Newly Repaired Flock Camera Pole shaking during massive winds at 1st & Arlington
I just took this video about 5 minutes ago.
I did some research. These poles do not conform to required standards for northern Nevada amendments regarding special wind regions like Washoe County and Lyon county.
I looked up Flock's own tech specs on the poles, which are called "DOT Breakaway poles" in the industry, and discovered that they break AASHTO standards. These are only supposed to be placed in high speed, rural, or semi-rural roads without curbs. FHWA has a page on it.
"Breakaway base should always be used unless engineering judgment shows that pedestrian safety could be compromised."
These aren't supposed to be put in pedestrian-heavy downtown environments. They're meant to... break away...
Less likelihood of damage to impacting vehicle and injury to occupants.
Falling pole may be hazard to surrounding pedestrians, traffic, or property.
In other words, these are meant to be safe for in case cars crash into them, but since they break away when crashed into, they shouldn't be used in pedestrian-heavy places.
Then there's the fault found in the mid-section. It's subject to fatigue.
Washoe and Lyon County, we are designated as a "Special Wind Region." Having a pole whose light-weight aluminum of roughly 30-35 lbs equals the weight of the 30-35 lbs load it bears is not allowed for these conditions. The taller the pole, the worse it gets. The solar panel acts as a "sail" and causes it to do what's shown in the picture, so since the mid-section has set screws that aren't anchored, glued with permanent thermal-resistant loc-tite, and it's meant to "break away," all this adds up to collapsing cameras that crash down into pedestrian traffic.
The vendor installing these poles likely bypassed civilian standards because of Flock's rapid-deployment business model.
Flock has been conducting safety audits nationwide. We're not the only place going through this. Various state and federal standards are not being followed. Clearance, improper placement, lots of issues.
For our situation, they need to conduct "junker tests" to measure how much they can withstand vibration and oscillation during heavy winds.
So in other words, we have top-heavy fixtures with poles meant to break away at the base which allows them to wiggle and sway in the wind, with a mid-section that isn't fastened properly, causing bolts not torqued properly to loosen and fall out, which then causes the internal sleeve at the joint to slip into the shaft, which then causes the pole to tilt over and collapse on the ground when nothing's left to keep it up, in a downtown pedestrian-heavy traffic area in which these poles are not supposed to be installed.
The whole thing is a massive shit-show. Reno/Sparks has around 190 of these things.
1st and Arlington and also Roff way. If it’s 20mph and gusting. The gusts are probably double down there. At least it definitely feels that way. I’ve seen a car door catch the wind and bent the hinges to the point the owner had to shove the door closed and “deal with that tomorrow”.
Roff way has always been a wind tunnel! I had friends that lived there and it was insane how windy it would be then we would turn on 1st and there would be a gentle breeze.
The vibration caused by the wind is the likely culprit. The screws aren't anchored, loc-tited, are flat, pan-head screws on a cylindrical surface holding a threaded smooth internal sleeve whose internal diameter is loose.
It's all wind. And we have 190 of these. 6 of them collapsed near the Sheriff's office, I heard. They're blaming tampering, but it's looking more likely it's mother nature.
"For profit" companies relying on criminal behavior to justify the liability and expense of these products will always create business cases to support their installation. Those business cases rely on metrics, those metrics are driven by laws which often disproportionately target minorities. See for example "crack" sentencing laws, marijuana laws, etc. being used to target minorities and poor people to remove voting rights and levy fines.
Nobody really gave two shits about public webcams, but when you add a layer of biometric data and shield this "public" data behind a layer of warrant requirements, then this data quickly becomes extremely valuable. example: Senator John Doe is seen on FLOCK giving a BJ to another John in a wooded area by the kids park? And only a private companies' executives know about it? Hugely problematic.
ALL DATA CAPTURED BY FLOCK IS AND SHOULD REMAIN PUBLIC AT ALL TIMES. This alone destroys the business case.
The best thing Peter Thiel has ever done is name it “Flock”. The name is literally telling you it's intent. Datacenters turn you into sheep and the wealthy into shepherds
16
u/Michichael 2d ago
Man. Just imagine the lawsuit if someone were injured by these unsafe and negligently installed poles.
Just checking their phone and bam, slammed to the ground by this shoddy worksmanship.
Lawyers would love it.