|
I agree, these automated traffic violation systems must go.
On the surface, these they seem like a logical way to keep everyone a little bit safer, and suppress dangerous driving behaviors, but when you dig a little bit deeper, you will find that there is no statistical evidence to support this assumption, and in fact, the whole idea is pretty half baked.
Statistics actually prove that they are not a safety mechanism, but rather, are a reliable but crooked income source for local government. In fact, the private company that manufactures, maintains, and receives 50% of the revenue from each ticket produced by these systems, sells them to our elected officials by stating that their studies show that chronic offenders simply do not change their behavior, no matter how many tickets they have to pay, so they can rest assured that the money will keep flowing.
You might say, "So what? They are breaking the law. They should have to pay." Well, the plot thickens. In fact, there is quite a bit of injustice occurring as well. Has anyone ever borrowed your car? If you have let someone borrow your car, like a business associate from out of town, your ex, or teenage children, and they get one of these tickets, YOU are responsible to pay the bill, and the blemish goes on your record, unless you can prove that you were not the driver. Because one can rarely identify the driver of a vehicle from the video or photographs used to initiate the citation, YOU must come up with your own evidence, have forms notarized, and present them to the court within the small window of time allowed to protest, and still, the charges are almost never reversed, and YOU suffer the consequences.
Not to mention the other obvious glitches in dehumanizing any system of justice. For instance, have you ever had a baby, or medical emergency? Sometimes speeding is appropriate. Sometimes a motorcycle will not have enough mass to cause the lights to change. Would you have a person wait at a red light for an hour, until a car arrives to trip the sensor. In many places, for a motorcycle driving after rush hour, especially late night, there is no other way to proceed, than to stop, check, and run the red light.
All of these facts are but a small compilation of what a skilled, even minded journalist could expose to an intelligent, freedom loving community, verifying our intuitive repulsion to automating law enforcement. It's not Robocop, but it's still a dangerous step in the wrong direction.
|
