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Comment by CalRobert | Hacker News Reader

I used to dislike speed cameras. I thought they were part of an encroaching surveillance state and took judgment away from officers.

Then (and sorry, I know it's a tired thing to say) I had a kid.

And my god, the people who will go FAR over the limit right down your street where people are pushing prams, kids are walking along, etc. is astounding. It's enough to make you hate all drivers, though a moment of reflection reveals that even if 1 out of 100 drives dangerously, you'll remember that 1.

We need car control every bit as much as gun control, and speed cameras are a big part of that. People die when drivers are left unchecked. Disproportionately, it's people not inside cars.

Of course, people also die from the emissions coming out of the tailpipe, which is what these protesters seem to want to do freely. "Oh, your grandma has emphysema and lives near the road? Tough shit, I want my cheap diesel."

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> And my god, the people who will go FAR over the limit right down your street where people are pushing prams, kids are walking along, etc. is astounding.

100%. However, the majority of cameras are placed on deserted countryside main roads and non-pedestrianised motorways/interstate type roads. More camera locations should be prioritised for protecting pedestrians.

Those cameras are not to protect pedestrians, they exist to enforce drivers to stick to the speed limit.

Look at these charts. Speeding rural areas kill! Also, take a guess at what time SUVs became popular in urban areas. https://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/roadway-and-environment/f...

The point is, speed cameras are just a bad solution.

At best, they're a passive aggressive way of exerting government control over citizens. At worst, they're a revenue-increasing mafia-protection-like tool.

If you actually want to protect pedestrians, you build physical "traffic calming" obstacles like speed bumps or chicanes [1]. Switzerland is full of these, and they're very effective. There's really no good reason to have speed cameras (although red light cameras might be a better idea), especially on the motorway (Germany manages without motorway speed limits, so clearly they're not necessary to have a functioning society).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicane#Traffic_calming

Yes speed bumps are way more effective than cameras.

Australia is full of them in sneaky places. It makes the driving experience quite stressful. The speed limits are sometimes ridiculously low and it’s like playing a game.

Speed bumps/breakers are way more effective at slowing cars down. If you don’t slow, you get a big fat jolt and damage your shocks.

I like driving in US much better.

That is indeed the best solution. I'd love to have them everywhere.

Very interesting tables! I'm not sure what you mean by "Speeding rural areas kill!" but the relevant table shows that the same proportion of deaths are speeding related in rural and urban locations.

I have lived in a rural area that has one of these speed cameras. It's just before a surprisingly sharp turn. People do walk on this road, not many (there is no pavement/sidewalk, just grass).

The hole in the hedge from the cars going through it has almost grown in!

My personal pet idea for pedestrian areas, especially in suburbs, would be to close off one entrance to a road, making them a dead end, stopping them from being short cuts. Not much difference to the people living there, they can still park and access. But now there will be no through traffic.

> close off one entrance to a road, making them a dead end, stopping them from being short cuts

It work well, but it puts a lot of political pressure on the mayor for a while, until the people who used to go through the city adjust to the new plan. It often gets reverted after a small while.

In the UK cameras can only be placed in accident hot spots.

They're still very unpopular.

Teen drives his hot hatch with 3 friends as passengers into lamp post by showing off his high speed handbrake turns.

Accident figures peak.

Council installs "safety" camera and lowers speed limit.

Next year figures revert to mean. Council: "Aha! The lower limit and camera has cut accidents, we'll make it permanent".

Net result: speed camera in middle of nowhere, on a dual carriageway, in isolated section of 40mph limit. Often on a bend.

Goodbye 85th percentile rule in yet another spot. I can see why that's unpopular. Yet the spots that really should have cameras near schools, or in other spots around town, generally don't.

"Goodbye 85th percentile rule " - is this bad? It's a flawed non-rule.

In many places (including Ireland, where I live) the same roads where people drive are where you walk your dog or ride a bike - with no footpath. The 85th percentile guideline doesn't help them.

Remember that roads were for walking (by humans, horses, etc) and drivers turned up and stole them.

It's a flawed rule in built up areas, and in situations like minor roads without pavement near a village, where you'd expect to see pedestrians, dog walkers, hikers etc. Many of those spots would benefit from a camera on nearing village outskirts and 30mph limit. Yet they normally don't have one.

On dual carriageways, which is about the only location I ever feel annoyed by speed cameras, it's a fairly reasonable basis for setting limits. That's the situation you find reductions of limit, with associated speed camera, that are simply unexplainable from road conditions, and lack of sources of danger, risks such as built up areas etc.

I'm pretty confident horses, especially ones pulling carriages, aren't super safe for pedestrians either.

Is that new? Here's my experience of how and where they're placed:

https://www.google.com/maps/@52.65301,-2.0079976,12.25z

That's the M6 toll, a road the folks who control such things would like you to pay them money to drive on. Note that it runs beside the perfectly straight 4 lane A5, which predated it, and, simultaneous to the toll road opening had its speed limit reduced to like 30 miles an hour and speed cameras installed every 200 yards along the entire length.

Hard to imagine the whole thing became that much of an accident hot spot right at that moment.

> We need car control every bit as much as gun control, and speed cameras are a big part of that. People die when drivers are left unchecked. Disproportionately, it's people not inside cars.

I agree completely.

To be honest, from a safety perspective, I would be happy if speed cameras were integrated with street lighting so that basically every stretch of road was covered by speed cameras.

That said, I think that penalties should be in the form of a points system that ultimately results in losing your driver's license if you consistently speed. Financial penalties seem to disproportionately penalise the poor.

Is that not the way it works in the states?

That's how it is in England.

3 points for a speeding offence. 12 points and you lose your license for 6 months. Points take 3 years to disappear from your license. You also get fined up to 75% of your weekly income, based on how much over the limit you were going, and there are some hard limits (100 mph?) which result in an instant loss of license. It seems sensible.

I agree that financial penalty does disproportianately affect the poor, but at least scaling it with income means the rich cannot completely ignore it either, as they could with a static fine.

Not sure about the states but here in Australia it works basically as you have described - but there is also a very expensive (in my opinion) fine for each speeding offense, and this is not scaled according to income.

Australian fines are quite ridiculous. As a student, a speeding ticket of $700 meant two weeks of my pay gone.

They really do run a mafia extortion system there.

Financial penalties and a camera system would be a nice way to get some budget needs met though. You can even do it on parkway by putting cameras at the exits and timing how long it takes from one to the other. Or, implement a toll road that charges you more the quicker you get there. Someone driving the speed limit doesnt pay, but everyone else above (or driving too slow) does, with it rising the further you away from the limkt you get.

As a cyclist I use as much space of the road as I can just to make sure cars behind me have to use the other lane to overtake or slow down and wait for a good moment.

I can't wait for laws to enforce speed limits via tech in modern cars.

I also believe that people just do not know yet how much nicer and relaxing it will be to be automatically driven at the speed limit even if the street looks like you could go faster and then, as a driver, having to restrain one-self from going faster.

I read the 2004 book In Praise of Slow (a surprisingly prescient book, to be honest) last year and Honoré talked about the speed limit. I don't know what it was, but something in it clicked for me and I have been actively trying to make sure I don't speed. Sure, there are times I still do, particularly if running late and on a parkway, but in general I've become a much safer driver (which is saying something).

It's been nice, to be honest. I've noticed it bleed into other thigs in my life and I'm no longer worried about the 'go go go' mentality of modern life as much. But we have a cultural issue surrounding speeding. I've mentioned it in passing and the number of people who've basically mocked me for it is too high. Sure, they're joking, but it's an issue we need to fix on a societal level... Thankfully, I think the automatic enforcement in cars will do that. Hopefully it comes sooner, as I've seen nothing but benefits from trying to stay the speed limit - and it doesn't even slow me down that much since I'm not driving long distances (>100 miles) at a time. Less than 5 minutes usually.

In a podcast I recently listened to (in german) there was the example of a manager who always came home totally stressed from the drive until he added a daily stop a few kilometer before arrive home, just to get out the car, enjoy the view and calm down from the day and job. Worked like a treat.

My car has adaptive cruise control (go at X speed max, or follow car in front, which ever is slower).

This has resulted in a much stress-less driving experience.

It would be nice for the car GPS to automatically sync with the cruise control and set appropriate speeds.

Doesn't surprise me that drivers hate cyclists so much.

> As a cyclist I use as much space of the road as I can just to make sure cars behind me have to use the other lane

What are you doing on the road if you're on a bike ? What do you think bicycle lanes are for ?

I use the bicyle lane when there is one. But in the city with cars parked on the road side I simply have to keep 1 meter distance to the side to avoid dooring (google it!) and that puts me into into the middle of the lane. Which in turn means that cars behind me have to use the oncoming lane to overtake me. If I were cycling more to the side the cars behind me a) wouldn't slow down b) overtake me with little to no space around me and thus endanger me in all those unexpected siutations on the road. Also, who said those roads are just for cars? Roads have been around since roman times, unlike cars.

99% of the time: what bicycle lanes? Even then bicycles aren't legally or morally obliged to stay in them if it's unsafe to do so.

In some countries, if there's no dedicated bike lane you have to cycle on the road. Germany, for example.

A huge amount of roads doesn't have bike lanes.

I think roads are not a place for cyclists to be. For the security of everybody only motorised vehicles should be able to use them if they have no bicycle lane.

It's not that people want cheap diesel, they want their job and wages to match up with the cost of living. The proportion between wages and cost of living has gotten worse over time (while the ones responsible for that, lawmakers and employers, have enriched themselves).

Well from experience in the UK in the country there is a lot of using tax exempt red diesel (meant for tractors etc) in your diesel car.

This may not be possible in your case but you can try organizing the neighbors and petition local government to install traffic calming measures. Physical laws are harder to ignore than traffic ones.

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