O O Ø O O O O
Drivers Beware
This is not merely a cautionary tale for drivers.
There are now 44 of the insidious devices throughout the city, patiently monitoring our progress through intersections, occasionally snapping a photo of the odd transgressor who made one of two fateful determinations:
“I cannot safely stop before this amber light.”
Or:
“Bugger that!”
The difference between the two is not salient, as the technology provides us with notional fodder for the following chilling exchange:
“How do you know he’s guilty?”
“The computer told me so.”
Does anyone remember the vote we must have held, introducing this level of surveillance? Perhaps not, as this is simply a case of the constabulary extending its reach wherever it can, and a genetically acquiescent population agreeing to its inevitability.
The next step will be to monitor speed through the intersections.
“If you’re not breaking the law, you have nothing to hide.”
Following that, we will see perpetual plate-monitoring through intersections, introduced to facilitate quick responses to AMBER Alerts.
And I can’t even argue that one.
This battle is lost.
Evan Spence
May 27, 2008
OOØOOOODCCCLXII
May 27th, 2008 at 11:28 am
My favorite one is McLeod and 26th Ave. Coming down a hill to an intersection with a camera. It’s a major controlled intersection with the added fun of a train crossing and there is no Amber warning coming down the hill to tell you the light is changing. It’s a cash trap pure and simple.
Sad.
May 27th, 2008 at 11:23 pm
And, of course, open for abuse…
http://www.autoblog.com/2008/04/14/six-ities-busted-for-shortening-yellow-light/
May 28th, 2008 at 10:01 am
The predominantly “Minority”-led city govt of New Orleans just installed them on the historic streets where tourists (non-minorities) travel. They did not place them at intersections in the “Minority” parts of the city–where their constituents live.
The traffic systems are antiquated and broken. But they’ll make money by taking advantage of this, in lieu of fixing the problem.
Lets hope we can learn to shoot out these things instead of each other down here.
May 28th, 2008 at 10:09 am
Not that it helps, but I do know for a fact that the Calgary cameras print the amber cycle time (currently around 3.5s) on every photo (and the amount of time into the red cycle when the violation occurs), so shenanigans should be relatively easy to spot (if you know what to look for.)
It also prints your speed, which is computed from the pair of piezo road sensors before the intersection. I sincerely wonder how accurate that is.
(and no, I didn’t find out the hard way. Yay Law Day!)
May 28th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
can the piezoelectric sensors be “thrown off” by the use of magnets? An Instructables.com article talks of bike messengers having rare earth magnets on one shoe to throw the light for them, b/c the bike metal isn’t enough to register.
May 28th, 2008 at 6:54 pm
Naw. piezo is a pressure sensor. I had thought the city just used inductive loops, but my little Law Day field trip taught me otherwise.
In either case, a magnet would not help things, other than increasing the amount of metal on the bike, and hence, increasing its inductive footprint.
For some light reading, see:
http://www.humantransport.org/bicycledriving/library/signals/detection.htm
(if you want to mess with things, though, dropping a steel plate on there might do the trick. Pressure AND inductive effects…)
May 29th, 2008 at 7:21 am
I agree - there are times (in winter and when its raining) that I’ve pressed the “big pedal on the right” vs the brake during a traffic signals cycle to red. Luckily, no photo of this. I think if you are more than halfway through when the light goes red, you should be fine, but, if you are less than halfway, your not (usually) paying attention.
luckily, our redlight cameras also double as speeding camera’s during “green” lights too. Go too fast throught the intersection, and you will soon get a photo in the mail (along with a fine).
there’s a company here selling a gps like device that warns you when you are approaching one of the many red light camera’s we have here in the peg.