Comment by marssaxman
3 months ago
Some guy I once met in a bar told me that he liked to mix a 1:1 solution of elmer's glue and water, put it into a spray bottle, set the nozzle to "stream", then squirt it all over the lens of a traffic camera near his house which he found offensive. His logic was that this made more sense than destroying the camera, because he could do it over and over and over: the company operating it would have to send someone out to clean the lens off each time, which would probably cost them more money than the camera was worth.
Not only this does good to society in the obvious way, but also creates jobs as someone needs to clean those.
Kudos to the guy, who single-handedly doing what almost all politicians miserably fail at.
Is it good for society to disable traffic cameras? Here in Sweden, traffic camera is used exclusively to reduce traffic speed on roads where the maximum speed is too fast for installing traffic bumps, with an expected effect of reducing traffic speed by around 20-30%. They are generally only installed on 60-90km/h roads, around road maintenance/construction sites, and in tunnels. They active when the radar detects speeds of 5km above the maximum. (The reduction in speed happens regardless if the camera is functional or not, since it is primarily a psychological effect).
Sweden also have traffic monitors that monitor highways around cities, border exists and tunnels, and also license plate readers for toll roads and bridges (also often used for parking). Those two generally have a much higher privacy cost than traffic cameras.
When the cameras become a revenue stream for a city it is not a good thing.
Cameras have been installed to fine cars running red lights. The city then reduces the length of the yellow to catch more people and offset the high cost of the cameras. The shortened yellows cause increased crashes and fatalities.
Net-net the track record in the states is not great.
One example https://www.koaa.com/news/news5-investigates/news-5-investig...
Here in Seattle the traffic cameras are not used to limit speed, but to monitor intersections for red-light violations. The glue-squirting fellow in my anecdote objected to the fact that the for-profit corporation which builds and operates these cameras gets a cut of the revenue from the citations they issue. He felt that it was one thing to enforce the law, and quite another thing to run a profitable business doing it.
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> Is it good for society to disable traffic cameras?
Its going to be unpopular but yes i think so. Traffic cameras, besides very few use cases, are completely useless (just like speed limits in general). Plus it's a huge temptation for local authorities to turn it into a cash cow and put it anywhere they please regardless of necessity. Italy is rife with those for example.
Speed cameras help really little with preventing accidents unless we're talking about 200 at 100. Put in cameras that detect tailgating/not maintaining enough distance relative to speed.
Now people can go faster while being safer.
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Reducing speed by 20-30% at scale results in a very large loss of man-years of lives in the form of sitting in a car. Reduced earning capacity, lost time with their families, waking up earlier and risks to health associated with reduced sleep, less theoretical throughput of roadways, reduced money for education/food/childcare when they accidently go too fast for a moment and are fined, lack of discretion in issuing tickets for bona fide emergencies, people suddenly slowing down before camera causing accidents, etc.
The obvious win in places like the US is that being pulled over is one of the most dangerous thing that ever happens to the common person, as they are exposed to a psychopath with a gun who is trained that the most important thing is to optimize every interaction to maximize his chance of 'making it home to his family' and if a policeman shoots everything that moves (up to and including, falling acorns) because he 'fears for his life' he will largely get away with it. So it is a nice alternative to that.
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This is the best way to handle it because if the company presses charges they just look ridiculous.
Honestly, feels like the company is within their right to press charges here? Dude is disabling the equipment that they use to turn revenue, no?
Don't agree with the company, but I don't find a suit here ridiculous. If my job put up cameras, and my form of protest was to deface and disable them, I'd get fired. This isn't a job, it's government, but it's similar in my head. The people with the authority to do something did it.
I don't think this counts as property damage or vandalism because nothing is damaged or vandalized.
Part of putting shit in public is that it now has to interact with the public. If you want your stuff pristine, I would think you should not put it in public.
Maybe the law disagrees with me here, and it probably does because this country bends over backwards for companies, but that's how I see it.
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It makes sense to me that criminals, like this guy you met in a bar, are opposed to Flock cameras.