Back to the topic at hand, one of the cameras, the one pictured in the article, is right out in front of my office, and I can tell you from experience that every single light change somebody either runs the light or is blocking the intersection. If traffic violations and accidents are really down as the city claims, then I would hate to have seen what that intersection was like before the cameras. I guess since I'm a law abiding citizen, I'm in favor of more traffic cameras. Not at all intersections, but just the most problematic.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Big Brother Is Watching
I saw this story in the Seattle Times earlier this week. The city has put up cameras at 4 intersections to catch people running red lights. I guess I kind of have mixed feelings about that. On the one hand I don't like the idea of cameras watching me everywhere I go. But on the other hand, it theoretically is making that intersection safer, and even if it isn't, it's bringing in a lot of revenue to the city from people who deserve to contribute to the general fund. The cameras have been up for a year now and have brought in over $900k. Hopefully some of that will go to road repair, and maybe building some mass transit that the voters keep approving. On a side note, I don't know what it is about this state that we keep passing light rail and monorail bills, but we don't get anything built (well, they are finally starting to build light rail at least), and we keep voting down stadiums but they get built anyway.
Back to the topic at hand, one of the cameras, the one pictured in the article, is right out in front of my office, and I can tell you from experience that every single light change somebody either runs the light or is blocking the intersection. If traffic violations and accidents are really down as the city claims, then I would hate to have seen what that intersection was like before the cameras. I guess since I'm a law abiding citizen, I'm in favor of more traffic cameras. Not at all intersections, but just the most problematic.
Back to the topic at hand, one of the cameras, the one pictured in the article, is right out in front of my office, and I can tell you from experience that every single light change somebody either runs the light or is blocking the intersection. If traffic violations and accidents are really down as the city claims, then I would hate to have seen what that intersection was like before the cameras. I guess since I'm a law abiding citizen, I'm in favor of more traffic cameras. Not at all intersections, but just the most problematic.
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2 comments:
from everything I've read about these, they actually don't do anything to make the intersection safer and in fact, in some cases make things worse.
this is only a revenue collecting devise and i resent the state telling us otherwise. i also have a real problem with the unconstitutionality of this in that people are assumed guilty unless they prove themselves innocent.
they have those things all over the place in Portland though, literally ALL over the place.
For a guy who writes in cyberspace where we know where everything comes from already you sure seem kind of paranoid. You may think that big brother can't see you, but online I can assure you if they cared, they could see everything you do...
Same thing with telephones, and cellphones. You may think they're encrypted, but somebody encrypted that for you, and big brother has a key to get into it.
George Orwell was right War is Peace. In war big brother's got way too many problems to worry about what you may or may not be writing....
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