From Reason‘s “Brickbats,” July 2006 print edition:
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants devices placed on vehicles that would light up if they exceed the speed limit. Bloomberg got the idea from Singapore, where all taxis and trucks are so equipped.
…and where the canes run on time.
Evidently, Bloomberg has become so used to being chaffeured about that he’s either forgotten (or never knew) that there are times when acceleration is necessary for passing, merging, etc., and that preventing people from speeding on occasion will likely create more safety hazards than simply continuing to police speeders as the city presumably does now. That such nannystatist programs—proferred always in the name of public safety but used, primarily, as a way to increase revenues—continue cropping up, leads me to believe that what we really need is a device placed on Mayors that light up everytime these bored petty tyrants do something other than, say, cut the ribbon at some mall opening, or fire up the Bat signal, should the Penguin get all uppity.
That way, at least people will have time to hide their wallets.
That way, at least people will have time to hide their wallets.
Not if Bloomberg requires all wallets to be equipped with lights that go on when there’s money in them.
Which would boost the aftermarket as kill-switches for said lights become the thing to get.
word: about “It’s all about the safety-Nazis.”
Don’t mind the speeders. Go around.
But I would like to have my car equipped with a 2 billion-candle-power spotlight on the back to burn the retinae of tailgaters.
Somewhere in one of William Gibson’s later, more forgettable novels* named “Idoru”, the is a scene in a car in Japan** where an annoying dashboard alarm sounds when you exceed the spped limit. An American asks what it is, and when it is explained, he just can’t understand why people don’t just rip out the speeding alarms, because that’s what Americans would do.
*Has anyone noticed that, post-Sprawl trilogy, Gibson keeps re-writing the same novel? He’s getting better at it, though, “Pattern Recognition” was his best attempt yet (IMHO) of writing the same novel.
**Don’t all Gibson novels include a few chapters set in Japan?
Why don’t they just lobotomize us all and eliminate the middle man?
I lived in Singapore and there is another set of reasons where this works there and nowhere else.
At the time I was living there in the early nineties, you have to pay 100,000 Singapore dollars to buy a license for your car on the road. So consider that the people you see driving are all upper middle class and above. Also, there were cameras on every street corner and elevator and public area. As well, stop light cameras on every single intersection. I was paranoid just to drive. As well, they have that UK style of driving on the wrong side of the road.
But the ticket thing was for commercial vehicles only.
An interesting story about Gibson. He was in the middle of writing his first novel and he was curious about the movie blade runner. He siad that he left the theatre in tears because the movie was bigger and better than anything he was writing at the time. He almost quit writing for good.
I prefer Phillip K Dick. Much better and earlier.
It reminds me of Demolition Man where computerized Dr. Cocktoes ticketed you for cursing and Stallone wiped his ass with them. Where’s Wesley Snipes?
It seems that Bloomberg comes up with one of these ideas every few weeks.
Skinner: [talking with his teachers]
Just think what we can buy with that money…
History books that know how the Korean War came out.
Math books that don’t have that base six crap in them!
And a state-of-the-art detention hall [holds up a scale model]
where children are held in place with magnets.
Teacher: [to no one in particular] Magnets. Always with the magnets…
—-
not yet, but just wait.
Why not just save themselves the trouble and go ahead an require full GPS telemetry devices installed on all vehicles? Then you know not only how fast someone is going, but you know WHERE they’re at and where they’re headed. This eliminates the need for LoJack, OnStar and Bloomberg’s stupid little light among other things.
Can you imagine just being able to MAIL people for citations for speeding violations, and catching them 100% of the time?
It’d be heaven on Earth.
TW: Distopian – OK, not really, but I wouldn’t have been at all surprised…
If you’re not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about.
In Massachusetts we already have lights on cars that light up whenever the driver is speeding. We call ‘em “taillights”.
The truly odd thing is that there is virtually no enforcement of road rules in NYC. In the 10 years I’ve been here, I have never (not once) seen a person get pulled over.
The closest is an ex-girlfriend who got pulled over for “changing lanes without signalling,” an obvious line of BS. The real reason she was pulled over is that she had New Jersey plates on St. Patrick’s day. The cops undoubtedly figured she’d had a drink or two and would be an easy DUI bust. They were wrong, but she still got the BS ticket.
Capt. Joe–what say you keep that “cameras everywhere” thing to yourself. Bloomie’s just the sort of prissy school marm to do something like that.
It sounds so archaic in this day and age. Why not have the car automatically report you for speeding?
Too late, they have them all over downtown London.
All the ones that I’ve read, yes.
So I’m not sure I understand how this is supposed to be workable, anyway. Now, I live in Kansas City, not New York, but in my four mile drive to work I go through speed zones of 35, 55, 45, 35, and 25 mph, in that order. Having visited New York a few times, I have a hard time believing that even New York taxis are confined only to an area of one speed limit. If that were true, it seems I would have had to change cabs to get from mid-town to JFK.
So, while it’s technologically feasible, it sure seems like it’d be a bit on the pricey side. Long run for a short slide, as they say.
Heh.
TW: country. Creepy.
Problem, however, is that this would almost certainly have a disproportionate impact on certain groups, thus rendering the program politically untenable and arguably unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment right not to have your interest group singled out as the scoff-laws they are.
See, Instapundit’s link to “racial profiling” by traffic cameras.
It would make a lot more sense to install red-light cameras, as long as they’re installed with safety in mind (making sure the yellow light is the right length). Red-light runners are a LOT more of a problem than people who drive 40 in a 35 zone.
JAA,
I tend to agree with you about the regularity of light runners, however I would (and am) against any “ticket cameras” at lights. I think it is wrong to hold the owner of the automobile accountable for the actions of the driver….and that is what would also happen if Bloomberg got his way. They do it with parking tickets now (I recently had one dismissed on that basis).
There really is a growing problem with “red light runners”. It’s almost as if red now is just a “suggestion”.
Problem, however, is that this would almost certainly have a disproportionate impact on certain groups, thus rendering the program politically untenable and arguably unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment right not to have your interest group singled out as the scoff-laws they are.
It would have a disproportionate impact on the middle-easterners who drive cabs.
rls, you could have the camera take the evidence, but have an officer stationed nearby who, when alerted, intercepts and tickets the actual driver.
I always thought a tax per honk (after say twelve free honks per years) would be a great boon to the City.
And I think red-light cameras should take video continuously, recording a few minutes in a loop. When someone runs the red light, the computer should automatically clip out the video from ten seconds before to ten seconds after. Then a judge could decide (if the ticket’s challenged) how much of a jerk the guy really was (was he the third one through the red light?).
JAA,
I don’t disagree with your premise…except that it is easy to identify the vehicle, but identifying the driver is the difficulty.
The driver commits the offense – the vehicle does not.
Here’s another great suggestion for all the idea geniuses, we could just make everybody walk. No speeding, no running red lights, no traffic accidents, no auto emissions, so everybody will be safe, ‘cuz it’s about public health & safety, right?
Dude!
Comissioner Gordon fires off the bat signal. Hell, I’m not even sure who the Mayor is…
Philistine.
SB: private
arrangement
And has already been proposed for the purpose of instituting a mileage tax.
http://economics.about.com/od/taxesandeconomicgrowth/a/mileage_tax.htm
tw: Money (really) after all, isn’t it always the money?
Instead of a light on the dashboard, how about a gizmo that cuts off the Internet connection whenever someone is about to post a mindless com
Dang, talk about ironic. My Internet connection just cut out on me in the middle of typing my last comment. What’s up w
That article’s dumb, and the phrase is useless, but the idea’s not ridiculous.
England might do things differently (doubt it), but where I live, they only put up the cameras at intersections that no one who can afford a lawyer drives through, then proudly announced itâ€â€once, then STFUâ€â€as “blue collar profiling.” In a perfectly predictable (and predicted) statistical non-accident, a third of the tickets go to black guys: ~1% of the population.
And no, they don’t run more red lights than the junior Paris Hilton types in my neighborhood do; the numbers came out when the cameras were proposed. But the local Democrat machine is dedicated to making life easier for Whitey however it can.
And yes, I’m serious.
That really sucks BoZ. Why don’t the people rise up and throw the bums out?
Tim’s point regarding NYC traffic enforcement is in line w/ what I’ve observed as well – there is none. In my experience, speeding isn’t a noticeable problem on surface streets.
Also, what proportion of vehicles in the city throughout the day are actually registered there?
Most of the people that I know who live in NYC either don’t own a vehicle, or use it primarily to leave the city. Cabs and commercial vehicles would be affected, but the majority of non-commercial vehicles may be registered elsewhere.
And the safety concerns may be well founded. Traffic engineers recognize that sign/signal saturation is actually a safety hazard. Adding a speed light, which doesn’t provide any useful information to other drivers, is a distraction at best, and may be confused for another type of signal.
* the danger of red-light cameras in an urban setting is that they’ll further increase rear-end collisions.
http://www.tfhrc.gov/safety/pubs/05049/
..and that’s todays lesson on traffic safety
On my visit to the UK two weeks ago my brother-in-law was showing us the country side in his car. There were signs that actually warned you that a speed camera was ahead. I thought that was useless until said brother-in-law explained that the cameras use license plate recognition software (as you know, big easy to read license plates). So what you say? Well, another mile or so down the road there’s another friggen radar station. It zaps your license plate again. They know exactly how long it takes a vehical to get from the first station to the second and if you’ve averaged your speed over the limit. It’s fricken evil.
Brits aren’t all that fond of these speed cameras either. http://www.speedcam.co.uk/index2.htm
Re: GPS squealers for cars
Yeah, baby, go right ahead. I’ve got a product all lined up – an in-line repeater to intercept the outgoing signal and limit the value in the speed field of the data squirt.
Million, I’m tellin’ ya! Freakin’ MILLIONS.
Of course, if they decide to start diffing the sequential position data and comparing, you’re toast. But that’s a pretty computationally expensive operation, and I doubt they’d bother.
rls-but this is what happens with parking tickets, no? When they go unpaid, it is the owner of the car that is in trouble. You can ask my mother-in-law about this.
Also, you don’t need to worry about fourth amendment problems.
Warning lights on the dashboard? Meh. Just a waste of tax dollars.
Connecting that warning light to a transmitter, with .1ms upload time, directly towards the police department mainframes? Yeah, that could cause a few problems… Such as the start of the little slippery slope that Orwell’s philosophical followers keep pointing at.
So sometimes us civil liberties absolutists are perfectly correct, eh Jeff?
i know, i’m not Jeff, but the phrase “broken clock” popped into my head.
How about we emulate the freaking Germans, who have it exactly right in this case.
Their cops give tickets to the assholes who loiter in the left lane on the autobahn. Drive as fast as you want, but pass on the left and get out of the way.
Worried about the lost revenue? I’d PAY to be able to drive like that here, even if it were only on the interstates. Of course, my purpose in life is not to run everyone else’s…
Actually, I think proponents of caning get a bum rap.
*rimshot*
Maybee,
That is true. I just recently had a parking ticket dismissed because of this. Out of town guests used one of my vehicles and apparently got a parking ticket down on the Plaza ($75.00). I went to court and asked for a trial. Everybody was flabbergasted. They couldn’t believe that I wanted a trial for a non moving violation.
I told the Judge that I did not park the car and since the ticket was issued to me, not the car, that I felt I had a legitimate defense and I could get a jury to agree with me. I offerred to give the Court the name and address of the person driving the car and they could reissue the ticket to him. The Judge dismissed the case, voiding the ticket.
rls- good for you.
My mother in law did a similar thing, although there were hundreds of dollars of unpaid parking tickets she was defending herself against. Tickets my sister-in-law had failed to tell her about.
The judge dismissed the case when she stood before him and said, “Your honor…do you have a teenage daughter?”
Well, if you’ve read me long enough you’d know that I’m pretty ubiquitously on the side of civil liberties and against encroaching nannystatism.
Which is different, I think, that being in favor of a strong defense and the President’s judicious use of Article II powers during a war that received bi-partisan support after 911 (and even with regard to the Iraq front).
So if you feel the need to make my that into a punchline, have at it. But for me, the government’s primary role is protection of the homeland. Not a war on drugs, or a war on contraception, or a war on potential speeders, or a war on fat, or a war on tobacco.
So where I am willing to grant latitude to government is on issues that redound to protecting the homeland, esp. during a time of war. Whereas civil liberties absolutists—or if you’d prefer, the people who like to set themselves up as such—either can’t seem to (or don’t think it advisable to) distinguish between smoking bans and obesity taxes, and using the NSA to monitor communications between terrorists that happen to connect inside the country.
While such rigid adherence to civil liberties might be seen as laudable by some, to me it suggests that one is trying to place one’s ideological beliefs above matters of immediate significance—and they are able to do so, further, because they know others will make the tough choices for them.
I don’t for a minute believe people like you or Greenwald, et al don’t want the NSA doing its job; instead, I believe you know that they are going to do the job no matter what, and so it becomes easy then to point and take the easy position of civil liberties absolutist. Buys you some libertarian street cred, certainly, but in my book, it marks you as someone who cares more about how you present yourself than about how we protect the country most efficiently and with the least amount of intrusion to our way of life.
All of which is a long way of saying, what, you want a medal or something?
The pitch for Bloomberg’s biopic: The Nanny Meets Godzilla.
What is with this guy? Is he the city’s babysitter?
So you’re one of those ‘patriot act for terrorism not general law enforcement’ types? sounds cool.
I don’t have to say it……do I?
IGNORE ACTHOLE
“All Single-Occupant Vehicles Banned on Metro Atlanta Roads. Blacks, Hispanics, Women Affected Most.”
I used to live in Singapore. We would just disable the light and damned annoying beeping device from the work van.
Like any other sensible person would do. *grin*
I live in Singapore now, so I thought I might provide a bit of background. Take it as you like.
1) The flashing light is on the top of the lorry, not the dashboard. Doesn’t exist on cars.
2) Inside, there is a noise-maker that chimes a bell-like ‘bing-bong’ every 3 seconds when you exceed the speed limit.
3) The speed limit which you need to exceed to have the thing go off is the expressway limit. It’s physically set in the vehicle, and doesn’t change depending on the limit in the area where you are driving at the time.
4) Most Singaporeans ignore the noise, and drive whatever speed they want. But it is a fairly small island (I can bicycle across the whole thing in two hours, even with stop lights) and with traffic congestion it isn’t like there’s a whole lot of reason to go anywhere at full speed.
5) There are regular speed cameras, and red-light cameras. They are obviously marked, with large signs before the area. Sometimes they mark the area without installing the camera.
6) Commenter ‘Capt. Joe’ is correct. In order to be able to use the roads, you have to purchase a COE (Certificate of Entitlement), which can be as much as the cost of the vehicle.
BTW, the COE is a very capitalist institution, if you accept the fee in the first place. The government contracts out the job of collecting the fees to the highest bidder (sealed bids), who then sets the price of the COE depending upon how much they had to pay to purchase the rights. The bidding price is based upon the perceived popularity of the type of vehicle under discussion. A few years back, someone got the rights to a car make for S$1 (about 66 cents).
The COE is good for 10 years, after which it has to be renewed. Call it an upfront road tax.
Personally, I ride a bicycle here as much as possible, which puts me in a minority but also keeps me in exercise. So I don’t notice it much.
Mayor Hill…yes, I was a dorky kid.
Jeff, this kind of crap is why I’m more convinced than ever that we need a constitutional amendment allowing constituants to tar and feather politicians.
Capt. Joe:
Re: Gibson and Blade Runner, close, but not quite right. See this for the accurate story of Gibson’s reaction to “Blade Runner”:
http://www.brmovie.com/FAQs/BR_FAQ_BR_Influence.htm
“Blade Runner” was almost, but not quite, the first cyberpunk movie. “Escape from New York” was the first, IMO.
Bloomberg is a nanny-state idiot, yes. But as for the chauffeur thing, he takes the subway to City Hall every morning.
Thanks, Ryk. That’s informative stuff.