Reading the actual response from his police managers I think what is more needed are the "Abolish Qualified Immunity Act" and the "Cleanup Thoroughly Police Corruption Act" , in addition to the "Hire Professional And Responsible Police Officers Act".
The program allowed the DOT to make drivers with more than 15 speed camera or 5 red light camera tickets in a year to take a safe driving course or have their car siezed. The DOT only took action against a small fraction of eligible offenders however.
More: https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2023/09/22/analysis-dangerous-ve...
Relatively small increases in speed dramatically increase the stopping distance and as such the danger of driving. Especially with a huge truck like that. That's why Amsterdam (with much more food traffic) has recently reduced speed limits a lot.
> At 30km/h, the stopping distance of a car is 13 metres. At 50km/h it’s more than double at 27 metres. That 20km/h reduction is the crucial difference between a pedestrian or cyclist surviving the impact of an accident – at 30km/h it’s estimated that 95 per cent of pedestrians would emerge relatively unscathed.
https://www.intertraffic.com/news/road-safety/amsterdam-30-s...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CROW_Design_Manual_for_Bicycle...
Just want to be sure you have a logically consistent position here.
This angers me. Police officers are granted special privileges that ordinary citizens are not, and should be held to higher standards of conduct both on the job and off. In a just world, police officers would be exemplar citizens while wearing the uniform and while not. If they are not, how can we trust them to wield special privileges and authority over us?
In general when the stakes are higher and the ambiguity of outcome is less clear, secondary signals become more important.
Concretely: I don't give a shit if my housecleaner doesn't make their own bed as long as they make mine; the outcome I need is easy to verify and the stakes are fairly low so the secondary signal doesn't matter very much. Conversely, I care a lot if the therapist I'm relying on to help me manage my depression is visibly unable to manage their own; the outcome I need has a slow feedback loop and the stakes are high so I'm much more likely to rely on secondary signals like "is this person able to manage their own mood successfully?"
It's broadly related to their line of work, and it's reasonable (in aggregate) to assume it impacts their work. They may in fact be fine, individuals vary, but in bulk you have to work with the best information you have.
Of course, with the advent of AI-enhanced surveillance and "smart" cars, we have have to have a separate traffic court for machines.
Then snowflake SJW machine-huggers will demand a machine Bill of Rights ...
Nevermind. ;-)
ya don't say
(sincerely, ex-resident)
> State law classifies camera-based tickets as mere violations, and they don’t add any points to a driver’s record, even though exceeding the speed limit by 11 miles per hour is worth four points on a license — but only if the offender is caught by a cop instead of a camera. Just three of those tickets suspends a driver’s license, but Giovansanti can keep on driving.
While I imagine it’s reasonable to assume “one vehicle per licensed driver” across much of America, that assumption seems much less reliable in NYC, where space is at an extreme premium and large families often share space. Can’t punish Mom for Dad’s speeding habit just because the car’s in her name. Plus, that doesn’t get Dad off the road!
And it doesn’t really seem cost-effective (or politically viable) to build out an elaborate appeal system to litigate which human was driving every single time. Or to layer some kind of AI facial recognition onto the cameras. No. Bad hackers. :)
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/16/nyregion/mathew-bianchi-n...
In the UK speeding tickets get you 3 points (or more if you're really over like 50+ in a 30).
Get 12 points in a 3 year period and you are banned from driving.
I thought that the US had something similar for "moving violations" (rather than say parking).
Is the penalty for ignoring the law seriously just a fine (i.e. if you're rich you aren't affected)?
they want to avoid giving you points on your license just because your kid/spouse/friend/whatever was speeding.
if these tickets were issued via a cop, rather than a camera, they would be 4 points each.
You can still point the finger at someone else when you get the ticket in the mail. Or just put a bunch of question marks in reply as it is on the State to prove their case, not for you to snitch on your own bad driving habits.
At least that is how it works in the state I live in.
If you are driving:
You say "Me", then they give you the points
You lie, say it "Bob", then you're guilty of perverting the course of justice. They then write to Bob,
If Bob agrees, then he's also guilty of perverting the course of justice, but most of the time you'll both get away with it.
If Bob disagrees, then they look more into it.
If you refuse to answer then you're guilty of not saying who was driving the car, a completely separate offence to the original speeding one, and one which is typically more serious
In the US you can mow down a child, drive away, and despite people having your plates and giving them to the cops, they can't actually arrest you because it was only your car which was used to kill someone?
I certainly support civil liberties, but they need to be balanced against the government's strong interest in preventing the bloodshed that comes from the reckless operation of vehicles.
Fine should be scaled to your income and have an escalating multiplier for reoffense within the same category of offense with a cool down period of a few years if they don't break the law.
I've brought this up many times online and people usually reply with something like "lots of people who have no income on paper but are wealthy speed" and a recent solution that I've seen posted is to scale the fine to the value of the vehicle.
Quite often fines are a pretty limp and ineffective way of modulating an individual's behaviour which is ultimately a choice by society.
We can make a better choice there to induce the behaviour that we want from antisocial people.
My country - Poland - implemented this part a couple of years ago. Specifically a reoffense in the same category within two years results in a higher tier fine - about twice the usual amount. Fines were also adjusted for inflation after over 20 years of being nominally the same.
The rate of cars passing me doing 180km/h+, so 40km/h+ above the local 140km/h limit, fell drastically.
Particularly speeding cars in poor condition (like dangling linkages etc.) vanished. Nobody wants a ticket that's worth more than the car.
Sweet. My vanagon has a license to speed... not on highways though, it can barely hit the speedlimit.
> Like all drivers in New York State, Giovansanti is immune to consequences as long as he pays the $50 tickets
So he's allowed to do this. Why are we talking about it?
My wife worked for a County government agency in Ohio. Her job duties included driving. She was required to report all traffic citations or crashes, regardless of when they occurred (during or outside of work hours), to the County and sign an affidavit annually attesting to such reporting.
If she exceeded a threshold of violations in a year the County's insurer would refuse to cover her. Because her job duties included driving this was considered grounds for termination.
The laws says if you do this, you owe a fine. If you pay the fine, it's following the law.
Of course not, the punishment is actually what happens because you disregarded and didn’t follow the law.
However this article reads more like hyperbolic slander.
(remember that a statement has to be false to be slander)
Because he doesn't need to nor should he respond to a blogger? We continually point out that no one should ever talk to the police, the same absolutely goes for the media, particularly when you're a civil servant.
There's certainly issues with speeding laws and enforcement, but at the end of the day the US is so car-centric that removing someone's license for dangerous driving can severely impact their ability to get to work, etc.
I have been on both sides of it. I have been the speeder who can drive very safely, and much earlier than that I have been the one to get hit by a car on a street. If the car had been going faster, or if it had been an SUV or a truck, I could have been less than lucky.
I settle for a middle position, which is that the speed limit should be no less than 35 mph on most streets, with heavy mandated use of automated collision avoidance systems. Moreover, I think that all pedestrian collisions, no matter how small, must be investigated thoroughly, with a hard action taken to minimize such an incident. School zones and other low-speed zones are a complete moneygrubbing racket because we already use schoolbuses which have protections.
Bicyclists must be mandated to wear light-colored high-visibility clothing, reflective gear, and a helmet, otherwise their bicycle should be confiscated.
The problem is the vast majority of drivers overestimate their skills and underestimate the risks. Many people are also emotional drivers and will drive faster when angry or stressed. A great combo.
> I settle for a middle position, which is that the speed limit should be no less than 35 mph on most streets, with heavy mandated use of automated collision avoidance systems.
So what are you going to do about all the millions of existing cars out there without collision avoidance systems?
Given all this, the easiest solution is for people to drive the speed limit, especially in urban areas with pedestrians and bicyclists.
If you really want to gas it, go to a racetrack or buy a motorcycle and donate your brain.
In my experience, the only thing that really feels too fast in a car is going faster than you've become used to driving.
And yeah, how someone talks about cyclists is always a tell.
Why does it need to be so contrived when there's empirical evidence from many other countries in the world about measures which do make traffic safer for everyone involved? Why can't the USA look at that and implement what has worked? It doesn't even need to do the heavy lifting, it's been done, just improve measures which have already saved countless lives in other countries...
Or don't and keep killing 30-50k people every year in traffic.
> School zones and other low-speed zones are a complete moneygrubbing racket because we already use schoolbuses which have protections.
What does this even mean? Does every kid ride a bus where you are? Do your school buses have seat belts and crumple zones?
The leading cause of death for car occupants is head injuries, I assume you believe that all car occupants must wear a helmet.
All cars needless to say need to be bright orange
Any infringement should have the car crushed.
As for helmets in cars, yes, it's a particularly good idea for small cars that have a lower collision safety score. An appropriate helmet should be used that does not obstruct viewing mirrors or the blind spot. Pedestrians too can benefit from a helmet.
However I can understand that slower speeds can reduce catastrophic results if a tire blows.
I suppose it's akin to wearing seatbelts: As long as you're driving reasonably around other traffic and only speeding when you're by yourself, then the law primarily is there to protect the one person.
Edit: is there something wrong with my comment?
Statistically if you speed the chances of a mishap increase. It's just a fact of observation. You are making a rationalization that statistics don't apply to you, and HN has judged you accordingly.
This article reads like a Kiwi Farms thread. Just saying. I'm not a fan of what they do, but that's what came to mind. And when people do undesirable things, documenting them for public awareness is important. But how deep is too deep when it comes to freelance investigative journalism of this type?
e: critically I'm _agreeing_ that the reporting is important, and I'm not passing judgement either way here, only making a comparison and posing a question
For investigative journalism, if it even qualifies as that, this is pretty shallow. It's good work but it's just some public data and a couple hours of work, not a deep invasive investigation. It also is not freelance, this is a staff reporter for a decades-old publication.
when the subject is a cop? no such thing.