VW "speed camera lottery" experiment rewards drivers who obey speed laws

[MetroMPG]

Buncha party poopers!

You're going to ruin my chance to get rich quick! ... By driving slowly past the special speed cameras. All. Day. Long.

[user removed]

The only thing that worries me about being observed is the money being wasted observing my driving. If that would make other drivers show similar consideration for me and the rest of the conscientious drivers and maybe reduce the overall risk of trying to get from point A to B then have at it.

The idea of the large SUV driver that was tailgating everyone of I64 west at a distance of less than 10 feet at 65 MPH being ticketed and fined a few hundred dollars before she kills some innocent person and maybe her own dumb arse is very appealing to me, and it is a public place.

regards
Mech

[Arragonis]

Useless. I could clone your numberplate to inflate the stats and claim the prize. Why rely on something as unreliable as the plate ?

My cousin had a car which was 6 months overdue for an MOT. It was safe as her hubby (a race mechanic) looks after it but this is illegal - a mistake. She never got pulled over.

However after she got her MOT sorted she was hit by a driver and noted the reg no, took photos etc. Turns out this was a correct reg plate, but at the time the real car with the plate was 300 miles away - the car that hit her was not insured and the plate was a copy.

This is not unusual.

[Arragonis]

Originally Posted by Old Mechanic

The idea of the large SUV driver that was tailgating everyone of I64 west at a distance of less than 10 feet at 65 MPH being ticketed and fined a few hundred dollars before she kills some innocent person and maybe her own dumb arse is very appealing to me, and it is a public place.

regards
Mech

This would be a useful use of cameras. I read something about cameras on the unrestricted sections of the German Autobahn (no higher accident stats BTW for those for who speed kills) where they targeted tailgaters specifically.

Target safety, not something that just earns money.

[Varn]

I don't think there is an automated way of identifying a tailgater. Besides how could you get the front plate on car that close behind.

I had a friend who used ballbearings He would drop them when someone got too close behind his motorcycle. He claimed it was very effective. A neat way might be to put a couple of pockets under the back of your car that you could release what ever you needed to.

[user removed]

Originally Posted by Arragonis

This would be a useful use of cameras. I read something about cameras on the unrestricted sections of the German Autobahn (no higher accident stats BTW for those for who speed kills) where they targeted tailgaters specifically.

Target safety, not something that just earns money.

I read that they use cameras on the Autobahns and photograph vehicles that are tailgating by using two stripes across the road. If the car behind another vehicle is less than the distance between the two stripes the camera takes a photo and the drive gets a ticket. The fine is based on ability to pay and one driver was fined $35,000 for tailgating!

Being a multi-millionaire can have it's disadvantages, but I would think it might actually discourage the behavior, especially at that price.

regards Mech

[Toby]

I'm really surprised that our highways here in the US don't have automated speeding ticket issuing systems. It would be trivially easy to implement with the road stripes and camera type system. And the capture rate would be ridiculously high compared to troopers in vehicles.

Maybe they are waiting to leapfrog such installations when all cars are position-aware and linked to networks?

I don't want either of these things to happen, but I'm surprised they haven't yet.

[comptiger5000]

Around here, cops are more worried about catching people who are speeding significantly, or are being dangerous than catching every vehicle who speeds. Unlike a camera, a human can detect when a person may be drunk, or is otherwise a danger to the cars around them.

[euromodder]

Originally Posted by Toby

I'm really surprised that our highways here in the US don't have automated speeding ticket issuing systems.

They are unnecessary and solve nothing - regardless of what politicians claim.
Portugal had a very dramatic increase in road safety without installing many camera's.

Our papers are full of perfectly survivable incidents that become fatal accidents. If everybody in Belgium wore their seatbelts, traffic fatalities would be around 25-30% lower. What camera detects seatbelt usage

[endurance]

I was listening to NPR a while back and there was a study that showed that if I city used red light cameras only at high risk intersections, they had a dramatic effect on reducing accidents at the intersection. However, if they had them at nearly every intersection, the effect dropped off to levels prior to their installation.

People are willing to slow down and drive safe for short periods of time, but they're just not going to change their driving habits completely. Speed cameras, if used, should be limited to school zones, areas with a lot of pedestrian traffic, and areas with high numbers of accidents; not as a blanket program to slow everyone down.