Speed cameras seem to be a common occurrence nowadays. On your way to work, school, or just out and about, you’re sure to see a “Photo Enforced” sign somewhere along the way. These things seem to be everywhere, but are they effective in what they’re put in place to accomplish? What are they there to accomplish, one may ask? Some say to make roadways safer by curbing speeders with moderate fines while others think it’s purely a revenue generator for the local and state governments. A fine of $100 or less isn’t going to keep a driver from speeding, at some point or another they will speed therefore deeming the cameras useless. Speeding cameras are a burden to people and have no benefit to anyone other than the local governments and the people …show more content…
The government is forbidden from engaging in continuous surveillance systems without warrants to look for offenders of crimes. As of now only career criminals are currently considered bad enough by the state legislature to justify such a system. It is possible that the cameras, or the data they collect, could one day be used for purposes other than speed enforcement, which may already be happening. This is a breach of privacy and should not be allowed. There are other ways to reduce speeds, such as the use of radar speed signs, that are every bit as effective if not more so than speed cameras. The profit motive of speed cameras encourages the government to ignore equal or better alternatives. Speed cameras do not remove the worst drivers from the roads the way a police officer can. Drunk drivers or a reckless criminals in a stolen vehicle, who might pose an immediate risk to pedestrians and other motorists, could ignore a speed camera completely therefore deeming it ineffective, and since the current system issues no points for citations, a wealthy but extremely bad driver can receive dozens of speed camera tickets without losing their license, if they pay the fines. Speed Cameras are magnets for legally bribing governments, essentially corruption. Speed Camera Contractors lobby heavily each year for statewide speed cameras. Many can agree that everyone has their own “price” and governments are literally …show more content…
I am going to address many below and give you a new outlook on how corrupt speed cameras are and the people behind them. Speeding cameras are computerized machines as some of us may know. This means there is no sure fire way to know whether the camera is ticketing properly. It could have fallen out of calibration leaving innocent speeders with a ticket they don’t deserve. The lack of human oversight means that no one person will be held accountable if there are widespread errors or misconduct by officials. Since tickets are received weeks later, the accused have a very limited ability to gather evidence in their defense. This is particularly true of mobile cameras which may no longer be in the same location, or work zone cameras where the location may have been substantially changed by the time the defendant becomes aware of the alleged offense. Tickets are issued to the owner of the vehicle even if they are not the driver. A third of speed camera tickets are going to people who did not in fact commit the offense because someone else was driving at the time. This is of even more concern now that courts in Maryland have declared paying a citation to be an "admission of speeding". Ticket Recipients who challenge citations have their cases heard in an unfair court proceeding commonly known as District Court 'Speed Camera Day ', where dozens of defendants have their cases heard in an assembly line manner.
The controversy that is around traffic cameras is a positive point into the safety of streets and the revenue that comes of people that fail to follow safety protocol. Traffic cameras have a characteristic that everyone is aware of, safety. Safety is the most important part, the traffic cameras leave officers free of stop light duties to emphasize more of their focus onto neighborhoods and other parts of a city. Traffic cameras are notorious for saving the lives of many people and reducing accidents, just in 2013, Insurance institute for highway safety has a study that showed a 24 percent decrease in red light accidents in larger cities. Cities have been af...
Would you like to get a ticket in the mail for running a red light two weeks after the fact, when you know someone else was driving your car? Most people would be furious if they received a ticket for running a red light even though they were not even driving the car at the time. I would be furious getting a ticket even though it was someone else in my car, which implies having restriction on traffic light cameras is good because………….….…..………...
Police Body Cameras Due to devastating events that have occurred between policemen and civilians, law enforcements find it liable for police officers to be fitted with body cameras. In doing so it is thought to bring an increase in trust in the community, reduce brutality and crime, as well as elucidate good cops still around. I feel body cameras will bring more awareness to police departments when it comes to the honesty in their staff’s actions when they are unsupervised. They can be used as hard evidence in courtrooms, to help make the correct judgment on the situation in question.
Obviously even five miles per hour over the speed limit is still speeding, but what would bring two cops to pull over a car traveling at a speed that almost everyone drives? Statistics from New York City’s Police Department have shown that the number of tickets for miniscule offenses is on the rise, and even though it is illegal for a city to set a formal quota for police to meet, many people believe it is still a common practice to have “under the table” quotas. According to Compstat, a crime analysis and police management process developed by the New York City Police Department, officers wrote 912,414 parking tickets between January 1 and May 11 of this year, as compared to 877,443 parking tickets during the same period last year, which represents an increase of 3.9%. A spokesman for the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, Al O’Leary, said, “The apparent increase in summonses (in New York City) was fueled by quotas. You can call them goals or targets or management productivity levels, but in a practical world, those are quotas" (Mauldin).
This little camera doesn’t have but one job and that is to record the story. “Advantages of police body cameras..” article talks about the pro and cons of such camera on the officers while on shift. The camera is there to help give an unbiased account of what happen. When you know you are being recorded, then you naturally act a little better because you know someone is watching you not so impulsive. There is a statement “A study performed by the Rialto, CA police department found that the cameras led to an 87.5 percent decrease in officer complaints as well as a 59 percent reduction in use of force over the course of a year—and they’re not the only departments seeing positive results.” “This drop in complaints can also lead to a substantial decrease in the time and resources devoted to investigating complaints and resolving civil litigation.” .The two cons I keep seeing against using cameras is the initial cost to issue one out to all law enforcement and the upkeep cost required by them. Additional is a privacy issue with what is recorded on them. These successes number out weight the cons specifically dealing with the public
One of the many drawbacks that come with using body cameras is due to the fact that there is a locus of control. This may pose a problem because there is an underlying question of who can control the cameras. There can be many videos of incidents that are not captured because an officer decided to turn off their camera. Officers have the ability to turn them off or on which causes the problem of each officer not releasing them. Many departments across the country does not even allow individuals to access the footage that is recorded and with the laws that are in place for many department to deny access to the footage that they have. Due to each officer having to release the footage that they capture, they are allowed to review the footage that they record before they make a statement (Harvard Law Review). This is one of the biggest drawbacks because controlling the video footage is important in not only courts but to ensure the minds of
There are at least 6 to 8 complaints of every 100 officers made each year. At least 30 percent of the complaints are for excessive use of force and that doesn 't include all the undocumented complaints civilians make that are failed to be reported. In the past year, police officers have killed more than 776 people. This information has only recently been brought to light. For once the media is not exaggerating on the crimes police are committing; this is happening right here, right now in our own country. What can people do to stop these unlawful police officers from hurting innocent civilians? Having the officers wear body cameras can be a start. Even though there is not enough research to prove their effectiveness, body cameras should be
Surveillance cameras have helped hundreds of law enforcement agencies solve thousands of crimes throughout the nation. They have become so helpful that most law enforcement agencies are planning on setting them up on street corners, buildings, publication parks, and on their own officers. There are many cities across the nation that have began to use surveillance cameras. Setting up cameras is a pivotal technique to solving and preventing crimes. Although, it is often argued that having law enforcement surveillance cameras set up throughout the nations communities is an invasion of privacy, citizens should sacrifice a little bit of privacy in return for their safety and protection of civil rights against criminals and police officers.
Since their inception, police body cameras have been a controversial topic as many do not agree on their effectiveness and legality. To the trained eye, body cameras clearly have no negatives other than the sheer cost of their implementation. Some people, nonetheless, do believe that it is an encroachment of privacy for police to record private and/or public interactions even though it is purely legal. While that may be seen as a negative, it is wholly subjective and must be completely ignored when considering the factual analysis of police body camera use that is necessary to verify their validity. When only taking fact into account, there is no way to deny the nearly infinite benefits of body cameras.
On top of that there are also some hefty fines that will help a driver learn his or her lesson. The average speeding ticket in the US is 150 dollars, but the faster a person drives the more costly a speeding ticket becomes. Drivers have the choice to fight their citation in court instead of just paying the fine, a lot of speeding drivers often do. If the driver decides to do this, the officer then assigns them a traffic court date. Drivers who take their fine to court normally do so because they disagree with the reason they were pulled over or believe they have a justifiable explanation for speeding. There is not good reason for speeding hence the saying “better late than never”. A driver who goes to court usually ends up paying the fine they received in the first place along with court fees. Not to mention the effects a speeding ticket has on one’s insurance. Just one speeding ticket can skyrocket an average policy holder’s premium as much as 22 percent according to an analysis of over 490,000 policy quotes. There are a lot of things that money could be spent on than a speeding ticket. Most states also employ a points system and when an individual acquires a certain amount of points (ten points in most states) the state will suspend an individual’s license. Now the driver can take a Defensive Driving course to deduct 2 points from their record, this can be done once every 24
In today’s world almost every place a person comes across has some sort of surveillance.
Technology is evolving faster than ever these days, however there is one technology that could revolutionize the transportation industry. This technology is called autonomous cars, also known as self-driving cars. Autonomous cars can be defined as a vehicle that is capable of sensing its environment, and navigating without human input. Using different techniques such as GPS and radar, autonomous cars can detect surroundings, thus removing the human element in driving. This would have a positive effect in more ways than we could ever imagine. Research suggests that self-driving cars will become more abundant in the future because they will be more cost-effective, enhance safety, and decrease traffic congestion.
There are an estimated 30 million surveillance cameras in the United States, proving to be a normal feature in American lives (Vlahos). This is no surprise because in the past several years, events such as the 9/11 attack and the availability of cheaper cameras have accelerated this trend. But conflicts have come with this and have ignited, concerning the safety of the people versus the violation of privacy that surveillance has. Although camera surveillance systems are intended to provide safety to the public, the violation of privacy outweighs this, especially in a democratic country like America.
Traffic control establishes a set of rules and regulations that people rely on to help avoid collisions and other hazards. With almost 160 million motorists and 3.8 million miles of public roads in the United States, traffic control on the highways is an important aspect of daily life. Without the control of speed there would be more fatalities than we already have now. Speed limits should be obeyed. A motorist going too slow could cause an accident. When everyone is traveling at the speed limit, a car comes up going 40 mph; if you break everyone will, too, perhaps causing a collision. Motorists depend on traffic control to avoid collisions and travel safely to their destination.
...s to make traffic more efficient. For example, the Ohio Revised Code in section 4511.21 states clearly that "No person shall operate a motor vehicle, trackless trolley, or a street car at a speed greater than reasonable or proper due regard to the traffic." Road speed limits are used to regulate the speed of vehicles. Sometimes people try to get somewhere and they go over the speed limit not realizing that they are putting themselves in danger. Now every time I get in a car with a friend or a family member, I make sure that they are going by the speed limit, not texting and paying attention on the road. It is very important that we follow this rules because they are only protecting us, and keeping us safe. If we want to reduce the millions of deaths that are caused by this imprudence every year we need to start being more responsible when we get behind the wheel.