French City To Use CCTV For Parking Fines 297
horza writes "The city of Nice, France is rolling out 626 CCTV cameras throughout town, giving it one of the highest levels of surveillance in the world (1.8 cameras per 1000 inhabitants). The usual rhetoric was given — that they will be used solely for reducing violent crime — but the city will now begin sending out parking tickets solely based on the CCTV video evidence."
Fill in the blanks (Score:0, Insightful)
What they say it's about ________
(a) Terrorism
(b) Violent Crime
(c) Child Pornography
What it's really about.
(a) Power
(b) Money
(c) Control
Re:Revenue Collection (Score:3, Insightful)
> Shifting focus from public safety to revenue collection.
As a cyclist, father, neighbour of wheelchairs users and part time pedestrian I can attest to the problems caused by poor parking (and speeding, red light jumping etc.). If CCTV can help reduce this then I am *all for it*.
(If, however, it is only used to catch someone who overstays their meter by a few minutes then it is not so useful.)
Re:London (Score:4, Insightful)
It is worse than living in East Germany under the Stazi.
Rule of thumb: if parking tickets are a big grievance for you then your life isn't as bad as living in East Germany under the Stasi.
Re:Even so... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Revenue Collection (Score:2, Insightful)
and you could stop assuming that everyone who has a problem with this runs red lights.
Re:Revenue Collection (Score:4, Insightful)
I used to dislike red-light cameras because they are used as revenue machines for the city, etc. Then I realized, wow, if they weren't using them as revenue machines, then I would have to pay higher taxes. So hey, I don't mind having my taxes subsidized by those people who are too stupid to figure out how to navigate a red light. If that's you, sorry about that, and thanks. And I think there must be a lot of people who feel like me, otherwise there would be no red-light cameras.
Now if they are catching people when they aren't actually breaking laws, that's another story. I'm against that. But that's not what you're complaining about.
Re:Not so Nice (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not so Nice (Score:1, Insightful)
Simpletons like you abound...it's no wonder we have any freedoms at all... We both know the situation is more complex than that childish black and white viewpoint allows for. Quit trolling.
Re:Revenue Collection (Score:5, Insightful)
There was a recent scandal here in Spain because the picture that comes with the fine showed the car passing in yellow, not red. Nobody was found responsible and nothing happened.
There's also been known cases of shortened yellow lights in the US that give the victims no time to stop before getting caught in camera.
Speed cameras are easier to use as bait, though, because as soon as the revenue goes down the "authorities" just set a lower speed limit, even far below the safe limit.
Re:Not so Nice (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Revenue Collection (Score:3, Insightful)
As a cyclist, father, neighbour of wheelchairs users and part time pedestrian I can attest to the problems caused by poor parking (and speeding, red light jumping etc.).
Hell, you don't need to be any of those. Going for a walk (with or without missus, the girfriend, or the dog) should provide ample evidence that most all drivers behave like complete assholes[1].
Not sure that CCTV cameras would help. To the extent they could, however, the focus would be on the most egregious and obviously illegal behaviour, leaving things like terrifying pedestrians unaddressed.
---------------
1. Yes, gentle Slashdot reader, that probably means you. Driving 35 in a 25, for example, may not seem like a big deal, but it's a huge frigging difference to everybody living in the neighbourhood, walking on the street, or simply not in your car. If you think that's an exaggeration, try running a few laps through your office and see how long it is before someone wants to knock your block off, or calls security.
Re:Not so Nice (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's extrapolate:
Why can't we put a camera in your house? I mean, you're not breaking the law, so why should you care? Obviously you don't want cameras in your house because you just want to break laws.
Re:Not so Nice (Score:1, Insightful)
Still, your violating laws...,/quote>I'm not a grammar^Wpunctuation nazi usually, but in this case this was so bad it made the sentence hard to parse. At least I lost a while trying to glean what you wanted to say.
Re:Not so Nice (Score:5, Insightful)
A camera in a house turns it from private space into public space where common morality demands different behaviour. CCTV in public spaces has significantly less impact.
Re:London (Score:5, Insightful)
Rule of thumb: if parking tickets are a big grievance for you then your life isn't as bad as living in East Germany under the Stasi.
This is obviously true. No one will be executed, tortured, or held in secret prisons in Nice for parking violations. However, the GP's point isn't totally trivial either. Certainly a surveillance apparatus is being implemented that is vastly greater than anything envisioned by the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century, and it is being aimed at punishing citizens who generally are trying to live their lives without harming others. Yes, people are breaking laws (usually, though there's plenty of stories of systems implemented in such a way that they catch even law abiders), but we all have occasions where we need to stop in a bus zone for a minute to drop something off, or realize that we left our change in our other pants and can't pay the meter. The notion of having eyes on us at all times, watching for us to make the smallest mistake and pouncing on it, does contribute to a sense of alienation, a feeling that government is working against us, rather than for us. Working for the citizens, rather than against them, is supposed to be the very essence of what separates liberal democracies from totalitarian autocracies. Just because a government demonstrates its hostility through annoyance, rather than brutality, doesn't mean it's not a disturbing attitude.
Re:London (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think the parking tickets are the problem, but the all seeing eye in the sky that smites you from a distance the moment it thinks you've broken its rules. As soon as people are fully acclimated to this sort of regime, and that may be generations from now, who knows what sort of new laws such a system will be used to enforce -- and people won't even know any better.
Let's make it illegal to walk around the city without smiling! France is the happiest place on earth -- just look at how happy everyone is here!
Re:Not so Nice (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Revenue Collection (Score:3, Insightful)
Or you could stop running red lights.
Citation needed?
Re:London (Score:4, Insightful)
but we all have occasions where we need to stop in a bus zone for a minute to drop something off
No, we don't. Unless you live in a village, your "one minute" stop is influencing hundreds of cars, creating a collective loss much greater than "one minute" that you're imposing on the society for egotistic reasons.
The one and only effect I'd enjoy of camera traffic control (being completely against it) is that it would reduce the dozens of "one minute quick stops just to drop something" that make me lose hours per year.
Re:Videoprotection (Score:1, Insightful)
The summary is wrong in other ways: it's not for parking tickets, but only for double-parking. I don't know many people who think that double-parking in a crowded city without many multi-lane avenues is a Good Thing. One double-parked car on a two-lane road blocks half the traffic.
Re:Revenue Collection (Score:3, Insightful)
That sounds nice in theory. However what really happens, is incompetent, bloated bureaucracies get used to all this new money and find new and innovative ways to piss it all away. It's a very slippery slope and pretty soon, even the most god-fearing, law-abiding citizens are getting gouged for the most victimless of offences.
Governments usually end up addicted to fines revenue like heroin.
Re:Revenue Collection (Score:3, Insightful)
As a cyclist, pedestrian, runner, and car user, I can attest to the problems caused by pedestrians not bothering to look at traffic and blithely stepping into the road, and a host of cyclist who will happily cut up drivers, cycle from one pavement to the other causing cars to have to emergency stop, jump red lights and a host of other things. I've even had cyclists swerve between cars, not looking, and collide with me on my own bike! Oh, and a couple of the guys I dive with and regularly hang out with are wheelchair users (they think people who advocate CCTV on the grounds you've just stated are completely oblivious to the real world and don't really think about solving problems or present real solutions).
CCTV doesn't really fix things. Having a presence on the street is a far more effective ploy.
Mod up (Score:4, Insightful)
Well said.
That, however, is worse than cameras (which does not diminish how bad cameras are). It's well known (from the examples of WWII Germany and so on) that states which encourage citizens to report each other become very nasty places to be.
Re:Not so Nice (Score:1, Insightful)
So, while you'd mind a camera in your house, you wouldn't mind - say - a cop with a camera following you around every time you're outside, recording everything you do and say?
Re:London (Score:3, Insightful)
I remember reading something about the old saying that 'at least the $fascists made the train run on time'. To paraphrase: When the attractive young woman runs onto the train platform in tears because she's a few seconds late and the doors are closing, and it's her first day of work etc. etc. etc. the fascist guard ignores her, blows the whistle and the train leaves on time. The not-so fascist guard will hold the train open a door for her and let her on - an action that may delay trains for everyone for the rest of the day.
I think your point is entirely valid. In a small village cars get parked wherever, and the minor slowdown to get round them is insignificant as there isn't the traffic to cause a problem. Having broken down on a red route in London at rush hour it's quite apparent how much difference one persons actions can make to the day of thousands. I certainly wouldn't stop there because it was more convenient for me, because the rest of the time I'm one of the many hundreds if not thousands of people who are being frustrated by that selfish action.
GP needs to consider that it's because of his unthinking attitude that we get such draconian restrictions. You _are_ harming others but are too lazy, unthinking or plain inconsiderate to see the consequences of your actions, so the government has stepped in to do its nanny state bit and fix the problem by controlling you. Irresponsible use of your freedoms results in them being taken away from you because everyone else thinks that the cost of your having those freedoms outweighs the benefits of them having them. Or to put it differently: Everyone who thinks 'I could stop here, but I'd be in the way' and hence doesn't sees the guy who does and thinks 'inconsiderate arsehole, someone should stop him doing that.'
Re:Mod up (Score:2, Insightful)
Where this road leads.
Re:London (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, but only if we are bus drivers, fuckwit.
Re:Spirit of the thing... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not so Nice (Score:3, Insightful)
You may say that the system will only be used to control criminals, and you have nothing to hide.
What you are forgetting is that the system can also be ABUSED or laws can be changed.
When the system is in place, the next crazy dictator will be able to use it for to find and control jews, arabs, christians, geeks. Whatever they hate.
Always keep in mind that even Hitler was chosen in a public election.
It WILL happend again. We need to build society with safeguards so we can survive.
Re:Not so Nice (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's extrapolate: Why can't we put a camera in your house? I mean, you're not breaking the law, so why should you care? Obviously you don't want cameras in your house because you just want to break laws.
Let's extrapolate further then. Why can't we put a cop in your house? I mean, if you're not breaking any law, so why should you care? Therefore, if you don't want any cops in your home, cops should not be allowed on the street.
But seriously, almost everyone agrees you need some level of police presence, or at least police need to be able travel freely about, but almost no one thinks they should be able to just willy nilly go into anyone's residence. Private space is private, public space is public. I believe there are both practical and civil liberty problems related to constant public surveillance, but I don't think that it follows that just because an activity is permitted in public spaces it should be allowed in private spaces, or vice versa.
Re:Revenue Collection (Score:3, Insightful)
This is true. Nevertheless, motorists take up a disproportionate fraction of space and inconvenience, relative to other sorts of downtown transport. 2 cars, usually with 2 people in them, take up as much space as a bus, which averages a lot more than 2 passengers. And you can have -many- people walk or bike on a lot smaller space than that used by the same people in individual cars.
Also, cars make a lot of noise and local pollution, significantly more than biking or walking.
Re:London (Score:3, Insightful)
Welcome to the quid pro quod real world, asshole. One of these days, you will have to stop one minute to drop something off.
No, I won't. You can keep telling that to yourself to justify your uncivilized actions but it's just not true. Most people never stop their can in an illegal place just because there are no cameras to fine them.
I wonder if you ignore red lights when you're in a hurry, surpass the speed limit, overcome cars in low visibility two directional lanes, etc. and excuse your actions thinking that I'll someday do the same things.
And you can come with extreme cases like "what if you had to take someone to the hospital and they would die if you go to the parking?" but the reality is that people like you will leave their car in a bus stop for a minute just because you really, really have to go to that shop to very quickly but whatever. Or simply because you didn't even consider it a problem and told someone to wait for you in the middle of a street with no stopping zone, and then stop there while you wait if they come a minute late.
Re:Revenue Collection (Score:5, Insightful)
You are suffering from the failed logic that government actually acts rational.
In fact, the revenue streams won't decrease your tax burden, instead they just give raises to employees, elected officials, find a way to work bonuses or more/better benefits into the public sector, and end up spending more.
You need to take off your teabagger hat. I work in the public sector, and I tell you that the last thing an elected official will do is give public employees a raise. We advertised for a traffic engineer; even in this horrendous job market it took 3 months to get 4 qualified applicants. Public sector pay is, for the most part, crap. I get about 75 cents on the dollar compared to private sector work. Most public service employees I know have some sort of side income - rentals, side business, etc - that increase their take home pay.
Government is funny that way, they think once the money is in their hands, they have to spend it.
You're right there, but the money is spent on pet projects, pie in the sky dreams, and stuff like that. They spend the money on what gets them re-elected, what YOU demand they provide YOU. They don't spend a dime on their own employees unless they have to. Any politician that would champion raises to staff, either as pay increases or better benefits, would not be re-elected next time around.
Once the economy improves, there will be a huge exodus of qualified public sector employees into the private sector, to the detriment of public service. Heck, I'm on my way out.
What happens is that once all the good people leave for better paying jobs, leaving mostly the lazy, indolent, and stupid, and a handful of people truly dedicated to service to the public. Then the politicians notice, run around in a panic, give everyone raises, thus rewarding the unqualified for their inability to find a better job.
Re:Revenue Collection (Score:3, Insightful)
It's unlikely they produce as much or more CO2 than a small car in city driving. The bikes you think produce more CO2 than a car only do so when being driven hard, which you cannot do in central London. In start-stop traffic, owing to not having to start and stop as frequently (bikes can filter between lanes) and owing to having about 1/5th of the mass of a small car, they are way more economical. Not to mention they used about a fifth of the resources to build in the first place.
Re:Not so Nice (Score:3, Insightful)
A lot like red light cameras-- Im sure there are legitimate concerns with them, but Im also sure the vast majority of people complaining about them just want to be able to drive how they want with impunity.
Re:Not so Nice (Score:3, Insightful)
Next up...
Automatic traffic fines for driving 1mph over the limit.
Automatic tickets for failing to have your headlights on after twilight.
Automatic tickets for changing lanes without signaling, even tho you are the only car on the road at 3am.
Automatic tickets the second your grass gets over 6" tall.
Automatic tickets the instant your tail light or headlight goes out.
Automatic tickets for loitering.
Automatic tickets for jaywalking.
The existing laws were predicated on human levels of enforcement. With automated enforcement, those same laws become onerous and oppressive.
I don't care to search for it again, but in a prior discussion on automated traffic cameras I found instances of people being ticketed multiple times on the SAME road thirty minutes apart. Each is a separate offense (and 30 minutes is not a legal limit- that just happened to be that the people were driving over the same section of road). And no warning from the camera, no warning from police. You can rack up fines quickly.
It would be like if you have a broken tail light and every time you started the car moving, the police stopped you and ticketed you again. Machines are not reasonable. Isolated bureaucrats are not reasonable.
Re:Mod up (Score:3, Insightful)
excuse of preventing illegal parking.
Are you high? This has nothing to do with "illegal parking". It's called "revenue enhancement". (they could care less if you park illegally, they want to squeeze more money out of you with tickets)
Parking meters and parking tickets are a combination of managing available parking and making the city money. Sometimes more of one, sometimes more of the other. When you go to a lot that's ALWAYS almost empty, and ALWAYS have to feed the meter, try talking to the meter maid about "if there's never a parking problem here why are there meters here and why do you have to give me a ticket?" They want your money, in those cases it has nothing to do with parking, that's just the excuse to milk your wallet.
Re:Not so Nice (Score:2, Insightful)