Robot Revenooers Revisited
So, I’m not happy about Knoxville’s red light cameras for a couple of reasons. Sure, people will say if you don’t break the law, then you have nothing to fear. But, if that’s the case, why stop there? Put them in my house, I might be breaking the law now. So, I got to thinking (dangerous, I know) about how to get rid of these things. I don’t mean like they do in England where they throw a gasoline soaked tire around them and set them on fire. I mean, a way to get the city to realize the error of their ways without the violence and destruction. About the only thing I can come up with is simply not patronizing the businesses around intersections where the cameras are. Now, I just need to convince 400,000 Knoxvillians to do the same.
June 23rd, 2007 at 5:08 pm
Depending on the laws involved, you might be able to put up signs near the location of the cameras.
The state isn’t doing this to be evil, it’s doing it because the state is stupid and wants to grow. It can only grow with money, and as long as this is ‘free’ cash, it’ll continue to go. On the other hand, once it’s non-profitable, the company the services are purchased from certainly won’t want to continue to lose money.
Cut off the mouth, and the rest shrivels.
June 23rd, 2007 at 6:26 pm
Are these things legal in Tennessee?
June 23rd, 2007 at 11:30 pm
There’s a home-bum that hangs around here at a local intersection with R2. I never give him anything, but I suppose that if he was clever enough to get a sign on a pole saying “Stop the Money Cams!” and stand just in the right spot during that artificially short yellow, I might be willing to support the cause were he to pass the hat during the red light.
June 23rd, 2007 at 11:48 pm
I think there’s some research that shows red light cameras actually increase accidents at intersections. Maybe they can be persuaded with that. That could get the insurance industry on board too if it’s actually true, but then again, they like citations too.
Good luck!
June 24th, 2007 at 12:16 am
Yeah, I’ve railed against these for a while because they have been shown to increase accidents.
Cities will begin removing them when someone is rear-ended and uses this data to successfully sue the city for creating an environment that contributed to the crash / injury even though they knew it could.
So it will take multiple, multi-million dollar settlements that increase property taxes before citizens remove the council that authorizes them and put in representatives that remove them.
Oh, and a few people will have to be seriously injured in crashes caused by the things. But hey, what’s a few paralyzed people when the State has money to make???
June 25th, 2007 at 1:44 am
Funny, I was thinking exactly along the lines of what they are doing in London. I had an idea for a device that attached a motor to a chain loop that would probably do a good job of chewing right through a metal pole, but I was worried about setting a pole in the road.
I did notice that the poles they are putting up in Dallas have standard (and unlocked) ports for accessing the power feeds here in Dallas. I spent more than a few minutes wondering what would happen if someone discharged a large homemade capacitor into the wires that run through that pole. The only thing standing between that is four large nuts and the will to do it.
June 25th, 2007 at 7:25 am
I’ve noticed the red light cameras flashing on cars while they were going through an intersection on a green light. I’ve seen it happen over and over again. I’m wondering if all those people rolling through on green got tickets.
My dad says once the illegal aliens in Dallas start getting tickets, they’re going to shoot up the cameras. I like the sound of the flaming tire of death, though. It’s more poetic that way.
June 25th, 2007 at 9:49 am
Phlegmee, after the people got use to the red-light money cameras here in DC, they turned on a function of the camera that detects people speeding. This was apparently a built-in, but disable feature in the local Lockheed Martin money-cams. Perhaps that’s what you were seeing.
Because speed is detected by two inductive loops in the pavement, I suppose braking hard just before the sensors might be effective. I’m sure that trick will do wonders for the accident rate