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Comment by kqr | Hacker News Reader

This is such an obvious extension of the concept, but I've never figured out why they aren't used in the jurisdictions I'm familiar with. Privacy related to license plates? Numerical calculations not being valid grounds for incrimination?

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In some places (like California), it's illegal to use a calculated average speed to issue tickets, regardless of whether it's done by a person or with cameras.

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.x....

That's good because I'm sure they could catch tons of people speeding in the fast lane from their fastrak transponders showing up at consecutive readers too fast.

I live in SF. I feel like speeding is not really a problem in the city proper as the roads are narrow and etc. The "natural" speed limit is the same or lower than the legal speed limit. On the highways I go 80-something mph, which is legally speeding but is the typical "flow of traffic" in the left lane.

I sense constituents would be livid and would vote accordingly. I suspect the same backlash around red light cameras and mobile speeding vans would arise and the program would be cancelled after about a decade or so.

It really depends on the municipality: I would vote for this in a heartbeat, and so would a lot of other people in my area. There would also probably be some opposition, but I don't think it would be particularly lopsided against these kinds of cameras.

Do you drive?

Nope. Under 40% of households in my area own cars; in the area I grew up in, it's under 25%[1].

[1]: https://edc.nyc/article/new-yorkers-and-their-cars

I think it is one of those things people might broadly support, until they themselves get a speeding ticket and start throwing a fuss. Traffic laws, in particular, are things people want strongly enforced on everyone else.

That's absolutely true, although it doesn't change the equation much for my area: most households here don't own cars.

The problem with speed cameras around here would be that they dropped all the speed limits and now everyone routinely does 15+ mph over the limit.

It's insane - the laws are obviously made to be broken because nobody wants 100% enforcement.

There were weird court cases involving cops manually doing this in the US ages ago. Something to do with "hearsay evidence" if I recall correctly.

Something similar with "speed patrolled by aircraft" warnings.

Mostly privacy.

License plates could be stored to track you

I believe it's simply because people like to speed, so they will vote against speed enforcement they don't think they can avoid.

The Mean Value Theorem is just a Theory NOT a Law!

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