RubeRad

The US has a lot of stoplight cameras that issue automatic red light tickets, but I've never heard of cameras in the US that issue speeding tickets.

I have seen roadside unmanned speed signs that have a radar gun and show the MPH of every passing car, but those are for information only, under the hope that seeing your speed measured outside vs just on your speedometer might influence you to drive slower. Studies have shown that is a somewhat effective psychological technique.

jon c. 

There are speeding cameras in use in a few places. I know Maryland has some and there are a few in south Florida. And an infamous one in Brantley, AL which nails a lot of tourists heading to Florida panhandle beaches.

We had red light cameras here but the city removed them after a year or two. My understanding is they were run by a contractor and the contractor was allowed to set the timing of lights. The result was a lot of left turn signals of woefully insufficient length. A lot of tickets and a lot of complaints and ultimately the complaints outweighed the revenue.

PeteHski

Speed cameras are everywhere in the UK and much of Europe. They are very effective around the big cities. London traffic for example has been massively tamed in recent years. I drive into the centre quite regularly and speeding is not really an option.

Alan K

The cameras on busy intersections in larger cities are becoming common here as well. But not all cities have them.
A friend got a ticket for making a right turn on red light, when no other car was present. He slowed down a great deal but did not come to full stop. He wasn’t happy about this ticket sent to him in the mail for $130 but he had to pay it. The cool thing about these tickets is that includes a link to their website where you can see the driver/car and the nature of offense. His car definitely did not come to a total stop!

Iride01 

The biggest issue with red light cameras in the USA... IMO, was that they let private companies install and monitor them. There was no requirement that they even be monitored by a person. And if they were, then I don't think they had to have law enforcement or even traffic enforcement training. The company got the bulk of all the revenue and the city or other government jurisdiction where they were installed only got a pittance share of the revenue. There also was little to no defense against any of the citations as there was no law enforcement officer involved. It was just a mandatory citation fee that you paid. Even if the intersection had been blocked by police for a funeral procession to pass through. Paying the citation didn't even involve going through the court system and redress for wrongly issued tickets was little to none.

If the cameras were operated by LEO's, and the revenue from them distributed in the same manner as normal traffic citations, then I'd have less issue with their use in the USA. Not that revenue from tickets is a large amount of money considering the overall expense budget for law enforcement. However it must have been good enough for private companies to cherry pick the places they installed the cameras.

How are the cameras in the UK installed and monitored? Who gets the revenue from their use?

PeteHski

They are governed by the regional police forces and revenue from fines goes directly to the government. There are many types of speed camera in operation throughout the UK and they are getting smarter with increased use of average speed cameras. Mobile camera vans are also regularly in operation.

They do make a big difference to driving habits. In areas where speed cameras are heavily used the effect it has on traffic speed is really obvious. Especially when average speed cameras are in operation. When driving in the UK you really do have to pay close attention to speed limits, especially in towns and cities and major motorways. In rural areas there are far less cameras, especially on minor roads.

jon c. 

I received a camera generated ticket driving a rental car in Newark. As it was a rental Avis automatically charged my credit card. There was no indication as to what the actual violation was so I called the number provided for information. They told me Newark had their own system so I had talk to them. I made repeated calls to Newark and only occasionally reached a live person. Who would invariably tell me that the system was down so they couldn't tell me what I did wrong. Gave up after a while figuring Newark probably needed the money more than I did. But I always wondered what it could have been as I'm pretty cautious when driving rentals in unfamiliar cities.

Jay Turberville

If you have $20-30 and an FM radio, you can easily update your car radio for handsfree calling. Well, at least for handsfree receipt of calls.

Chuck M 

I almost always set mine at the posted limit or 5 over. But if I'm being passed so much that I have to check to make sure I'm not going well under the limit, I set it much higher and let the adaptive cruise control keep me with the rest of the traffic.

I think George Carlin may have had it right though, anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac.

Jay Turberville

Just to be clear pedestrian and bicycle fatalities track geometrically with vehicle speed. The increase is pretty rapid after around 35-40 mph. So reducing average traffic speed in cities and near bicycle routes is probably the thing to focus on from a cycling advocacy and pedestrian safety standpoint. If the car is traveling 55 legally it is still a significantly greater hazard for cyclists than if it were travelling 35 mph. The issues goes well beyond illegal speeding.

And as someone else alluded to earlier, having a handful of cars "controlled" to obey the speed limits is a problem if all the cars aren't similarly controlled. So the first step would be to change enforcement so that the posted speed limit is treated as a real limit and not the number plus 9 mph that you can travel at and avoid getting cited. In a world full of GPS devices, there's no longer much excuse not to have a very accurate idea of you actual vehicle speed.

Troul 

having bicycle routes be very limited to interact with motorized vehicle routes would likely result in a safer outcome & less likely to deal with cities eager to issue quick cash grabbing tickets.

Leisesturm

Every city that has tried to put even one millionth the amount of bicycle routes as car routes into existence has failed. Many cities can no longer even keep their car routes paved! My city wisely designated many car routes as 'sharrow's' which allow no overtaking of cyclists. In reality, passing still happens, but at greatly reduced relative velocities. The issue of cities using motorists as revenue is completely separate.

Leisesturm

I don't know about your city, but mine is short 350 patrol officers. Over in a neighboring county they gave up law enforcement altogether! The money to even put signals on a majority of intersections isn't there and you need that infrastructure to hang your cameras and tie them into the Network. The number one complaint by people is that people "get away" with stuff ... well. Look around. Who is actually left working? I had to start taking my wife (blind) to work on our tandem because its just sad how many buses and trains are being cancelled because there is no one to drive them. People know what the speed limit is and there are no pedestrians on limited access freeways and interstates. People don't speed in town because they don't know what the posted limit is. And, for the very last time, speed compliance, is an incredibly low bar for success. An incredible amount of misery and mayhem is caused by people that were NOT speeding.

Troul 

sounds like a mismanagement of tax payers money if the city lacks police presences.
More & more it goes unaddressed for where the money is accounted for, but when asked, it's "dont worry about it, it's used wisely!" riiiiiight.

Speeders wouldnt be speeding if they witnessed more cop cars patrolling.

PeteHski

I find that on motorways here (70 limit) 10% over generally puts you in the main traffic flow. It's adaptive of course, but I find that not many people risk going over 10% because of the many cameras. Some will drive in the mid 80s at around the limit where a fixed penalty applies. Above that and you are going to court, so that has pretty much stopped 100+ driving here. It's usually stolen cars you see at that speed.

On city roads (30 or even 20 limits) you get a ticket at 35 and drivers know it. 10% over avoids tickets and you generally won't get tailgated at that speed. Again cameras have tamed it all down. They are everywhere in the towns and cities.

jon c. 

I know where they tend to set up radar and I adjust my speed accordingly. As a driver I don't advocate for more speed traps, but I can't argue that they wouldn't be effective.

RubeRad

Promises, promises...

RubeRad

Everybody on the freeway stabs the brakes whenever they see a cop

Funny story, one time I was driving up to a T intersection in like a dell so all 3 sides approached it downhill. I was behind a cop car, and from the right (heading 'across the top' of the T) came this Jeep Wrangler screaming downhill, trying to beat the red light. Too late he realized (a) he wasn't going to make it, and (b) there was a cop right there. He slammed on the brakes, wheels completely locked, and he skidded all the way through the intersection.

Needless to say, after a beat, the cop's lights went on. I was laughing my ass off.

I-Like-To-Bike

Bicyclists would come to a full stop at stop signs and wait patiently for the green light at traffic signals if they witnessed a cop car patrolling in the immediate vicinity; otherwise the normal rules apply: all drivers are bad, all bicyclists are good.

Leisesturm

Weak. Bicyclists ARE, in the main, gooder than cagers. Wanna know why? Because bicyclists don't have a two ton cage around them for when it goes sideways. It tends to reach an equilibrium that favors the cautious cyclists. Cops or no cops, the only red light running by cyclists that I ever see is by me, and only because I come from an East Coast Megacity where red light running by cyclists was a thing. Here, not so much. Hardly any enough to matter. Even I have cut it back to once every three or four months. Red light running by cars ... I don't know, it doesn't seem that out of control to me, but again, I'm from a HUGE city. I do see it though. It does happen. Several times a week. Cyclists are FAR more law abiding around intersections than cars. It isn't even close. We've earned the right to be holier than thou about it.

PeteHski

For practical purposes there has to be a tolerance on the posted limit for prosecution. Here that tolerance is 10% +2 mph. So in a 30 limit, you get prosecuted at 35. That tolerance allows for the combined error in vehicle indicated speed and camera measured speed. So if you drove at an indicated 30, there would be practically no chance of getting a ticket in error. But if you chose to drive at an indicated 34 then you might get a ticket if your speedometer or camera calibration was slightly out. We could argue about how generous the 10% +2 tolerance is, but it seems reasonable to me and has been very widely adopted by UK police forces.

I agree that active mandatory vehicle speed control would not work unless retro-fitted to all vehicles, which is impractical. It would also cause traffic issues on motorways as it already does to some extent with HGV limiters, where you get one lorry attempting to pass another with a speed differential of 0.1 mph, blocking the lane for literally minutes while they crawl past on the speed limiter.

RubeRad

I regularly roll through a red light at a 3-way intersection (different than the Jeep story) when I'm going across the T. I don't think I've ever seen a cop there, not sure if I'd stop or not. But at 4-way intersections, I observe traffic regulations religiously and performatively. I want to reassure drivers that I'm 'one of the good ones', maybe build up some karma to counteract my less-well-behaved brethren

Jay Turberville

That's adjacent to my point. Compliance to the posted speed is far less important than reduced speeds where bicycles interact with cars. Manage that how you can. But that's what I consider the most important thing.

Personally, I manage that by avoiding 40+ mph streets. That's not perfect, but it helps.

Jay Turberville

Yup. Bicycles are not only lighter, but they typically are going slower. They are far less likely to cause physical harm to others. The people that should fear them most are pedestrians - who should fear cars even more.

And while it is interesting to speculate about infrastructure, city planning and how silly it is that some driver is willing to speed up to nearly run a red light in order to get to their destination 23.8 seconds sooner - smart cyclists look out for themselves because that's the only person they can count on. The trick is to not fool yourself into thinking you are appropriately cautious when you actually are not.

tomato coupe

I'd say it's actually the opposite. Before it became legal here, I saw many, many more cyclists than motorists running red lights and stop signs.