Probably going to be overturned on appeal. <_<
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/03/08/speed-camera-ruling/1974369/
QuoteJudge slams Ohio village's speed cameras
Kimball Perry, The Cincinnati Enquirer 8:58p.m. EST March 8, 2013
"It is a scam the motorist cannot win," the judge wrote in invalidating the ordinance.
ELMWOOD PLACE, Ohio — In a scathing ruling, a Hamilton County judge ruled that an ordinance allowing this village of 2,000 to install speed cameras is invalid and unenforceable.
Critics have said those cameras, which already have generated about $1.5 million in fines, have more to do with revenue enhancement than safety in this Cincinnati suburb nearly surrounded by the city.
"Elmwood Place is engaged in nothing more than a high-tech game of Three-card Monty," Common Pleas Court Judge Robert Ruehlman wrote in his Thursday decision. "It is a scam the motorist cannot win."
Thirteen states and the District of Columbia have speed cameras operating in at least one location, according to the Governors Highway Safety Association. Ohio has 13 other jurisdictions that use them, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety says.
A dozen states have laws prohibiting them.
The village put the cameras in place in July to slow speeders — not to rake in revenue — officials there have said. About half of the fines go to the village as new revenue.
The village hired Maryland-based Optotraffic LLC to install the cameras and bill offenders, allowing the company to keep part of the fine money.
When motorists began receiving the $105 speeding tickets in the mail, they exploded in anger. Many have said they now go out of their way to avoid driving here, and many business owners say the cameras and the fallout are hurting business.
Many hired lawyer Mike Allen to fight the cameras.
"It is obvious that the village of Elmwood is motivated by financial considerations and not public safety," Allen said. "This is a victory for the common man and woman who does not have $105 to give to the village of Elmwood."
Allen added that Ruehlman's ruling could be the nation's first to address the specific constitutional challenge — whether a driver's due-process rights were violated.
"I think the preliminary injunction is pretty much the whole case," Allen said.
Village Solicitor Anita Vizedom couldn't be reached for comment.
The judge was particularly biting in writing his decision, blasting the village for taking from its residents instead of providing services to those who pay for them.
"The entire case against the motorist is stacked because the speed monitoring device is calibrated and controlled by Optotraffic," the judge wrote.
If motorists receiving tickets wanted to contest them, they had to request an administrative hearing that came with a $25 fee.
"The hearing is nothing more than a sham," the judge wrote.
While Ohio law allows such cameras, Allen argued successfully that the village didn't display the proper signage that must accompany them.
Allen expects Elmwood Place to appeal the judge's ruling.
Funny, there's been a major shitstorm here over speed cameras around the Baltimore area in the last several months.
Here's a link to the series of investigative articles for anybody interested:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/speedcameras/
Don't speed. Problem solved.
Quote from: HVC on March 10, 2013, 05:17:57 PM
Don't speed. Problem solved.
Trashy people are in a hurry to go about their doomed little lives.
Quote from: HVC on March 10, 2013, 05:17:57 PM
Don't speed. Problem solved.
If you check out the Sun's articles, you'll see that people are getting tagged for not speeding, as cameras are not calibrated correctly, a total lack of verification (city cops reviewing 1,200 photos an hour) and possessing an inaccuracy rate of well over 5%, to the point that the city is replacing all of them. :contract:
Example:
QuoteCity transportation officials were so worried four months ago about inaccurate speeding tickets coming from an automated camera on Cold Spring Lane that a supervisor ordered the problem fixed before it could "get out of hands," documents obtained by The Baltimore Sun show.
Yet the camera remained in operation, continuing to record erroneous citations. And it was only last month that the city said it was investigating the source of the errors.
Meanwhile, evidence emerged Tuesday of problems at another speed camera miles away. The Sun determined that a camera on Walther Avenue in Northeast Baltimore ticketed a Toyota sedan for traveling 56 mph, even though time-stamped photos and a measurement of the pavement show it was moving 34 mph, not fast enough to warrant a $40 ticket.
Just a big, big mess.
Vandalize cameras. Problem solved.
:P
I don't like traffic cameras because sometimes I go fast and have a tendency to hit the accelerator rather than the break when I see a yellow light. But much of the rest of the world has deployed traffic cameras. Is US government uniquely incompetent in their deployment, or is there some other explanation that we can't move beyond cops with radar guns chasing speeders down?
Quote from: HVC on March 10, 2013, 05:25:56 PM
Vandalize cameras. Problem solved.
:P
They used to shoot at the "blue light" police surveillance cameras and trash them when they could, but when they learned they would keep getting replaced, they just sorta stopped. :lol:
Quote from: CountDeMoney on March 10, 2013, 05:29:46 PM
Quote from: HVC on March 10, 2013, 05:25:56 PM
Vandalize cameras. Problem solved.
:P
They used to shoot at the "blue light" police surveillance cameras and trash them when they could, but when they learned they would keep getting replaced, they just sorta stopped. :lol:
Go cartoon style, put a picture of the empty road in front of it :D
Quote from: alfred russel on March 10, 2013, 05:28:28 PM
I don't like traffic cameras because sometimes I go fast and have a tendency to hit the accelerator rather than the break when I see a yellow light. But much of the rest of the world has deployed traffic cameras. Is US government uniquely incompetent in their deployment, or is there some other explanation that we can't move beyond cops with radar guns chasing speeders down?
Those are likely national initiatives, while these are being done individually by town.
Quote from: alfred russel on March 10, 2013, 05:28:28 PM
Is US government uniquely incompetent in their deployment, or is there some other explanation that we can't move beyond cops with radar guns chasing speeders down?
1) As per standard American government practice, the equipment isn't purchased and operated by the local government, but to a contractor; and the contract goes to the lowest bidder who turns out to be the shittiest provider with the shittiest equipment.
2) Automation = increased revenue.
3) Removing cops with radar guns frees the cops up to do something else useless with their time.
Quote from: CountDeMoney on March 10, 2013, 05:34:07 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on March 10, 2013, 05:28:28 PM
Is US government uniquely incompetent in their deployment, or is there some other explanation that we can't move beyond cops with radar guns chasing speeders down?
1) As per standard American government practice, the equipment isn't purchased and operated by the local government, but to a contractor; and the contract goes to the lowest bidder who turns out to be the shittiest provider with the shittiest equipment.
2) Automation = increased revenue.
3) Removing cops with radar guns frees the cops up to do something else useless with their time.
I'm with you. And also Tim. We would be better with more centralized government and less local government run by whatever sort of person gets elected to city council in Alabama.
Any idiot knows to SLOW THE FUCK DOWN in the village boonies.
lookup the new rome speed trap.
Quote from: Ed Anger on March 10, 2013, 06:16:22 PM
Any idiot knows to SLOW THE FUCK DOWN in the village boonies.
lookup the new rome speed trap.
Yeah, even I know that, cos every other comedy set in rural America has speed trap cops doing their thing.
edit:
Didn't Russ Meyer's 'Up' have that sort of scene ?
Quote from: CountDeMoney on March 10, 2013, 05:34:07 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on March 10, 2013, 05:28:28 PM
Is US government uniquely incompetent in their deployment, or is there some other explanation that we can't move beyond cops with radar guns chasing speeders down?
1) As per standard American government practice, the equipment isn't purchased and operated by the local government, but to a contractor; and the contract goes to the lowest bidder who turns out to be the shittiest provider with the shittiest equipment.
2) Automation = increased revenue.
3) Removing cops with radar guns frees the cops up to do something else useless with their time.
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.ning.com%2Ffiles%2Fb0eWVQfsIROlw9uUiuIdgqzxpDFiydyoSBYEjPkPW1nbX-fE6nETO2w25q0uV86WSJIHIelvAxjsG4knCK2L6itFWjBfEqny%2Fjack_middle_finger.gif&hash=9760bed993d931dae3f046d1b93a5f9e276ce70b)
:P
Such as watching pre teen ass in the Target parking lot.
There was an article in the local rag on Sunday about the growing use of license plate readers on police cars.
Basically, it is a high speed camera mounted on the police car that can read up to 2000 license plates per minute, and then in real time check them against a database. Obvious utility in finding stolen vehicles, cars with expired registration, etc.
Of course, that also means that the data is storing where your car is at some particular moment in time even if you've done nothing wrong. And if they take that data and store it somewhere, and then take data from other plate readers and store that in a way that can correlate it all, you can start putting together some rather interesting data about private citizens movements in their cards, where they have been, when, etc., etc.
On the one hand, this is creepily similar to the eye readers in Minority Report - except it is your car. You could imagine that if these were all over the place, say every single police car?, you could pretty quickly create a rather serious amount of data about otherwise perfectly innocent people's whereabouts. There aren't really any laws dealing with this yet - should there be?
On the other hand, none of this data is "private" per se - it's not like the fact that you are driving on some particular road and some particular time carries any expectation of privacy with it - these devices are not doing anything that in theory could not be done by some guy jotting down plates as they go by, but of course in reality they do so in a manner that is simply not possible manually.
Right now, at least in New York, most police departments using them have one or two cars with them, they use them to check for expired tags and such, and the data is wiped out every thirty days or so. But that is all pretty much voluntary on their part, and mostly driven by them
1) Not having them on every car,
2) Not having the resources to actually use them if they were on more cars, and
3) The technology not yet existing to actual store/process/report on the data from multiple systems in one place.
But none of these issues are particularly difficult to overcome, if the NSA or someone like that wanted to create some kind of database of citizens vehicles movements...
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57559105-71/speed-camera-gives-ticket-to-stationary-car/
Quote
Speed camera gives ticket to stationary car
A speed camera in Baltimore declares that a Mazda is doing 38 mph in a 25 mph zone. It wasn't. It was standing still at a red light.
Something's wonky about technology in Baltimore.
Earlier this week, I shivered at the idea that the city had been at the forefront of putting audio surveillance in its buses.
Now I hear that its speed cameras appear to have been buying street drugs from extremely disreputable sorts.
You see, a Baltimore camera issued a ticket to Daniel Doty. It claimed that he and his Mazda wagon were going 38 mph in a 25 mph zone.
I hadn't been aware that Mazda wagons could go that fast. Doty, on the other hand, hadn't been aware that you can go 38 mph while standing completely still.
As the upstanding Baltimore Sun has it, the photograph that Doty received with his $40 citation showed that his Mazda wasn't moving. At all.
It showed its brake lights offering an illuminating detail to the scene. Doty told the Sun that it was "shockingly obvious" his Mazda wasn't moving.
For its part, the city was incapable of explaining how it might possibly be that such an injustice could occur.
It seems that citations go through not one, but two reviews -- just in case, you know.
Some might experience involuntary spasms on hearing that one of those reviews involves an actual police officer who must swear that this car was going at least 12 mph over the limit.
Oh, and he or she must swear it "based on inspection of the recorded images."
Speed cameras have often been criticized for their ineffectiveness -- or merely for their utterly venal purposes.
But the city of Baltimore has withheld comment -- beyond describing any error as "unacceptable" -- until a task force meeting on Friday.
I imagine that Doty may have a good chance of contesting the ticket. Conveniently, he happens to be a lawyer.
Baltimore and all
Yeah, sounds about right.
Quote from: HVC on March 10, 2013, 05:17:57 PM
Don't speed. Problem solved.
increase the speed limits. Problem solved.
Stop shuffling the speed signs to create ticket traps. Problem solved.
Legalize high speed instead of marijuana. Problem solved.
Quote from: HVC on March 10, 2013, 05:17:57 PM
Don't speed. Problem solved.
On the contrary, it makes the problem of reaching ticket quotas all the more difficult.
Quote from: Berkut on March 11, 2013, 08:44:04 AMBut none of these issues are particularly difficult to overcome, if the NSA or someone like that wanted to create some kind of database of citizens vehicles movements...
License plate readers have been deployed for "homeland security" purposes at
<insert certain bridges and tunnels in a certain mid-atlantic state> for several years already, just sucking up all sorts of data that wasn't for us. I worked on the program. LULZ TO TEH EVILDOERZ