view the rest of the comments
Fuck Cars
A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
Rules
1. Be Civil
You may not agree on ideas, but please do not be needlessly rude or insulting to other people in this community.
2. No hate speech
Don't discriminate or disparage people on the basis of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sexuality.
3. Don't harass people
Don't follow people you disagree with into multiple threads or into PMs to insult, disparage, or otherwise attack them. And certainly don't doxx any non-public figures.
4. Stay on topic
This community is about cars, their externalities in society, car-dependency, and solutions to these.
5. No reposts
Do not repost content that has already been posted in this community.
Moderator discretion will be used to judge reports with regard to the above rules.
Posting Guidelines
In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:
- [meta] for discussions/suggestions about this community itself
- [article] for news articles
- [blog] for any blog-style content
- [video] for video resources
- [academic] for academic studies and sources
- [discussion] for text post questions, rants, and/or discussions
- [meme] for memes
- [image] for any non-meme images
- [misc] for anything that doesn’t fall cleanly into any of the other categories
Speed cameras were introduced in my area. It caused accidents to go up, not down. Ex: Person A sees the camera and slows down, but person B doesn’t and now swerves to avoid them while maintaining speed. Or doesn’t and just rear ends them. The cameras got deactivated. Speed traps aren’t a good answer.
FYI, it's "eg:", not Ex.
As described, the cause of the accident is driving too fast for the conditions, inattentive driving and possibly following too close. Every US jurisdiction I have driven in requires a driver to maintain speed and spacing that allows them to stop safely if the vehicle in front of them comes to a sudden stop. If a driver needs to take evasive action to avoid a vehicle that is not stopped, but just slowing, that is one shitty driver. We are all better off if individuals like that are ticketed and get points on their license.
This is one of the reasons places have taken out red light cameras, as well. It was causing people to slam on the brakes.
It was causing people to stop at red lights? Can't have that can we.
It causes people to stop at the first sign of a yellow light, whether or not it was actually safe to or not.
Many cities who implemented red light cameras also deliberately decreased the length of yellow lights in order to boost tickets.
Rear-end collisions are significantly safer than T-bone collisions though.
Sucks for those affected but reduces deaths nonetheless. A fivefold increase in rear-end collisions doesn't offset the benefit from even just a 10% reduction in T-bones. Put them up everywhere and people will necessarily get used to them. These cameras exist everywhere around here in Germany and no one really slams on their breaks.
Besides, why haven't you created norms for the duration of the yellow light based on the speed limit of a road? I feel like that's something every country should have.
@half_fiction @fuckwit_mcbumcrumble A greater raw number of crashes is sometimes observed when a new red light camera is introduced, but severe injuries and fatalities go down. The crashes prevented are of more severe types, like t-bone crashes or hitting people, while any extra crashes are the rear end variety which produces few major injuries. Plus, rear end crashes are 100% the fault of the trailing driver following too closely. After an introductory period, more people learn not to tailgate.
@half_fiction @fuckwit_mcbumcrumble Tailgating is a ridiculously stupid behavior that far too many US drivers routinely engage in. It's like nobody had physics or driver's ed in high school. On any given day, 1/4 of the drivers are following the vehicle in front of them at a speed and distance that would not allow them to stop if the car in front encountered an obstacle and had to stop or slow suddenly. It's completely preventable and cars can and should be designed to prevent it.
This assumes you can see and recognize the camera. Driving in sf there's so many other things you're watching out for, and the streets/sidewalks have so much other shit going on that you'd be hard pressed to spot the camera.
Also like someone else mentioned it could increase overall incidents but if those are minor, like getting rear ended, it's well worth reducing pedestrian fatalities.
NYC implemented speeding cameras and saw a 94% reduction in speeding and a 14% reduction in injuries and fatalities
Im Brazil all speed cameras have signs before them, so drivers can know the camera is in front and slow down. They are installed strategically, to slow down drivers before conflict points or pedestrian crossings.