Comment by ilamont

Comment by ilamont 20 hours ago

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Traffic enforcement, which used to correct some bad driving, has basically evaporated in many parts of the U.S. This has been a long-term trend.

A friend who's a cop told me that only when their department got specific state grants would they set up stings of drivers driving in a pedestrian walkway while someone was crossing the street. Here's an example of one such grant program, which is actually funded by the federal government: https://www.mass.gov/doc/ffy26-municipal-road-safety-grant-a...

Crosswalk Decoy Operations: These operations may involve a plainclothes officer acting as a civilian pedestrian and a uniformed officer making stops OR involve a uniformed officer serving as a spotter to observe and relay violations to an officer making stops. ... All Pedestrian and Bicyclist enforcement must be conducted during overtime shifts, meaning grant-funded activity occurs during hours over and above any regular full-time/part-time schedule.

At other times, he said he would only pull someone over if they were doing something batshit crazy and they happened to be behind the vehicle where it was easy to pull them over. Minor stuff and speeding they would rarely ticket.

The U.S. and other countries need to use automated methods of detecting and applying penalties. Some busy intersections have cameras for this, but it seems to be very limited, maybe because of cost.

Years ago New York used to calculate if you were speeding the NY State Thruway based on the time between toll booths. They cancelled this program for some reason.

Although more recently, the New York State Police have speed cameras set up in a few highway work zones, which is effective (double fines applicable, see https://wnyt.com/top-stories/where-are-automated-speed-camer...) but it still requires a person driving a car to set up the gear.

hombre_fatal 20 hours ago

I grew up in a Texas city, lived abroad for over a decade, and recently moved back to the same city because my girlfriend randomly got a job here.

The number of people who run red lights is giving me culture shock. You have to sit and wait at your own green light because 1-3 vehicles are still running their red light, and it's every time.

As a teen, I saw cops everywhere camping out for traffic violations. I got a few tickets myself for tiny infractions that don't compare to running a red light.

Of course, the icing on the cake is that Texas outlawed red light cameras in court.

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jonahx 20 hours ago

In Miami, there is very little enforcement and reckless driving flourishes. I used to regularly see cars doing 90, weaving, pass cops who did nothing. I've also talked to multiple cops who confirmed that they rarely enforce unless specifically doing traffic duty. Which never made sense to me, since it's a revenue stream. But however the incentives are set up, they motivate cops to do nothing, and drivers know it.

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  • hombre_fatal 20 hours ago

    Maybe it's only one part of an overall trend in cultural rot around rule enforcement.

    A woman had her dog in the cart at Costco that kept barking at people.

    I joked with an employee during check-out "So anyone can bring their dog to the store these days?" and she said they stopped confronting these people because it's not worth it and makes things worse. Worse for who?

    Man, I thought that was the exact type of person worth confronting in civilized society. If we can't police minor antisocial behavior, what can we confront? We wait until it's so bad that we have no choice?

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    • bradleyjg 16 hours ago

      The woman is going to claim it’s a service animal. There’s no real rules about service animals—-and even where there are rules, like with learning disabilities, doctors and other professionals act like whores and sell their signatures to anyone with money. It’s widespread bad parenting for generations now. How can a store fight that?

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      • csa 14 hours ago

        > The woman is going to claim it’s a service animal. There’s no real rules about service animals

        I agree with your overall point, but there are actually rules about what types of behavior are unacceptable for service animals. Uncontrolled or disruptive barking is one of those unacceptable behaviors.

        The store would be entirely within their right to warn this person and remove the owner and/or ban the “service animal”.

        That said, unless you have a legal team that aggressively embraces these sorts of acts against people who abuse the service animal rules, it’s almost always more practical just to let it go. Some of these folks have significant psychological issues, and you’ve already lost once you’ve entered a conflict with an unstable person.

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    • II2II 19 hours ago

      If you wait until it's so bad you have no choice, you usually lack the ability to enforce the rules.

      When I'm in the position that I have to enforce rules, I usually provide an alternative and explain to people that they're not the problem. I spell out that problems arise when you have a dozen people breaking said rule, or when the people who come after them decide to push the limits even further. As long as they see the rules enforced consistently and equally, I rarely encounter any pushback. But until my employer got all of the staff to consistently enforce the rules, things were getting pretty nasty (threats towards staff, people doing stuff that would endager lives, etc.).

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lenerdenator 20 hours ago

> The U.S. and other countries need to use automated methods of detecting and applying penalties. Some busy intersections have cameras for this, but it seems to be very limited, maybe because of cost.

Ultimately, someone still has to send in a check, and if they don't, you go back to the same problem, which is having police officers interact with random drivers, this time with a no-show warrant.

This isn't as much of a problem in NYC, but here in KC, unfortunately, neither the traffic stop nor the warrant are trivially safe tasks.

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  • gus_massa 19 hours ago

    > Ultimately, someone still has to send in a check, and if they don't, you go back to the same problem, which is having police officers interact with random drivers, this time with a no-show warrant.

    Here in Argentina they if you don't pay, they just remember until you want to sell the car, or renew your license or a ¿anual? technical review of the vehicle.

    You have to pay it sooner or later with late fees. It's not necesary to send a minitank to the front door of the home of the bad drivers.

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  • hamdingers 17 hours ago

    > which is having police officers interact with random drivers, this time with a no-show warrant.

    Impounding vehicles is an option too. Like we do for parking tickets. That is routinely done without police interaction, or interaction at all with the driver.

    I know in California if you ignore a red light ticket long enough they'll pull the fines (plus penalties and interest) from your state tax return.

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kotaKat 20 hours ago

> Years ago New York used to calculate if you were speeding the NY State Thruway based on the time between toll booths. They cancelled this program for some reason.

Did they? The only thing I knew they nailed people for was speeding through the EZPass lanes too fast.

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  • ilamont 19 hours ago

    This was decades ago. Maybe the 70s or 80s. My late uncle got busted multiple times.

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lokar 16 hours ago

Have certification (required) for sensor/video recording systems in self driving cars. Make the data admissible in traffic court.

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AngryData 19 hours ago

That's because US cops and courts only care about making a profit, and cops issuing speeding tickets and minor traffic infractions don't earn money.

But something like an operating while intoxicated is big bucks, which is why some places have drivers on the road with 12 DUI convictions (tens of thousands in state profit), and now we got cops and courts from legal cannabis states arresting people for smoking 8 hours beforehand because the criteria for guilt is ill-defined but the punishments are massive because they just copied all of the harshest (read expensive) drunk driving laws.

US cops and courts don't care about guilt, they don't care about safety; over and over and over again they have shown themselves to be a profit-seeking racket. Anyone who has ever been in or had access to the the details of someone's criminal case and seen the mountains of ridiculous extra fines and fees and ways to waste money for no gain knows how ridiculous it is.

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