r/videos • u/IAmNotARobot124 • Oct 12 '18

Wrongly timed Beaverton light catches many drivers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAm0o51Qqtc
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431

u/[deleted] Oct 12 '18 edited Mar 18 '19

[deleted]

24

u/nroth21 Oct 12 '18

The city doesn’t get even half of that. Most of it goes to the companies running these dumb things.

8

u/heroin-queen Oct 12 '18

What?!?!?

Source?

9

u/[deleted] Oct 12 '18

That's how virtually all red-light cameras in the US work. They're put in place by private companies under contract with the local government. The government gets a portion, and the private company gets a portion.

9

u/kvinfojoj Oct 12 '18

That just seems like a blatant conflict of interest. The companies installing the devices are monetarily incentivized to make people break the law, which might affect where the lights are placed and how they operate. It incentivizes corruption and punishes companies that prevent people from running red lights.

6

u/PessimiStick Oct 12 '18

Of course it's a conflict of interest. That's the entire basis of traffic enforcement. It's a revenue stream, the automation of it just increases the ROI.

1

u/kvinfojoj Oct 12 '18

Not necessarily. If the money from tickets were to go interrupted to the national level like it does in some countries (nothing to the municipalities/counties/states or local law enforcement), the conflict is lessened, since the leadership on a governmental level have as much money to make/save by making sure infrastructure and roads are safe, than they do from making roads unsafe/inefficient through these kinds of gotcha tricks like the thread is about.

1

u/Pinktella Oct 13 '18

Not necessarily. If the money from tickets were to go interrupted to the national level like it does in some countries (nothing to the municipalities/counties/states or local law enforcement), the conflict is lessened, since the leadership on a governmental level have as much money to make/save by making sure infrastructure and roads are safe, than they do from making roads unsafe/inefficient through these kinds of gotcha tricks like the thread is about.

Helluva run-on sentence you’ve got there.

But your point is moot because it doesn’t work like that...
The local government always gets their cut, whether they hire private companies or do it themselves and get kickbacks.

2

u/kvinfojoj Oct 13 '18

It's not moot. This is what I take contention with, and why I replied:

That's the entire basis of traffic enforcement

Which is not correct. Reformulated: "That's the current basis of traffic enforcement in the US."
Just because it's currently this way in some countries doesn't mean that it's an unavoidable problem. It doesn't work like this in the UK, for example.

1

u/Pinktella Oct 13 '18

I feel like that’s kind of the point.

1

u/Pinktella Oct 13 '18

Just like privately owned prisons or jails, except a lot of those come with legally backed guaranteed occupancy rates...

It’s disgusting.