do you insist that people must die so that you can get to the next red light quicker?


Driving 20 mph doesnt save any lives if you're on a street with no pedestrians.


What street in DC has a 20mph speed limit and never ever has had or will have any pedestrians?
Anonymous
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Anonymous wrote:Did you know there's almost no stop sign cameras west of the park? I wonder how that happens....


There's 17 speed cameras in Ward 3. In Ward 7, there's almost 60.


Listing this without listing data on accidents or fatalities isn’t that useful.
Traffic accidents, injuries, and fatalities are FAR higher in ward 7 than 3. This isn’t the racist “gotcha” that you think it is.



Actually it is.

https://www.propublica.org/article/chicagos-race-neutral-traffic-cameras-ticket-black-and-latino-drivers-the-most


Accidents and fatalities are much higher in majority black zip codes. Should city officials defer to those who break the law or those who are victimized by law breakers?

The underlying problem is that road infrastructure is generally much more conducive to speeding in black majority zip codes. The solution is more traffic calming etc..


Accidents and fatalities are rare in every section of the city. The city should not bombard people with tickets that cost them lots of money and make no difference to accident rates.


No one is bombarding you. You are actively breaking the law. You can choose to stop.


It would make more sense if we just had the cops give out the tickets. So many of the camera tickets are bullshit-y foot fault tickets. It's just harassment.


The cops do not give a crap. They never did.

And what the is a foot fault ticket?? Did you follow the law or not? Sounds like no, but you want to whine about it


A lot of the tickets are for trivial offenses. For example you stopped at a stop sign, but the nose of your car was beyond the stop sign pole when you stopped, so they say you didnt stop at the stop sign.


The stop sign cameras record your speed going over the line and will automatically cancel the ticket if it's under a certain speed, specifically to avoid this situation. If the automatic cancellation doesn't happen for some reason you can appeal and presuming you were actually just inching over the line your ticket will be dismissed because they have not only your speed recorded but a video of the infraction that a human can review for an appeal.

People love to say "oh I was just doing this reasonable thing and the mean old speed camera punished me!" But in reality it's usually either a straight up lie or they have an utter lack of self-awareness of what they are doing in their vehicle, rolling through the stop sign at 8mph but in their mind they "barely inched over."


It would be great if it actually worked like this, but that hasn't been my experience at all. Most of the traffic camera tickets I have ever gotten (and there's been a few) are penny ante complaints about how I stopped but not in precisely the right place because my bumper was over the crosswalk or something.


That is literally how it works. It's right there on the DDOT website if you had ever bothered to take 2 seconds to look it up:

Drivers must come to a complete stop prior to the stop bar at an intersection controlled by a stop sign or traffic signal. This allows the driver to look around and ensure that they have the right of way before continuing. The stop signs units use radar to detect if a vehicle stopped at, rolled through, or ran a stop sign. Tickets will be issued when vehicles fail to make a complete stop at a stop signs.

The stop sign enforcement camera system predicts using advance algorithms, when a stop sign violation is occurring and captures the violation event with digital camera and high-resolution video.

Step 1 The first image of the violation is taken BEFORE the vehicle passes the stop line.
Step 2 The second image is taken AFTER the vehicle passes the stop line.
Step 3 The license plate is taken from a close-up of the images captured.
Step 4 In addition, a high-resolution video of the violation event is captured as a validation tool.
Step 5 Additional data collected includes the time, date, speed, location, lane, and direction of the travel.


https://asc.ddot.dc.gov/


They send you a video when you get a ticket. No one needs to look anything up. You can see how silly the tickets are in the video they send you.


If the ticket is "silly," i.e. not video evidence of you breaking the law and deservedly getting the ticket, then you can easily get the ticket dismissed.

If the ticket is in fact video evidence of you breaking the law then the ticket is not "silly."

So what's the problem?


Tickets have increased 10 fold. They doubled in the past year alone. Last year there 3.3 million tickets for a city of 700,000. Speeding deaths have not gone down at all, despite the massive increase in ticketing. How is that possible? Lots and lots of tickets for trivial offenses.


You picked the wrong year to make this argument. Traffic deaths are down 60% year-on-year after the number of cameras were doubled last year. You need to find a new hobby.


The number of speeding related deaths have gone up and down each year, without any clear pattern. If increasing tickets by 10 times over the past decade actually made a difference, you'd see a pattern.

2023: 22
2022: 9
2021: 12
2020: 15
2019: 10
2018: 9
2017: 12
2016: 8
2015: 11
2014: 12
2013: 11


You can keep posting lies and I will keep calling you out for the liar that you are. You know that these numbers do not include many people killed by speeding drivers and yet you continue to claim otherwise. Why?


You can look them up yourself. They come from the DC police department. The reports are here: https://mpdc.dc.gov/page/mpd-annual-reports


I hate it when people make me repeat myself and you are making me repeat myself over and over again because you insist on spreading misinformation.

It states very clearly in the main table on page 44 on the 2023 report that the numbers constitute the “Predominant Cause of Traffic Fatality”.

I cannot believe that you do not understand the difference between a factor being determined to be a predominant cause and a contributing factor.

Therefore, I can only conclude that you are deliberately seeking to mislead the public in service of your hideous crusade against speed cameras, which persists in spite of all evidence that they save lives.

Do you want people to die on the streets of DC? Is that your goal here?


Everything has multiple causes. There are multiple reasons why I had eggs for breakfast. But the police investigated these crashes. They interviewed people in the crashes. They interview people who saw the crashes. They examined the physical evidence. Then they reported the primary reason for the crash and that was used in some cases to put people in prison. You can pretend you know better than the people who actually did the work, but it seems like it would be better for everyone if you just shut the fkc up.


So you do understand how traffic cameras can be effective at reducing fatal crashes even though the number of fatal crashes is not changing in accordance with the expansion of those cameras? Because it doesn't sound like you want to admit that you understand that.

That said, it is kind of silly to expect that cameras will make a difference to how people drive across the city when there are only 500 cameras for 8,000+ city blocks and drivers by and large know exactly where the cameras are. Cameras aren't going to work in places where there are no cameras.

If the city cared about saving lives, there would be traffic cameras on every block. They are cheaper enough to buy and operate that cost can no longer be cited as a factor in preventing the city from acquiring more of them. With AI, the cameras could also catch not only speeding but also drunk driving, double parking, red light running and so on.

How wonderful it would be to live in a city where drivers actually obeyed the law.


You sound like Trump pretending that DC is a crime ridden hell hole.

The reality is traffic accidents in DC are rare. Very, very few people die in traffic accidents. The vast majority of people are safe drivers, just like the vast majority of people do not commit crimes. Probably because so few people die in traffic accidents, it's hard to move the needle in further reductions which is why the numbers don't change that much from year to year.

You can blanket the city with tickets, but when you're issuing 3.3 million tickets to a city with a few hundred thousand drivers, you're mostly just giving tickets to safe drivers who make minor mistakes. That has no impact on safety. It's just harassment. It's like Trump putting National Guard troops on every corner, giving everyone tickets for jaywalking and then pretending you're reducing crime.


Are you nuts? The tickets are going to drivers who are speeding at least 11mph over the limit through residential neighborhoods? Only a true buffoon would describe that as a “safe driver making a minor mistake”. That you believe that drivers who break the law and endanger others constitutes “harassment” shows just how deranged you truly are. That you are trying to devalue the deaths of hundreds of people who would have been with us today were it not for such “safe drivers” who made “minor mistakes” is ghoulish. Please go away.


There's a lot of streets in DC with speed limits that are so low that they are a joke. I drive on a lot of roads that, if they were in any other city, would be set at 35mph. DC puts them at 20mph, and then gives you a ticket for speeding for going 31mph, even though if that exact same street was in any other city, you'd be driving below the speed limit. A lot of what DDOT is just dumb.


DC reduced the speed limits to save lives. Because the evidence shows that reducing speed limits to 20mph saves lives, a lot of them. Here is the research on that: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002243752400152X

And what other cities do you have in mind? Maybe, Kensington, MD? The place where pedestrians are being killed left and right by speeding drivers (ICYMI: https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1293666.page)

Why do you insist that people must die so that you can get to the next red light quicker?


Based on the DC data that was shared, the opposite seems to be true. Total traffic fatalities ROSE after implementation. Maybe they'll decrease the numbers in the future but they're starting with a deficit.


Based on the accumulated evidence, traffic fatalities would have been even higher had the speed limits (on some neighborhood roads) not been reduced.

But it's important to note that the speed limits on most arterial roads was not reduced and arterial roads are where most traffic fatalities happen, so the scope of the effect of the speed limit reduction was quite limited.
Anonymous
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Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Did you know there's almost no stop sign cameras west of the park? I wonder how that happens....


There's 17 speed cameras in Ward 3. In Ward 7, there's almost 60.


Listing this without listing data on accidents or fatalities isn’t that useful.
Traffic accidents, injuries, and fatalities are FAR higher in ward 7 than 3. This isn’t the racist “gotcha” that you think it is.



Actually it is.

https://www.propublica.org/article/chicagos-race-neutral-traffic-cameras-ticket-black-and-latino-drivers-the-most


Accidents and fatalities are much higher in majority black zip codes. Should city officials defer to those who break the law or those who are victimized by law breakers?

The underlying problem is that road infrastructure is generally much more conducive to speeding in black majority zip codes. The solution is more traffic calming etc..


Accidents and fatalities are rare in every section of the city. The city should not bombard people with tickets that cost them lots of money and make no difference to accident rates.


No one is bombarding you. You are actively breaking the law. You can choose to stop.


It would make more sense if we just had the cops give out the tickets. So many of the camera tickets are bullshit-y foot fault tickets. It's just harassment.


The cops do not give a crap. They never did.

And what the is a foot fault ticket?? Did you follow the law or not? Sounds like no, but you want to whine about it


A lot of the tickets are for trivial offenses. For example you stopped at a stop sign, but the nose of your car was beyond the stop sign pole when you stopped, so they say you didnt stop at the stop sign.


The stop sign cameras record your speed going over the line and will automatically cancel the ticket if it's under a certain speed, specifically to avoid this situation. If the automatic cancellation doesn't happen for some reason you can appeal and presuming you were actually just inching over the line your ticket will be dismissed because they have not only your speed recorded but a video of the infraction that a human can review for an appeal.

People love to say "oh I was just doing this reasonable thing and the mean old speed camera punished me!" But in reality it's usually either a straight up lie or they have an utter lack of self-awareness of what they are doing in their vehicle, rolling through the stop sign at 8mph but in their mind they "barely inched over."


It would be great if it actually worked like this, but that hasn't been my experience at all. Most of the traffic camera tickets I have ever gotten (and there's been a few) are penny ante complaints about how I stopped but not in precisely the right place because my bumper was over the crosswalk or something.


That is literally how it works. It's right there on the DDOT website if you had ever bothered to take 2 seconds to look it up:

Drivers must come to a complete stop prior to the stop bar at an intersection controlled by a stop sign or traffic signal. This allows the driver to look around and ensure that they have the right of way before continuing. The stop signs units use radar to detect if a vehicle stopped at, rolled through, or ran a stop sign. Tickets will be issued when vehicles fail to make a complete stop at a stop signs.

The stop sign enforcement camera system predicts using advance algorithms, when a stop sign violation is occurring and captures the violation event with digital camera and high-resolution video.

Step 1 The first image of the violation is taken BEFORE the vehicle passes the stop line.
Step 2 The second image is taken AFTER the vehicle passes the stop line.
Step 3 The license plate is taken from a close-up of the images captured.
Step 4 In addition, a high-resolution video of the violation event is captured as a validation tool.
Step 5 Additional data collected includes the time, date, speed, location, lane, and direction of the travel.


https://asc.ddot.dc.gov/


They send you a video when you get a ticket. No one needs to look anything up. You can see how silly the tickets are in the video they send you.


If the ticket is "silly," i.e. not video evidence of you breaking the law and deservedly getting the ticket, then you can easily get the ticket dismissed.

If the ticket is in fact video evidence of you breaking the law then the ticket is not "silly."

So what's the problem?


Tickets have increased 10 fold. They doubled in the past year alone. Last year there 3.3 million tickets for a city of 700,000. Speeding deaths have not gone down at all, despite the massive increase in ticketing. How is that possible? Lots and lots of tickets for trivial offenses.


You picked the wrong year to make this argument. Traffic deaths are down 60% year-on-year after the number of cameras were doubled last year. You need to find a new hobby.


The number of speeding related deaths have gone up and down each year, without any clear pattern. If increasing tickets by 10 times over the past decade actually made a difference, you'd see a pattern.

2023: 22
2022: 9
2021: 12
2020: 15
2019: 10
2018: 9
2017: 12
2016: 8
2015: 11
2014: 12
2013: 11


You can keep posting lies and I will keep calling you out for the liar that you are. You know that these numbers do not include many people killed by speeding drivers and yet you continue to claim otherwise. Why?


You can look them up yourself. They come from the DC police department. The reports are here: https://mpdc.dc.gov/page/mpd-annual-reports


I hate it when people make me repeat myself and you are making me repeat myself over and over again because you insist on spreading misinformation.

It states very clearly in the main table on page 44 on the 2023 report that the numbers constitute the “Predominant Cause of Traffic Fatality”.

I cannot believe that you do not understand the difference between a factor being determined to be a predominant cause and a contributing factor.

Therefore, I can only conclude that you are deliberately seeking to mislead the public in service of your hideous crusade against speed cameras, which persists in spite of all evidence that they save lives.

Do you want people to die on the streets of DC? Is that your goal here?


Everything has multiple causes. There are multiple reasons why I had eggs for breakfast. But the police investigated these crashes. They interviewed people in the crashes. They interview people who saw the crashes. They examined the physical evidence. Then they reported the primary reason for the crash and that was used in some cases to put people in prison. You can pretend you know better than the people who actually did the work, but it seems like it would be better for everyone if you just shut the fkc up.


So you do understand how traffic cameras can be effective at reducing fatal crashes even though the number of fatal crashes is not changing in accordance with the expansion of those cameras? Because it doesn't sound like you want to admit that you understand that.

That said, it is kind of silly to expect that cameras will make a difference to how people drive across the city when there are only 500 cameras for 8,000+ city blocks and drivers by and large know exactly where the cameras are. Cameras aren't going to work in places where there are no cameras.

If the city cared about saving lives, there would be traffic cameras on every block. They are cheaper enough to buy and operate that cost can no longer be cited as a factor in preventing the city from acquiring more of them. With AI, the cameras could also catch not only speeding but also drunk driving, double parking, red light running and so on.

How wonderful it would be to live in a city where drivers actually obeyed the law.


You sound like Trump pretending that DC is a crime ridden hell hole.

The reality is traffic accidents in DC are rare. Very, very few people die in traffic accidents. The vast majority of people are safe drivers, just like the vast majority of people do not commit crimes. Probably because so few people die in traffic accidents, it's hard to move the needle in further reductions which is why the numbers don't change that much from year to year.

You can blanket the city with tickets, but when you're issuing 3.3 million tickets to a city with a few hundred thousand drivers, you're mostly just giving tickets to safe drivers who make minor mistakes. That has no impact on safety. It's just harassment. It's like Trump putting National Guard troops on every corner, giving everyone tickets for jaywalking and then pretending you're reducing crime.


Are you nuts? The tickets are going to drivers who are speeding at least 11mph over the limit through residential neighborhoods? Only a true buffoon would describe that as a “safe driver making a minor mistake”. That you believe that drivers who break the law and endanger others constitutes “harassment” shows just how deranged you truly are. That you are trying to devalue the deaths of hundreds of people who would have been with us today were it not for such “safe drivers” who made “minor mistakes” is ghoulish. Please go away.


There's a lot of streets in DC with speed limits that are so low that they are a joke. I drive on a lot of roads that, if they were in any other city, would be set at 35mph. DC puts them at 20mph, and then gives you a ticket for speeding for going 31mph, even though if that exact same street was in any other city, you'd be driving below the speed limit. A lot of what DDOT is just dumb.


DC reduced the speed limits to save lives. Because the evidence shows that reducing speed limits to 20mph saves lives, a lot of them. Here is the research on that: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002243752400152X

And what other cities do you have in mind? Maybe, Kensington, MD? The place where pedestrians are being killed left and right by speeding drivers (ICYMI: https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1293666.page)

Why do you insist that people must die so that you can get to the next red light quicker?


Based on the DC data that was shared, the opposite seems to be true. Total traffic fatalities ROSE after implementation. Maybe they'll decrease the numbers in the future but they're starting with a deficit.


Based on the accumulated evidence, traffic fatalities would have been even higher had the speed limits (on some neighborhood roads) not been reduced.

But it's important to note that the speed limits on most arterial roads was not reduced and arterial roads are where most traffic fatalities happen, so the scope of the effect of the speed limit reduction was quite limited.


And what evidence is that?
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:The number almost doubled from the year before. DC now issues 8 times as many tickets each year as it did a decade ago. We issue twice as many tickets as Chicago, which is SO MUCH BIGGER! Pretty insane.

Hard to see what difference it's made to safety. Here's how many people the police say were killed each year in DC by speeding drivers:

2023: 22
2022: 9
2021: 12
2020: 15
2019: 10
2018: 9
2017: 12
2016: 8
2015: 11
2014: 12
2013: 11

Not really seeing a pattern.


+1
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Anonymous wrote:Did you know there's almost no stop sign cameras west of the park? I wonder how that happens....


There's 17 speed cameras in Ward 3. In Ward 7, there's almost 60.


Listing this without listing data on accidents or fatalities isn’t that useful.
Traffic accidents, injuries, and fatalities are FAR higher in ward 7 than 3. This isn’t the racist “gotcha” that you think it is.



Actually it is.

https://www.propublica.org/article/chicagos-race-neutral-traffic-cameras-ticket-black-and-latino-drivers-the-most


Accidents and fatalities are much higher in majority black zip codes. Should city officials defer to those who break the law or those who are victimized by law breakers?

The underlying problem is that road infrastructure is generally much more conducive to speeding in black majority zip codes. The solution is more traffic calming etc..


Accidents and fatalities are rare in every section of the city. The city should not bombard people with tickets that cost them lots of money and make no difference to accident rates.


No one is bombarding you. You are actively breaking the law. You can choose to stop.


It would make more sense if we just had the cops give out the tickets. So many of the camera tickets are bullshit-y foot fault tickets. It's just harassment.


The cops do not give a crap. They never did.

And what the is a foot fault ticket?? Did you follow the law or not? Sounds like no, but you want to whine about it


A lot of the tickets are for trivial offenses. For example you stopped at a stop sign, but the nose of your car was beyond the stop sign pole when you stopped, so they say you didnt stop at the stop sign.


The stop sign cameras record your speed going over the line and will automatically cancel the ticket if it's under a certain speed, specifically to avoid this situation. If the automatic cancellation doesn't happen for some reason you can appeal and presuming you were actually just inching over the line your ticket will be dismissed because they have not only your speed recorded but a video of the infraction that a human can review for an appeal.

People love to say "oh I was just doing this reasonable thing and the mean old speed camera punished me!" But in reality it's usually either a straight up lie or they have an utter lack of self-awareness of what they are doing in their vehicle, rolling through the stop sign at 8mph but in their mind they "barely inched over."


It would be great if it actually worked like this, but that hasn't been my experience at all. Most of the traffic camera tickets I have ever gotten (and there's been a few) are penny ante complaints about how I stopped but not in precisely the right place because my bumper was over the crosswalk or something.


That is literally how it works. It's right there on the DDOT website if you had ever bothered to take 2 seconds to look it up:

Drivers must come to a complete stop prior to the stop bar at an intersection controlled by a stop sign or traffic signal. This allows the driver to look around and ensure that they have the right of way before continuing. The stop signs units use radar to detect if a vehicle stopped at, rolled through, or ran a stop sign. Tickets will be issued when vehicles fail to make a complete stop at a stop signs.

The stop sign enforcement camera system predicts using advance algorithms, when a stop sign violation is occurring and captures the violation event with digital camera and high-resolution video.

Step 1 The first image of the violation is taken BEFORE the vehicle passes the stop line.
Step 2 The second image is taken AFTER the vehicle passes the stop line.
Step 3 The license plate is taken from a close-up of the images captured.
Step 4 In addition, a high-resolution video of the violation event is captured as a validation tool.
Step 5 Additional data collected includes the time, date, speed, location, lane, and direction of the travel.


https://asc.ddot.dc.gov/


They send you a video when you get a ticket. No one needs to look anything up. You can see how silly the tickets are in the video they send you.


If the ticket is "silly," i.e. not video evidence of you breaking the law and deservedly getting the ticket, then you can easily get the ticket dismissed.

If the ticket is in fact video evidence of you breaking the law then the ticket is not "silly."

So what's the problem?


Tickets have increased 10 fold. They doubled in the past year alone. Last year there 3.3 million tickets for a city of 700,000. Speeding deaths have not gone down at all, despite the massive increase in ticketing. How is that possible? Lots and lots of tickets for trivial offenses.


You picked the wrong year to make this argument. Traffic deaths are down 60% year-on-year after the number of cameras were doubled last year. You need to find a new hobby.


The number of speeding related deaths have gone up and down each year, without any clear pattern. If increasing tickets by 10 times over the past decade actually made a difference, you'd see a pattern.

2023: 22
2022: 9
2021: 12
2020: 15
2019: 10
2018: 9
2017: 12
2016: 8
2015: 11
2014: 12
2013: 11


You can keep posting lies and I will keep calling you out for the liar that you are. You know that these numbers do not include many people killed by speeding drivers and yet you continue to claim otherwise. Why?


You can look them up yourself. They come from the DC police department. The reports are here: https://mpdc.dc.gov/page/mpd-annual-reports


I hate it when people make me repeat myself and you are making me repeat myself over and over again because you insist on spreading misinformation.

It states very clearly in the main table on page 44 on the 2023 report that the numbers constitute the “Predominant Cause of Traffic Fatality”.

I cannot believe that you do not understand the difference between a factor being determined to be a predominant cause and a contributing factor.

Therefore, I can only conclude that you are deliberately seeking to mislead the public in service of your hideous crusade against speed cameras, which persists in spite of all evidence that they save lives.

Do you want people to die on the streets of DC? Is that your goal here?


Everything has multiple causes. There are multiple reasons why I had eggs for breakfast. But the police investigated these crashes. They interviewed people in the crashes. They interview people who saw the crashes. They examined the physical evidence. Then they reported the primary reason for the crash and that was used in some cases to put people in prison. You can pretend you know better than the people who actually did the work, but it seems like it would be better for everyone if you just shut the fkc up.


So you do understand how traffic cameras can be effective at reducing fatal crashes even though the number of fatal crashes is not changing in accordance with the expansion of those cameras? Because it doesn't sound like you want to admit that you understand that.

That said, it is kind of silly to expect that cameras will make a difference to how people drive across the city when there are only 500 cameras for 8,000+ city blocks and drivers by and large know exactly where the cameras are. Cameras aren't going to work in places where there are no cameras.

If the city cared about saving lives, there would be traffic cameras on every block. They are cheaper enough to buy and operate that cost can no longer be cited as a factor in preventing the city from acquiring more of them. With AI, the cameras could also catch not only speeding but also drunk driving, double parking, red light running and so on.

How wonderful it would be to live in a city where drivers actually obeyed the law.


You sound like Trump pretending that DC is a crime ridden hell hole.

The reality is traffic accidents in DC are rare. Very, very few people die in traffic accidents. The vast majority of people are safe drivers, just like the vast majority of people do not commit crimes. Probably because so few people die in traffic accidents, it's hard to move the needle in further reductions which is why the numbers don't change that much from year to year.

You can blanket the city with tickets, but when you're issuing 3.3 million tickets to a city with a few hundred thousand drivers, you're mostly just giving tickets to safe drivers who make minor mistakes. That has no impact on safety. It's just harassment. It's like Trump putting National Guard troops on every corner, giving everyone tickets for jaywalking and then pretending you're reducing crime.


Are you nuts? The tickets are going to drivers who are speeding at least 11mph over the limit through residential neighborhoods? Only a true buffoon would describe that as a “safe driver making a minor mistake”. That you believe that drivers who break the law and endanger others constitutes “harassment” shows just how deranged you truly are. That you are trying to devalue the deaths of hundreds of people who would have been with us today were it not for such “safe drivers” who made “minor mistakes” is ghoulish. Please go away.


Maybe you should actually look at the data. Only a shade more than half of all the tickets issued by the city are even for speeding. And a few cameras are responsible for truly ridiculous numbers of tickets. There's a camera at North Capitol and New York Ave that routinely issues 100,000 tickets a year. Does anybody seriously think there's 274 dangerous drivers passing through that intersection every single day of the year? If that was the case, seems like you would have a huge number of accidents at that intersection and yet you don't.


There's a number of cameras that are in that 100,000 ticket cclub.
Anonymous
Do they put interest on late fines? I have a few that I have to pay and they maybe late.
Anonymous
When carpet bombing Washingtonians with traffic tickets is not enough.

https://x.com/maustermuhle/status/1976745832431911213
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Anonymous wrote:Did you know there's almost no stop sign cameras west of the park? I wonder how that happens....


There's 17 speed cameras in Ward 3. In Ward 7, there's almost 60.


Listing this without listing data on accidents or fatalities isn’t that useful.
Traffic accidents, injuries, and fatalities are FAR higher in ward 7 than 3. This isn’t the racist “gotcha” that you think it is.



Actually it is.

https://www.propublica.org/article/chicagos-race-neutral-traffic-cameras-ticket-black-and-latino-drivers-the-most


Accidents and fatalities are much higher in majority black zip codes. Should city officials defer to those who break the law or those who are victimized by law breakers?

The underlying problem is that road infrastructure is generally much more conducive to speeding in black majority zip codes. The solution is more traffic calming etc..


Accidents and fatalities are rare in every section of the city. The city should not bombard people with tickets that cost them lots of money and make no difference to accident rates.


No one is bombarding you. You are actively breaking the law. You can choose to stop.


It would make more sense if we just had the cops give out the tickets. So many of the camera tickets are bullshit-y foot fault tickets. It's just harassment.


The cops do not give a crap. They never did.

And what the is a foot fault ticket?? Did you follow the law or not? Sounds like no, but you want to whine about it


A lot of the tickets are for trivial offenses. For example you stopped at a stop sign, but the nose of your car was beyond the stop sign pole when you stopped, so they say you didnt stop at the stop sign.


The stop sign cameras record your speed going over the line and will automatically cancel the ticket if it's under a certain speed, specifically to avoid this situation. If the automatic cancellation doesn't happen for some reason you can appeal and presuming you were actually just inching over the line your ticket will be dismissed because they have not only your speed recorded but a video of the infraction that a human can review for an appeal.

People love to say "oh I was just doing this reasonable thing and the mean old speed camera punished me!" But in reality it's usually either a straight up lie or they have an utter lack of self-awareness of what they are doing in their vehicle, rolling through the stop sign at 8mph but in their mind they "barely inched over."


It would be great if it actually worked like this, but that hasn't been my experience at all. Most of the traffic camera tickets I have ever gotten (and there's been a few) are penny ante complaints about how I stopped but not in precisely the right place because my bumper was over the crosswalk or something.


That is literally how it works. It's right there on the DDOT website if you had ever bothered to take 2 seconds to look it up:

Drivers must come to a complete stop prior to the stop bar at an intersection controlled by a stop sign or traffic signal. This allows the driver to look around and ensure that they have the right of way before continuing. The stop signs units use radar to detect if a vehicle stopped at, rolled through, or ran a stop sign. Tickets will be issued when vehicles fail to make a complete stop at a stop signs.

The stop sign enforcement camera system predicts using advance algorithms, when a stop sign violation is occurring and captures the violation event with digital camera and high-resolution video.

Step 1 The first image of the violation is taken BEFORE the vehicle passes the stop line.
Step 2 The second image is taken AFTER the vehicle passes the stop line.
Step 3 The license plate is taken from a close-up of the images captured.
Step 4 In addition, a high-resolution video of the violation event is captured as a validation tool.
Step 5 Additional data collected includes the time, date, speed, location, lane, and direction of the travel.


https://asc.ddot.dc.gov/


They send you a video when you get a ticket. No one needs to look anything up. You can see how silly the tickets are in the video they send you.


If the ticket is "silly," i.e. not video evidence of you breaking the law and deservedly getting the ticket, then you can easily get the ticket dismissed.

If the ticket is in fact video evidence of you breaking the law then the ticket is not "silly."

So what's the problem?


Tickets have increased 10 fold. They doubled in the past year alone. Last year there 3.3 million tickets for a city of 700,000. Speeding deaths have not gone down at all, despite the massive increase in ticketing. How is that possible? Lots and lots of tickets for trivial offenses.


You picked the wrong year to make this argument. Traffic deaths are down 60% year-on-year after the number of cameras were doubled last year. You need to find a new hobby.


The number of speeding related deaths have gone up and down each year, without any clear pattern. If increasing tickets by 10 times over the past decade actually made a difference, you'd see a pattern.

2023: 22
2022: 9
2021: 12
2020: 15
2019: 10
2018: 9
2017: 12
2016: 8
2015: 11
2014: 12
2013: 11


You can keep posting lies and I will keep calling you out for the liar that you are. You know that these numbers do not include many people killed by speeding drivers and yet you continue to claim otherwise. Why?


You can look them up yourself. They come from the DC police department. The reports are here: https://mpdc.dc.gov/page/mpd-annual-reports


I hate it when people make me repeat myself and you are making me repeat myself over and over again because you insist on spreading misinformation.

It states very clearly in the main table on page 44 on the 2023 report that the numbers constitute the “Predominant Cause of Traffic Fatality”.

I cannot believe that you do not understand the difference between a factor being determined to be a predominant cause and a contributing factor.

Therefore, I can only conclude that you are deliberately seeking to mislead the public in service of your hideous crusade against speed cameras, which persists in spite of all evidence that they save lives.

Do you want people to die on the streets of DC? Is that your goal here?


Everything has multiple causes. There are multiple reasons why I had eggs for breakfast. But the police investigated these crashes. They interviewed people in the crashes. They interview people who saw the crashes. They examined the physical evidence. Then they reported the primary reason for the crash and that was used in some cases to put people in prison. You can pretend you know better than the people who actually did the work, but it seems like it would be better for everyone if you just shut the fkc up.


So you do understand how traffic cameras can be effective at reducing fatal crashes even though the number of fatal crashes is not changing in accordance with the expansion of those cameras? Because it doesn't sound like you want to admit that you understand that.

That said, it is kind of silly to expect that cameras will make a difference to how people drive across the city when there are only 500 cameras for 8,000+ city blocks and drivers by and large know exactly where the cameras are. Cameras aren't going to work in places where there are no cameras.

If the city cared about saving lives, there would be traffic cameras on every block. They are cheaper enough to buy and operate that cost can no longer be cited as a factor in preventing the city from acquiring more of them. With AI, the cameras could also catch not only speeding but also drunk driving, double parking, red light running and so on.

How wonderful it would be to live in a city where drivers actually obeyed the law.


You sound like Trump pretending that DC is a crime ridden hell hole.

The reality is traffic accidents in DC are rare. Very, very few people die in traffic accidents. The vast majority of people are safe drivers, just like the vast majority of people do not commit crimes. Probably because so few people die in traffic accidents, it's hard to move the needle in further reductions which is why the numbers don't change that much from year to year.

You can blanket the city with tickets, but when you're issuing 3.3 million tickets to a city with a few hundred thousand drivers, you're mostly just giving tickets to safe drivers who make minor mistakes. That has no impact on safety. It's just harassment. It's like Trump putting National Guard troops on every corner, giving everyone tickets for jaywalking and then pretending you're reducing crime.


Are you nuts? The tickets are going to drivers who are speeding at least 11mph over the limit through residential neighborhoods? Only a true buffoon would describe that as a “safe driver making a minor mistake”. That you believe that drivers who break the law and endanger others constitutes “harassment” shows just how deranged you truly are. That you are trying to devalue the deaths of hundreds of people who would have been with us today were it not for such “safe drivers” who made “minor mistakes” is ghoulish. Please go away.


Maybe you should actually look at the data. Only a shade more than half of all the tickets issued by the city are even for speeding. And a few cameras are responsible for truly ridiculous numbers of tickets. There's a camera at North Capitol and New York Ave that routinely issues 100,000 tickets a year. Does anybody seriously think there's 274 dangerous drivers passing through that intersection every single day of the year? If that was the case, seems like you would have a huge number of accidents at that intersection and yet you don't.


There's a number of cameras that are in that 100,000 ticket cclub.


"Do you believe there are 274 dangerous drivers passing through intersection 'x' each day?" Hell yes I do. As a pedestrian who walks to work I absolutely do believe there are tons of dangerous drivers passing through certain intersections each day. Virtually every single day I see multiple people speeding, blowing through red lights, near misses, many bad drivers endangering others. And sadly the majority of them have MD or VA plates, some of them treat residential side streets like their personal superhighway, flying down them at double the posted speed limit. Complete axeholes. Completely disinvested in safety because they are commuters and it's not their town. Look, if you're late for work, leave earlier. Don't make your own personal problem everyone else's problem by endangering other drivers, pedestrians, bicyclists. I'll be more than happy to see DC enforce out of state tickets a lot more aggressively, in fact I think they should impound vehicles on the spot if they have more than $1000 in unpaid tickets. And I don't understand why MD and VA aren't more cooperative with DC on enforcement. Given these drivers are dangerous drivers on DC streets, they are endangering people on MD and VA streets too.
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Anonymous wrote:Did you know there's almost no stop sign cameras west of the park? I wonder how that happens....


There's 17 speed cameras in Ward 3. In Ward 7, there's almost 60.


Listing this without listing data on accidents or fatalities isn’t that useful.
Traffic accidents, injuries, and fatalities are FAR higher in ward 7 than 3. This isn’t the racist “gotcha” that you think it is.



Actually it is.

https://www.propublica.org/article/chicagos-race-neutral-traffic-cameras-ticket-black-and-latino-drivers-the-most


Accidents and fatalities are much higher in majority black zip codes. Should city officials defer to those who break the law or those who are victimized by law breakers?

The underlying problem is that road infrastructure is generally much more conducive to speeding in black majority zip codes. The solution is more traffic calming etc..


Accidents and fatalities are rare in every section of the city. The city should not bombard people with tickets that cost them lots of money and make no difference to accident rates.


No one is bombarding you. You are actively breaking the law. You can choose to stop.


It would make more sense if we just had the cops give out the tickets. So many of the camera tickets are bullshit-y foot fault tickets. It's just harassment.


The cops do not give a crap. They never did.

And what the is a foot fault ticket?? Did you follow the law or not? Sounds like no, but you want to whine about it


A lot of the tickets are for trivial offenses. For example you stopped at a stop sign, but the nose of your car was beyond the stop sign pole when you stopped, so they say you didnt stop at the stop sign.


The stop sign cameras record your speed going over the line and will automatically cancel the ticket if it's under a certain speed, specifically to avoid this situation. If the automatic cancellation doesn't happen for some reason you can appeal and presuming you were actually just inching over the line your ticket will be dismissed because they have not only your speed recorded but a video of the infraction that a human can review for an appeal.

People love to say "oh I was just doing this reasonable thing and the mean old speed camera punished me!" But in reality it's usually either a straight up lie or they have an utter lack of self-awareness of what they are doing in their vehicle, rolling through the stop sign at 8mph but in their mind they "barely inched over."


It would be great if it actually worked like this, but that hasn't been my experience at all. Most of the traffic camera tickets I have ever gotten (and there's been a few) are penny ante complaints about how I stopped but not in precisely the right place because my bumper was over the crosswalk or something.


That is literally how it works. It's right there on the DDOT website if you had ever bothered to take 2 seconds to look it up:

Drivers must come to a complete stop prior to the stop bar at an intersection controlled by a stop sign or traffic signal. This allows the driver to look around and ensure that they have the right of way before continuing. The stop signs units use radar to detect if a vehicle stopped at, rolled through, or ran a stop sign. Tickets will be issued when vehicles fail to make a complete stop at a stop signs.

The stop sign enforcement camera system predicts using advance algorithms, when a stop sign violation is occurring and captures the violation event with digital camera and high-resolution video.

Step 1 The first image of the violation is taken BEFORE the vehicle passes the stop line.
Step 2 The second image is taken AFTER the vehicle passes the stop line.
Step 3 The license plate is taken from a close-up of the images captured.
Step 4 In addition, a high-resolution video of the violation event is captured as a validation tool.
Step 5 Additional data collected includes the time, date, speed, location, lane, and direction of the travel.


https://asc.ddot.dc.gov/


They send you a video when you get a ticket. No one needs to look anything up. You can see how silly the tickets are in the video they send you.


If the ticket is "silly," i.e. not video evidence of you breaking the law and deservedly getting the ticket, then you can easily get the ticket dismissed.

If the ticket is in fact video evidence of you breaking the law then the ticket is not "silly."

So what's the problem?


Tickets have increased 10 fold. They doubled in the past year alone. Last year there 3.3 million tickets for a city of 700,000. Speeding deaths have not gone down at all, despite the massive increase in ticketing. How is that possible? Lots and lots of tickets for trivial offenses.


You picked the wrong year to make this argument. Traffic deaths are down 60% year-on-year after the number of cameras were doubled last year. You need to find a new hobby.


The number of speeding related deaths have gone up and down each year, without any clear pattern. If increasing tickets by 10 times over the past decade actually made a difference, you'd see a pattern.

2023: 22
2022: 9
2021: 12
2020: 15
2019: 10
2018: 9
2017: 12
2016: 8
2015: 11
2014: 12
2013: 11


You can keep posting lies and I will keep calling you out for the liar that you are. You know that these numbers do not include many people killed by speeding drivers and yet you continue to claim otherwise. Why?


You can look them up yourself. They come from the DC police department. The reports are here: https://mpdc.dc.gov/page/mpd-annual-reports


I hate it when people make me repeat myself and you are making me repeat myself over and over again because you insist on spreading misinformation.

It states very clearly in the main table on page 44 on the 2023 report that the numbers constitute the “Predominant Cause of Traffic Fatality”.

I cannot believe that you do not understand the difference between a factor being determined to be a predominant cause and a contributing factor.

Therefore, I can only conclude that you are deliberately seeking to mislead the public in service of your hideous crusade against speed cameras, which persists in spite of all evidence that they save lives.

Do you want people to die on the streets of DC? Is that your goal here?


Everything has multiple causes. There are multiple reasons why I had eggs for breakfast. But the police investigated these crashes. They interviewed people in the crashes. They interview people who saw the crashes. They examined the physical evidence. Then they reported the primary reason for the crash and that was used in some cases to put people in prison. You can pretend you know better than the people who actually did the work, but it seems like it would be better for everyone if you just shut the fkc up.


So you do understand how traffic cameras can be effective at reducing fatal crashes even though the number of fatal crashes is not changing in accordance with the expansion of those cameras? Because it doesn't sound like you want to admit that you understand that.

That said, it is kind of silly to expect that cameras will make a difference to how people drive across the city when there are only 500 cameras for 8,000+ city blocks and drivers by and large know exactly where the cameras are. Cameras aren't going to work in places where there are no cameras.

If the city cared about saving lives, there would be traffic cameras on every block. They are cheaper enough to buy and operate that cost can no longer be cited as a factor in preventing the city from acquiring more of them. With AI, the cameras could also catch not only speeding but also drunk driving, double parking, red light running and so on.

How wonderful it would be to live in a city where drivers actually obeyed the law.


You sound like Trump pretending that DC is a crime ridden hell hole.

The reality is traffic accidents in DC are rare. Very, very few people die in traffic accidents. The vast majority of people are safe drivers, just like the vast majority of people do not commit crimes. Probably because so few people die in traffic accidents, it's hard to move the needle in further reductions which is why the numbers don't change that much from year to year.

You can blanket the city with tickets, but when you're issuing 3.3 million tickets to a city with a few hundred thousand drivers, you're mostly just giving tickets to safe drivers who make minor mistakes. That has no impact on safety. It's just harassment. It's like Trump putting National Guard troops on every corner, giving everyone tickets for jaywalking and then pretending you're reducing crime.


Are you nuts? The tickets are going to drivers who are speeding at least 11mph over the limit through residential neighborhoods? Only a true buffoon would describe that as a “safe driver making a minor mistake”. That you believe that drivers who break the law and endanger others constitutes “harassment” shows just how deranged you truly are. That you are trying to devalue the deaths of hundreds of people who would have been with us today were it not for such “safe drivers” who made “minor mistakes” is ghoulish. Please go away.


There's a lot of streets in DC with speed limits that are so low that they are a joke. I drive on a lot of roads that, if they were in any other city, would be set at 35mph. DC puts them at 20mph, and then gives you a ticket for speeding for going 31mph, even though if that exact same street was in any other city, you'd be driving below the speed limit. A lot of what DDOT is just dumb.


DC reduced the speed limits to save lives. Because the evidence shows that reducing speed limits to 20mph saves lives, a lot of them. Here is the research on that: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002243752400152X

And what other cities do you have in mind? Maybe, Kensington, MD? The place where pedestrians are being killed left and right by speeding drivers (ICYMI: https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1293666.page)

Why do you insist that people must die so that you can get to the next red light quicker?

This does not show that lives were saved in DC. Where’s the DC data that supports your thesis, because this isn’t it. I prefer specific facts, not some generic information.
Anonymous
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Anonymous wrote:Did you know there's almost no stop sign cameras west of the park? I wonder how that happens....


There's 17 speed cameras in Ward 3. In Ward 7, there's almost 60.


Listing this without listing data on accidents or fatalities isn’t that useful.
Traffic accidents, injuries, and fatalities are FAR higher in ward 7 than 3. This isn’t the racist “gotcha” that you think it is.



Actually it is.

https://www.propublica.org/article/chicagos-race-neutral-traffic-cameras-ticket-black-and-latino-drivers-the-most


Accidents and fatalities are much higher in majority black zip codes. Should city officials defer to those who break the law or those who are victimized by law breakers?

The underlying problem is that road infrastructure is generally much more conducive to speeding in black majority zip codes. The solution is more traffic calming etc..


Accidents and fatalities are rare in every section of the city. The city should not bombard people with tickets that cost them lots of money and make no difference to accident rates.


No one is bombarding you. You are actively breaking the law. You can choose to stop.


It would make more sense if we just had the cops give out the tickets. So many of the camera tickets are bullshit-y foot fault tickets. It's just harassment.


The cops do not give a crap. They never did.

And what the is a foot fault ticket?? Did you follow the law or not? Sounds like no, but you want to whine about it


A lot of the tickets are for trivial offenses. For example you stopped at a stop sign, but the nose of your car was beyond the stop sign pole when you stopped, so they say you didnt stop at the stop sign.


The stop sign cameras record your speed going over the line and will automatically cancel the ticket if it's under a certain speed, specifically to avoid this situation. If the automatic cancellation doesn't happen for some reason you can appeal and presuming you were actually just inching over the line your ticket will be dismissed because they have not only your speed recorded but a video of the infraction that a human can review for an appeal.

People love to say "oh I was just doing this reasonable thing and the mean old speed camera punished me!" But in reality it's usually either a straight up lie or they have an utter lack of self-awareness of what they are doing in their vehicle, rolling through the stop sign at 8mph but in their mind they "barely inched over."


It would be great if it actually worked like this, but that hasn't been my experience at all. Most of the traffic camera tickets I have ever gotten (and there's been a few) are penny ante complaints about how I stopped but not in precisely the right place because my bumper was over the crosswalk or something.


That is literally how it works. It's right there on the DDOT website if you had ever bothered to take 2 seconds to look it up:

Drivers must come to a complete stop prior to the stop bar at an intersection controlled by a stop sign or traffic signal. This allows the driver to look around and ensure that they have the right of way before continuing. The stop signs units use radar to detect if a vehicle stopped at, rolled through, or ran a stop sign. Tickets will be issued when vehicles fail to make a complete stop at a stop signs.

The stop sign enforcement camera system predicts using advance algorithms, when a stop sign violation is occurring and captures the violation event with digital camera and high-resolution video.

Step 1 The first image of the violation is taken BEFORE the vehicle passes the stop line.
Step 2 The second image is taken AFTER the vehicle passes the stop line.
Step 3 The license plate is taken from a close-up of the images captured.
Step 4 In addition, a high-resolution video of the violation event is captured as a validation tool.
Step 5 Additional data collected includes the time, date, speed, location, lane, and direction of the travel.


https://asc.ddot.dc.gov/


They send you a video when you get a ticket. No one needs to look anything up. You can see how silly the tickets are in the video they send you.


If the ticket is "silly," i.e. not video evidence of you breaking the law and deservedly getting the ticket, then you can easily get the ticket dismissed.

If the ticket is in fact video evidence of you breaking the law then the ticket is not "silly."

So what's the problem?


Tickets have increased 10 fold. They doubled in the past year alone. Last year there 3.3 million tickets for a city of 700,000. Speeding deaths have not gone down at all, despite the massive increase in ticketing. How is that possible? Lots and lots of tickets for trivial offenses.


You picked the wrong year to make this argument. Traffic deaths are down 60% year-on-year after the number of cameras were doubled last year. You need to find a new hobby.


The number of speeding related deaths have gone up and down each year, without any clear pattern. If increasing tickets by 10 times over the past decade actually made a difference, you'd see a pattern.

2023: 22
2022: 9
2021: 12
2020: 15
2019: 10
2018: 9
2017: 12
2016: 8
2015: 11
2014: 12
2013: 11


You can keep posting lies and I will keep calling you out for the liar that you are. You know that these numbers do not include many people killed by speeding drivers and yet you continue to claim otherwise. Why?


You can look them up yourself. They come from the DC police department. The reports are here: https://mpdc.dc.gov/page/mpd-annual-reports


I hate it when people make me repeat myself and you are making me repeat myself over and over again because you insist on spreading misinformation.

It states very clearly in the main table on page 44 on the 2023 report that the numbers constitute the “Predominant Cause of Traffic Fatality”.

I cannot believe that you do not understand the difference between a factor being determined to be a predominant cause and a contributing factor.

Therefore, I can only conclude that you are deliberately seeking to mislead the public in service of your hideous crusade against speed cameras, which persists in spite of all evidence that they save lives.

Do you want people to die on the streets of DC? Is that your goal here?


Everything has multiple causes. There are multiple reasons why I had eggs for breakfast. But the police investigated these crashes. They interviewed people in the crashes. They interview people who saw the crashes. They examined the physical evidence. Then they reported the primary reason for the crash and that was used in some cases to put people in prison. You can pretend you know better than the people who actually did the work, but it seems like it would be better for everyone if you just shut the fkc up.


So you do understand how traffic cameras can be effective at reducing fatal crashes even though the number of fatal crashes is not changing in accordance with the expansion of those cameras? Because it doesn't sound like you want to admit that you understand that.

That said, it is kind of silly to expect that cameras will make a difference to how people drive across the city when there are only 500 cameras for 8,000+ city blocks and drivers by and large know exactly where the cameras are. Cameras aren't going to work in places where there are no cameras.

If the city cared about saving lives, there would be traffic cameras on every block. They are cheaper enough to buy and operate that cost can no longer be cited as a factor in preventing the city from acquiring more of them. With AI, the cameras could also catch not only speeding but also drunk driving, double parking, red light running and so on.

How wonderful it would be to live in a city where drivers actually obeyed the law.


You sound like Trump pretending that DC is a crime ridden hell hole.

The reality is traffic accidents in DC are rare. Very, very few people die in traffic accidents. The vast majority of people are safe drivers, just like the vast majority of people do not commit crimes. Probably because so few people die in traffic accidents, it's hard to move the needle in further reductions which is why the numbers don't change that much from year to year.

You can blanket the city with tickets, but when you're issuing 3.3 million tickets to a city with a few hundred thousand drivers, you're mostly just giving tickets to safe drivers who make minor mistakes. That has no impact on safety. It's just harassment. It's like Trump putting National Guard troops on every corner, giving everyone tickets for jaywalking and then pretending you're reducing crime.


Are you nuts? The tickets are going to drivers who are speeding at least 11mph over the limit through residential neighborhoods? Only a true buffoon would describe that as a “safe driver making a minor mistake”. That you believe that drivers who break the law and endanger others constitutes “harassment” shows just how deranged you truly are. That you are trying to devalue the deaths of hundreds of people who would have been with us today were it not for such “safe drivers” who made “minor mistakes” is ghoulish. Please go away.


There's a lot of streets in DC with speed limits that are so low that they are a joke. I drive on a lot of roads that, if they were in any other city, would be set at 35mph. DC puts them at 20mph, and then gives you a ticket for speeding for going 31mph, even though if that exact same street was in any other city, you'd be driving below the speed limit. A lot of what DDOT is just dumb.

What’s the speed limit in front of your house?

My house is not on a main through way, so people have beginning it to bypass the street that is a Main Street located one block over. That street now has both a speed camera and a stop sign camera. So now cars zoom down my residential street. The residents have asked for speed bumps.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
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Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
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Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
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Anonymous wrote:
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Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Did you know there's almost no stop sign cameras west of the park? I wonder how that happens....


There's 17 speed cameras in Ward 3. In Ward 7, there's almost 60.


Listing this without listing data on accidents or fatalities isn’t that useful.
Traffic accidents, injuries, and fatalities are FAR higher in ward 7 than 3. This isn’t the racist “gotcha” that you think it is.



Actually it is.

https://www.propublica.org/article/chicagos-race-neutral-traffic-cameras-ticket-black-and-latino-drivers-the-most


Accidents and fatalities are much higher in majority black zip codes. Should city officials defer to those who break the law or those who are victimized by law breakers?

The underlying problem is that road infrastructure is generally much more conducive to speeding in black majority zip codes. The solution is more traffic calming etc..


Accidents and fatalities are rare in every section of the city. The city should not bombard people with tickets that cost them lots of money and make no difference to accident rates.


No one is bombarding you. You are actively breaking the law. You can choose to stop.


It would make more sense if we just had the cops give out the tickets. So many of the camera tickets are bullshit-y foot fault tickets. It's just harassment.


The cops do not give a crap. They never did.

And what the is a foot fault ticket?? Did you follow the law or not? Sounds like no, but you want to whine about it


A lot of the tickets are for trivial offenses. For example you stopped at a stop sign, but the nose of your car was beyond the stop sign pole when you stopped, so they say you didnt stop at the stop sign.


The stop sign cameras record your speed going over the line and will automatically cancel the ticket if it's under a certain speed, specifically to avoid this situation. If the automatic cancellation doesn't happen for some reason you can appeal and presuming you were actually just inching over the line your ticket will be dismissed because they have not only your speed recorded but a video of the infraction that a human can review for an appeal.

People love to say "oh I was just doing this reasonable thing and the mean old speed camera punished me!" But in reality it's usually either a straight up lie or they have an utter lack of self-awareness of what they are doing in their vehicle, rolling through the stop sign at 8mph but in their mind they "barely inched over."


It would be great if it actually worked like this, but that hasn't been my experience at all. Most of the traffic camera tickets I have ever gotten (and there's been a few) are penny ante complaints about how I stopped but not in precisely the right place because my bumper was over the crosswalk or something.


That is literally how it works. It's right there on the DDOT website if you had ever bothered to take 2 seconds to look it up:

Drivers must come to a complete stop prior to the stop bar at an intersection controlled by a stop sign or traffic signal. This allows the driver to look around and ensure that they have the right of way before continuing. The stop signs units use radar to detect if a vehicle stopped at, rolled through, or ran a stop sign. Tickets will be issued when vehicles fail to make a complete stop at a stop signs.

The stop sign enforcement camera system predicts using advance algorithms, when a stop sign violation is occurring and captures the violation event with digital camera and high-resolution video.

Step 1 The first image of the violation is taken BEFORE the vehicle passes the stop line.
Step 2 The second image is taken AFTER the vehicle passes the stop line.
Step 3 The license plate is taken from a close-up of the images captured.
Step 4 In addition, a high-resolution video of the violation event is captured as a validation tool.
Step 5 Additional data collected includes the time, date, speed, location, lane, and direction of the travel.


https://asc.ddot.dc.gov/


They send you a video when you get a ticket. No one needs to look anything up. You can see how silly the tickets are in the video they send you.


If the ticket is "silly," i.e. not video evidence of you breaking the law and deservedly getting the ticket, then you can easily get the ticket dismissed.

If the ticket is in fact video evidence of you breaking the law then the ticket is not "silly."

So what's the problem?


Tickets have increased 10 fold. They doubled in the past year alone. Last year there 3.3 million tickets for a city of 700,000. Speeding deaths have not gone down at all, despite the massive increase in ticketing. How is that possible? Lots and lots of tickets for trivial offenses.


You picked the wrong year to make this argument. Traffic deaths are down 60% year-on-year after the number of cameras were doubled last year. You need to find a new hobby.


The number of speeding related deaths have gone up and down each year, without any clear pattern. If increasing tickets by 10 times over the past decade actually made a difference, you'd see a pattern.

2023: 22
2022: 9
2021: 12
2020: 15
2019: 10
2018: 9
2017: 12
2016: 8
2015: 11
2014: 12
2013: 11


You can keep posting lies and I will keep calling you out for the liar that you are. You know that these numbers do not include many people killed by speeding drivers and yet you continue to claim otherwise. Why?


You can look them up yourself. They come from the DC police department. The reports are here: https://mpdc.dc.gov/page/mpd-annual-reports


I hate it when people make me repeat myself and you are making me repeat myself over and over again because you insist on spreading misinformation.

It states very clearly in the main table on page 44 on the 2023 report that the numbers constitute the “Predominant Cause of Traffic Fatality”.

I cannot believe that you do not understand the difference between a factor being determined to be a predominant cause and a contributing factor.

Therefore, I can only conclude that you are deliberately seeking to mislead the public in service of your hideous crusade against speed cameras, which persists in spite of all evidence that they save lives.

Do you want people to die on the streets of DC? Is that your goal here?


Everything has multiple causes. There are multiple reasons why I had eggs for breakfast. But the police investigated these crashes. They interviewed people in the crashes. They interview people who saw the crashes. They examined the physical evidence. Then they reported the primary reason for the crash and that was used in some cases to put people in prison. You can pretend you know better than the people who actually did the work, but it seems like it would be better for everyone if you just shut the fkc up.


So you do understand how traffic cameras can be effective at reducing fatal crashes even though the number of fatal crashes is not changing in accordance with the expansion of those cameras? Because it doesn't sound like you want to admit that you understand that.

That said, it is kind of silly to expect that cameras will make a difference to how people drive across the city when there are only 500 cameras for 8,000+ city blocks and drivers by and large know exactly where the cameras are. Cameras aren't going to work in places where there are no cameras.

If the city cared about saving lives, there would be traffic cameras on every block. They are cheaper enough to buy and operate that cost can no longer be cited as a factor in preventing the city from acquiring more of them. With AI, the cameras could also catch not only speeding but also drunk driving, double parking, red light running and so on.

How wonderful it would be to live in a city where drivers actually obeyed the law.


You sound like Trump pretending that DC is a crime ridden hell hole.

The reality is traffic accidents in DC are rare. Very, very few people die in traffic accidents. The vast majority of people are safe drivers, just like the vast majority of people do not commit crimes. Probably because so few people die in traffic accidents, it's hard to move the needle in further reductions which is why the numbers don't change that much from year to year.

You can blanket the city with tickets, but when you're issuing 3.3 million tickets to a city with a few hundred thousand drivers, you're mostly just giving tickets to safe drivers who make minor mistakes. That has no impact on safety. It's just harassment. It's like Trump putting National Guard troops on every corner, giving everyone tickets for jaywalking and then pretending you're reducing crime.


Are you nuts? The tickets are going to drivers who are speeding at least 11mph over the limit through residential neighborhoods? Only a true buffoon would describe that as a “safe driver making a minor mistake”. That you believe that drivers who break the law and endanger others constitutes “harassment” shows just how deranged you truly are. That you are trying to devalue the deaths of hundreds of people who would have been with us today were it not for such “safe drivers” who made “minor mistakes” is ghoulish. Please go away.


There's a lot of streets in DC with speed limits that are so low that they are a joke. I drive on a lot of roads that, if they were in any other city, would be set at 35mph. DC puts them at 20mph, and then gives you a ticket for speeding for going 31mph, even though if that exact same street was in any other city, you'd be driving below the speed limit. A lot of what DDOT is just dumb.

What’s the speed limit in front of your house?

My house is not on a main through way, so people have beginning it to bypass the street that is a Main Street located one block over. That street now has both a speed camera and a stop sign camera. So now cars zoom down my residential street. The residents have asked for speed bumps.

Oh, and because white families are moving into the block, I bet we will now get the speed bumps that us long timers have been asking the city three years now
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Did you know there's almost no stop sign cameras west of the park? I wonder how that happens....


There's 17 speed cameras in Ward 3. In Ward 7, there's almost 60.


Listing this without listing data on accidents or fatalities isn’t that useful.
Traffic accidents, injuries, and fatalities are FAR higher in ward 7 than 3. This isn’t the racist “gotcha” that you think it is.



Actually it is.

https://www.propublica.org/article/chicagos-race-neutral-traffic-cameras-ticket-black-and-latino-drivers-the-most


Accidents and fatalities are much higher in majority black zip codes. Should city officials defer to those who break the law or those who are victimized by law breakers?

The underlying problem is that road infrastructure is generally much more conducive to speeding in black majority zip codes. The solution is more traffic calming etc..


Accidents and fatalities are rare in every section of the city. The city should not bombard people with tickets that cost them lots of money and make no difference to accident rates.


No one is bombarding you. You are actively breaking the law. You can choose to stop.


It would make more sense if we just had the cops give out the tickets. So many of the camera tickets are bullshit-y foot fault tickets. It's just harassment.


The cops do not give a crap. They never did.

And what the is a foot fault ticket?? Did you follow the law or not? Sounds like no, but you want to whine about it


A lot of the tickets are for trivial offenses. For example you stopped at a stop sign, but the nose of your car was beyond the stop sign pole when you stopped, so they say you didnt stop at the stop sign.


The stop sign cameras record your speed going over the line and will automatically cancel the ticket if it's under a certain speed, specifically to avoid this situation. If the automatic cancellation doesn't happen for some reason you can appeal and presuming you were actually just inching over the line your ticket will be dismissed because they have not only your speed recorded but a video of the infraction that a human can review for an appeal.

People love to say "oh I was just doing this reasonable thing and the mean old speed camera punished me!" But in reality it's usually either a straight up lie or they have an utter lack of self-awareness of what they are doing in their vehicle, rolling through the stop sign at 8mph but in their mind they "barely inched over."


It would be great if it actually worked like this, but that hasn't been my experience at all. Most of the traffic camera tickets I have ever gotten (and there's been a few) are penny ante complaints about how I stopped but not in precisely the right place because my bumper was over the crosswalk or something.


That is literally how it works. It's right there on the DDOT website if you had ever bothered to take 2 seconds to look it up:

Drivers must come to a complete stop prior to the stop bar at an intersection controlled by a stop sign or traffic signal. This allows the driver to look around and ensure that they have the right of way before continuing. The stop signs units use radar to detect if a vehicle stopped at, rolled through, or ran a stop sign. Tickets will be issued when vehicles fail to make a complete stop at a stop signs.

The stop sign enforcement camera system predicts using advance algorithms, when a stop sign violation is occurring and captures the violation event with digital camera and high-resolution video.

Step 1 The first image of the violation is taken BEFORE the vehicle passes the stop line.
Step 2 The second image is taken AFTER the vehicle passes the stop line.
Step 3 The license plate is taken from a close-up of the images captured.
Step 4 In addition, a high-resolution video of the violation event is captured as a validation tool.
Step 5 Additional data collected includes the time, date, speed, location, lane, and direction of the travel.


https://asc.ddot.dc.gov/


They send you a video when you get a ticket. No one needs to look anything up. You can see how silly the tickets are in the video they send you.


If the ticket is "silly," i.e. not video evidence of you breaking the law and deservedly getting the ticket, then you can easily get the ticket dismissed.

If the ticket is in fact video evidence of you breaking the law then the ticket is not "silly."

So what's the problem?


Tickets have increased 10 fold. They doubled in the past year alone. Last year there 3.3 million tickets for a city of 700,000. Speeding deaths have not gone down at all, despite the massive increase in ticketing. How is that possible? Lots and lots of tickets for trivial offenses.


You picked the wrong year to make this argument. Traffic deaths are down 60% year-on-year after the number of cameras were doubled last year. You need to find a new hobby.


The number of speeding related deaths have gone up and down each year, without any clear pattern. If increasing tickets by 10 times over the past decade actually made a difference, you'd see a pattern.

2023: 22
2022: 9
2021: 12
2020: 15
2019: 10
2018: 9
2017: 12
2016: 8
2015: 11
2014: 12
2013: 11


You can keep posting lies and I will keep calling you out for the liar that you are. You know that these numbers do not include many people killed by speeding drivers and yet you continue to claim otherwise. Why?


You can look them up yourself. They come from the DC police department. The reports are here: https://mpdc.dc.gov/page/mpd-annual-reports


I hate it when people make me repeat myself and you are making me repeat myself over and over again because you insist on spreading misinformation.

It states very clearly in the main table on page 44 on the 2023 report that the numbers constitute the “Predominant Cause of Traffic Fatality”.

I cannot believe that you do not understand the difference between a factor being determined to be a predominant cause and a contributing factor.

Therefore, I can only conclude that you are deliberately seeking to mislead the public in service of your hideous crusade against speed cameras, which persists in spite of all evidence that they save lives.

Do you want people to die on the streets of DC? Is that your goal here?


Everything has multiple causes. There are multiple reasons why I had eggs for breakfast. But the police investigated these crashes. They interviewed people in the crashes. They interview people who saw the crashes. They examined the physical evidence. Then they reported the primary reason for the crash and that was used in some cases to put people in prison. You can pretend you know better than the people who actually did the work, but it seems like it would be better for everyone if you just shut the fkc up.


So you do understand how traffic cameras can be effective at reducing fatal crashes even though the number of fatal crashes is not changing in accordance with the expansion of those cameras? Because it doesn't sound like you want to admit that you understand that.

That said, it is kind of silly to expect that cameras will make a difference to how people drive across the city when there are only 500 cameras for 8,000+ city blocks and drivers by and large know exactly where the cameras are. Cameras aren't going to work in places where there are no cameras.

If the city cared about saving lives, there would be traffic cameras on every block. They are cheaper enough to buy and operate that cost can no longer be cited as a factor in preventing the city from acquiring more of them. With AI, the cameras could also catch not only speeding but also drunk driving, double parking, red light running and so on.

How wonderful it would be to live in a city where drivers actually obeyed the law.


You sound like Trump pretending that DC is a crime ridden hell hole.

The reality is traffic accidents in DC are rare. Very, very few people die in traffic accidents. The vast majority of people are safe drivers, just like the vast majority of people do not commit crimes. Probably because so few people die in traffic accidents, it's hard to move the needle in further reductions which is why the numbers don't change that much from year to year.

You can blanket the city with tickets, but when you're issuing 3.3 million tickets to a city with a few hundred thousand drivers, you're mostly just giving tickets to safe drivers who make minor mistakes. That has no impact on safety. It's just harassment. It's like Trump putting National Guard troops on every corner, giving everyone tickets for jaywalking and then pretending you're reducing crime.


Are you nuts? The tickets are going to drivers who are speeding at least 11mph over the limit through residential neighborhoods? Only a true buffoon would describe that as a “safe driver making a minor mistake”. That you believe that drivers who break the law and endanger others constitutes “harassment” shows just how deranged you truly are. That you are trying to devalue the deaths of hundreds of people who would have been with us today were it not for such “safe drivers” who made “minor mistakes” is ghoulish. Please go away.


There's a lot of streets in DC with speed limits that are so low that they are a joke. I drive on a lot of roads that, if they were in any other city, would be set at 35mph. DC puts them at 20mph, and then gives you a ticket for speeding for going 31mph, even though if that exact same street was in any other city, you'd be driving below the speed limit. A lot of what DDOT is just dumb.

What’s the speed limit in front of your house?

My house is not on a main through way, so people have beginning it to bypass the street that is a Main Street located one block over. That street now has both a speed camera and a stop sign camera. So now cars zoom down my residential street. The residents have asked for speed bumps.


If you put in speed bumps, people will run the stop signs. There's no free lunch here. I think it's better than cars stop at intersections than randomly in the middle of the block.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Did you know there's almost no stop sign cameras west of the park? I wonder how that happens....


There's 17 speed cameras in Ward 3. In Ward 7, there's almost 60.


Listing this without listing data on accidents or fatalities isn’t that useful.
Traffic accidents, injuries, and fatalities are FAR higher in ward 7 than 3. This isn’t the racist “gotcha” that you think it is.



Actually it is.

https://www.propublica.org/article/chicagos-race-neutral-traffic-cameras-ticket-black-and-latino-drivers-the-most


Accidents and fatalities are much higher in majority black zip codes. Should city officials defer to those who break the law or those who are victimized by law breakers?

The underlying problem is that road infrastructure is generally much more conducive to speeding in black majority zip codes. The solution is more traffic calming etc..


Accidents and fatalities are rare in every section of the city. The city should not bombard people with tickets that cost them lots of money and make no difference to accident rates.


No one is bombarding you. You are actively breaking the law. You can choose to stop.


It would make more sense if we just had the cops give out the tickets. So many of the camera tickets are bullshit-y foot fault tickets. It's just harassment.


The cops do not give a crap. They never did.

And what the is a foot fault ticket?? Did you follow the law or not? Sounds like no, but you want to whine about it


A lot of the tickets are for trivial offenses. For example you stopped at a stop sign, but the nose of your car was beyond the stop sign pole when you stopped, so they say you didnt stop at the stop sign.


The stop sign cameras record your speed going over the line and will automatically cancel the ticket if it's under a certain speed, specifically to avoid this situation. If the automatic cancellation doesn't happen for some reason you can appeal and presuming you were actually just inching over the line your ticket will be dismissed because they have not only your speed recorded but a video of the infraction that a human can review for an appeal.

People love to say "oh I was just doing this reasonable thing and the mean old speed camera punished me!" But in reality it's usually either a straight up lie or they have an utter lack of self-awareness of what they are doing in their vehicle, rolling through the stop sign at 8mph but in their mind they "barely inched over."


It would be great if it actually worked like this, but that hasn't been my experience at all. Most of the traffic camera tickets I have ever gotten (and there's been a few) are penny ante complaints about how I stopped but not in precisely the right place because my bumper was over the crosswalk or something.


That is literally how it works. It's right there on the DDOT website if you had ever bothered to take 2 seconds to look it up:

Drivers must come to a complete stop prior to the stop bar at an intersection controlled by a stop sign or traffic signal. This allows the driver to look around and ensure that they have the right of way before continuing. The stop signs units use radar to detect if a vehicle stopped at, rolled through, or ran a stop sign. Tickets will be issued when vehicles fail to make a complete stop at a stop signs.

The stop sign enforcement camera system predicts using advance algorithms, when a stop sign violation is occurring and captures the violation event with digital camera and high-resolution video.

Step 1 The first image of the violation is taken BEFORE the vehicle passes the stop line.
Step 2 The second image is taken AFTER the vehicle passes the stop line.
Step 3 The license plate is taken from a close-up of the images captured.
Step 4 In addition, a high-resolution video of the violation event is captured as a validation tool.
Step 5 Additional data collected includes the time, date, speed, location, lane, and direction of the travel.


https://asc.ddot.dc.gov/


They send you a video when you get a ticket. No one needs to look anything up. You can see how silly the tickets are in the video they send you.


If the ticket is "silly," i.e. not video evidence of you breaking the law and deservedly getting the ticket, then you can easily get the ticket dismissed.

If the ticket is in fact video evidence of you breaking the law then the ticket is not "silly."

So what's the problem?


Tickets have increased 10 fold. They doubled in the past year alone. Last year there 3.3 million tickets for a city of 700,000. Speeding deaths have not gone down at all, despite the massive increase in ticketing. How is that possible? Lots and lots of tickets for trivial offenses.


You picked the wrong year to make this argument. Traffic deaths are down 60% year-on-year after the number of cameras were doubled last year. You need to find a new hobby.


The number of speeding related deaths have gone up and down each year, without any clear pattern. If increasing tickets by 10 times over the past decade actually made a difference, you'd see a pattern.

2023: 22
2022: 9
2021: 12
2020: 15
2019: 10
2018: 9
2017: 12
2016: 8
2015: 11
2014: 12
2013: 11


You can keep posting lies and I will keep calling you out for the liar that you are. You know that these numbers do not include many people killed by speeding drivers and yet you continue to claim otherwise. Why?


You can look them up yourself. They come from the DC police department. The reports are here: https://mpdc.dc.gov/page/mpd-annual-reports


I hate it when people make me repeat myself and you are making me repeat myself over and over again because you insist on spreading misinformation.

It states very clearly in the main table on page 44 on the 2023 report that the numbers constitute the “Predominant Cause of Traffic Fatality”.

I cannot believe that you do not understand the difference between a factor being determined to be a predominant cause and a contributing factor.

Therefore, I can only conclude that you are deliberately seeking to mislead the public in service of your hideous crusade against speed cameras, which persists in spite of all evidence that they save lives.

Do you want people to die on the streets of DC? Is that your goal here?


Everything has multiple causes. There are multiple reasons why I had eggs for breakfast. But the police investigated these crashes. They interviewed people in the crashes. They interview people who saw the crashes. They examined the physical evidence. Then they reported the primary reason for the crash and that was used in some cases to put people in prison. You can pretend you know better than the people who actually did the work, but it seems like it would be better for everyone if you just shut the fkc up.


So you do understand how traffic cameras can be effective at reducing fatal crashes even though the number of fatal crashes is not changing in accordance with the expansion of those cameras? Because it doesn't sound like you want to admit that you understand that.

That said, it is kind of silly to expect that cameras will make a difference to how people drive across the city when there are only 500 cameras for 8,000+ city blocks and drivers by and large know exactly where the cameras are. Cameras aren't going to work in places where there are no cameras.

If the city cared about saving lives, there would be traffic cameras on every block. They are cheaper enough to buy and operate that cost can no longer be cited as a factor in preventing the city from acquiring more of them. With AI, the cameras could also catch not only speeding but also drunk driving, double parking, red light running and so on.

How wonderful it would be to live in a city where drivers actually obeyed the law.


You sound like Trump pretending that DC is a crime ridden hell hole.

The reality is traffic accidents in DC are rare. Very, very few people die in traffic accidents. The vast majority of people are safe drivers, just like the vast majority of people do not commit crimes. Probably because so few people die in traffic accidents, it's hard to move the needle in further reductions which is why the numbers don't change that much from year to year.

You can blanket the city with tickets, but when you're issuing 3.3 million tickets to a city with a few hundred thousand drivers, you're mostly just giving tickets to safe drivers who make minor mistakes. That has no impact on safety. It's just harassment. It's like Trump putting National Guard troops on every corner, giving everyone tickets for jaywalking and then pretending you're reducing crime.


Are you nuts? The tickets are going to drivers who are speeding at least 11mph over the limit through residential neighborhoods? Only a true buffoon would describe that as a “safe driver making a minor mistake”. That you believe that drivers who break the law and endanger others constitutes “harassment” shows just how deranged you truly are. That you are trying to devalue the deaths of hundreds of people who would have been with us today were it not for such “safe drivers” who made “minor mistakes” is ghoulish. Please go away.


Maybe you should actually look at the data. Only a shade more than half of all the tickets issued by the city are even for speeding. And a few cameras are responsible for truly ridiculous numbers of tickets. There's a camera at North Capitol and New York Ave that routinely issues 100,000 tickets a year. Does anybody seriously think there's 274 dangerous drivers passing through that intersection every single day of the year? If that was the case, seems like you would have a huge number of accidents at that intersection and yet you don't.


There's a number of cameras that are in that 100,000 ticket cclub.


"Do you believe there are 274 dangerous drivers passing through intersection 'x' each day?" Hell yes I do. As a pedestrian who walks to work I absolutely do believe there are tons of dangerous drivers passing through certain intersections each day. Virtually every single day I see multiple people speeding, blowing through red lights, near misses, many bad drivers endangering others. And sadly the majority of them have MD or VA plates, some of them treat residential side streets like their personal superhighway, flying down them at double the posted speed limit. Complete axeholes. Completely disinvested in safety because they are commuters and it's not their town. Look, if you're late for work, leave earlier. Don't make your own personal problem everyone else's problem by endangering other drivers, pedestrians, bicyclists. I'll be more than happy to see DC enforce out of state tickets a lot more aggressively, in fact I think they should impound vehicles on the spot if they have more than $1000 in unpaid tickets. And I don't understand why MD and VA aren't more cooperative with DC on enforcement. Given these drivers are dangerous drivers on DC streets, they are endangering people on MD and VA streets too.

Amen. All you have to do is be a pedestrian in DC for a day and PP’s post will resonate with you. 100% accurate.
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