Virginia is for ticket cameras

Good

... and a great title.

A few months ago I was driving in a 45 mile per hour zone, and as i was driving twords the flashing lights off a school zone the the blinking lights turned off before i entered the school zone. I thought to myself "the lights turned off so I can just maintain regular posted speed limit". I found out a month later i was wrong via a ticket 46mpg in a 35mph with a screenshot of the back of my car and my license plate for $50. So if I'm driving towards a school zone and the flashing lights turn off I will now maintain the adjusted school zone speed limit because the camera got me right after it turned off the flashing school zone lights. Seems the flashing lights and the speed camera are not synchronized that well. Lesson learned..

????????

There are often school zone signs here with language such as "35 mph when students are present". I never understood what that meant. Does it mean any time that students are in the building? How would we even know? Or does it mean whenever students are outside the building, coming and going (like before and after school)? Never got a ticket, but that seems really ambiguous.

are experimenting with these ticket cameras. I think they try them out and see how much public outcry there is. In some cases, the cameras were removed due to public opinion.

My state is currently in the process of trying them. So far, the backlash has been minimal. Time will tell if they stay operational.

Personally, I think they have their place as long as the public is forewarned of their presence.

I asked a cop once about the days the school zone lights are on but it's a school holiday, no kids going to or at school, so no need for the lights, could you get a ticket for not doing the school zone limit? He said technically yes, but the cop would have to be a real prick to give you one.

Did this occur, if Phila, it makes no sense and easily defeated. You're driving the school speed limit when the lights are not flashing is illogical and will disrupt traffic flow. It would seem uncommon that a speed limit is 46 when school is not during drop off and 15 when it is (if this is PA). More facts would ensure the proper lesson is learned.

Cop friends, let's be honest, they have a hard enough job as it is--asking them questions is like asking a doctor friend for medical advice or an IT or auto tech questions on computers or cars. Imho they don't know all the answers, most of the time, and don't give the best answers.

A cop told me you can't have your license suspended for a school bus red conviction, absolutely wrong answer in PA.

We should be asking AI for the best and most correct answers lol

There are folks video'ing in public trying to get people riled up for YouTube content. If one ignores them, they have no content. But for some reason, they often provoke the response they want, an altercation, and now, the subject of the video is charged with battery. If a person is doing nothing wrong, they should not feel threatened when someone sticks a camera in their face. Just like red light and speed cams, if you're doing nothing wrong, who cares? Now, with Flock, I see the other side.

I am aware that cops can't possibly know every law, and some would just flat out lie, but I'll trust them over AI every time. I have several cop friends, actual friends, and I will 100% trust what they say. All AI does is garner info from online mentions of the keywords, that includes comments from things like Reddit posts where people are offering opinions, not facts, but AI doesn't know that, it just sees info it thinks is pertinent.

As for the school bus redlights, if it's an automated cam system you cannot have your license suspended, if a cop pulls you over, it's a 60 day suspension, in PA.

Everyone commits minor traffic violations without even knowing it. Even those law abiding citizens who would never consciously break the law. Should the public be fined for every little infraction they might commit?

FLOCK cameras have their place in identifying egregious violations, but they are often used as a revenue source, with no provisions for "gray" areas or minor infractions.

Tickets issued for exceeding the speed limit by 5 MPH, or failing to stop for a light when the camera catches your rear bumper as it exits the intersection just as the the light turns red are sure to create public outcry.

With the exception of privacy invasion, FLOCK can be useful in many ways, but self defeating if misused as a revenue source with no provision made for gray areas.

My understanding was flock records license plates (and other characteristics of vehicles and anything else it records), tags that with time stamp and gps data. Over time it's able to correlate all the data and offer trends information to law enforcement. Flock is not a red light or speed camera (yet).

You are correct. FLOCK cameras are not specifically designed to spot traffic violations, they are just the latest addition to the list of cameras being used to spy on the general population. The images they capture can be used for many purposes.

There was at least one incident in my state recently where two FLOCK cameras were used to time vehicles travelling between them and speeding tickets issued to violators.

While I was living in Holland, a long time ago, a zero-tolerance policy for speeding was implemented. The penalty was based on the square of your speed over the limit.

I soon got a ticket in the mail for 25 euros for going 5 km/h over the speed limit (about 3 mph) on the freeway. If I had been going 10 km/h over the limit the ticket would have been 100 euros, 30 km/h over would have been 900 euros, etc. No upper limit, no lower limit, as far as I recall.

The theory at the time was that the public did need to be fined for every little infraction to break their habit of driving slightly over the limit and develop a new habit of driving slightly under the limit, to avoid these nuisance tickets.

What state is that?

I'd be careful about using AI for legal or medical advice.

Definitely! You should get your legal and medical advice from this forum.

Where was this? In PA folks were concerned a similar thing would happen with EZPass on the PA Turnpike, basically clocking you between entry and exit points.

It was written into law they EZPass could not be used for anything other than collecting tolls in PA.

PA also has a law that red light cams can only take a photo of the rear of the vehicle, privacy concerns. I wonder is FLOCK type cams are or will be included in those concerns.

We have a school zone where the sign lists the times (school day, 8 am to 4 pm) but the yellow flashing lights flash all of the time even on nights and weekends. Very confusing.

Pennsylvania.

The story was broadcast on WNEP TV in Scranton a couple of months ago. It was in a municipality in northeast PA, Luzerne County I think, but I didn't catch the town name. Apparently, local cops used two FLOCK cameras to time vehicles on a local boulevard and issued speeding tickets by mail.

It created quite a controversy and the legality has been questioned. I haven't seen anything else in the news about it.

Interesting because Flock cams are supposed to be used for LPR only, not for speed enforcement. Now there are speed cams in Philadelphia, but they are not FLOCK cameras.

Is there an article that mentions the FLOCK speeding tickets?

ETA you posted more info as I was typing this up

The NY thruway used to issue round hole Univac cards identifying where you entered so upon exit you could be charged correctly. They never to my knowledge used those cards for speed enforcement but I wondered if they might.

From duckduckgo search assist: UNIVAC systems used both 80-column rectangular-hole cards (IBM-style) and 90-column round-hole cards, with the 90-column version introduced by Remington Rand in the 1930s for its tabulating machines.

The thruway in Massachusetts did give tickets if you exceeded the speed and really nasty tickets if you turned around somewhere in the middle

This is useful information.