

Baltimore Parking Tickets Revisited - glaugh
http://blog.statwing.com/baltimore-parking-tickets-revisited/

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jlgreco
Interesting website for those interested by the mention of speed-camera
burning: <http://www.speedcam.co.uk/gatso2.htm>

I hadn't heard of this happening in the US until now.

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epoxyhockey
A few months ago, the District of Columbia (a Baltimore neighbor) increased
their speed camera fines to minimum of $150 per violation. The late fee is
double the fine if, for example, one changes addresses and the USPS doesn't
forward the ticket to the new address like they should (or by design). That
would be a total rage-inducing price tag of $300.

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Evbn
How is it even possible to speed in DC traffic?

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rpicard
I'm glad to see another take on the data. I'm also relieved to see that our
results are along the same lines! :)

You say that "Red light violations" are automated. That didn't even cross my
mind! I just assumed that they were manually issued without even thinking
about it. I think it'd make more sense that it would be referring to automated
red-light cameras, but are you basing that on anything or did you just make
the opposite assumption?

I'd also just like to point out that I made an update yesterday with some more
conventional statistics (standard deviation, Z-scores) and new weights
accounting for days of the week.

<http://robert.io/posts/4.html#updates>

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glaugh
Ah, I missed your update, thanks for posting that.

I guess we can't be totally sure that the red light tickets in question are
automated. But it seems pretty likely given that Baltimore does have automated
red light ticketing (<http://cityservices.baltimorecity.gov/parkingfines/>),
and this dataset seemed to only contain automated versions of moving
violations (ie, it had mobile and fixed speed cameras but not policeman-in-a-
cruiser speeding tickets). Also it's just a ton of red light tickets, and in
my personal experience street cleaning or meter tickets feel way more common
than manually dispensed red light tickets.

I was a bit disappointed that this (and other datasets in Baltimore and SF)
didn't have a codebook anywhere to explain the data. I'm guessing you weren't
able to find one, either?

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rpicard
No, I wasn't able to find anything explaining the data either. I actually
called a couple of offices to ask how complete it was, and nobody knew what to
do with me. The first number I could find was the mayor's office. The person
who answered transferred me to the DMV, and the lady who answered there had no
idea what I was talking about and put me on hold. I hung up after a while. :/

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rm999
From a quick glance of the data, there's something very odd: there are no
speed camera tickets on weekends. These make up more than half the data...
something to look into.

Cool site btw, it's a good interface to quickly look into the data.

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wzm
Maryland's speed cameras are only active in school zones (which are not school
zones outside of school hours) and work zones (which are usually not work
zones on the weekend).

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rm999
Thanks, that explains that.

