Reply to DC traffic cameras issued 3.3 MILLION tickets last year

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Reply to "DC traffic cameras issued 3.3 MILLION tickets last year"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Did you know there's almost no stop sign cameras west of the park? I wonder how that happens....[/quote]

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

[/quote]
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.

[/quote]

Actually it is.

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

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..[/quote]

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. [/quote]

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

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. [/quote]

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 [/quote]

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. [/quote]

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."[/quote]

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. [/quote]

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:

[quote]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. [b]The stop signs units use radar to detect if a vehicle stopped at, rolled through, or ran a stop sign.[/b] 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, [b]a high-resolution video of the violation event is captured as a validation tool.[/b]
Step 5 Additional data collected includes the time, date, [b]speed,[/b] location, lane, and direction of the travel.[/quote]

https://asc.ddot.dc.gov/ [/quote]

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. [/quote]

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? [/quote]

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. [b]Speeding deaths have not gone down at all[/b], despite the massive increase in ticketing. How is that possible? Lots and lots of tickets for trivial offenses.  [/quote]

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.[/quote]

Correlation. Based on the other data, it's clear something else caused the reduction. But I am sure others will cherry pick this data point in order to double the number of cameras again. [/quote]

Do you understand that vehicular crashes can have multiple causes or don’t you?

Here you posit that other changes in other factors drove the reduction in traffic fatalities. Yet in the post immediately before this, you argue that it is clear that traffic cameras aren’t working because “speeding deaths” aren’t perfectly correlated with the increase in traffic cameras.

Please make up your mind.

I’m also very confused as to what type of evidence would convince you that traffic cameras are contributing to a reduction in traffic deaths.

There are multiple peer-reviewed scientific studies that demonstrate that cameras reduce traffic fatalities. These have been posted in this thread and you dismissed them as not being relevant because they were not done in DC.

Yet you now dismiss DC-specific evidence - which include the massive reduction in traffic fatalities the year after the number of cameras were doubled as well as evidence showing that traffic cameras reduce vehicle speed - as not being rigorous enough.

I think it’s very clear to the rest of us that either you are lying to yourself or to everyone else. That is, you cannot bear the idea that you could possibly be wrong and so dismiss any evidence - no matter how convincing - that undermines your opinion or you know you are wrong, but do not want to admit it. [/quote]

You seem to be tying yourself in knots trying to blame everything on speeding. I'm sorry the data doesn't fit your narrative. It's hard to see a relationship between the two when ticketing has absolutely exploded and the number of speeding deaths goes up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down. [/quote]

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