Put down the bottle and back away slowly.....

[JScott]

Orwellian and almost unbelievable. The world is rapidly becoming a very weird place. I have the tea, who wants to meet me at the harbor??

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... ching.html

[DavidG]

Wow. Not anywhere near as invasive or intrusive as, say, rendition, but this targets the masses. Loss of liberties, whether imposed by governments or terrorists, are still loss of liberties.

[Jay Winton]

wow...I wonder if there will be a voice that says: the bottle you are buying received a WS of 89 and a WA score of 88 therefore we recommend it....?

[DavidG]

Too funny, Jay! Or maybe even a snide comment like "$350 for an RP-96? Point-chaser!" or "Better not let the Missus see you come home with that!" for case purchases...

[Jay Winton]

actually, I'm not sure it's funny at all. The UK has decided that its citizens' right to personal privacy is not important.

[DavidG]

That part's not funny...

[William P]

Did anyone here object when about six years or so, the government allowed the NSA to install the capacity to listen in on every domestic phone call made. Or object when they did began to listen to conversations without parameter of relevancy. Let's look in the mirror before we look down our noses at the UK.

Bill

[Comte Flaneur]

Truly scary - Britain has become a police state - there are more surveillance cameras per head of population than in any other country - democratic or not - there is also talk of the local councils monitoring the number of empies you leave outside for recycling.

Scott I took the liberty of posting this on a UK wine site, attributed to you - they obviously need to know to

[alchemeus]

Bill,

I did.

[William P]

Alch, well done. Few understand that once a right or freedom is lost, no matter what the climate, it is never retrieved.

[alchemeus]

Bill,

Not to start a political mish mash, but I honestly can't remember a thing Bush did right. From unilateral breaking of a missile treaty with Russia to total disregard of Climate Change to unacceptable low numbers of military in the Afghanistan War to the bogus invasion of Iran to the tax cuts to the continuation of stupid deregulation to the pressure for 'Christian' ideals in telecommunications. Honestly, the worst 8 years of leadership I can remember, and I remember Eisenhower.

No. There is no discussion on this. The above are facts. Feel free to email me any idiotic hate notes.

[DavidG]

Did anyone here object when about six years or so, the government allowed the NSA to install the capacity to listen in on every domestic phone call made. Or object when they did began to listen to conversations without parameter of relevancy. Let's look in the mirror before we look down our noses at the UK.

Bill

There were plenty of people here voicing objections to that. They were routinely shouted down as being soft on terror.

[JScott]

Did anyone here object when about six years or so, the government allowed the NSA to install the capacity to listen in on every domestic phone call made. Or object when they did began to listen to conversations without parameter of relevancy. Let's look in the mirror before we look down our noses at the UK.

Bill

Not remotely looking down my nose at the UK; this is a worldwide phenomenon and very scary. Actually after I saw this my wife and I were discussing that very thing (wiretapping without cause). We were also talking about how it's not just government but industry, too. Retail chains track your purchases, sell the data to others for "targeted advertizing," etc. There is in this last stimulus bill a provision regarding electronic data gathering from medical records. We have become very blase about personal freedoms. It's apparently 1984 now.....

[JScott]

Bill,

Not to start a political mish mash, but I honestly can't remember a thing Bush did right. ......

He left!

[JimHow]

A few years ago the Lewiston Police Department was experimenting with placing cameras at certain intersections that activated and photographed license plates that went through red lights, which were followed with written warning notices with a grainy picture of the back of your car. The local news interviewed me on what I thought about it and I told them I was uncomfortable with the surveillance, the police chief got all bent out of shape. They've done away with the program, though.

[JScott]

Jim, that program is alive and well in a number of places, including Canada, if I'm remembering correctly. I have a problem with it, too, in the sense that they're randomly assuming everyone is guilty - and taking a small piece of their privacy and freedom - to catch the few that are. As David said, it's not rendition, but it's creeping incrementalism while we're all hardly noticing.

[JCNorthway]

The City of Chicago employs this approach to identifying and ticketing red light offenders. I am not one for government intrusions into private lives, but I don't have problem with these cameras. In my mind they are acting as an extension of the "arm of the law" without an officer having to be physically present. And since what they are photographing is happening on public property, I don't think there is a argument on right to privacy. I can see scenarious where photos and filming could be taken to an extreme where it does cross the line, but I don't see that as the case in this situation.

Jon

[JimHow]

I don't know if they are still doing it, but a few years back the Maine State Police were staking out the parking lots of the New Hampshire liquor stores right over the Maine border, checking license plates and radioing to their counterparts over the bridge if anyone buying more than two liters of booze was coming into Maine in violation of the law.

[DavidG]

At some point, if we sacrifice enough freedoms in the name of protecting them, we reach a point where there aren't enough left worth protecting.

Here's my take on red light cameras: We've got them all over Columbia, MD, where my office is. Jon makes some good points about public places, expectation of privacy, etc, plus a photo of the car doesn't prove who was driving it. There are also speeding cameras in DC (one on Macarthur Blvd right on the way home from Macarthur Beverages - guess how I know that?!). I am not an absolutist when it comes to privacy rights, and the loss of privacy associated with these may be acceptable if they really reduce deaths and injuries due to accidents. I don't think there is any data indicating that they do so - they may even have the opposite effect. All they really seem to do is raise revenue for the local government. And that's not a good enough reason for even a little encroachment on privacy.

[JScott]

I agree with David....if these are acceptable, then why not cameras on every corner everywhere, to catch potential thieves, muggers or jay walkers? And if we agree to cameras everywhere for this purpose, are they not part of the public record, subject to subpoena by ex-spouses, employers or anyone else who wants to know where you went in your car this afternoon? The problem with this is that it violates the central tenant of innocent until proven guilty and expectation against unreasonable search and seizure. I frankly don't know how it passes constitutional muster, but then I don't know how municipalities can collect taxes from those not permitted to vote there, either, so what do I know?

And like David, I think the traffic cameras are more for revenue than public concern.

[Tom In DC]

Like Jon, I don't have a problem with red light or speed cameras -- other than the number of checks I've sent off to various regional government entities! Well-reasoned laws (not always the case!) in place for public safety are being broken by anyone who gets popped for one of these robo-tickets, and I don't hear anyone suggesting that more than a minuscule percentage of such tickets aren't justified.

I don't know what the underlying technology looks like, but based on what I recall from a past life, pattern recognition software from 20+ years ago would have been able to detect both types of offenders with no human intervention. (OK, maybe not extract the license plate number, but hey...) As I said, I don't know what's going on under the covers, but I can't imagine wasting the computer storage required to actually save all of the photos that aren't in violation of the laws that are being enforced, so I don't see issues at this time with divorce lawyers freedom-of-information-act'ing these photos or other end-of-days scenarios. If anyone knows that all of the monitoring photos are being archived, I'd love to hear about it and would likely change my tune.

Insofar as saving lives, I think everyone can agree that excessive speed and red light running both cause cause traffic deaths. In Montgomery County, Maryland, several studies related to their speed cameras have indicated that speeding as a whole has decreased throughout the county. Presumably, this is saving lives. I haven't seen any studies about the "red light running" cameras, but I can attest (anectdotal, it's true) that most of the horrendous accidents I've seen on secondary roads have been at intersections controlled by a traffic signal. My small brain doesn't find it too much of a leap to figure that many of these have involved one party violating the signal, but your mileage may vary.

I do find it quite a stretch to project this exercise -- focused on enforcing specific traffic laws -- into some sort of universal agreement to cameras everywhere in order to monitor street corners for jaywalkers; however, that just might be my lack of imagination. (And I'm truly baffled by how this can possibly relate to a question of "how municipalities can collect taxes from those not permitted to vote there", since government entities worldwide are collecting taxes from you whenever and wherever you travel.)

Just my mumbled opinion,
Tom

[DavidG]

While I agree with Tom that red light and speed cameras are not the equivalent of universal monitoring, I still don't buy the argument, no matter how logical on its face, that they reduce accidents and save lives.

"Speed kills" is one of those mantras that sounds great but doesn't always hold up to scrutiny. I'm not a traffic expert, but in at least a few jurisdictions where it's been studied, accidents increased after installation of cameras. Something about speed differentials between the slow and fast cars being more important than the speed of the fast cars, and most speed limits typically being set at a point where about 80% of the cars travel above and 20% below the limit. I can't provide the specific cites off the top of my head, some have been reviewed in the editorial pages of some of the car mags like Car & Driver - admittedly not an unbiased observer. Similarly for red light cameras, where in some cases the timing was set by the companies that install the gizmos to be less than "fair" - possibly related to the fact that they shared in the revenue?

[JCNorthway]

I sense that this has become a bit of a meandering subject. But on the question of capturing red light offenders, I somehow find it hard to support an argument that red light offenders do not cause accidents. If the point of installing traffic signals is to prevent intersection collisions, then I cannot see a logical argument against a means of monitoring compliance with that purpose. Any argument otherwise is an argument for individual rights trumping the public safety. In that case we should just remove all traffic signals and stops signs, replacing them with BEWARE! signs.

Jon

[Tom In DC]

Is "Speed Kills" a red herring? Nope, it's simple physics -- the faster the cars are going when an accident occurs, the greater the deceleration forces that must be absorbed by the participants in the accident -- cars, passengers, and pedestrians. Car and Driver's studies are (to the best of my recollection) almost exclusively about cars traveling at highway speeds or greater. I remember one from the gas crisis days (no, not last year, but the early 1970's) that suggested that the "new" 55 mile per hour speed limit would cause more traffic accidents than the 70mph limits that were the being eliminated, with the reduction in accidents explained because drivers are more alert at 70mph than at 55. Of course, no such increase in accidents was observed, mostly because in general drivers aren't paying attention regardless of their speed.

The differential between fast and slow cars seems an obvious factor in how many accidents occur, but wouldn't a major determinant in that factor be how far above the posted speed limit the fast cars go, since this will in all likelihood be a greater deviation from the posted speed limit than that pitiful 20% minority traveling at speeds below the limit? The folks driving 55mph up I-95 from DC to Baltimore are closer to the speed limit (65mph) than the many driving at 80mph or more (based on personal observation when driving at 75mph on this particular stretch.)

The red light cameras are by definition at traffic signals, and Montgomery County's speed cameras are either in school zones or on neighborhood roads, so any studies related to highway driving are not germane. "Timing of the gizmos" is surely sour grapes, since they always provide a picture of your car short of the intersection with the light already red, along with another picture taken shortly thereafter of your car in the intersection with the light still red.

[DavidG]

I'm not trying to ignore the laws of physics. Of course a crash at higher speed is going to cause more damage. But you can't ignore the number of accidents, and focus only on the physics of speed. No one gets hurt unless there is a crash, and in at least some jurisdictions there have been more crashes after installation of the cameras. I don't have my back copies of Car & Driver, so I can't quote you chapter and verse, but the statistics had me convinced.

Also, highway deaths have decreased as speed limits have been liberalized and highway speeds have increased. Granted this is highway not residential - and a lot of it may have to do with safety improvements in cars, but it shows that there is more to it than speed alone.

I have no problems with red light cameras that show your car short of the intersection with the light already red, if that is how they are set up. I have no personal experience with these (wish I could say the same about the speed cameras!), except to say that in Columbia they seem to be set fairly, as I've never been snapped though I know I've gone through an intersection under yellow and wondered if I would be getting a ticket. I have, however, read about some jurisdictions where they only snap you exiting the intersection with the light red, and the timing of the cameras was set to nab even those who entered under the yellow. I can't vouch for the accuracy of that reporting, or if it was during early days of implementation, perhaps that's been fixed. I don't mean to condemn the whole concept based on a few bad examples if they are set that way in only a few towns.

[Tom In DC]

Please do find and post references about jurisdictions where speed cameras have been linked to more crashes. I'd love to be dissuaded...

Highway deaths have indeed decreased in recent years relative to miles driven. Of course, insurance costs rise unabated as more people -- surviving crashes that would have been fatal in cars produced even a decade ago -- require mega-buck medical treatments for their injuries.

If I encountered such a thing, I'd fight a "single picture" red light camera, but those aren't my experience. At the same time. the existence of an "unfair" implementation -- such as the "single photo, I was already in the gridlocked intersection when the light turned red" example you suggest -- doesn't override the legitimacy of the concept of red light cameras.

[JScott]

....I do find it quite a stretch to project this exercise -- focused on enforcing specific traffic laws -- into some sort of universal agreement to cameras everywhere in order to monitor street corners for jaywalkers; however, that just might be my lack of imagination.

Here's another to help expand your imagination! It's a slippery slope....

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstop ... homes.html

[DavidG]

OK Tom, you made me look...

Car and Driver, Patrick Bedard's editorial column about 7 years ago addressed rear end crashes and red light cameras. There are also a number of other stories dating back to that time frame. And here's one on speed and fatalities. I'm not saying that Bedard's word is gospel, I'm sure that there are holes that can be poked in some of his arguments. But there can be surprising unintended consequences of apparently straightforward decisions.

[Tom In DC]

Interesting article, but Mr Bedard's point of view is far from objective. His dismissal of what he calls a spillover effect, where he claims that red-light running cameras should be expected to decrease red-light running only at those intersections with cameras, flies in the face of all common sense. Is he really suggesting that typical drivers will base stopping for any given traffic signal on their knowledge of whether a camera is present? That's just absurd. Mr. Bedard's enthusiast audience might consider themselves the elite among the driving public, but few drivers will behave as he predicts. The average driver, upon receipt of a robo-ticket or two, will change behavior and increase compliance at all traffic signals.

And the enlightened C&D reader who knows the light ahead doesn't have a camera will just be damaging his pride and joy as he crashes into the driver in front who actually stops for red lights!

[JimHow]

...Hey at least you guys haven't had a police chief yelling at you about the issue over the public airwaves....

[DavidG]

I think what he's saying is that people who might just go through on yellow might be inclined to slam on the brakes if they know there are cameras present.

[JimHow]

To me it's not even about the safety issue, it's about the privacy issue. Cameras everywhere means we are closer to a police state. Everyone is against crime and even traffic violations, but where do we draw the line in our surveillance. Today it is traffic lights. Tomorrow it is the parking lot at the Portsmouth, New Hampshire liquor store....

Oh wait....

[DavidG]

I agree with you, Jim. The more we're acclimated to surveillance, the harder it is to draw the line - the old slippery slope. I'm willing to sacrifice a bit of privacy if there is a real and proven safety advantage. I'd be happy to be convinced by some data, not just speculation and assumption, showing that these things actually do prevent accidents.

[PappaDoc]

The "Red Light Cameras in NYC show three pictures of your car going through the intersection, and shows the light is red in all three pictures. I know because I got one. The most productive camera in this program is on Pelham Pky in the Bronx, I got one heading west.The camera is located at a "T" intersection. Cars from the right must turn right as there is no turn permitted to the left and that street ends at Pelham Pky.

[PappaDoc]

Oh, I must add, folk in the Bronx demonstrate thier love of anarchy in these manners. Arthur Ave, in the Belmont Section of the Bronx ( considered one of the safest neighborhood in the USA by the FBI 3 years running) used to double park cars with no parking tickets given for many years. They had no parking meters as well, until Mayor Juliani came into office.

He had parking meters installed and the neighorhood folk spray painted the glass windows black that showed the paid time or violation status. This went on with removing the paint and respraying the paint until NYPD put Detectives on "Stake Out'' to catch the culpurts/heros, who then "went back to the hills"

They did a similar action to the red light cameras, spraying the lenses with black paint. NYPD Traffic raised the cameras to ten ft from five ft, and the Purps attached spray cans to long poles and somehow got the spry button taped down for continuious spray and sprayed the lenses again. Again Detectives had to be placed on "Stake out" to catch the Perps, who finally stopped all attemps of vandalism.

[stefan]

In defense of Bush Lite...

He was a failure as a governor (although not as bad as his good hair successor), yet the country elected him to a post for which he was obviously not qualified. Instead of blaming him for everything, blame the American voter. After all, do you blame an untrained puppy who urinates in the wrong place?

stefan, political analyst

[JScott]

In defense of Bush Lite...

He was a failure as a governor (although not as bad as his good hair successor), yet the country elected him to a post for which he was obviously not qualified. Instead of blaming him for everything, blame the American voter. After all, do you blame an untrained puppy who urinates in the wrong place?

stefan, political analyst

Interesting take, Stefan. Hard to argue with that. I wonder sometimes if everyone's really paying attention. Remember, he got elected twice.