102
Seattle Sets the Stage for Automatic Traffic Camera Expansion - The Urbanist
(www.theurbanist.org)
this post was submitted on 04 May 2025
102 points (97.2% liked)
Technology
69702 readers
3147 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
There is also a complete lack of segregation of duties with these things. The companies that install, configure, and maintain also get a cut of the income. This is really bad.
Right; I'm considering requesting cameras in my city to protect crosswalks, pedestrians and cyclists as none of the laws are currently enforced in any meaningful way. One of the most cost-reasonable, effective ways to do that would be to have automatic cameras but the lecherous vendors that want 20-30% of the cut and authoritarian state are two massive concerns I have that make me, at the cost of my own daily safety, hesitant to call this stuff out.
Keep in mind too that they’re not always accurate. I know of one in my city that regularly takes photos of people going through on the green because it’s a bit of a wonky intersection. And that means a person gets to spend their day in court instead of at work fighting a ticket they did not deserve.
Yeah, that at least can be systematically identified and corrected; the bias and also inaccuracy of judgement of current human officers seems far worse and when combined with the fact non-vehicular safety is seen as a low priority or completely ignored, getting to "good" for safety of non-vehicular traffic is life and death. A few tickets that get waived, or in my city, Portland Oregon, a citizen sued to prove the cameras inaccurate where they were and won vs. engineers, is a small price to pay vs. the current state of zero enforcement and bodies littering crosswalks and cyclists mown down in "bike lanes".