• MisterFrog@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    Gonna be downvoted, because apparently this is car brain central, but the amount of mental gymnastics people will do to make red light camera enforcement “bad” is crazy.

    The US’ private company control over these cameras notwithstanding.

    Fuck me, so many people die on on roads, and especially at intersections.

    • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      The city I work for put up Flock cameras with specific instructions from Council that they were only to be used for identification of cars flagged in active warrants.

      Within a week of their installation, police used the cameras to track the movements of someone who filed a complaint.

      • MisterFrog@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        Sounds like a police/privacy problem, not the idea of having cameras at all.

        Police should need a warrant to access the videos.

        The software should not log licence plates of every single car that comes past.

        The software should be open source and developed by the public sector.

        I agree what’s in place in the US is a privacy nightmare, but the idea of having cameras in general isn’t fundamentally bad.

        Skill issue USA, git gud.

    • mojofrododojo@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      The US’ private companies

      this is entirely the problem, because they’re turning over info to ICE and other agencies and it’s being used oppressively.

      • MisterFrog@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        Hence my carve out. I don’t support the privacy nightmare the US has.

        I do support road safety cameras in general, if managed properly.

        People don’t have the right to have no consequences for their dangerous behaviour.

        • mojofrododojo@lemmy.world
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          5 days ago

          I do support road safety cameras in general, if managed properly.

          yeah that’s the rub. what municipality do you trust to manage them properly in this day and age? I’ve seen horror stories from all over the US, UK…

          I fucking hate, absolutely despise the vroom vroom dickheads who make these technologies desirable. I want them to be held accountable but am not sure it’s worth the ice goons and yokel yokels who will abuse their capabilities.

    • yourgodlucifer@sh.itjust.works
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      7 days ago

      I just don’t think having this kind of surveillance state apparatus is ever worth it I don’t want the government or private companies tracking my every move.

      I don’t even own a car and I want these cameras gone.

      • MisterFrog@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        I don’t want the government or private companies tracking my every move

        This is an issue with how the cameras are operated. I’m taking issue with people complaining that these cameras exist at all.

        People claiming no system could ever be privacy-preserving aren’t being very imaginative.

        I agree the surveillance state is bad, but taking a picture of someone running a red light and sending them a fine is a good thing, sorry.

        What’s bad is allowing cameras to passively record every single licence plate at all times and store that information. A speed or red light camera should only take a photo/video when it detects someone speeding/running a red light, and no other information should be stored.

    • RedditRefugee69@lemmynsfw.com
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      7 days ago

      People enjoy driving dangerously. They don’t see it as risky because they haven’t been killed in a crash yet.

      Cops enforcing traffic? Bad.

      Cameras enforcing traffic? Bad.

      • dreadbeef@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        6 days ago

        very few people would complain about traffic police if the cops didn’t carry guns or were not trained to pit maneuver you for not wearing a seatbelt

        • MisterFrog@lemmy.world
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          6 days ago

          So, we agree. This is specifically a US police problem.

          But many people argue against speed cameras and red light cameras in general, as if they have the right to endanger people’s lives.

          Pit maneuvers are insane, and aren’t done in most other civilised countries.

          • dreadbeef@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            5 days ago

            No, this is a transportation problem as well. Cameras arent a solution to the problem of too many cars and carcentric infrastructure design lol, its literally a bandaid solution that only affects the poor negatively and no one else. People who complain about the cameras have every right to complain.

            Before any camera is installed, cities should instead be spending that money on reworking street design and getting more buses and banning more cars. Capitalism fixes these problems by letting poor people foot the bill, socialism solves this by making rich people pay their fair share. Are you against taxing the rich instead for safer roads by banning cars on bus-only streets?

            • MisterFrog@lemmy.world
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              5 days ago

              Funnily enough, this is my even more preferred solution haha

              I am for public transport centric cities, where you can safely walk across streets, and cities are designed for people, not cars.

              I am 100% for everything you’ve said, including socialism.

              It’s just I’m also living in the world as it currently is, and if we’re gonna have car-centric hell holes, I at least want to make breaking the rules have consequences, so car centrism is A BIT safer. Income based fines to boot.

              Most certainly is a band-aid, though. Do agree.

              But I just get pissed when dickheads think speeding isn’t a bit deal, or red-light cameras are just for revenue raising, as if driving a massive hunk of metal is a serious responsibility, not to be taken lightly.

              • dreadbeef@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                5 days ago

                You can complain, but youre getting mad at the symptoms and the cameras are only a solution to the symptoms and dont address any real problem. People should be holding their governors, mayors, city councils, and police departments 100% responsible for poor planning and decision making and not applaud them for a band aid solution like cameras. The proper response on cameras to your government should be: Try again, with effort this time. People should be visiting neighborhood meetings to talk about these problems cameras instead of getting angry at people running lights, all Im saying. Lets direct that energy at the real problems and the people who are the only ones capable of making the necessary changes instead of just picking the pickets of the poor please.

  • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    I can condone taking down pedestrian surveillance, but people who drive cars should follow the rules or get fucked.

  • glitchdx@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    There seems to be 2 main camps in this thread.

    Fuck the police, and fuck shitty drivers.

    Both camps are correct.

  • jjjalljs@ttrpg.network
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    7 days ago

    On the one hand, omnipresent surveillance is bad and ripe for abuse.

    On the other, I feel like the haphazard and selective enforcement of traffic laws by police officers is also really bad. Cops can selectively enforce laws so poor people or black people or whatever out-group suffers more. A machine should be impartial.

    On the last hand, no traffic enforcement is probably going to get people killed. So that’s not desirable.

    Also, fines are problematic. Fines should probably scale with wealth, but also it shouldn’t be a revenue source because that’s a perverse incentive.

    • BanMe@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      Some countries do scalable fines, so you’ll see headlines about a rich person being given a $75k speeding ticket or something.

      I do agree with the concept of traffic laws, but I went back to my home state of Iowa recently and it was seriously comical, cameras everywhere, stoplights but just randomly along the road, everyone was driving exactly the speed limit and I was going insane. Having humans involved in policing does introduce biases but it also introduces common sense and good judgement.

      I like the idea of mobile camera units, so bad spots can be focused on, people understand that it’s a bad spot, but it doesn’t turn into a permanent fixture.

  • ToiletFlushShowerScream@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    Government surveillance tracking device you mean? Enrich the local cops devices? Over half of violations monies collected goes to the corporations that market them to local and state officials with lavish dinners and vacations devices? Financial incentive to calibrate them to flag innocent drivers knowing there is little to no recourse against the company devices? 5.5 lbs you say?

  • infinitesunrise@slrpnk.net
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    7 days ago

    Friendly reminder that no technology is ever intrinsically good or bad, that is determined by who wields it and to what end.

  • Eh-I@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    I just don’t think there’s that much copper in a camera. That’s a lot of weight for a camera by itself.

  • DylanMc6 [any, any]@lemmy.ml
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    7 days ago

    surveillance like this violates the non-aggression principle (which, being someone who’s left-libertarian, should be rewritten and reinterpreted to say ‘DON’T use force or coercion on anyone, except for self-defense, or the defense of your community’)

  • melfie@lemy.lol
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    7 days ago

    Sounds about like the techbros. Tech isn’t there yet, but let’s deploy it anyway and start making money.

  • dan69@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    only reason you shouldn’t is have accountability for maybe not you, but for the bad drivers.

  • Gammelfisch@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    The USA needs more speed traps (all sorts), red light cameras, traffic circles and draconian fines to prevent the undisciplined idiots from killing people.

    • Oxysis/Oxy@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      8 days ago

      Ea Nasir is a really interesting case study of how one piece of information can be interpreted in two completely different ways.

      One interpretation, and the one most people know, is that the authors of the clay tablets complaints are legitimate.

      The other is that Ea Nasir kept them as a record of people attempting to harm his reputation. So he could remember who to avoid doing business with in the future.

      • tomiant@piefed.social
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        6 days ago

        Why don’t y’all just get to machine learn all those fucking tablets you dug up, like hundreds of thousands of them, and train a fucking AI on that shit and tell us what it says instead of sitting here being a besserwisser online, HMM? If there was one good cause for AI, cuneiform would be it. Just god damned saying.

        Edit: just btw I happen to know that the problem is mainly the first training set, you need cuneiformers to correctly give the answers so the model knows what to train on, and there’s like seven people in the world who do that, but I’m thinking, what if we trained an AI model on all the cuneiform we do know? Hit me up for proposals, I’m serious about this shit

      • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
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        7 days ago

        Also ancient Sumer had a pretty decent legal system for it’s time, it’s entirely possible Ea-Nasir was keeping the tablets for a possible court case. So the ancient equivalent of saving texts from a shit customer.

    • tomiant@piefed.social
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      7 days ago

      Suppliuppliuma II accepts your proposition, in spite of wearing nothing but an over-sized bath towel.