Seattle Bike Blog is reporting that Seattle will spend its school zone speeding camera money on school safety improvements.
The city installed a couple cameras last year, and the revenue generated far exceeded expectations (bad and good news). But there are also signs that the cameras themselves are changing behavior. Citations have fallen 16 percent since cameras were installed, and nearly every person who has received one ticket has not received a second.
So generating the money makes streets safer, and investing the money makes streets safer. Perfect.
The end game for the cameras would be zero speeding in school zones. People in Seattle will know that school zone speeding is taken extremely seriously. Of course, this would theoretically dry up the millions the cameras generate for school safety, but that would be a beautiful problem to have.
As long as the money comes from and goes to reducing those violations, it seems like a pretty good thing. I wouldn’t want the city to become dependent on that money for social services or whatever, vital as that is.
Replacing human drivers with computers is just a matter of time — the technology already exists — and will eliminate traffic congestion, accidents, drunk driving, speeding, police chases, and vehicular deaths and injuries. We won’t need car insurance, traffic lights and signs, traffic cops, or body shops anymore; and the need for insurance adjusters and personal injury lawyers will be greatly reduced. We will be able to dramatically increase the capacity of existing roads because computerized driving will allow higher traffic densities. Oil imports will be reduced because vehicles will be driven more efficiently. This is so obviously the way to go that I’m surprised nobody is talking about it.
And the NSA and the advertisers would know where you were, every second you were in the vehicle!
@1 In order for all of those improvements to happen then everyone would have to be willing to let computers drive their car everywhere and I don’t see that happening until MAYBE the Millennials are retiring. I just don’t see enough Gen Xers being willing to give up that control.
Also, something to consider. We can’t keep stationary voting machines from being hacked what kind of security are we going to have to keep people from taking control of your car for nefarious purposes. Call me paranoid I guess.
Yeah, I forgot about all those Robo-apocalypse stories where the machines become sentient and decide that there are too many people.
Replacing human drivers with computers is just a matter of time — the technology already exists — and will eliminate traffic congestion, accidents, drunk driving, speeding, police chases, and vehicular deaths and injuries. We won’t need car insurance, traffic lights and signs, traffic cops, or body shops anymore; and the need for insurance adjusters and personal injury lawyers will be greatly reduced. We will be able to dramatically increase the capacity of existing roads because computerized driving will allow higher traffic densities.
I heard at least 6 million people are employed as professional drivers. So yes add in all the jobs connected with human-directed transport and it’s a very disruptive technology we’re talking about.
I also heard the mining company Rio Tinto is already using automated truck transport for ore. Something like 30 percent of their ore transport.
Yep, just a matter of time and working out some bugs.
I cannot accept the backwards, sleepy, no-vision, take-the-narrow-view, attitude towards transportation issues expressed in this thread. Everybody knows what the future of transportation, that is to say, the transportation of the future will be! Obviously 600cc and 1000cc sportbikes will, and deservedly so, carry America into the Twenty-first-and-a-half Century.