I'd much rather the drone monitor things and just give me a ticket in the mail than a potentially power tripping cop.
I routinely drive around 80 mph (15 over the speed limit) on the freeway here in San Diego, just like virtually everyone else (when there isn't traffic). Cops here don't even blink when it comes to this sort of speed on the freeways. But drones would, presumably, issue tickets at any technical infraction regardless of the "situation on the ground".
To be honest, I'm not sure which situation I'd dislike worse, the occasionally arbitrary power-tripping cop or the completely clinical and technical rule following of the drone, both are pretty bad, IMO.
People routinely overestimate their driving abilities and underestimate the risk.
But the increase in revenue raised would make it too tempting not to use, IMO.
I fail to see how this is a bad thing.
And think about what a low speed limit like 65mph would do to the economy.
A lot of the discussions I hear on this fall down to "it's inconvenient to drive the speed limit". Man that sucks, but the speed limit is kind of a legal limit.
The faster we drive, the less time we have to react to a fast changing situation on the road, and the more dangerous collisions become.
I'd be really unhappy if speed limits were rigorously enforced too; I'm pretty routinely 5-10mph over them too. But I'd adjust my habits eventually, and so would you.
Of the 11-12 figure transportation projects the US could undertake in 2013, making it easier for people to achieve dramatically lower fuel efficiency by driving 10-20mph faster seems like a poor investment.
And the argument "what about woman driving while talking on the phone, eating and tending to children??" is completely pointless, just like "what about drunk people driving??" - both of these groups of people should be banned from driving, as both pose a danger to safety on the road.
FWIW, I only ever drive 80 mph in 65 mph zones on large 5+-ish lane freeways. On non-freeway roads, I don't speed.
Given the tendency of some courts in the SF area to make you pay the ticket before you can contest it (read this somewhere, not sure 100% on truthfulness of it), this sounds like a nightmare shakedown scenario.
In any case, a single 1.8 gigapixel ARGUS-IS can cover a huge amount of surveillance area and within a few years that technology could be commonplace, so the answer could easily always be "yes, of course there is a drone watching your car right now", making that information basically useless.
Yea, that's false.
-Go to court and plead not guilty: send the bail amount, wait for your court date. If found not guilty, you get some $$ back. If guilty, pay the fine amount (less bail).
-Plead guilty/no contest via mail: send them the bail amount, they keep the $$ (bail forfeiture).
It's cleverly and obviously intentional practice that plays on people's time to defend themselves being worth more than the discounted price.
Not really. They exist as a revenue source for the police department. This is why people routinely drive 10-15 mph over the speed limit and yet don't get pulled over - except when the police need additional revenue.
>>In any case, I don't think there would be a way to monitor your speed to any kind of accuracy from a moving object.
It doesn't have to be 100% accurate. There's a certain margin after which the small inaccuracy that results from measuring speed of moving object A from moving object B becomes inconsequential. If the police vehicle is driving at 65mph (the limit) and you're 10mph faster, that means you're over the speed limit.
I think France uses this system. Also there was a huge uproar on the news of potential introduction of it in Poland. Mostly because it's so effective.
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