I have no sympathy for people who speed past a stopped school bus.
With that said, the automation of law enforcement is deeply concerning to me. I'm of the opinion that most of our laws are calibrated based on enforcement costs that are simply being removed and it's going to fundamentally transform society if we continue to automate in this way.
My daughter got one of these. The school bus was pulled over on the side of the road; not in a travel lane. The bus driver opened the door as she was passing the back of the bus and closed it before she got to the front of the bus. She got a $250 fine. I pled not guilty (because it is my car). This was last summer, and we still do not have a court date.
Plenty of these tickets are BS that most actual cops would not write. The only saving grace is there is video instead of just someone's description of what happened.
At 15 mph it would take less than 2 seconds for a car at the back of a bus to reach the front of a bus. Are you suggesting that the driver of the bus was able to open and then close their door in less than two seconds? Alternatively, Are you suggesting that your daughter was driving slower than 15 mph yet was unable to stop?
I certainly believe there is room for discretion when officers write tickets, but not for passing a school bus.
What I like about the automation of rules is that it takes away targeted enforcement and the opportunity for leniency to be offered only to certain groups.
The UK model for speed cameras is that they can (generally) only be placed in areas that have shown to have a higher than average number of accidents on the stretch of road, caused by speeding. So at least (in theory) they are focused on reducing accidents and not raising money.
We have a bunch of red light cameras which actually cause more accidents than they prevent. Perhaps t-bones are more dangerous than read-ends, but accident prevention it isn't.
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
How do the cameras cause the crash, and not the lights themselves? Is it that the flashes of the camera causes people to brake suddenly, or the very presence of the camera causes some people to brake at the lights and others not to?
I find it interesting, as in the UK we don't have loads of red light cameras (though we do have them) but people driving through red lights is a rarity - even when there is no-one around and at night, the vast majority of people will obey a red light.
It seems pretty messed up to suggest that we shouldn’t enforce people not blowing through red lights because then they’ll slam on their brakes and cause rear end accidents instead.
This seems to say the opposite, which is that the benefits of reducing right-angle crashes (getting t-boned) outweighs the increase in rear-end crashes.
There's usually a two-second delay between a light turning red and the next light turning green, just as a simple safety precaution. No driver is perfect, and red lights get run through accidentally all the time.
While running the red light is still dangerous, running it as soon as it turns red is unlikely to cause an accident. It's still ticketable, and if a cop sees it happen, they should make a stop and issue a ticket.
If you are distracted, or time the yellow light badly, and you have to make a decision on whether to lay on the horn and run the red light as soon as it changes, or slam your brakes and try to avoid running through the intersection, you're already in a position where you're going to have to commit a moving violation, and you don't need the threat of automatic monetary penalties guiding your judgement on which move to make.
There are situations where slamming the brakes creates a more serious hazard than running the red light, but the red light cameras only ticket you for running the red light. Why create an artificial preference for one hazard over the other, rather than trust the driver to drive defensively in these situations?
The cameras don't even need to go away; they just need a human in the loop to apply these tickets rationally. Maybe don't ticket the driver who barely missed yellow, but do ticket the driver who blew through the red with zero regard for the rules. Make sure these rules are understood by drivers, so that they don't fear automatic enforcement more than they do bodily harm to themselves and others, but still think twice about ignoring the rules of the road.
Not GP, but I've seen multiple credible news stories on this.
The problem isn't the red-light camera itself, it is that whoever installs/manages them also reduces the time of the yellow-light warning, so the red light comes on significantly sooner. The normal yellow light timing is a properly studied and engineered interval based on traffic and speed to give drivers sufficient warning to see, decide, and go or slow-stop in a safe and predictable fashion.
When the red-light-camera installers/managers decide to cut that time to increase infractions and increase revenue, they create situations where drivers think they are going to make it to the intersection in good time, but are surprised by the sooner-changing red light, so emergency-brake before the line. This causes accidents, including accidents where the car is pushed into the intersection and causes a rear-end then T-bone.
This invalid yellow-red light timing was revealed in some lawsuits about it.
I think the right solution is to maintain properly engineered timing, install cameras that also trigger a full video from multiple angles, and manually evaluate each positive and ticket only the egregious ones and have records of the violators who caused accidents.
But since the easy money is evidently too much of a temptation to fck with people, ban them all.
We already ban the thing that is being abused — running red lights. Yet people do it with deadly results so much we're looking for another solution.
With the cameras, the camera salespeople and the town managers just can't get away from "It increases revenue (and if we screw with the yellow-light-timing we can increase it even more!".
I'd be all over making any town manager and red-light-camera-salesperson involved in a decision to screw with the red lights personally and criminally liable for any accidents resulting from screwing with yellow-light timing, and requiring all timing before installation to be officially logged, but they'll try to find ways around that too. And then there is the whole surveillance capitalism thing — we've got the cameras, why not record all license plates, and tie them to driver license and voting records, and, and, and...
While I acknowledge there is now a legality question around the use of "red light cameras". I have no sympathy for people who are not stopping for school busses: I can't stomach that the article frames this as "burden" on those driving past the bus.
"there’s evidence the program is heavily burdening residents who either can’t or don’t pay the fines."
As I understand it, Tesla auto driving (and, maybe, Waymo), have consistency issues with passing stopped school buses. Sometimes they stop, sometimes they don't.
But, what little I read about it, nothing from the photos or video show that the busses were actually signaling. A bus can stop, and you can pass it. When they embark children, they have to put their flashers on (or, back in the day on my busses, they had signals and a STOP sign that popped out from the driver side). When the flashers are running, that's when you are supposed to stop (both ways). Otherwise, it's just a bus on the side of the road.
I normally agree. However, this doesn't really automate the function like speed cameras or regular red-light cameras do. This still has police in the loop. The real problem is that it tickets owner and not driver.
> The footage is sent to local police for review. If they decide the law was broken, the driver receives a $250 ticket in the mail.
Where is the automation? This is no more automated than a speed camera or a parking camera. It's not even worthy of being called AI truth be told.
Traffic laws are underpoliced by orders of magnitude. Setting aside the general catastrophe which is car-centric (more like car-exclusive) design of our urban and suburban spaces. Technology gives us extremely cheap and easy ways to monitor traffic laws, much cheaper and much more reliable than having a cop roam around. The very least we can do is use it to make cars suck a bit less.
Unfortunately it sounds like this program is designed to maximize revenue for the private vendor, not make roads safer by changing driver behavior. The county is also using this surface-level fix as an excuse to avoid more fundamental road design changes that would actually improve safety for vulnerable road users.
Other automated enforcement mechanisms like average speed cameras and automated tolling are more effective at achieving their purported goals. Ultimately, enforcement will always be secondary to proper road design in both cost and effectiveness.
The speed camera that was found to shorten yellow lights to force more tickets? The flock camera that is used to stalk an ex? These are the cameras you love?
Traffic laws are usually arbitrary, victimless (or at least the perpetrator is the victim), and over-policed because they are revenue drivers and police job security. No crimes, no need for the police.
The raid on Venezula and the strikes on Iran were some of the first military operations that didn't leak to the media that I can remember (with the exception of the Bin Laden raid I can't think of another big one during my lifetime?).
Both happened after they kicked journalists out of the Pentagon and I have to think that it played at least some role in the secrecy.
The earlier strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities before the change were leaked, though not the details of the mission, just that they were happening.
That's inaccurate. Several journalists had both advance and real-time knowledge of the raid on Venezuela, but chose to hold off on reporting out of journalistic ethics. [0]
Given the detail and depth of reporting into the initial strikes on Iran that emerged very shortly after, I would expect the same was true in that case too.
Banning journalists from the Pentagon doesn't prevent them from getting scoops and being leaked to. That was always a false justification for this move.
It's also unlocking economic value that was impossible to realize in the old model. If you're sitting around your house with nothing to do for an hour you can now earn money in ways you couldn't before.
Fungibility means anything can be framed as economic value. Prisoner labour is also unlocking economic value, as is child labour.
Also who are these non-theoretical people who in this economy can afford to sit around but are suddenly economically motivated by gig economy offerings?
A laughable concept; absurd on its face. Just like the idea that uber is just suburban mums taking one or two trips on the way back from school.
It will absolutely be a full time, below minimum wage job that desperate people do. The same as uber, delivery drivers, and the entire rest of the gig economy
When people think of automation I'm assuming their thinking of the financial statements (balance sheet, income, cash flows, equity).
Reporting also contains narrative explanations by management of: the company's financial health, updates on any new or existing market risks and the company's strategy to deal with them, any changes to controls or accounting procedures, updates on any new or existing litigation, and more.
These reports need to be certified for truth by the CEO, CFO, and relevant officers under penalty of 10+ years in jail and millions of dollars in fines personally.
It's also common to do a press release, earnings call, and investor presentation but those aren't required.
I meant just closing the financial records, not coming up with the shareholder marketing. It can take a month just to find out if you "made" the quarter or not, mostly because accounting and finance is combing through every line item to see if they can recategorize it in a way that makes the numbers look better but doesn't result in them going to jail
In what should be a very black and white line of work there is a ton of judgement and negotiation involved
small business is the majority of employment. Think of an indi-coffee shop, the person taking your order may very well be the ceo technically. So there's a lot of "top executives".
I've found it surprising how pro-Anthropic everyone here has been in this saga.
I assume it's for political reasons because they dislike the current US administration, as all of the government's claims that I've seen have been completely reasonable, and their actions justified.
Resist everything the Trump government does, whether it's good, bad, reasonable, or indifferent, is just a viewpoint that I find shortsighted.
> all of the government's claims that I've seen have been completely reasonable, and their actions justified
you must not be seeing what I'm seeing
refusing to renew Anthropic's contract because Anthropic doesn't want to comply with their terms, would have been reasonable; retaliating by designating them a SCR is not
Anthropic as a whole isn’t perfect, but in this specific scenario they seem to be.
Or, when Anthropic re-iterates “no murder without human approval, no domestic mass surveillance”, why should the government not only change suppliers (free-market), but label Anthropic a “supply-chain risk”?
If you listen to the government officials explain the situation:
All this began after the Maduro raid, when executives from Anthropic allegedly called an intermediary vendor, Palantir, seeking specifics of how their software was used. Because this is classified information, Palantir refused to disclose it, which led to Anthropic threatening to shut off service to Palantir. Palantir reported this to the pentagon who then contacted Anthropic directly.
Obviously, the military can’t have Palantir’s services suddenly stop working mid-operation because one of their suppliers objects to it. So they can’t risk having Claude anywhere in the supply chain.
Assuming the government isn't lying, then the designation is completely and entirely appropriate. You can substitute out any other vendor, and they'd receive the same treatment.
>All this began after the Maduro raid, when executives from Anthropic allegedly called an intermediary vendor, Palantir, seeking specifics of how their software was used....
Let's see if the govt includes these assertions in their reply brief since such a factual record would obviously help their case.
Cancelling Anthropic's contract, and maybe even restricting Anthropic's use as a component to DoD certain contract work might be reasonable.
However, Anthropic's lawsuits are broader than that - partly because the government's actions were broader than that.
* Trump did post a "truth" ordering all Federal agencies to stop using Claude. Anthropic claims that many federal agencies did stop using Claude, and is suing saying that the order is not lawful.
* Hegseth then posted saying that no DoD contractor can work with Anthropic or use Claude at all. This is much broader order than the actual delivered letter which is much narrower - contractors can use Claude, but you can't use Claude as part of your solutions that you deliver to DoD. Anthropic is claiming damages from the difference between the first announcement, and the actual delivered scope, and is also claiming that the actual order did not follow procedures.
* Finally, Anthropic is claiming that the pattern of behaviour by the administration demonstrate that the administration is not simply trying to protect against supply chain risk, but is actively trying to harm Anthropic out of spite.
Frankly, you just have to read Trump's or Hegseth's posts to just get the vibes that this isn't just a technocratic calculation.
> If you sell to the War Department, the CIA, the NSA, or ICE/Border Patrol, you know exactly how it is going to be used.
Yes, you know their use of your services will legally be limited by the contact you both signed.
> This after the fact naiveté by Anthropic is crazy.
The real naiveté here is in the government signing a contract they ended up not liking after all, and in viewers who don't realize that there was a signed contract on place already, which included said restrictions.
> Speaking as a patriot I’d be incredibly proud if my tool was used in a supporting role for one of the most perfect military operations ever executed.
The usage we're talking about is exclusively: mass domestic surveillance of civilians; and fully-autonomous killbots which can (and will) be used against those same civilians. Weird pride to have.
How do you mean exactly? They have clearly stated that they're willing to work with the government without passing their red lines. And Trump is now blackmailing them. How can you interpret their reaction as a shortsighted viewpoint?
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