ANALYSIS - Intersection Safety Cameras

I finally realized what the cameras take away that changes "everything",  something that we've enjoyed for granted, and something that reinforced the honor system in our society: the little known thing such as "freedom from being caught". The reason that changes everything is because it changes the entire balance of power in an adversarial justice system. Suddenly the state knows with machine perfect precision everything to know about your movements, financial transactions, history, opinions and may as well your thoughts.

With modern tech, 99% of drivers are already carrying on-board all of the necessary equipment for remote tracking, evidence documentation and preservation. Unless you don't carry a smartphone on you most of the time, Google already has all the data/evidence necessary to charge every single one of us with every single speeding offense that we've committed over the past 2 years. An average driver breaks some kind of driving law every 3 blocks, and now there's enough dirt on most of us to bankrupt anyone practically on-demand, its an invisible Damocles sword hanging over all our heads.

Recently the talk about "defunding Police" came about, and opinions on it range from Zero Police to Less Police to more non-Police-Police. And it seems to me that the Zero Police is completely and perfectly attainable everywhere with the current level of technology today: a dystopian fusion of films "Enemy of the state" & "Minority Report" & "Idiocracy". China already surveils and fines pedestrians based on facial recognition for spitting, littering, jay-walking. They assign social scores based on individual behavior and prohibit travel and other "luxuries" if individual is not in good standing. Everything is done digitally, well documented, with perfect evidentiary base.

But even in North America, gone are the days when license plates were necessary - if you have a face - you can be uniquely identified. Majority of identification databases, such as passports and driver licenses are already analyzed for facial recognition and an algorithm is built for your face to bounce back positive matches on-demand, i.e. for FBI requests. Most of the tech and costs necessary for 100% per-person tracking are already in-place. We are literally a stroke of a pen away from turning "our" laws into a dystopian 2084 world where everything will be prohibited, unless explicitly allowed.

We keep dealing with "all these problems", but the society is demonstrably becoming unhappier. Suicide rates are up more than double among young people over the last decade. Lots of people are unsatisfied with their lives and don't have high hopes of it getting better. I don't believe that we'll be happy once we cut-off any more freedoms, we'll be even more miserable.

Why don't we instead have cameras that pay drivers (randomly) for positive actions, like stopping at red-light, stopping on stop-signs, letting pedestrians through, etc. We have the technology, and we have too much money (apparently), so why not positive reinforcement instead?

It's worth taking the time to look at that Impacts report; particularly page 301 on the BC Photo Radar Program. As many will recall, it became an important political issue that went from majority support on the part of the public when they introduced it, to the opposite once they ran it for a few years.

Note that the fines were raised from $115 to $460 per incident - it may not have been intended as a 'cash cow', but that's what the government of the day morphed it into; even as the police deliberately switched from a model based on community input/demand for lower speeds on certain roads to setting up their beige minivans on sections of road (such as SW Marine) where traffic flow has always been swift, thus resulting in many more tickets.

At least, back in those days, the vehicle owner receiving the ticket could then nominate who was driving, to ensure that they now bore the responsibility - both the fine, but also the Penalty Points on their Driver License, which is as it should be; whether it's an employee operating a company vehicle, of just a family member using the car. 

And, to the best of my knowledge/recollection, when BC introduced Red Light cameras, this same ability to nominate the miscreant was continued. Again, this is how it should be, to have any affect on driver behaviour (never mind the cost). And whatever your politics, there is never an excuse for running a red, you had lotsa time to stop when it went amber, if it was red when you entered the intersection.

But we should definitely be concerned about how this red light camera / speed camera system is being run these days. Secretly, it seems, by RSBC. It's absurd and unjustifiable that only the vehicle owner can get penalized, and only with a fine. Wealthy people aren't that special.

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A couple of other thoughts. 

Why don't we instead have cameras that pay drivers (randomly) for positive actions, like stopping at red-light, stopping on stop-signs, letting pedestrians through, etc. We have the technology, and we have too much money (apparently), so why not positive reinforcement instead?

Outrageous, I always enjoy reading your posts, but this logic confounds me. I'm pretty certain that the idea behind the system is to target incorrect driver behaviour, in a calculated manner, rather than reward random drivers for doing what they're supposed to do anyway (though stopping on stop signs probably ain't what you meant).

Meanwhile, looking at the Traffic Camera warning sign at the top of this article, I wonder why they always use some approximate silhouette of a 4x5 Speed Graphic from the 1940's to depict these modern digital devices?