A woman drives with both hands on the wheel. Her phone sits face-down on her lap. No officer pulls her over. No lights flash. Weeks later, a $1,251 ticket arrives in the mail. The evidence: a single frame from a Camera surveillance app. The charge: phone use while driving.
Automated camera companies market their devices as automated license plate readers — tools for catching stolen cars, flagging warrants, and aiding serious investigations.
Sold as a Crime Tool. Used as a Fine Machine.
And road diets, and modal filters, and bike infrastructure that is wide, separated, given priority at intersections, and ubiquitous. All great ideas I fully support. But even given immense political will those will take decades to fully deliver.
Meanwhile in a country a 10th the population of America 100s of people die every year because of drivers on phones. For a measure to be effective as a preventative, people need to believe there’s a high chance they will actually get caught. That’s the most effective predictor. These should not be secretly installed, but accompanied with a public campaign making it clear that they are being installed and that being caught is very likely.
And people who are caught, more than just a fine, need to face a real chance of losing their licence. Not to be punitive, but because that is what they have demonstrated is necessary for genuine public safety because they are dangerous if they’re allowed to drive.
Well, I don’t think you have to threaten people to make them behave. I think most people are decent and responsible, and can be convinced if they understand the dangers. I’m not convinced threatening the ones who couldn’t be convinced will actually be helpful. I am fairly hostile to anyone threatening me even to agreeable ends. Regardless of whether I’m right about all that, it kinda misses the point: the means are unacceptable. These systems will creep and overstep while empowering stalkers and tyrants at multiple level of government. They will antagonize both people who’ve done nothing wrong and those who have but would prefer to quietly reform.
It doesn’t really matter how just your ends are when your means enable horrific outcomes.