Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, toxicity and dog-whistling are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !uspolitics@lemmy.world
7) No Hit-and-Run questions.
Please don't delete your post for no apparent reason. If you plan on deleting a question later, say so in the post, or if you feel that you have a good reason to remove it, message a mod beforehand. It's not fair to the ones who took their time to answer, and it's not in the spirit of the community.
8) No Bots.
Posts or comments from bots, LLM's, AIs, Neural Networks, Transformers, or Marvin the Paranoid Android are not welcome in AskLemmy. Real humans only please.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
A lot to unpack here. Many reasons for all. Since I'm typing with my thumbs, and this will be a long one, I'll be glossing over some details.
There are many reasons, but the two biggest are:
The better option is to design roads such that a lower speed feels more appropriate to the given conditions.
The systemic issue of US police being trained to believe they're warriors in battle, thus many of them seeing traffic enforcement as not worth their time. The better question is, why are law enforcement and traffic enforcement carried out by the same people?
The US Constitution guarantees the accused the right to face and question their accuser in a court of law. Rules of court procedure guarantee a witness cannot offer evidence to an event they didn't personally witness. This makes prosecution via camera problematic; the camera can't be called into court for questioning and no person personally witnessed the event occur.
The systemic issue of widespread corruption, resulting in projects being completed as cheaply as possible, as opposed to as effectively as possible. Proper measures requires hiring engineers to determine what's needed and then installing them. Every dollar spent on that is a dollar their friend who was contracted for the project can't pocket and donate during their next campaign.
US Americans aren't stupid. Their government has been captured by corrupt officials and oligarchs who are making money off the status quo.
By this logic you can't accuse someone in a situation where your only evidence is security camera footage. That may be the case? Either way it's just one of a plethora of examples of how wonky the US justice system is.
Interaction dreamed up by the utterly deranged.
Good question about why we don't have officers just to enforce traffic. My guess is that the right to detain people is a constitutional weighty and perhaps dangerous anyway. Are there specialized traffic cops with less authority to cause mayhem somewhere in the world?
Your constitutional issues with traffic cameras don't make sense because I know for a fact that they exist and I doubt every ticket is a supreme court case. I find when it comes to policing, lots of things that are unconstitutional on its face, but the state's need to police people--especially black people--overrrides all sense and logic.
Re:traffic calming. It's such a weird feeling NOT being the most cynical person in the room. I like your take, but I think the reason is that drivers want to feel safe, and traffic calming is based entirely around making drivers feel unsafe. That and the fire department wants to be able to take every turn going 65 miles an hour with guys hanging off the side, so our roads are MUCH wider which leads to speeding.