Having just been in Chicago, one of the most prevalent subject of conversation (despite the football season of course) is the ever-rising number of tickets being given to drivers. The Daley administration first made Chicago the most expensive parking city in the country with a corrupt deal that bordered on the criminal. The city was also accused of corrupt dealings with the company handling red-light ticking. However, none of this has curtailed the city contractors and officials clipping motorists for revenue in the form of endless ticketing. The latest outrage was the city reducing the time of yellow lights — a small tweak of a second that resulted in nearly $8 million in new tickets. Drivers are being treated as sources for revenue and hit with the equivalent of speed traps and short lights to generate more and more tickets.
Near my mother’s house in Chicago, she constantly warns me of such a trap that suddenly reduces car speed to a crawl. The reason is that it is being treated as a school zone even though there is no school nearby. All of her neighbors have been clipped despite driving less then 40 miles per hour on the main street.
The short yellow lights resulted in thousands of new $100 tickets from red light cameras. These cameras seem to function as a new hidden tax but the cost is not just cash by destroying the driving records of citizens – impacting insurance and, for many, their jobs.
Chicago may have picked up this idea from the Florida Department of Transportation which in 2011 secretly reduced the length of yellow lights and bringing in a windfall. Since most people have a common notion of the length of time, a small tweak can catch them off guard and snare their cars in a red light run.
It would seem logical that all yellow lights should have a uniform standard time to avoid this type of manipulation. At a minimum, Chicagoans have got to rise up against this type of revenue-generated traffic trap. People are struggling in Chicago and they do not need city officials manipulating lights to find new ways to siphon us more of their money (before they have to pay the over-priced meters of course).
Source: Time
Darren – does the NTSB influence any regulations on traffic lights? It would be helpful if they were standardized with lights manufactured from this point onward. No more changeable timing below a minimum level.
Karen – do you really want the Feds involved in your life any more than they already are?
NORMAL CARS VS BIG RIGS — probably this article from DailyKos’ Baculum King… http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/11/10/1254293/-Want-to-Die-Slowly-Mangled-Beyond-Recognition-Updated — it’s probably time for him to post it again, as the holiday season + weather converge… it’s a GREAT piece!
chimene – we do allow everyone to visit Arizona and December is a wonderful time to come. Your chance of having an auto accident is the lowest in the United States. Yah, us!!!!
Traffic circles, or Rotaries can solve a great deal of problems. They are much more cost efficient. They are much safer. Some of the worst accidents I worked are T-Bones. I’m sure Darren has responded to many. They can be collisions @ high speed. Any accident in a rotary is low impact. Insurance companies love them. Again, I know insurance companies are evil, I worked for many, but they do know safety. They have a vested interest in it. One resistance to rotaries is unfamiliarity. We had some old bitty ladies show up to a village meeting saying the “are confusing and scary.” Now, a rotary won’t work @ some intersections, but they will @ most. They come in different sizes for different volumes of traffic.
Growing up in New England, I was familiar w/ rotaries. But, in many parts of the US there are none. Finally, the county where I live, started putting them up a decade or so ago. They are a God send. But, some of those little old ladies are scared of them. In many big city intersections they are not practical.
Nick – I think the person who invented the round-about should be flayed, then boiled alive. As you can see, I am not a fan.
Nick Spinelli wrote: “In many big city intersections they are not practical.”
They seem to work very well in big city intersections in London and Paris.
In driving the environs around London, I was surprised by how rare a stop light or stop sign was. I came to realize that we really don’t need stop lights.
The biggest difficulty in London for me was driving on the left hand side of the road. In Paris that problem does not exist. I think the USA should slowly transition all of our intersections to roundabouts. Stop lights are not needed, so no wiring costs or electric bill. Once people get familiar using them, they are so much more efficient for traffic flow. Energy is saved because cars do not come to a complete stop. We also should transition our measurement standards to using the metric system for everything. With all the political leaders we have had, it is amazing that nobody has moved us to do these things.
david – have you every seen the video of people stuck (and I mean stuck) in the round-about near the Roman Colosseum? If you are on the inside you may be there for ever.
Paul, no, I did not see it, but I did see JT’s picture of an Italian traffic jam that was not in a roundabout. Are you sure the problem is the roundabout?
david – I am sure if you go to youtube and type in Colosseum round a bout you will get some videos that will give you a better understanding of the country and its traffic problems. 😉
Roundabouts are sensible. They are beginning to put some in around Minneapolis but I don’t like the extra expense. DOT is an inefficient boondoggle everywhere.
I recall when I first drove from Abu Dhabi to Dubai many years ago, many of the roundabouts were punctuated by burned out hulks of wrecks in the middle of the circle. Evidently novice drivers speeding through the desert found their way to their 70 virgins reward that way (unless they were drunk).
start shooting/breaking/vandalizing the cameras
Olly
Yes. Everyone, well most everyone, rather liked Miranda. Too bad there were five Republicans who didn’t.
Doc,
I recall that JT had done a piece on this case. And EVERYBODY screamed!
http://www.courts.ca.gov/opinions/documents/S202107.PDF
Olly,
Turley posted on Salinas.
BTW – liberals screamed.
http://jonathanturley.org/2013/06/17/the-price-of-silence-supreme-court-rules-that-pre-miranda-silence-can-be-used-against-defendant-to-prove-guilt/
Olly,
Wasn’t the Salinas ‘silence case’ settled last term by Scotus?
“A nation continues to wait for final word on the Supreme Court’s Big Four cases this term — voting rights, affirmative action, DOMA, and Proposition 8 — but the justices’ closest decision arrived first on Monday, in a 5-4 ruling on Salinas v. Texas in which the conservative members of the Court and Anthony Kennedy determined that if you remain silent before police read your Miranda rights, that silence can and will be held against you. Here’s what that means.”
Do you have some other case in mind regarding California?
Directed at myself:
[Thou] mad mustachio purple-hued maltworms!
You starvelling, you eel-skin, you dried neat’s-tongue, you bull’s-pizzle, you stock-fish–O for breath to utter what is like thee!-you tailor’s-yard, you sheath, you bow-case, you vile standing tuck!
I was ticketed by an aforementioned Montgomery County, Maryland speed camera and decided to go to court to overturn it. The cost of the ticket was $40 and the basis of my case was the fact that this particular camera was in a school zone and was ostensibly active only during the school day. My ticket caught me at the posted non-school day speed limit on New Year’s Eve at approximately 6pm. The judge was in a humorous mood and, with a grin on his face, asked the county speed camera “officer” (who I think was really a representative of the company that installs and operates them) if he knew of any school social or sporting events that were taking place at the time of the alleged violation and the fellow came up empty. Case closed. Except with court and administrative fees involved with adjudicating the ticket I ended up shelling out about $38.
Bottom line: the state is going to extract revenue from the citizen any way it can every time.
Oldfox,
Recently, I believe the CA Supreme Court ruled your silence COULD be held against you in a court of law. Nudged to tyranny without a whimper.
I maintain houses in both Maryland and Arizona, two states on the opposite ends of virtually all spectra: ideological, political, weather, etc.
The red light cameras and speed cameras are popping up faster than Roundup-resistant weeds in The Free State, and the sheeple of Maryland just submit to it without question. Speeding tickets are a $40 pop, with no effect on one’s driving record (this is how we know revenue and not enforcement is the “driving” force behind them) and with the populace here swimming in government employment payroll, maybe they think it’s just an expensive toll.
In Arizona, the grand speed camera experiment was short-lived. First, there was a run on sticky note and silly string sales after the speed cameras were installed. (Until the TSA gets involved in “fighting terrorism” on the streets, speed cameras lack X-rays, and can’t see through the stickies/string affixed to the lens.) Then, some enterprising and legally savvy individual actually read the state constitution and found some provision therein with which the speed cameras couldn’t pass muster, took it to the Arizona Supreme Court, and the speed cameras magically disappeared after that.
“Red light stop. Green light go. Yellow light go… very fast.”
ModernMiner – was that line from Starman?
Paul- I get the traffic alert too (when I use it), but since I travel a short distance every day to the same places, I don’t really use it. I just try and maintain a constant speed and safe distance (15-20mph, 4ish cars off) from the car in front of me at rush hour. Not the normal 1/2 car space NJ drivers like to leave. They have superhuman reaction times! I am a mere mortal and need more time to react, as well as not have a car directly in front of me blocking my view of the next mile of road. Must look ahead!
I’m sorry for sort of ranting, I am very passionate about driving. I wish everyone was as vigilant about physics on the road.
From this blog, (probably some years ago!), a wonderful link was presented about normal cars and big rigs on the highway. I just tried to find it again, but gave up.
docmadison
Funny thing about Nick. He has intimate knowledge of every possible corruption known to man. I wonder how that happened?
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He reads all his Shakespeare here.
Dredd, that link to Shakespearean insults is hilarious.
Standardization is a common engineering practice for cars, dishwashers, keyboards, electrical outlets, etc.
Standardization odoes not imply or require federal political control.
Thanks, Olly. If the wacky 9th repeals the Right to Remain Silent, we’re all goners.
I learned to drive on Long Island. I was taught in order to make a left turn you pull up to the middle of the intersection and wait until it is clear and safe to turn. Left turn arrows ruined that convention. Nowadays, without left turn arrows, we have idiots (police included) waiting, stopped behind the stop line to make a left turn, which means many of us are stuck behind and can’t get through the intersection for at least a couple and sometimes several cycles of the light! I’m a guerrilla: When I see this I pass them on the middle lane and move into the left lane well inside the intersection, then wait for the opening in the opposing traffic. You only NEED four seconds!
As I motor off a half mile away, I see the silly halfwits still sitting waiting for the light to change yet again.
I am opposed to capital punishment, but this should be an exception.
Standardization is essential for industrialization and orderly social functioning. We implemented Morse Code, the Qwerty keyboard, Dewey’s Decimal System, 110v/60 cycle AC, DOS, and HTML without any mandate, role, or input from the government. That’s why they work.
“I thought many conservatives and all libertarians were for local control”
Yes and no. You thought wrong. Some things do require consistency from location to location for safety’s sake. Many other things can be on a local or case by case basis. It isn’t all black and white in the real world.
Here is a real life example of why these things….traffic lights need to be standardized.
My mother was color blind. Could not see the difference between, blue/green blue/brown green/brown yellow/some browns green or red. That last is the important part.
When we lived in Texas the red light for stop was on the bottom and green for go on the top. The only thing she knew what which light was on. Top light…ok…good to go. Bottom light….better stop.
When we moved to California (for the first time mid 1950’s) no one thought to tell her that the lights were reversed and Stop is on top and Go is on the bottom. As a result, she ran a red light (she thought it was green because it was on) and we got t-boned in an intersection. It was a very bad accident and I was thrown out of the car and almost died.
Standardizing the positions of the lights nation wide is now done and that issue of colorblind people being fooled by the lights and causing accidents is not thing anymore.
Some things are too important to leave to happenstance and chance or whimsical local rules. Public safety. Traffic safety and standardization of equipment is one of those things.
What I find immensely helpful at intersections (here in the People’s Republik of NJ), are the hand-flashing countdown signs for people at the crosswalks. If they are placed well, I can see the numbers a good distance off and know whether or not to accelerate towards that green or coast.
Another thought I’ve been having recently- smart phones and the IFF transponder principle. If we had some kind of social network just for driving, almost like a 21st century CB radio, which could keep people more aware of each other on the road… I have no idea how the mechanics or actual application would really function, it’s just something that seems possible this day and age.
My main concern is other people’s apparent lack of concern. They make impulsive driving decisions which they do not communicate to other motorists, which could have potentially deadly results! Use your EFFIN’ BLINKER!!! Does the casual motorist not realize they are driving a massively deadly weapon? Perhaps we should not so easily and callously hand out the privilege of licensed driver.
I liked California’s traffic lights on highway ramps for staggered entry. I believe NJ could benefit from something like this.
Steg – my GPS alerts me to traffic problems and traffic cameras. Most helpful. It also beeps if I go over the posted speed limit.
Sorry about your accident. CA has always prided itself as being on the cutting edge of traffic technology but I think that ended with the recession in the 70s. I hate, double dog hate, driving in CA in the larger cities. I do love driving the PCH, but it keeps falling into the ocean.
swarthmoremom
I think I see a way to pass immigration reform, end tax inversion, create single payer, and extend unemployment benefits
All we have to do is say that OPPOSE such measures. And viola! We have a grassroots movement that cannot be stopped.
I thought many conservatives and all libertarians were for local control. Do they really want DOT involved?
SWM – DOT takes money from my buying gas in the form of a tax. I want it back. I do not want the DOT. And they should not be dealing with traffic lights although God knows they may be thinking about it.
I realize that it is a nuisance, but masses of people really NEED to go to court on every traffic or parking ticket. The pressure on police to appear and court clerks to handle the extra work can have a salubrious effect. The First Rule of justice is that you have NO rights unless you are willing to stand up, fight, and be inconvenienced by the statist control freaks who want to railroad you and everyone else that they can.
You have no legal duty or obligation to provide your name, driver license, registration, or any information whatever to police at a traffic stop. You cannot lie, but you need not say anything. If they arrest you, beat you, shoot you, or hurt you, they are breaking the law. Such perfectly legal and Constitutional “disobedience” will gum up their neat little system to a standstill.
This gets my Irish up and my preferred response is extrajudicial remedies like spray painting the camera lenses, blacking out license plates, and smashing the equipment with a sledge hammer. A civicly-minded club or gang should organize an operation, with a mobile cherry-picker truck if necessary, to take out all the RLCs they can of an evening with suitable diversionary measures to occupy the patrols elsewhere.