All You See Is Red
Posted on | December 20, 2007 at 9:23 pm | 9 Comments
Pet Peeve of the Day:This is a topic I’ve addressed before, but I’m going to revisit it as it starts to hit closer to home. According to this article in the Rocky Mountain News today, the city of Denver is going to install four red light cameras at busy intersections in order to easier catch scofflaws who wantonly run red lights (or, more accurately, try to beat the yellow). The online article doesn’t mention what the four intersections are, but the print edition had a map showing them. The map was pretty small, but it looked they were: 6th & Kalamath, 6th & Lincoln, 8th & Speer, and 36th & Quebec (?). I regularly traverse two of those on my way to work every morning, and a third one sometimes on my way home. So I expect to pay a lot of fines. Not that I’m a notorious red light runner or anything, it’s just hard to avoid when driving in Denver. A couple of months ago, I thought for sure I was going to get a ticket when I didn’t beat the yellow at 6th & Kalamath, and there was a cop on a motorcycle right after the intersection, looking directly at my car and writing something down. But he didn’t chase after me and I never got a ticket in the mail. Actually, I was driving a rental car at the time, so maybe that had something to do with it. I have to say that I’ve been a lot more careful at that intersection since that incident.
Though I applaud efforts to hinder the running of red lights, I’m not sure that cameras are the way to go. It just feels like an invasion of privacy to me. Like I really want to get a ticket in the mail with a picture of me picking my nose and a $40 fine. Next thing you know they’re going to be using cameras to catch people who don’t use their turn signals. On second thought, maybe that’s not a bad idea.
Jogged Today: No. Jogging? What’s that?
Today’s Weight: 164.4 lbs
Lunch Yesterday: Turkey Bacon Guacamole sub at Quiznos.
Bonus Pet Peeve of the Day: I was eating lunch at a tiny Thai/Chinese eatery today (not quite Bay Area tiny, but still very small – maybe ten 2-person tables at the most), and had to spend pretty much the entire meal listening to a dude at one table ranting to a dude at another table about the government. Like I said, the place was small, and his rant easily carried all the way through, even to me at the other end trying to read the paper. I didn’t want to eavesdrop, but I couldn’t help it. At least the rant was a liberal rant rather than a conservative one, but that didn’t make it any more tolerable. It was also a very paranoid rant – apparently the government is tapping this guy’s phone, and agents are tailing him (he even got in an auto accident with one and was arrested). He talked a lot about how the country is undergoing the worst constitutional crisis since before the Civil War. I think he even said he once worked at an oil company in Texas under the (soon-to-be) President. Really, the guy just kept going on and on and on about all sorts of problems and conspiracies, and the guy at the other table didn’t tell him to stifle it – it looked like he was actually listening. The weird thing is that the ranter looked like a fairly normal well-off guy, not like one of the ranting homeless looking for shelter. If I was sitting nearer, I would have told him to shut up and that I was trying to eat.
Curiously, later in the day, N and I watched two guys nearly come to blows outside a McDonald’s. We couldn’t figure out what it was about, but there was a lot of swearing. One of the guys (the older one) had a bicycle, and we surmised that the other guy had maybe almost driven into him at some point earlier or something. Just as they were about to swing at each other, the second guy’s wife came out and held them apart. More words were exchanged and then the bicyclist pedaled away.
Emotions ran high today at Denver eateries!
Latre.
Comments
9 Responses to “All You See Is Red”
December 20th, 2007 @ 11:38 pm
What’s weird to me about the photo-ticketing thing is this: presumably, in order to work, the cameras will have to get the license plate number of the vehicle in question. But if they’re focused on that, they cannot also focus on the driver of the vehicle. Aren’t drivers responsible for moving violations, rather than owners? If someone steals my car and runs a red, do I get a ticket?
It seems to me that if I ever got a ticket in the mail based on a camera thing, my first argument would be: prove I was the driver. For all the state knows, I lent my car to my leadfooted pal that day.
December 21st, 2007 @ 12:00 am
I’ve gotten at least two photo-radar tickets for speeding, and the pictures showed that it was obviously me, and the license plate number was readable at the same time. The red light cameras are supposed to be even more sophisticated.
From the article:
“The feedback is that (the cameras) can even detect if it’s a bad hair day, and you can’t deny you did it because it’s pretty much right there,” Councilwoman Marcia Johnson said Wednesday.
and
Suspected red-light runners will receive notification in the mail with four pictures: the vehicle before it enters the intersection, the vehicle in the intersection, the license plate and the driver’s face.
The notices will include a pin number that allows recipients to go online and see a 12-second video of the violation to help them decide if they want to pay the citation or fight it.
December 21st, 2007 @ 12:15 am
The wife got a huge$ photo-ticket soon after we moved to L.A. – on a hunch, I googled it and discovered that the municipality where she got nabbed (Culver City) was so notorious for using camera with improper timing constraints, or unlawfully inadequate signage, that it was fairly easy to get out of a ticket from them. In fact, whole websites were devoted to it, and even listed experiences with specific traffic court judges by name! So we had no problems.
Me, I always just flip my sun visor down when heading through an intersection with ‘questionable’ timing. If your face is covered, your ass is covered too!
December 21st, 2007 @ 1:29 am
I’m a huge fan of these contraptions and I don’t have any privacy qualms about them at all. Because, you know, being t-boned by some pronghead careening down the street, Starbucks in one hand, cell phone in the other, is a definite invasion of my privacy.
No doubt my perspective on this is due to my locale. When we first moved here, I was confused by, and angered at, people’s tendency to stop on green lights. It didn’t take long to figure out why: people just out-and-out ignore the lights here. Maybe Denver’s gotten this bad too.
The privacy argument is interesting, but that would tend to imply some sinister desire on The Goverment’s part to exert some kind of twisted Political Control on the masses. (It’s also, as a matter of law not an issue) Occam’s Razor would turn that into so much confetti. I say its just plain old greed-headedness. As you point out, it often feels like such criminal behaviour is just simply actions necessary to survive in this modern world. The City And County no doubt understands that, and knows they can cash in.
I’ll take it a step further and suggest that the City may even be engineering this behaviour. Out here we have this mile and a half long Test of Patience known as Mercer Street, a significant length of which is better known as the “Mercer Mess”. There are at least eight lights down that stretch, none of which are in sync. Having driven down Colfax from downtown to Lakewood (Westland) having to stop only once, I find this very frustrating, and by the time I hit I-5, I’m all lathered up and rarin’ to put that A4’s turbo to the test — blow through that stoopid-ass light right on the entrance ramp because I’M SICK AND TIRED OF STOPPING FOR EVERY DAMNED LIGHT. And I know SDOT knows that everyone coming from Queen Anne, Magnolia and Ballard feels this way: “Hey, lets put a red-light camera on the corner of Mercer and Fairview. I’ll buy the first round in Fiji next year…”
Recently, though, while stuck on the Mess, instead of fuming simultaneously at SDOT and Paul Allen (google: Seattle SLUT), I’ve taken solace in Bill The Galactic Hero. BtGH and I got into a spirited conversation about my Chosen Major and how it was, in his mind, just Social Engineering. But SDOT is a perfect example of Bill’s argument. Sure, SDOT could actually get traffic to move down Mercer or dozens of other thoroughfares here just by syncing the lights, probably save thousands of barrels of oil, keep untold tons of CO, CO2, etc. out of the atmosphere and maybe even reduce red-light running. But they won’t do that because the City of Seattle does not want you driving. So they deliberately make it frustrating to get around. Now that they’ve figured out how to make it cash-flow positive, we’ll never get smooth traffic.
But I’m still in favor of them, thinking that the cameras will make a difference some day.
And every morning, the image of Bill’s face will pop up HUD-like in front of me, to remind me its fantasy.
December 21st, 2007 @ 11:45 am
The Denver area has a few of its own “Mercer Mess”es, but I don’t think any of them are quite that bad. That’s just insane. I’m glad I’m not driving in Seattle.
This caught my eye from the Seattle Times article:
Critics say there are better ways to achieve safety goals. Increasing the duration of yellow lights or the amount of time all four lights at an intersection are red would be a start, said Aaron Quinn, with the National Motorists Association.
He cited one study that shows extending yellow lights by 1.5 seconds decreased violations by 96 percent.
“In most cases, the cameras are more for revenue than improving safety,” Quinn added.
It does sound like Seattle got a lot of revenue out of this!
I notice that a lot of times when I “push the yellow”, it’s because the people in front of me didn’t go fast enough (didn’t realize the light was green) or were prevented from starting right away because drivers from the other direction were still going. Increasing the yellow light time might help with that.
December 21st, 2007 @ 12:01 pm
Joe just got a photo ticket for making a RIGHT TURN ON RED without coming to a complete stop. And it ain’t for $40 — it’s for $381. Be careful, people.
December 21st, 2007 @ 12:04 pm
Also, re: conspiracies, I thought this article from today’s SF Chronicle was fascinating.
December 22nd, 2007 @ 10:20 am
There was a followup article in this morning’s RMN saying that red-light accidents have actually decreased during the last few years, and that the city insists they are not installing the red light cameras to provide extra revenue. “It’s promoting safety.”
December 22nd, 2007 @ 9:44 pm
Sue: That does it – I’m wearing a fake beard whenever I drive from now on. I mean, in addition to my real one.
Gregory: while I agree with the general point that, you know, I don’t want to get run into by some moron running a red (again: that already happened to me once – if I’d been about 1/10 second ahead of myself I wouldn’t be here to be typing about it), the situation Sue describes indicates the abuse potential of this sort of thing, which is clearly aimed primarily at revenue enhancement. It makes not a good jolly goddam of a difference whether one comes to a “complete stop” turning right on red so long as one is paying attention to whether there’s oncoming traffic or pedestrians. And unless Joe just roared through the intersection without slowing like the impetuous lad we all know he is, the chief lesson that $381 is going to teach (assuming he has to pay it & doesn’t challenge it) is that his municipality is willing to do anything to earn a buck. Where I come from, that’s called prostitution.
Which gives me an idea…hold on while I e-mail the mayor.