I’ve lived in places with traffic cameras and it’s not what it’s cracked up to be. The biggest flaw I’ve seen is that if you were to roll through a yellow light (which is completely legal) and your rear bumper happened to still be in the intersection when the light changed to red, you are in violation. Not only is this legal, but it’s completely safe and there’s a zero percent chance someone is harmed because you didn’t make it out of the intersection 0.5 seconds earlier.
Yes, you can go and argue this in court and likely get out of it, but this is only the beginning of the problems with traffic cameras. After you’ve opened this Pandora’s box, how do you get the algorithms changed? These programs are almost always designed by a third party and are not actually under the control of your government.
It’s time for people to quit patting themselves on the back for prioritizing safety over everything. We could make Vancouver much safer by making the speed limit 5 mph. We don’t because we realize the risk of more death is worth it in order to make people’s lives more enjoyable and efficient.
