Idiot comes up with stupid demands for "safe driving" that even @Lorne-Kates says are idiot dumb
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I thought "hey, safer driving proposals to be implemented now, while we wait for self-driving cars-- that's just up my alley".
Then I saw the word "manifesto", and my insides felt sad.
AN EIGHT POINT MANIFESTO FOR SAFER ROADS
- Black boxes compulsory in every vehicle, with improved technology that detects speed limit breaking and careless or aggressive driving.
- Insurance companies encouraged to hike premiums immediately and punitively as bad driving is revealed.
- Insurance companies obliged to hand over to DVLA and / or police all data that reveals traffic offences and dangerous driving.
- Legal framework to allow prosecution and driving bans relating to offences revealed by black boxes.
- Legal changes to encourage use of dashcam / helmet-cam / CCTV evidence to prosecute motorists.
- Comprehensive review of 30mph speed limits, with local consultations on which should be lowered to 20mph.
- Limit revs to 3,000rpm on all vehicles - as condition of passing MOT - to cut noise and dangerous acceleration.
- Funding for technology that will limit all vehicles automatically to the local speed limit (and in the case of national speed limits, a safe speed for the road conditions); and will prevent heavy goods vehicles from using inappropriate rural and urban roads.
Dude, this is fucking stupid. And that assessment is coming from ME.
There is literally absolutely no way you can implement black boxes without punishing good drivers. And by that, I mean the majority of them. How the fuck do you even define "careless or aggressive" driving in a way that a black box can reliably detect. The false negative rate will be astronomical, and the false POSITIVE rate will hurt every single good driver. The boxes will either detect something wrong, or have no context for what's going on, or will just fucking glitch out. Not to mention the COST for developing and rolling this out. Who is designing these things? Programming the rules? Updating the rules? Maintaining the equipment. This is dumb.
Which leads to #2. Go fuck yourself. I mean, sure, let's just allow a private, for-profit corporation to be judge, jury and executioner-- where they get to decide when someone has broken the law, and apply whatever penalty they want, without any method of appeal-- and THEY benefit from it. What could go wrong? I mean, it's not like we're only now learning our lesson about private prisons. Or company stores. Here, let me paint you a scenario:
Hey, codemonkey, what's this setting here?
It's sensitivity, where we use fuzzy-logic to determine if an infraction has occured.
And if you turn down sensitivity from 32 to 7?
It will false-positive infractions more often. Probably at least 25% more.
Excellent! That means 25% extra profit, which is what I need for my quarterly bonus. Do it.
But many of our customers will know they've been falsely charged.
Is there an appeal process?
No not really, but I suppose they could class action lawsuit us.
That'd take YEARS! I'll get my contract bonus before then. It'll be someone else's problem-- and besides, it'll cost less in legal fees than profit. Make the change!DON'T EMPOWER PRIVATE ENTITIES BY LETTING THEM PROFIT FROM HARMING OTHERS!
#3 - there's already enough data sharing between private entities and law enforcement. It's supposed to be a one-way street-- going the other way. Cops should provide details of infractions to insurance companies to raise rates, not the other way around. And by cops, I mean the courts, since you need to be proven guilty first!
#4 - You have that legal framework. It's called existing laws. Try working on making those offenses carry stiffer penalties as far as driving bans go. Fuck your black box.
#5 - There already is a framework for submitting dashcam footage during trials. It's called "submitted evidence" you fucking moron. Unless you mean blackboxes should also have cameras. Not sure about other countries, but I'd think America has an amendment about being forced to rat yourself out.
#6 - Lowering the speed limit almost never helps. Because it's almost always lowered by reactionary dumbfucks like you. Roads are designed very carefully by very smart engineers. It's 30mph because that's the safe limit to drive. Lowering it punishes everyone-- especially those going the speed limit already-- and guess who it doesn't punish? People who are going to speed anyways. How about better enforcement of speed limits you have with harsher penalties for egregious infractions. You know, like the laws that already exist (or were created for "aggressive/dangerous/stunt driving" categories)
#7 - Limit the RPM-- what the dumbfuck are you talking about? How the shit would you even do that without forcing everyone to buy a new car? I've never once heard of RPM limiting tech on a car. Did you just make this up? Did you just make it up because you don't LIKE NOISY CARS? Holy fucking shit. So you want to introduce new, unproven, possibly faulty tech that may fuck everyone over (I'm pressing gas and nothing's happening CRASH), because some noise bothers you? You do know there are already laws on books for things around this-- excessive noise laws-- road-worthy (damaged mufflers)-- dangerous/stunt driving for acceleration-- jumping the green-- leaving tire rubber behind during unsafe operation of a vehicle. Jesus fucking christ man, when @lorne-kates is giving you an you've gone too far.
#8 - This idea is so fucking stupid I can barely begin to scratch the surface. First where is this data set of speed limits coming from? Because it doesn't exist. Maybe some people sort of keep track of some of the speed limits on some roads. But in what format? There's no standard. More of that info is pen-on-paper in Mabel's ledger. How does that dataset get updated? How does it get distributed? How do you make DAILY updates to people's cars to capture all the changing speed limits across the entire nation?
What about temporary changes? If a construction crew hits the road, which paperwork do they fill out to change the speed limit for 4 hours?
What happens when an update fails? If someone gets a ticket for going "too fast", but they were actually correct but their car was wrong-- who gets sued? The black box maker? The person who didn't update? One of the many municipalities, towns, districts, states/provinces, etc in charge of making the speed limits? AT&T because the distribution network went down?
Just how granular to you think GPS is? How do you determine exactly WHERE the speed limit changed on a single roadway? You're going to need it down to the meter, aren't you? So we all get military grade GPS? How often does it update-- if a car is doing 40mph, unless you're polling it's position several times a second you might miss that change over. And how much time does someone have to adjust their speed before it's considered an infraction? After all, according to you we're not allowed to accelerate or decelerate too fast for your ears. Do I need to slam on brakes at each speed changeover? Do I get a few seconds grace?
What if someone moves the physical speed change sign (maliciously, or because of construction) a few meters? Does that fall out of bounds and I get charged? What if the sign is removed altogether. Under current laws, the old speed limit would still be in effect. Do I get charged?
Does this amazing computer also have a clock in it? Because what do you do about school zones, where the speed limit changes based on the time of day-- and day of week-- and which months it is. How do you synchronize all those clocks? What happens on daylight savings? How will you handle the leap minute? What happens when I'm in the middle of the zone, the clock ticks over to the new speed limit. Do I get a warning, or am I instantly going "too fast"?
And this is all assuming country roads. Hey, buddy, try this. Go grab your phone. Turn on GPS. Get Google Maps going. Now go walk around downtown-- you know-- amongst all those gigantic buildings made of steel and concrete. Notice how your GPS doesn't work so well anymore-- because you either lose the signal, or get false echoes as it bounces around all over the place. Oh look you're suddenly half a block away from where you actually are.
And that isn't even touching on any of the security concerns. How will you prevent malicious updates. How will you prevent someone from feeding in false data? How will you prevent someone from spoofing their GPS so it shows that they're always on a 100kmph highway?
In short (in long), you are a fucking idiot.
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Did @fbmac take over your account?
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Fuck you. Give me content.
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@Gąska said in Idiot comes up with stupid demands for "safe driving" that even @Lorne-Kates says are idiot dumb:
Fuck you. Give me content.
Fuck you, give him money.
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(sorry for the delete restore-- posted it mid-rant, and had to restore)
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@antiquarian said in Idiot comes up with stupid demands for "safe driving" that even @Lorne-Kates says are idiot dumb:
Did @fbmac take over your account?
It was my fault. I started to post, but hit POST too soon. Realized people already got the "new thread" notification, so deleted the thread-- put in the content-- and restored it.
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@Lorne-Kates said in Idiot comes up with stupid demands for "safe driving" that even @Lorne-Kates says are idiot dumb:
#7 - Limit the RPM-- what the dumbfuck are you talking about? How the shit would you even do that without forcing everyone to buy a new car? I've never once heard of RPM limiting tech on a car. Did you just make this up? Did you just make it up because you don't LIKE NOISY CARS? Holy fucking shit. So you want to introduce new, unproven, possibly faulty tech that may fuck everyone over (I'm pressing gas and nothing's happening CRASH), because some noise bothers you? You do know there are already laws on books for things around this-- excessive noise laws-- road-worthy (damaged mufflers)-- dangerous/stunt driving for acceleration-- jumping the green-- leaving tire rubber behind during unsafe operation of a vehicle. Jesus fucking christ man, when @lorne-kates is giving you an you've gone too far.
My pickup truck is already RPM-limited to 3,200 RPM, and my motorcycle is already RPM-limited to 10,000 RPM. The EFI quits sending fuel when the engine hits the limit.
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@Lorne-Kates said in Idiot comes up with stupid demands for "safe driving" that even @Lorne-Kates says are idiot dumb:
improved technology
*Willy Wonka lean*
Tell me more about how you think we should have "improved technology"@Lorne-Kates said in Idiot comes up with stupid demands for "safe driving" that even @Lorne-Kates says are idiot dumb:
bad driving
*Willy Wonka lean*
Tell me more about how you determine "bad driving" in the inevitable absence or failure of this "improved technology"@Lorne-Kates said in Idiot comes up with stupid demands for "safe driving" that even @Lorne-Kates says are idiot dumb:
all data that reveals traffic offences and dangerous driving.
*Willy Wonka lean*
Tell me more about how you expect this to be totally cool with people who regularly flip the fuck out about Google's targeted marketing.@Lorne-Kates said in Idiot comes up with stupid demands for "safe driving" that even @Lorne-Kates says are idiot dumb:
Legal framework to allow prosecution and driving bans relating to offences revealed by black boxes.
*Willy Wonka lean*
How did that work with the cameras catching people blowing red lights?@Lorne-Kates said in Idiot comes up with stupid demands for "safe driving" that even @Lorne-Kates says are idiot dumb:
Comprehensive review of 30mph speed limits, with local consultations on which should be lowered to 20mph.
*Willy Wonka lean*
Tell me more about how 30mph speed limits in places where people go 40+ should be lowered more.@Lorne-Kates said in Idiot comes up with stupid demands for "safe driving" that even @Lorne-Kates says are idiot dumb:
Limit revs to 3,000rpm on all vehicles - as condition of passing MOT - to cut noise and dangerous acceleration.
*Willy Wonka lean*
Tell me more about how "dangerous acceleration" is the only type of rapid acceleration@Lorne-Kates said in Idiot comes up with stupid demands for "safe driving" that even @Lorne-Kates says are idiot dumb:
Funding for technology that will limit all vehicles automatically to the local speed limit (and in the case of national speed limits, a safe speed for the road conditions); and will prevent heavy goods vehicles from using inappropriate rural and urban roads.
*Willy Wonka lean*
Tell me more about how you want to make car capable of dynamically adjusting its speed to not only the posted signage but also to road conditions, which is probably one of the last things keeping smart cars from being 100% ready to go right now.
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@Lorne-Kates said in Idiot comes up with stupid demands for "safe driving" that even @Lorne-Kates says are idiot dumb:
This idea is so fucking stupid I can barely begin to scratch the surface. First where is this data set of speed limits coming from? Because it doesn't exist. Maybe some people sort of keep track of some of the speed limits on some roads. But in what format? There's no standard. More of that info is pen-on-paper in Mabel's ledger. How does that dataset get updated? How does it get distributed? How do you make DAILY updates to people's cars to capture all the changing speed limits across the entire nation?
My guess is he meant that the car reads speed signs and keeps track of what road it's on.
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@Lorne-Kates said in Idiot comes up with stupid demands for "safe driving" that even @Lorne-Kates says are idiot dumb:
GPS
When discussing GPS in any context requiring reliability (like using it to drive autonomous delivery drones), it is important to remember that GPS is trivially jammed or spoofed using publicly available equipment.
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@Lorne-Kates said in Idiot comes up with stupid demands for "safe driving" that even @Lorne-Kates says are idiot dumb:
Roads are designed very carefully by very smart engineers
You haven't visited Italy have you? Sicilian roads are the worst. The speed limits have zero, zilch in common with the road layout. 30 km/h on a split dual carriageway. Biggest speed limitation is the degraded road and traffic jams. Most likely because the roads are layed out and maintained by monkey's ... or the mob. That last one could explain something ...
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The examples of wrongdoing that this guy picks out are so egregious that his lack of awareness of the baby-bathwater dumping is almost amusing, apart from the scary Orwellian police state proposal.
Of course, the biased American news media has led me to believe that the UK is already a police state where people can be jailed for making a good joke (i.e. "poor taste").
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@Luhmann - I guess it's really easy to become a civil engineer in Italy, I wonder what the pay is like... there's a few flunkies from my ol' math courses that are having a hard time finding work here in the states with their civil engineering degree.
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@Lorne-Kates said in Idiot comes up with stupid demands for "safe driving" that even @Lorne-Kates says are idiot dumb:
DON'T EMPOWER PRIVATE ENTITIES BY LETTING THEM PROFIT FROM HARMING OTHERS!
*cough* private prisons *cough*
@Fox said in Idiot comes up with stupid demands for "safe driving" that even @Lorne-Kates says are idiot dumb:
Tell me more about how you want to make car capable of dynamically adjusting its speed to not only the posted signage but also to road conditions
Also, what the fuck am I supposed to do in case of an emergency? Are you telling me I cannot go over the speed limit even then? And if I have to accelerate to slightly above the speed limit for a short time to safely overtake another vehicle on a country road, I cannot do that either? Fuck that.
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@asdf said in Idiot comes up with stupid demands for "safe driving" that even @Lorne-Kates says are idiot dumb:
Also, what the fuck am I supposed to do in case of an emergency? Are you telling me I cannot go over the speed limit even then? And if I have to accelerate to slightly above the speed limit for a short time to safely overtake another vehicle on a country road, I cannot do that either? Fuck that.
That was also the point of the line before the one you quoted, too. :P
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@Fox Reading is a to posting rants. :P
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@asdf said in Idiot comes up with stupid demands for "safe driving" that even @Lorne-Kates says are idiot dumb:
@Fox Reading is a to posting rants. :P
I have it on good authority that reading is absolutely necessary for rants Or Else™. :P
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@Lorne-Kates said in Idiot comes up with stupid demands for "safe driving" that even @Lorne-Kates says are idiot dumb:
punishing good drivers. And by that, I mean the majority of them.
maybe in Canada, good drivers are a rare thing around here
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@asdf said in Idiot comes up with stupid demands for "safe driving" that even @Lorne-Kates says are idiot dumb:
And if I have to accelerate to slightly above the speed limit for a short time to safely overtake another vehicle on a country road, I cannot do that either? Fuck that.
why overtake if the guy isn't going slow? this argument doesn't make sense
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@Fox said in Idiot comes up with stupid demands for "safe driving" that even @Lorne-Kates says are idiot dumb:
How did that work with the cameras catching people blowing red lights?
Funnily enough, that is one of the few automated enforcement technologies that, with caveats, I'm okay with:
- It's an unambiguous offense. You ran a red light or you didn't. You were in the intersection when it turned red (innocent) or you weren't. You crossed the line X seconds after the light turned red (grace period) or you didn't. It's your car or it isn't. Cut and dry.
- It doesn't require any complicated equipment to be installed on cars. The only equipment is the cameras themselves.
- They're self-enforcing. What I mean is, you install them. The media gets some "local news" stories out of them, and spreads the word. They're big cameras, and there are signs all over the place that say "red light cameras". That alone prevents the majority of the red-light runners. The rests are the ultra-idiots who deserve the ticket-- and the majority of them will stop once tagged once. Hell, they're almost as effective as just putting up an empty box that says "red light camera".
The caveat being the moment anyone involved in them stops seeing them as "enforcement tool", and starts seeing them as "revenue generators". No. You do not get to make revenue off of traffic penalties. Full stop. The moment anyone starts fucking around with settings-- shortening yellow lights, creating "point of no return" zones that guarantee a red-light run-- anything, then CAVEAT. Flag on the play. You lose your cameras and whoever fucked around with public safety for profit gets to go to jail.
And inb4 "it encourages people to slam on brakes at yellow and cause rear-ends", fuck you. If you're driving so fast you have to slam on brakes at yellow, you're a fucking moron. If you're letting someone tailgate you that close, and are still going full speed, you're an idiot. This is not a valid argument against red light enfircement.
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@groo said in Idiot comes up with stupid demands for "safe driving" that even @Lorne-Kates says are idiot dumb:
@asdf said in Idiot comes up with stupid demands for "safe driving" that even @Lorne-Kates says are idiot dumb:
And if I have to accelerate to slightly above the speed limit for a short time to safely overtake another vehicle on a country road, I cannot do that either? Fuck that.
why overtake if the guy isn't going slow? this argument doesn't make sense
I'm seeing this all of the time on the 20 km of road leading up to a city and a ramp onto the Autobahn. Someone overtakes me because I'm only going 100 kph (allowed are 100 kph). And then I usually see the guy in front of me for the full 20 km. Meaning that he didn't save any reasonable amount of time.
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@Lorne-Kates said in Idiot comes up with stupid demands for "safe driving" that even @Lorne-Kates says are idiot dumb:
It's an unambiguous offense.
Nope. How do you prove who was driving the car? If I let my good friend borrow my car, but then he runs a light, why should I get the ticket? He's the motherfucker what done it.
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@lolwhat thats how it works here. you pay the ticket unless your friend fill some forms and take the blame.
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Also, anyone who gibbers about speed limits being set correctly needs to watch this and feel the burn:
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@groo said in Idiot comes up with stupid demands for "safe driving" that even @Lorne-Kates says are idiot dumb:
you pay the ticket unless your friend fill some forms and take the blame.
Sounds like you all need to tell your traffic enforcement people to fuck themselves.
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@lolwhat said in Idiot comes up with stupid demands for "safe driving" that even @Lorne-Kates says are idiot dumb:
@Lorne-Kates said in Idiot comes up with stupid demands for "safe driving" that even @Lorne-Kates says are idiot dumb:
It's an unambiguous offense.
Nope. How do you prove who was driving the car? If I let my good friend borrow my car, but then he runs a light, why should I get the ticket? He's the motherfucker what done it.
Ah forgot that part. Even had it in mind.
Those tickets go to the registered owner of the car. There's to license penalties or insurance penalties b/c you can't prove who the driver was. The owner is responsible for who uses their car. If your friend ran the red, fuck them, give you money.
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@groo said in Idiot comes up with stupid demands for "safe driving" that even @Lorne-Kates says are idiot dumb:
@lolwhat thats how it works here. you pay the ticket unless your friend fill some forms and take the blame.
In Germany, such cases work like this:
a) Your friend takes the blame. Case closed.
b) You state that you did not know who was driving the car. You now have to go the station to prove (using the photo) that it indeed wasn't you driving the car. If you can prove that using the photo you now don't have to pay. However: You most likely are now required to have a driver's logbook in the car which details who drove where and when.The latter case happened to a friend of mine who has a twin sister (identical twins). While she was able to claim that the photo couldn't discern who exactly was driving (and they didn't remember), they then had the logbook on their hands.
Another effect of b): Your insurance company might want to have words with you.
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@Lorne-Kates said in Idiot comes up with stupid demands for "safe driving" that even @Lorne-Kates says are idiot dumb:
Those tickets go to the registered owner of the car.
If your friend runs over a hooker with your car, should you be the one convicted of murder?
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@Lorne-Kates said in Idiot comes up with stupid demands for "safe driving" that even @Lorne-Kates says are idiot dumb:
punishing good drivers.
Do not be surprised if it turns out the writer hates cars, because that's the kind of person who says ridiculous shit like this.
Shit, it's easy to blow past 3000 RPM accelerating from a stop at a red light. Good job, moron, you've just increased traffic congestion everywhere in the city. (Which would be a positive to a person who hates cars.)
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@lolwhat said in Idiot comes up with stupid demands for "safe driving" that even @Lorne-Kates says are idiot dumb:
@Lorne-Kates said in Idiot comes up with stupid demands for "safe driving" that even @Lorne-Kates says are idiot dumb:
Those tickets go to the registered owner of the car.
If your friend runs over a hooker with your car, should you be the one convicted of murder?
If your friend runs over a hooker with your car, and the cops know which car did it, you can expect a visit from them. And you better have an alibi. That's kinda how law enforcement works.
Funnily enough, running a red light isn't running over a hooker. That's comparing apples to cherries.
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@Fox said in Idiot comes up with stupid demands for "safe driving" that even @Lorne-Kates says are idiot dumb:
How did that work with the cameras catching people blowing red lights?
Actually that works pretty well, except for where they did something that violated the law in a way that allows people to challenge tickets easily, like shortening yellows.
There's a reason Dallas shut off most of the red-light cameras after only a year or two--they weren't generating any revenue, because people were drastically cutting down on red-light running.
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@Lorne-Kates said in Idiot comes up with stupid demands for "safe driving" that even @Lorne-Kates says are idiot dumb:
creating "point of no return" zones that guarantee a red-light run
Dallas did that! The imaginary stop line where you've run the light and will trip the camera is, oddly enough, not the painted stop line, but an imaginary line several feet before it, supposedly for "legal reasons" which were, of course, never specified.
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@lolwhat said in Idiot comes up with stupid demands for "safe driving" that even @Lorne-Kates says are idiot dumb:
why should I get the ticket?
Some jurisdictions will let you rat your friend out to transfer the ticket to him.
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@FrostCat said in Idiot comes up with stupid demands for "safe driving" that even @Lorne-Kates says are idiot dumb:
(Which would be a positive to a person who hates cars.)
no, I hate driving and I dont want to increase my time at traffic
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@FrostCat said in Idiot comes up with stupid demands for "safe driving" that even @Lorne-Kates says are idiot dumb:
@Fox said in Idiot comes up with stupid demands for "safe driving" that even @Lorne-Kates says are idiot dumb:
How did that work with the cameras catching people blowing red lights?
Actually that works pretty well, except for where they did something that violated the law in a way that allows people to challenge tickets easily, like shortening yellows.
There's a reason Dallas shut off most of the red-light cameras after only a year or two--they weren't generating any revenue, because people were drastically cutting down on red-light running.
Yeah, when it's not abused (They aren't locally but they are in other places near here), red light cameras are very effective at cutting down nasty T-bone collisions (Ohio is currently in the process of making them illegal, and we're seeing the statistical effect firsthand).
Of course, as with all things like this, you'll have some idiot local gubermint that decides they want to turn it into a revenue generation scheme. Which is why the "ban traffic cameras" law in Ohio was instituted to begin with.
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@groo said in Idiot comes up with stupid demands for "safe driving" that even @Lorne-Kates says are idiot dumb:
@FrostCat said in Idiot comes up with stupid demands for "safe driving" that even @Lorne-Kates says are idiot dumb:
(Which would be a positive to a person who hates cars.)
no, I hate driving and I dont want to increase my time at traffic
I'm not sure what you're going for here--the kind of person who hates the idea of cars would approve of anything that made driving them less enjoyable or more difficult, because it would coerce people into not having them.
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@sloosecannon said in Idiot comes up with stupid demands for "safe driving" that even @Lorne-Kates says are idiot dumb:
some idiot local gubermint that decides they want to turn it into a revenue generation scheme.
The guy who got them killed in North Carolina did it in an awesome way: he pointed out that the contract gave 40-60% or so of the ticket revenue (I don't remember the exact amount) to the camera company, and also that state law required 95% of certain fines, which the camera ones consisted of) go to the state Education fund. As soon as the state realized every ticket issued cost it money, they shut off the cameras until the court process worked its way through.
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@FrostCat said in Idiot comes up with stupid demands for "safe driving" that even @Lorne-Kates says are idiot dumb:
@Lorne-Kates said in Idiot comes up with stupid demands for "safe driving" that even @Lorne-Kates says are idiot dumb:
creating "point of no return" zones that guarantee a red-light run
Dallas did that! The imaginary stop line where you've run the light and will trip the camera is, oddly enough, not the painted stop line, but an imaginary line several feet before it, supposedly for "legal reasons" which were, of course, never specified.
Which allowed people to challenge the tickets easily, negating any revenue gains they could have made from them. :P
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@FrostCat said in Idiot comes up with stupid demands for "safe driving" that even @Lorne-Kates says are idiot dumb:
@sloosecannon said in Idiot comes up with stupid demands for "safe driving" that even @Lorne-Kates says are idiot dumb:
some idiot local gubermint that decides they want to turn it into a revenue generation scheme.
The guy who got them killed in North Carolina did it in an awesome way: he pointed out that the contract gave 40-60% or so of the ticket revenue (I don't remember the exact amount) to the camera company, and also that state law required 95% of certain fines, which the camera ones consisted of) go to the state Education fund. As soon as the state realized every ticket issued cost it money, they shut off the cameras until the court process worked its way through.
Ouch. Someone should've paid a little more attention to that little legal interaction there....
I generally like the way it's done here. most of the enforcement does seem to go towards things that actually stop crashes. OSP, for example, doesn't really hide, they sit in the middle of the road and pull over the idiot going 100 in a 65.
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@FrostCat said in Idiot comes up with stupid demands for "safe driving" that even @Lorne-Kates says are idiot dumb:
red-light cameras
There's an intersection near me where I really wish they'd put up a red-light camera. Picture two basically parallel streets meeting at a mutually perpendicular cross street.
π
The left leg is clearly marked "No right turn on red" because the cars would be turning in front of the cars turning left from the right street. But every cycle of the light, anywhere from a couple to a half-dozen cars turn right after the light for the other street is already green.
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@groo said in Idiot comes up with stupid demands for "safe driving" that even @Lorne-Kates says are idiot dumb:
why overtake if the guy isn't going slow? this argument doesn't make sense
The key to overtaking safely on a road with many curves is being quick. And that might require going over the speed limit temporarily, even if the car you overtake is 10 or 20 kph below the limit.
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@lolwhat said in Idiot comes up with stupid demands for "safe driving" that even @Lorne-Kates says are idiot dumb:
How do you prove who was driving the car?
How it works here: The camera takes a picture, the owner of the car gets the ticket. If he claims he didn't drive and doesn't know who did, the police will have to come to his house to verify his identity. Depending on how lazy your local police department is, they may never show up.*
You should be careful with that, though. If you piss off the police by trying that more than once, they can force you to document the time and driver's name every time you use your car in the future.
*A friend of mine kept his license despite being caught well over the limit because the police simply couldn't be bothered to visit him for two years.
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@Rhywden said in Idiot comes up with stupid demands for "safe driving" that even @Lorne-Kates says are idiot dumb:
You now have to go the station to prove (using the photo) that it indeed wasn't you driving the car.
IIRC, you don't have to go there (although the letter will make it sound like you do). You can also choose to simply wait at home. The police have to prove that you personally did something wrong, not vice versa.
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@Lorne-Kates said in Idiot comes up with stupid demands for "safe driving" that even @Lorne-Kates says are idiot dumb:
First where is this data set of speed limits coming from?
The easiest source are the posted speed limits. Just have computer vision systems in cars to detect what the current limit is. Before you say this is science fiction, my car already does this, putting the limit in a designated space in the speedometer (in several formats, but that's just a UI thing). It mostly gets it right, but occasionally doesn't (e.g., where you're coming up the leg of a
Y
and taking the fork without a limit but there's a limit on the other leg). This has the benefit of working very well when there are variable speed limits in place, typically as congestion controls. I wish there was a button to set the current target speed for my cruise control to the limit that was detected, but oh well…It helps that the law here states that it is the posted limit that is definitive on public roads, not some value in a document or database.
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This post is deleted!
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@groo said in Idiot comes up with stupid demands for "safe driving" that even @Lorne-Kates says are idiot dumb:
@asdf said in Idiot comes up with stupid demands for "safe driving" that even @Lorne-Kates says are idiot dumb:
And if I have to accelerate to slightly above the speed limit for a short time to safely overtake another vehicle on a country road, I cannot do that either? Fuck that.
why overtake if the guy isn't going slow? this argument doesn't make sense
There's plenty of situations where you need to go fast to overtake someone going slow.
It's not unusual to have only a short span of time and/or space to safely and/or legally overtake someone.
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@dkf said in Idiot comes up with stupid demands for "safe driving" that even @Lorne-Kates says are idiot dumb:
Just have computer vision systems in cars to detect what the current limit is.
I remember a story about some Ford car with such speed-sign-aware cruise control system mistaking the markings on the rear of trucks for speed limits. Thankfully, it did so on the highway, so it was going at half the speed limit, not twice the speed limit in city center.
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@groo said in Idiot comes up with stupid demands for "safe driving" that even @Lorne-Kates says are idiot dumb:
why overtake if the guy isn't going slow? this argument doesn't make sense
Because your car's limiters allow you to go .5 km/h faster than the other guy’s car, and sticking behind him is an annoyance.
Heavy goods vehicles in the EU are limited to, IIRC, 90 km/h, and that frequently leads to one overtaking another at a crawl (relative to the one being overtaken), blocking anyone else from overtaking the two of them on a four-lane dual carriageway. The only reason I can think of for this kind of overtaking is because the driver of the faster vehicle doesn’t want to lift his foot off the gas pedal slightly.
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@Lorne-Kates said in Idiot comes up with stupid demands for "safe driving" that even @Lorne-Kates says are idiot dumb:
Hell, they're almost as effective as just putting up an empty box that says "red light camera".
Around where I live, maybe 15 years ago they installed speed camera boxes at various points along a main road, but with only a few cameras that were installed in different boxes every couple of days. Not sure how effective this scheme was, since the boxes were removed again some years later.
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Fun fact: ever since Poland introduced the show-who-was-driving law for speedtraps and red light cameras, the confession market has grown rapidly. As in, you pay someone money and they admit to having driven your car at the time the infringement was made.