Road design, safety and Vision Zero

[ijmorlan]

I’d rather the speeded be fined via automated speed enforcement than..
-Hiring additional police officers to do speed enforcement
-Paying property taxes to enforce “victimless laws”
-Having officers enforce speed laws rather than catching “real criminals”
-Having traffic impeded by a blocked lane because a speeding motorist has been pulled over.

I’d assume the same people complaining about automatic enforcement also have the above issues with traditional enforcement. In reality they want NO enforcement and do not care about the safety of others that we share the road with.

Yes, it’s weird to be as clear as some people seem to be about being upset they were caught breaking the law.

I do think there are some issues that need to be seriously considered with automatic enforcement, but the mere fact of enforcement shouldn’t be the problem. I think with automatic enforcement we need to be better at making the rules actually appropriate and aligned with the goals of the enforcement. For example, you should not have a road clearly designed for 60km/h or higher signed for 40km/h; but realistically unless the police are doing a blitz they won’t be ticketing people for going the design speed of the road anyway. On a related note, there needs to be clarity on what the trigger condition actually is. Conventionally, it is accepted that one is pretty much never ticketed for going 10km/h over the limit, 20km/h over on the highway. So if I get to a speed camera, do I need to go at the usual speed (10km/h over), or exactly at the limit?

These are all issues that can be worked out however. Complaints about “cash grabs” do not help.