UK traffic police to roll out drones to catch speeding and reckless motorists | Hacker News Reader

UK traffic police to roll out drones to catch speeding and reckless motorists

londonworld.com

31 pointsAndrewDucker9 comments

I really do wonder what needs to change in our system to align the incentives of the police with the incentives of the public. I'm not saying that traffic violations shouldn't be enforced, but it seems very strange to me there's such a focus on traffic - installing speed cameras everywhere, red light cameras, yellow box cameras, moving police vans. Given the seriousness of most driving offences it seems weird there's so much focus on it compared to their just total apathy towards any other kind of crime. Do 50mph in a 40mph area? Oh they'll catch you, they're going to spend millions putting average speed cameras right across the country. Someone breaks into your house and steals your 50k car? Oh they're not even going to investigate and you'll get the speeding ticket for the speed the thief was doing once they'd nicked it which you'll have to appeal. It's just so weird. I guess it's partly just "Here's the one type of crime that is revenue positive and trivial to solve".

Traffic violations cause more deaths than any other crime. Besides, police "solves" a lot of crimes during random traffic controls.

But this maybe removes opportunity for those accidental arrests

I mean if they had cameras everywhere monitoring speed they could presumably use that to also figure out who was near your house and or driving your car.

It's just how many tools do people want cops to have? And the answer is generally very few in case they use those tools against you.

Moving violations is one of those areas where its hard to argue. Oh? You aren't in favor of a safety corridor near the elementary school? Do you want children to get hit?

I think the focus on traffic violations is due to how much money they make from giving people tickets

Lol, so instead of putting some cheap bumps on the road to phisicaly slow down traffic, they bought and are using expensive drones+ operators

Initially when I saw these headlines I assume this would be for catching moped thieves and replacing police cars and motorbikes in high speed chases. Chasing a fleeing suspect in central London is very, very dangerous for bystanders, especially if the suspect is more than happy to mount the pavement and cause crashes. Lots of narrow streets, and chases often come down to a game of chicken, where the suspect will take a route that the police can't justify following him down (like a crowded pedestrian alley, or weaving through gridlocked traffic). A drone flying overhead is a lot safer for everyone involved.

But no, this is apparently for spying on regular motorists. I thought we already had cameras for that, but whatever...

Speed bumps can't collect tolls from drivers which is all the tax mercenaries care about.

The question is: are those taxes bigger than hospital bills of people injured in accidents(higher speed= more frqwent and severe accidents)

You could really stop speeding by limiting the car's max speed based on GPS location, yet this means reducing the speeding fines revenue to a net zero.

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