this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2025
130 points (96.4% liked)

Fuck Cars

16648 readers
1003 users here now

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 CivilYou may not agree on ideas, but please do not be needlessly rude or insulting to other people in this community.

2. No hate speechDon't discriminate or disparage people on the basis of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sexuality.

3. Don't harass peopleDon'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 topicThis community is about cars, their externalities in society, car-dependency, and solutions to these.

5. No repostsDo 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:

Recommended communities:

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/44712264

These up-eds usually complain that photo radar would be fine if the radar worked properly. This one doesn't even do that. It just complains that speed limits aren't fair and now drivers have to change their behavior. jfc

It is true that drivers can avoid such tickets by sticking to the posted speed limits, but it is also true that drivers are hardly ever expected to strictly observe those limits.

...

It’s like the generally accepted contract between drivers and police – just drive at a reasonable speed and you’ll be fine – has been broken.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-photo-radar-is-becoming-increasingly-common-that-doesnt-make-it-any/

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Humanius@lemmy.world 28 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Both of these can be solved with policy.

If you make it so that the institution that determines where the cameras will be placed doesn't stand to financially benefit from them, that reduces the incentive to turn them into revenue generating machines.

And if you issue fines based on income, which is already the case in countries like Finland and Switzerland, you also solve the unfairness of the fines.

[–] Demdaru@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Oi, fuck off from the first one. Make them incentivised as heck to gain financially - they will then place them everywhere they sniff money, which is everywhere limits are broken.

[–] Humanius@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

The goal should be to improve safety, not benefit financially.

Placing speed cameras is a tool in your belt to achieve that, but it's not the only one.
Other alternatives are narrower lanes, speed bumps, trees and objects closer to the road, etc.

But if more cameras means more revenue for the institution in charge of road safety, then that pushes them to not actually fix the reason why people are speeding in the first place. Because that would lower their revenue.

Edit: Here in the Netherlands it is the public ministry who determines where the cameras are located. And the police issues other traffic fines.

However the money from fines is going into the general national budget (just like a tax). Neither the public ministry, nor the ministry of safety who runs the police, gets more money for more fines issued.

This means that their priority is to improve road safety and not maximize revenue.

[–] FireRetardant@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

We need money to vastly overhaul the dangerous design of roads. I'm not too upset if that is partially paid for by people breaking the speed limit.

[–] squaresinger@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

I get what you mean, but it's not quite correct.

For example, one situation I have seen in real life: You are on a road with speed limit 100km/h. There's a bend to the right with bad visibility, and right around the bend is a speed limit 30km/h and a speed camera right next to it. This situation is propbably financially great, but from a safety aspect it's really not.

It would be much better to gradually decrease the speed limit (e.g. 100, 70, 50, 30) over a longer distance and where there's better visibility.

In fact, if placing the signs, placing the radars and collecting the fines are handled by the same department, it's likely that they will purposely create dangerous situations like that to collect more fines.

That's why it should be three separate departments with separate goals:

  • One handles placing safe speed limits with the goal to increase safety.
  • One handles placing the cameras with the goal to reduce the amount of people going over the speed limits.
  • One handles maintaining the cameras and collecting fines.
[–] ChonkyOwlbear@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Poloticians don't see this as a problem to solve. They see it as the solution to holes in their budget.

[–] newaccountwhodis@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] ChonkyOwlbear@lemmy.world -2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Call it dumb all you want, but it's true.

[–] infinitesunrise@slrpnk.net 2 points 1 year ago

If it's worth complaining about then it's probably worth getting involved.