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1788 messages, Last post on Nov 14, 2009 at 3:43 PM
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Replying to: xrunner2 (May 12, 2009 5:17 am) Unfortunately, the traffic engineers just don't have enough money to do everything and get all the signals coordinated like that one. They do have cameras on something like 80 or 120 major intersections and they can override the signals remotely if they see traffic flow problems or bottlenecks in an area. Politicians may be idiots, but the bureaucrats keep things running pretty smoothly when the pols keep out of their way. And I think that photo radar isn't something that a traffic engineer decides to implement to calm traffic, but something driven more by revenue. |
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I would say that 80 to 90 percent of stop signs would be better served if changed to either nothing or a Yield sign. A majority of stop signs are incorrectly used where it should be a Yield Sign. When I used to live in Sacramento, CA, they implemented a lot of neighborhood 3 way stop signs I'm sure in an effort to appease blue hairs that own Buicks. As a Teenager, I made a point of disobeying those "NEW" stop signs that were utterly useless except for wasting gas, by simply ignoring them. I didn't even yield, I just ran them at full speed and ignored them. Also, my average speed may have been about 40 before the stop signs (speed limit was 30 or 35 I forget), but after the stop signs, I averaged 50 MPH on that road. So the signs don't work, and have the opposite effect of what was inteneded by the OLD FOLK. I"m a perfect example. |
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Replying to: larsb (May 11, 2009 10:39 am) Traffic Court makes a mockery of the justice system, and since most people's only experience with court is from Traffic Infractions (hopefully they are law abiding in other areas), it is there only exposure to the justice system, and it breeds nothing but contempt, disrespect, and a disbelief in law enforcement and the justice system. If you think the OJ trial made the justice system look bad, you are out of touch. Go to traffic court some day and watch the trials; it is a complete joke, and makes a mockery of our constitution. I for one, have no respect for law enforcement officers, and it is due to the very reasons described above. Why just recently, a Santee Sheriff decided to issue me a ticket for not seeing an obscure and unsubstantiated "no u turn symbol sign" at a left turn lane on a divided 6 lane road (3 lanes each way) Why the NO U TURN sign is there I have no idea. I'm upset it was not posted in a very visible spot and can be easily missed. I'm upset 2 motorcycle sheriff's officer's were lying in wait in the parking lot for people to miss that "hard to see" no u turn sign. I'm upset he issued me a ticket for a non-safety related manuever. I demanded the County Seat as my place to appear in court which is the LAW and has a vehicle code requiring the officer provide the County Seat if requested by the citizen. It has been upheld as an ABSOLUTE right by the CA appeals court and is case law/precedent. The officer proceeded to BREAK The law and the VC and deny my request. I noted on the ticket that "Officer REFUSED County Seat Requested" and signed the ticket. The officer became irate and said I defaced the ticket and was impeding his investigation because he might have to write another ticket. He opened my driver side door without my consent and performed an illegal visual search in doing so. He then said , you know what? and walked around my vehicle. Keep in mind I had already signed the ticket, but when he came back a couple minutes lateer, he said I had 2 more violations, one for bald tires with too little tread depth (this was recently so it's almost summer in an area where it almost NEVER rains ie. not a safety issue) and that my radar detector is not allowed in the center of my windshield. He handed me back the citation with now 2 offenses, (he only added the bald tire VC violation) for which I obviously never signed to appear in court. So he committed prosecutorial misconduct, in committing charge STACKING, obviously in retaliation for my exercising and assertion of MY RIGHTS, which now makes this a CIVIL RIGHTS violation on the officer's part, and all this over a SIGN violation ticket? Do you know he actually threatened to take me into jail for defacing the ticket that I did sign (mind you), and threatened I'd be stuck for 3 days in jail before the "too busy" magistrate would see me. I find this to be PAR for the course for most traffic officers out there. |
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Replying to: larsb (May 01, 2009 9:50 am) Do you think the "it was just a mistake" defense will hold up in court? Everytime I'm speeding above the speed limit, it was JUST A MISTAKE Officer. I'd love to see that one work. I was mistakenly driving above the underposted speed limit judge! |
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How can this technology be trusted? Of course shills will not have a problem with this technology, but ALL sane individuals should be concerned about the use of technology that CANNOT be made to work reliably, as shown time and again. from: http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/2405820/Cameras-record-incorrect-speed- - s Cameras record incorrect speeds By TIM DONOGHUE - The Dominion Post Last updated 05:00 13/05/2009 Police have been forced to waive speeding tickets losing thousands of dollars in revenue because their new digital speed cameras are clocking motorists at twice their actual speeds. A police spokesman has confirmed the new mobile cameras, which were introduced nationally in January at a cost of $4 million, were wrongly clocking the speeds of larger vehicles. Some tickets were issued for twice the vehicles' true speeds. As a result, police have stopped processing infringement notices for high-sided trucks and buses in effect giving those vehicles temporary immunity from speed camera fines. They have waived at least 133 tickets after complaints, including 10 proven cases of inaccurate readings. Acting national manager of road policing Inspector Peter McKay dismissed suggestions that tickets for normal-sized cars were also being waived, but admitted staff were scrutinising all photos and readings, particularly from large-sided vehicles. "If there appears to be any anomalies, we will not process any infringements," he said. "To ensure no one is disadvantaged, no photos of large flat-sided vehicles typically buses and trucks are being processed at the moment." Lawyer Tony Ellis said police would need to be certain on technical grounds that the Australian-supplied cameras were correctly measuring speeds, otherwise they would "leave themselves open to a challenge by some enterprising motorist or lawyer. They could bring a challenge on the basis that the cameras are incorrectly calibrated". He also questioned the police definition of a large vehicle. "What about a van which is between a large vehicle and a car? There does seem room for querying what is going on." The problems emerged soon after the 43 digital cameras were introduced nationwide in January. National road policing manager Paula Rose said last December that she expected the new cameras to result in more tickets, and motorists would receive their infringement notices more quickly. About $36m was collected in speeding fines last year. Mr McKay refused to say how much was being lost through the waivers. The radar beams from the cameras have been deflected from the sides of large vehicles to nearby metal objects and back doubling the recorded speed. "It appears initially the cameras were set incorrectly and this has resulted in some incorrect [high] readings," Mr McKay said. "We are talking about introducing a fairly sophisticated piece of equipment ... it is reasonable to expect some teething issues." Mr McKay could not say when the problems would be resolved. There were 536,995 speed camera tickets issued in the 15 months to April 15 more than 25,000 fewer than during the period from January 1, 2007, to April 15 last year. Road Transport Forum chief executive officer Tony Friedlander was unaware of the speed camera problems. Bus and Coach Association chief executive Raewyn Bleakley advised her members to be careful if disciplining drivers who had received speeding tickets in recent months because of the uncertainty. Automobile Association spokesman Simon Lambourne said it was imperative that the problem be sorted out quickly. "If people are speeding, they should be caught." CLOCKING UP * $36 million was collected by police and the Justice Department in speeding fines last year. * The 43 new digital cameras, mounted on the roadside in modified people-mover vehicles, were introduced in January, replacing 31 old mobile, wet film cameras. * The decision to expand the speed camera programme was part of an attempt to lower the road toll to less than 300 by 2010. |
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Replying to: andres3 (May 12, 2009 9:36 am) |
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Our legal system may be slow, and somtimes inconsistent, but I have no doubt it will work for all of us in the end. Please note the highlighted parts and how they directly negate the concept spouted by shills that we have NO right to privacy on a public road. from: http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/27/2775.asp New York Appeals Court Strikes Down Warrantless GPS Spying Ruling by New York Court of Appeals calls the warrantless GPS tracking of motorists a massive invasion of privacy. The New York State Court of Appeals yesterday disagreed with Wisconsin's second-highest court in ruling that police may not use Global Position System (GPS) tracking devices without a warrant. A divided New York court found that the state police violated the law when officers placed a device known as Q-Ball on the van belonging to Scott C. Weaver on the morning of December 21, 2005. This device wirelessly transmitted an up-to-the-minute history of the vehicle's every move over the course of sixty-five days. Police never obtained a warrant for the surveillance, but the evidence obtained was used -- along with the testimony of a witness -- to convict Weaver of participating in a K-Mart burglary. In evaluating the legal situation, the New York court -- like its Wisconsin counterpart -- turned to US v. Knotts, a 1983 US Supreme Court case involving a modest beeper-like transmitter. The New York judges departed from the reading of the Wisconsin judges by distinguishing the powerful capabilities of modern surveillance. "Knotts involved the use of what we must now, more than a quarter of a century later, recognize to have been a very primitive tracking device," Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman wrote for the 4-3 majority. "The device was, moreover, used in a focused binary police investigation for the discreet purpose of ascertaining the destination of a particular container of chloroform. And, in this application, during the single trip from the place where the chloroform was purchased to the Knotts cabin, the beeper was fairly described by the court as having functioned merely as an enhancing adjunct to the surveilling officers' senses; the officers actively followed the vehicle and used the beeper as a means of maintaining and regaining actual visual contact with it. The technology was, in this context, not unconvincingly analogized by the court to a searchlight, a marine glass, or a field glass." Such a narrow use of technology could not be compared, the court argued, with the broad power promised by a GPS unit with a tracking memory and precision beyond anything a police department could do with live surveillance. "GPS is not a mere enhancement of human sensory capacity, it facilitates a new technological perception of the world in which the situation of any object may be followed and exhaustively recorded over, in most cases, a practically unlimited period," Lippman wrote. "The potential for a similar capture of information or 'seeing' by law enforcement would require, at a minimum, millions of additional police officers and cameras on every street lamp." The majority found that allowing police unsupervised access to this powerful technology was not "compatible with any reasonable notion of personal privacy or ordered liberty." It also found that the most troubling aspect was the ease with which police could create a profile of the political, religious and social habits of any target. The US Supreme Court in 1983 even suggested that the Knotts ruling may have been different had the technology allowed for "twenty-four hour surveillance of any citizen in this country... without judicial knowledge or supervision." The New York majority also struck back against the well-worn concept of "diminished expectation of privacy" that is so often used as an excuse to intrude on the rights of the motoring public. "It is... quite another (thing) to suppose that when we drive or ride in a vehicle our expectations of privacy are so utterly diminished that we effectively consent to the unsupervised disclosure to law enforcement authorities of all that GPS technology can and will reveal," Lippman wrote. "We, of course, have held in reliance upon our own Constitution that the use of a vehicle upon a public way does not effect a complete surrender of any objectively reasonable, socially acceptable privacy expectation." The majority concluded that it was absurd for the state to argue that no search occurred in Weaver's case. It also found no possible "emergency" exception could apply to a surveillance operation that lasted sixty-five days. To prevent the possibility of being overturned by a federal court, the majority made clear that because the US Supreme Court has not ruled on GPS that it was relying on the privacy protections of the New York Constitution. "Without judicial oversight, the use of these powerful devices presents a significant and, to our minds, unacceptable risk of abuse," Lippman concluded. "Under our state Constitution, in the absence of exigent circumstances, the installation and use of a GPS device to monitor an individual's whereabouts requires a warrant supported by probable cause." The full text of the decision is available in a 70k PDF file at the source link below. Source: New York v. Weaver (Court of Appeals, State of New York, 5/12/2009)
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Replying to: andres3 (May 12, 2009 9:36 am) Reminds me of a police chase clip shown/reshown on cable tv numerous times. A young guy and his girl friend passenger are being chased by a police officer with police car having video camera facing forward and recording. The young man is driving a pickup and has an alegedly stolen lawn mower rider in its bed and is speeding, driving recklessly and will not pull over and stop. The pickup driving at "Full Speed", maybe 60 or more, goes through a stop sign and is hit broadside by a semi truck maybe going 60. Man and his passenger killed instantly. To extent that semi driver was hopefully not injured, and no other motorist or pedestrian was injured/killed, justice was served. Photo radar for speed and stop signs would not be necessary if there weren't those incredibly irresponsible drivers who "grossly" violated speed limits or wantonly ran through traffic control devices such as stop lights and stop signs. Blame photo radar on these folks. |
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Replying to: vcheng (May 13, 2009 5:19 am) “The protection guaranteed by the Amendments [the Fourth and Fifth] is much broader in scope [than the protection of property]. The makers of our Constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness. They recognized the significance of man's spiritual nature, of his feelings and of his intellect. They knew that only a part of the pain, pleasure and satisfactions of life are to be found in material things. They sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations. They conferred, as against the Government, the right to be let alone -- the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men. To protect that right, every unjustifiable intrusion by the Government upon the privacy of the individual, whatever the means employed, must be deemed a violation of the Fourth Amendment. And the use, as evidence in a criminal proceeding, of facts ascertained by such intrusion must be deemed a violation of the Fifth” "That such a surrogate technological deployment is not - - particularly when placed at the unsupervised discretion of agents of the state "engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime" (Johnson v United States, 333 US 10, 14 [1948]) -- compatible with any reasonable notion of personal privacy or ordered liberty would appear to us obvious. One need only consider what the police may learn, practically effortlessly, from planting a single device. The whole of a person's progress through the world, into both public and private spatial spheres, can be charted and recorded over lengthy periods possibly limited only by the need to change the transmitting unit's batteries. Disclosed in the data retrieved from the transmitting unit, nearly instantaneously with the press of a button on the highly portable receiving unit, will be trips the indisputably private nature of which takes little imagination to conjure: trips to the psychiatrist, the plastic surgeon, the abortion clinic, the AIDS treatment center, the strip club, the criminal defense attorney, the by-the-hour motel, the union meeting, the mosque, synagogue or church, the gay bar and on and on. What the technology yields and records with breathtaking quality and quantity, is a highly detailed profile, not simply of where we go, but by easy inference, of our associations -- political, religious, amicable and amorous, to name only a few -- and of the pattern of our professional and avocational pursuits. When multiple GPS devices are utilized, even more precisely resolved inferences about our activities are possible. And, with GPS becoming an increasingly routine feature in cars and cell phones, it will be possible to tell from the technology with ever increasing precision who we are and are not with, when we are and are not with them, and what we do and do not carry on our persons -- to mention just a few of the highly feasible empirical configurations." "This being so, the Court quite reasonably concluded that the technology "in this case" (Knotts, 460 US at 282 [emphasis added]) raised no Fourth Amendment issue, but pointedly acknowledged and reserved for another day the question of whether a Fourth Amendment issue would be posed if "twenty-four hour surveillance of any citizen of this country [were] possible, without judicial knowledge or supervision"> (id. at 283). To say that that day has arrived involves no melodrama; twenty-six years after Knotts, GPS technology, even in its present state of evolution, quite simply and matter-of-factly forces the issue." "An individual operating or traveling in an automobile does not lose all reasonable expectation of privacy simply because the automobile and its use are subject to government regulation. Automobile travel is a basic, pervasive, and often necessary mode of transportation to and from one's home, workplace, and leisure activities. Many people spend more hours each day traveling in cars than walking on the streets. Undoubtedly, many find a greater sense of security and privacy in traveling in an automobile than they do in exposing themselves by pedestrian or other modes of travel. Were the individual subject to unfettered governmental intrusion every time he entered an automobile, the security guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment would be seriously circumscribed. As Terry v. Ohio ... recognized, people are not shorn of all Fourth Amendment protection when they step from their homes onto the public sidewalks. Nor are they shorn of those interests when they step from the sidewalks into their automobiles." "Technological advances have produced many valuable tools for law enforcement and, as the years go by, the technology available to aid in the detection of criminal conduct will only become more and more sophisticated. Without judicial oversight, the use of these powerful devices presents a significant and, to our minds, unacceptable risk of abuse." |
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Replying to: xrunner2 (May 13, 2009 5:45 am) But how do the businesses selling the photo/redlight/radar speed services to the political entities know which of the hundreds of intersections in a small town to have cameras at? They don't put cameras up at ALL intersections and stop signs or else they might actually have a chance of capturing pictures of the hardcore criminals like that. Of course, are we to believe that they pay the tickets for the camera businesses? Brooklyn Bridge for sale if we believe they do!!! Indeed this points all the more to having real policemen on the patrol to note the funny things that happen that make them suspictious so they stop a vehicle before the driver runs through a stoplight.
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