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.
If we have to have cameras on every corner for “public safety” we’ve gone wrong somewhere our set up of society. Do I think people should be on their phone while driving? No – I don’t even think people should be talking or listening to music while driving. The question is where do we draw the line? Do I get to decide where the line is drawn? Do you get to? Let’s not pretend things were decided democratically or for the public good when they obviously weren’t – because there are no democracies (yet) and cops wouldn’t need to lobby or propagandize so hard if it were actually for the public good. The world is setting up surveillance states and eventually those states will make laws that go too far. It’s a lot more sensible to leave people alone until they interfere with someone else.
Fees and surveillance like this isn’t even a preventative measure. If you actually want to prevent harm, use public information campaigns. Or decrease the need for cars in the first place with public transport…
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.
I know of at least 1 study on human behaviour, where an image of an eye was added to a bathroom and increased the number of people who washed their hands after using the facilities, that suggests people do in fact need the “threat” of feeling they’re being watched to behave responsibly.
Ultimately, when you’re in control of something with the potential destructiveness of a car, you do need to be monitored for everyone’s safety. The only way to have a society without that level of monitoring is to have one without general access to cars.
You realize people can buy guns, yeah? Primitive guns can be made with shockingly little resources. The only way to protect society from guns is to monitor everyone all the time in all scenarios – full surveillance state, and every thing that comes with it. If your stance is anything to prevent any risks at any costs, we disagree about really fundamental aspects of life.
Are cars dangerous? Sure, but they’re not weapons. I’m even not convinced banning weapons - much less mass surveillance against weapons - is a particularly wise idea with rising authoritarianism. Maybe you do draw a line somewhere and accept some level of risks, but if you do it’s far beyond anything I’d consider reasonable.
Yeah you shouldn’t have guns either, you don’t even use them for what you’re meant to.
Cars might not be weapons, but mistakes made or malfunctions that happen while controlling them can cause as much if not far more damage than many weapons, even before including distractions like phones. The options are surveillance or getting rid of cars.
Tolerate the risk and lower it by educating people and moving cultural norms. If you’re not willing to put in the work to build broad societal consensus, you’re going to live in a society that is fundamentally oppressive and undemocratic. That should be obvious. If that’s what you want, well good news for you we’re well on our way.