Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition
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yes. and now maybe this isn't an issue so much where you drive, but the oncomming same direction traffic will not infrequently also take advantage of that delay to slip by on the red, leaving you in the middle of the intersection with the cross traffic wanting to get past.
i wish the coursts had ruled that traffic cameras for automatic running red tickets were legal and not an invasion of privacy (because you could see inside the cars in the picture. an invasion of privacy! being photographed in public! wehre anyone with a cellphone camera could have taken that picture!)
Oh, come on. Being such a stickler for the rules is not such a great idea. Here's an intersection with a left turn lane:
Lining up for the turn in the green area is against the rules. However, this road is super busy and the left turn lane just isn't big enough for the volume of people taking lefts. If everyone followed the rules, the leftmost through lane would come to a halt and the road capacity would be cut in half. Fortunately, the general public is smarter than the road designers and they line up in the green anyways.
In most situations where people break the rules, he rule breakers are doing the right thing. Getting all draconian just makes the roads more congested, less safe, and generally unpleasant.
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Ok, this is a really stupid example, but here's how I'll refute the claim.
If you want to get technical, the car is in public, not necessarily the people inside the car. If you're riding in the back of a stretch limo with tinted windows, do you have an expectation of privacy?
If (for some god awful and most likely illegal reason) you were traveling down the road with someone towing your singlewide, do the people inside the singlewide have an expectation of privacy? It is their house after all. It's just being moved.
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you're FLIPPING IN PUBLIC! THERE IS NO EXPECTATION OF PRIVACY IN PUBLIC!
What is inside a car is not considered in public except if in plain view. This is to prevent a complete search of the car over anything, but still allow a cop to bust you for something like an open beer in the cupholder. So what the camera sees prolly should be considered in plain view, but that is slightly different from being in public.
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This is a much better example :3
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fair enough. but my point still stands that the camera is not an invasion of privacy as it can only see what a cop could see if the cop pulled you over for runnint a red light.
in fact the camera can see less because it often can't see cupholder or floorboards. or even the back seat...
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(because you could see inside the cars in the picture. an invasion of privacy! being photographed in public! wehre anyone with a cellphone camera could have taken that picture!)
That's interesting if that's true. Because that isn't a problem in Europe and Europe is generally a lot more picky about privacy than US.
It was guilty until proven innocent which, I'm pretty sure, was unconstitutional anyway.
Yes. Here they introduced cameras and the owners simply started turning them down by saying they don't know who drove. So they added to the law that owner must know who drives his vehicle and the owners switched to saying that their close relative drove and they invoke the right not to incriminate a close relative (which is in constitution and so can't be overridden by mere law) and won't testify further. I believe the lawmakers are still scratching their heads in attempt to work around this, but I also believe that some of the photos are indeed good enough to identify the driver anyway. They certainly managed to convict the aggressive driver who pushed another car off from motorway a couple of years back and the critical evidence was some photos or videos from surveillance cameras.
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@accalia said:
i wish the coursts had ruled that traffic cameras for automatic running red tickets were legal
It was guilty until proven innocent which, I'm pretty sure, was unconstitutional anyway. They send the non-ticket ticket to the owner of the car as well, whom you can't prove was the one driving without a clear picture of their face, which there usually wasn't one of.
There are some intersections here in Phoenix that still use them. AIUI, there are a few seconds after the light turns red before the cameras start working. Also, it's setup so that they won't send the picture unless there is a picture of the driver. I was in a situation once taking a left turn where my view of the light was obstructed by a large box truck next to me and a large box truck in front of me. Since both were going, I figured it was safe for me to go. Apparently it wasn't, because I saw the flash in my rear view as the automatic camera got a picture of my license plate. However, since one of the box trucks kept them from getting a picture of me, I never saw a ticket.
Arizona used to use speeding cameras as well, but when the contract with the service company ran out, the governor decided to not renew since it wasn't cost effective. There was a ballot measure to force the renewal, but it failed.
you're FLIPPING IN PUBLIC! THERE IS NO EXPECTATION OF PRIVACY IN PUBLIC!
Cars are funny. ISTR reading once that your car is considered an extension of your home, as far as warrants and invasion of privacy go. I think the invasion of privacy is a bit of a stretch since there windows all over by necessity. If you need to keep a secret in your car, cover it up or put it in your trunk.
Fortunately, the general public is smarter than the road designers and they line up in the green anyways.
This one isn't so much about how smart the road designers are. They probably would have made the left turn lane longer if possible, but they needed to leave some space so that people could turn to access the businesses.
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i wish the coursts had ruled that traffic cameras for automatic running red tickets were legal
Why? It's also fairly well known they increase rear-end collisions, and that they're used for revenue enhancement. (Here in Dallas, the stop line isn't actually the line on the road, oh, no, it's an imaginary line extended out from the curb of the cross street...but they don't tell you that, so it's easy to get a ticket from a camera a cop wouldn't stop you for, which is a significant portion of why most of the cameras were shut off.)
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Because that isn't a problem in Europe and Europe is generally a lot more picky about privacy than US.
Is that true in the case of the sort of privacy being talked about here (i.e., admissibility of evidence)? I know you guys have silly rules about websites and stuff.
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It's also fairly well known they increase rear-end collisions
not leaving a safe follow distance increases rear end collisions. the traffic cameras are just increasing the incentive for idiots to stop short and get hit by the other idiots that are following too close to hit them because they didn't leave enough reaction time.
and that they're used for revenue enhancement.
if it meant people would stop flipping running red lights i'd deal with that.
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Why? It's also fairly well known they increase rear-end collisions, and that they're used for revenue enhancement. (Here in Dallas, the stop line isn't actually the line on the road, oh, no, it's an imaginary line extended out from the curb of the cross street...but they don't tell you that, so it's easy to get a ticket from a camera a cop wouldn't stop you for, which is a significant portion of why most of the cameras were shut off.)
The one intersection I regularly encounter with a red light cam uses red lines painted on the road. They are actually past the crosswalk, but whatever.
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That sounds like some politician meddled with the traffic signal programming -- if the intersection isn't draining completely by the time the cross green goes up, something is rotten, and it's not the fault of the individual driver who is trying to make a permissive left turn. OTOH, I'd write the ticket in a heartbeat if someone tried this stunt from a protected-only left turn lane -- as it's no different than running a red light at that point, legally speaking.
Most traffic light programming is really bad. I've probably spent hours of my life sitting at green lights because the traffic flow/timing is horribly designed, at that's just in the 5 years I've lived in this city.
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Cars are funny. ISTR reading once that your car is considered an extension of your home, as far as warrants and invasion of privacy go. I think the invasion of privacy is a bit of a stretch since there windows all over by necessity. If you need to keep a secret in your car, cover it up or put it in your trunk.
Man Avoids 37 Speed Camera Tickets By Wearing Monkey Mask
Authorities have sent 37 speeding tickets to Dave Vontesmar, claiming he'd been captured each time by speed camera. Dave denies he's at fault, saying he doesn't resemble the monkey driver portrayed in camera images.
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This one isn't so much about how smart the road designers are. They probably would have made the left turn lane longer if possible, but they needed to leave some space so that people could turn to access the businesses.
Which just means that the chosen method of traffic control doesn't work. There's no way to both leave enough space for left turns into those businesses and to prevent traffic jams. When people are in the green area, access to some businesses is difficult - but that's a much better trade-off than a traffic jam. Another way to say it is that the decision to leave space to turn into those businesses was pointless (and wrong) because no one is going to obey those lines anyways.
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theoretically seal off the central section and dredge it and drain it so it was lower
Yeah lower the lock and canal by 10 + metres great idea!
I'm certain the canal and it's view are protected too ... The pain of living in a UNESCO protect city.
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I'd write the ticket in a heartbeat if someone tried this stunt from a protected-only left turn lane -- as it's no different than running a red light at that point, legally speaking.
Yesterday I was waiting at a light that just turned green for the oncoming drivers making protected lefts to finish. I counted three cars that had clearly started left turns after my side had the green light.
Sometimes it works out. A few years ago, I was waiting to go after a green light because a car had clearly started a protected left after the light turned green for me. The police car behind me saw the same thing and pulled him over.
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Yeah, you better be over the line at the intersection if you're going to turn between the red and green.
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Yesterday I was waiting at a light that just turned green for the oncoming drivers making protected lefts to finish. I counted three cars that had clearly started left turns after my side had the green light.
Sometimes it works out. A few years ago, I was waiting to go after a green light because a car had clearly started a protected left after the light turned green for me. The police car behind me saw the same thing and pulled him over.
Yeah, that happened at an intersection last night, which is part of this story that I was going to post...
So there's a local road bypass that I take for about a mile to get around bumper-to-bumper traffic on the 5. The only issue is that a major intersection has too much traffic, and a rail crossing on one side. So I'm coming south, needed to take a right turn across the tracks to get back to the highway onramp. The road I'm on has three lanes, a dedicated left-turn lane, a middle straight lane, and the right lane is straight/right turn mixed-use. Waiting for the north-bound traffic to clear the intersection after about 5 cars ran the red, I'm in the mixed-use lane, which is wide enough to have the right-turners and straight-non-turners in the same lane. Some douchecanoe thinks he's smart and can bypass the 15 cars in the right side of the lane by pretending to go straight, and flying around the corner. So the crossing has two lanes per side, and since the near lane is full, I make my right turn, get in the far lane, with the idiot flying around, not anticipating that I'd move over, and honks his horn at me, nearly rear-ending me. Sorry, but if you want to bypass traffic like that, karma's going to hit. So he's tailgating me, and as I cross the tracks, there's enough traffic where my car is the last one that can fit across the tracks. So he decides that it's smart to stay on my tail, and sit on the tracks. So traffic starts moving, and I sit there for a few seconds, letting him just sit on the tracks, thinking about his bad decisions. My only regret is that the signals didn't start going off.
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if it meant people would stop flipping running red lights i'd deal with that.
If you accept that, the next thing that happens is they shorten all the yellow lights to trap drivers and increase the number of tickets, which is what I meant by "revenue enhancement." That quickly becomes the raison d'etre, at the expense of safety.
And it's not actually abstract, it's well-documented. Either the local government shortens yellow lights, or they cheat by putting the cameras not where the actual problems are, but where the shortest yellows are already located so they can say with a straight face "we did not shorten the yellows."
If red-light running is a problem, the answer is not cameras. It's "put a cop in the intersection on a more or less regular but random basis".
Oh, and that's before we even consider all the other shenanigans. Durham (I think) North Carolina started putting in cameras, and arranged for an agreement where they split the money 60-40 (or so) with the company who owned the cameras. Then someone who got a ticket and was pissed about it noticed that there was a NC law that said something like "90% of fines must go into either general revenue or the funds for schools" and sued the city or the state, which objected, but as soon as they realized they might lose, the shut off the cameras because if they lost it would cost them tons of money because they hadn't been setting it aside in case they lost.
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The one intersection I regularly encounter with a red light cam uses red lines painted on the road. They are actually past the crosswalk, but whatever.
That's more or less what I mean, except Dallas does NOT mark the lines, and they are NOT the crosswalk or the painted stop line. And you'd only know that after you got a ticket, or if you read the article several years ago where the cops pointed it out. Like I said, the line is an imaginary line made by extending the right-hand intersecting street's curb. Supposedly it's illegal for the cops to use the actual painted line, but I can't see how that makes sense and it was never explained.
Ironically they had to shut off most of the cameras because people realized what was going on and made a point of being careful, at least at those intersections, and the revenue from the cameras plummeted, which caught the city completely off guard.
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I've probably spent hours of my life sitting at green lights because the traffic flow/timing is horribly designed, at that's just in the 5 years I've lived in this city.
My street is a half-circle with both ends connecting to a major 6-lane divided thoroughfare. The opposite half from the one I live near has a light, and at either end, I need to take a left to get to the office.
There's another street extending from the light, making it a four-way. The sensor or something is hosed on my street, so that pretty much every other cycle, it won't register cars on my street. Obviously this causes backups at rush hour, and I've timed it--if you're not lucky, you'll be sitting there 8-10 minutes. For that reason if traffic's bad, I take a right turn and go around the block (i.e., the 1-mile-grid major streets), which approximately triples my commute. It beats the hour of stop and go I used to have though.
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Yeah lower the lock and canal by 10 + metres great idea!
In case you were being sarcastic, I acknowledge it wouldn't be cheap or necessarily easy, or even quick to do. But it's probably the best way to improve traffic overall given the geography.
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New solution, get rid of the fucking boats. Places in Europe still have outdated laws that give the boats the right of way. At least give them someplace to moor up and not allow them to pass during rush hours. No one is commuting in a sailboat, so they can wait.
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@Intercourse said:
New solution, get rid of the fucking boats.
Indeed, this is probably the best thing to do.@Intercourse said:
Places in Europe still have outdated laws that give the boats the right of way.
It seems like the US does too, or at least that boat owners are entitled assholes with clout.
@Intercourse said:
At least give them someplace to moor up and not allow them to pass during rush hours.
Absolutely. This would be the best solution for the most people, so I'm sure it'll never happen.
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Or, here is a midpoint solution:
All boats have identifying numbers on them. During rush hour, when you want to back up traffic so you can get your boat through, there will be signs that look up your ID number and display: "Your commute today is being disrupted by $NAME and their mobile phone number is $MOBILENUMBER and their home address is $ADDRESS. Feel free to let them know what you think."
Problem solved.
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If you accept that, the next thing that happens is they shorten all the yellow lights to trap drivers and increase the number of tickets, which is what I meant by "revenue enhancement." That quickly becomes the raison d'etre, at the expense of safety.
................which they do so often, it's crazy.
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@Intercourse said:
Or, here is a midpoint solution:
All boats have identifying numbers on them. During rush hour, when you want to back up traffic so you can get your boat through, there will be signs that look up your ID number and display: "Your commute today is being disrupted by $NAME and their mobile phone number is $MOBILENUMBER and their home address is $ADDRESS. Feel free to let them know what you think."
Problem solved.
Evil ideas thread is
over there.
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Evil ideas thread is over there.
I think it fits better in the Good Ideas thread. ;)
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Some douchecanoe thinks he's smart and can bypass the 15 cars in the right side of the lane by pretending to go straight, and flying around the corner. So the crossing has two lanes per side, and since the near lane is full, I make my right turn, get in the far lane, with the idiot flying around, not anticipating that I'd move over, and honks his horn at me, nearly rear-ending me. Sorry, but if you want to bypass traffic like that, karma's going to hit. So he's tailgating me, and as I cross the tracks, there's enough traffic where my car is the last one that can fit across the tracks. So he decides that it's smart to stay on my tail, and sit on the tracks. So traffic starts moving, and I sit there for a few seconds, letting him just sit on the tracks, thinking about his bad decisions. My only regret is that the signals didn't start going off.
Yeah...that'd have been a fun one to see, especially from the vantage point of a hi-rail truck or something like that...
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A very noticable anti-pattern. I can't remember if this was linked here.
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So traffic starts moving, and I sit there for a few seconds, letting him just sit on the tracks, thinking about his bad decisions. My only regret is that the signals didn't start going off.
Except that anybody that stupid is probably too stupid to realize that sitting on the tracks is a bad decision.
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I think I've seen something similar. AFAIR, it's a regular occurrence.
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That is awesome.
Many years ago I was running a company that had a train trestle just south of us that had low clearance. We had heavy machinery and the official policy was not to haul anything south. Go around the north way. Unofficially, some machinery would fit if it were loaded properly.
One day, a driver takes off headed south with an excavator on the trailer and before I could dial my phone he had already ripped every hydraulic line off the top of the boom and gotten basically stuck in the gap between the two main support beams. About $20K worth of damage by the time it was all said and done.
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Except that anybody that stupid is probably too stupid to realize that sitting on the tracks is a bad decision.
Well I assume that even though he wouldn't get it at first, it would eventually hit him.
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AFAIR, it's a regular occurrence.
"Regular" as in, 11foot8.com has about one video a month for the last several years of that happening.
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"Regular" as in, 11foot8.com has about one video a month for the last several years of that happening.
I also seem to recall seeing some months where the video involved 4 or 5 accidents.
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Be careful what you wish for...
Safer road travel? Relief from the boredom of the Hume Highway? Remove the nut behind the wheel of the cars around me? Probably fewer traffic infringements? Sign me up!
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Safer road travel? Relief from the boredom of the Hume Highway? Remove the nut behind the wheel of the cars around me? Probably fewer traffic infringements? Sign me up!
http://www.essetek.com/tl_files/solutions/its_1.jpg
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fairly well known they increase rear-end collisions
Rear-end collisions are safer than T-bones from running reds. They're also easier to avoid: Don't follow so close.
Here in Dallas, the stop line isn't actually the line on the road, oh, no, it's an imaginary line extended out from the curb of the cross street.
That's ridiculous. Fix it.
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That's very pretty. Now use your words because after one vague yet ominous warning and one confusing image with no context I still have no idea what you're trying to say.
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Here they introduced cameras and the owners simply started turning them down by saying they don't know who drove. So they added to the law that owner must know who drives his vehicle and the owners switched to saying that their close relative drove and they invoke the right not to incriminate a close relative (which is in constitution and so can't be overridden by mere law) and won't testify further. I believe the lawmakers are still scratching their heads in attempt to work around this, but I also believe that some of the photos are indeed good enough to identify the driver anyway. They certainly managed to convict the aggressive driver who pushed another car off from motorway a couple of years back and the critical evidence was some photos or videos from surveillance cameras.
They could try doing what they do in the UK. The owner of the car (well, strictly the registered keeper; handles complex ownership better) has a duty in law to ensure that the vehicle is driven lawfully, or they can identify who was actually driving, or they should report to the police that the vehicle is being driven without permission (theft, joyriding, etc.) It's evil. The ticket gets sent to the owner, and they get to sort out who was driving at the time. They also mustn't lie about it; that'd be perjury of course (and this has been the downfall of at least one politician in the past 5 years.
)Yes, the solution was arrived at after some smart lawyers poked holes in the previous rules. A duty of care on the owner is much harder to wriggle out of.
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That's very pretty. Now use your words because after one vague yet ominous warning and one confusing image with no context I still have no idea what you're trying to say.
Monitoring & Control Infrastructure + government = ...
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This post is deleted!
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Monitoring & Control Infrastructure + government = ...
... ???
Are you having a stroke?
Can't be bothered hitting more keys?
Think we're all mind-readers?
Have no respect for the people you're trying to communicate with?
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Have no respect for the people you're trying to communicate with?
I have respect for people who can think for themselves.
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The other directions would be coming off a red, so the T-bone collision would be at a very low speed.
The bonee is travelling at low speed, the boner is trying to beat a red so he's flying. Unfortunately it's also the case that the boner has the protection of all the best safety features on the car: air-bags, large front crumple zones, seat belts working in the direction they're intended. The bonee gets hit from the side and if he's very lucky he has intrusion protection bars and curtain air bags. That's the worst spot to hit a car, he's royally fucked in any case.
Also, the rear-end collision could force the front car into the intersection, causing another collision.
... with cars just starting from a new green. This is the low-speed collision.
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I have respect for people who can think for themselves.
And you assume I can't think for myself because... I can't read your mind? I have different information available to me? My biases are different to yours? I come to different conclusions than you?
You are an ineffective communicator and I don't want to play the guessing game anymore.
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I have respect for people who can think for themselves.
If you're having a debate, don't expect other's to finish your arguments for you.
