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Seattle Sets the Stage for Automatic Traffic Camera Expansion - The Urbanist
(www.theurbanist.org)
this post was submitted on 04 May 2025
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I drove over 7K miles last month. I would much rather see traffic enforcement cameras than police cars sitting on the side of the road.
Traffic cameras attempt to document actual behavior with real evidence in an impartial manner.
Most cops are dumb, undertrained, and overpayed parasites on society who have violent and agressive behaviors. Then they sit on the side of the road being bored out of their minds all day. When an accident does occur they mostly stand around directing traffic while the paramedics, firefighters, and wreckers do all the work. Hell the most useful thing I have seen them do is remove debris from the road with a broom and dustpan.
City I lived in had a serious issue with people running red lights at a few intersections. Many fatal accidents and pedestrian injuries happened because of it. They put in a red light light cameras on the worst intersection. The first month it generated over $350K in fines at $125 each. Around 2,800 drivers ran that intersection. Within 3 months the number of tickets dropped to under 20 per month. The number of accidents dropped respectively as well.
Screw traffic cameras. Most of that money goes to private companies and it's all too tempting for cities to game them to increase revenue. I say we just park a bunch of empty cop cars around if you want people to slow down. Nothing works better and there's no cost involved outside of the initial purchase of the vehicles. It's cheaper and more effective.
Agreed. I have a compromise. They can put in all the cameras they want - but absolutely cannot, upon pain of losing 50% of their total budget for a year per violation - outsource or subcontract the operations or anything akin to the operations of the system at all. Hire IT staff to run it, pay people to process the data. No you can't use AI. Do this or fuck off, Seattle.
I will never ever forget when a red light camera came to Redmond, at the turn leading to driving through Microsoft's campus. Can you guess what happens when you piss of a bunch of smart motivated people who have money and aren't necessarily the kindest people? That shit got challenged and removed after about six months. I still see the stump/the concrete it was embedded when when I go to my buddy's house, and it warms my heart literally every. single. fucking. time.
jfc. I've only ever run a red in an ambulance, and that's with the lights and sirens and still creeped into the intersection before passing through.
you know what the issue is? apparently these assholes are getting through life without seeing enough traumatic shit.
also people who drive recklessly should have to volunteer in burn wards and children's hospitals.
They just stopped using the traffic cameras in my county this year. I’ve been pulled over twice this year now after never getting a camera ticket and not being pulled over for the last 15 years. I guess they have to make the money somewhere. I’d prefer the cameras.