The Dangerous Vehicle Abatement Program was meant to deal with drivers like this, but it was allowed to expire in 2023 after the NYC DOT failed to actually implement it.
The program allowed the DOT to make drivers with more than 15 speed camera or 5 red light camera tickets in a year to take a safe driving course or have their car siezed. The DOT only took action against a small fraction of eligible offenders however.
Relatively small increases in speed dramatically increase the stopping distance and as such the danger of driving. Especially with a huge truck like that. That's why Amsterdam (with much more food traffic) has recently reduced speed limits a lot.
> At 30km/h, the stopping distance of a car is 13 metres. At 50km/h it’s more than double at 27 metres. That 20km/h reduction is the crucial difference between a pedestrian or cyclist surviving the impact of an accident – at 30km/h it’s estimated that 95 per cent of pedestrians would emerge relatively unscathed.
What you're saying is all true, but typically road design influence driving speed more than anything. Changing speed limits rarely has an impact on that (at least in the US).
Not sure, but I think that in the Netherlands a municipality is not allowed to slap some 30kmh road signs along a roadway and call it a day. If the street does not 'communicate' that it is designed for that velocity, i.e. it is too broad, too many car lanes, then it must be adapted first to slow down traffic. There are a number of interesting design guidelines and manuals on the web, like CROW [0] for bicycle traffic, applied across the Netherlands.
One thing that may also help: an Amsterdam local told me that virtually all drivers there (and their parents/kids) are cyclists _also_, and so have more empathy for bikes and tend to operate motor vehicles safely them.
Really you should do both. Otherwise you do end up with roads that feel like you have to go slow but nominally you're allowed to go fast (and some drivers will certainly take that opportunity).
> The expert, former cop turned criminal justice professor Michael Alcazar, said Giovansanti should face “serious discipline.” But that’s not happening — an NYPD spokesperson shrugged off the suggestion of punishment because Giovansanti’s tickets are “not related to his job or his duties in the department.”
This angers me. Police officers are granted special privileges that ordinary citizens are not, and should be held to higher standards of conduct both on the job and off. In a just world, police officers would be exemplar citizens while wearing the uniform and while not. If they are not, how can we trust them to wield special privileges and authority over us?
What that spokesperson is saying isn't the whole truth. Departments can discipline or terminate people who dont meet their character clause, including being a scofflaw. They only apply it in whatever way they feel benefits them.
This kind of thing is egregious, but they get away with stuff like this all the time. I live a few blocks from an NYPD precinct house and they park all their personal vehicles on the sidewalk all the time every day. It's less dangerous than speeding, but it's a quality of life issue as well as simple fairness. They are in charge of ticketing parking violations but explicitly ignore their own violations.
The same way we can trust an overweight doctor, a depressed therapist, a housecleaner who doesn't make their bed, or me to verify code I push to corporate repos even while I vibecode apps at home for fun without paying attention. I don't understand the basis for applying this standard to cops.
If I don't trust my doctor, I can ignore them and find a new doctor.
If I don't trust my therapist, I can ignore them and find a new therapist.
If I don't trust my housekeeper, I can fire them and hire a new housekeeper.
If I don't trust a police officer, it doesn't matter. If they detain me and order me to step out of my vehicle, I have to comply under threat of the law and violence. I don't get to only listen to police officers whom I trust.
That is why they must be held to a higher standard, because they wield elevated authority not granted to ordinary citizens.
A police officer who has demonstrated such a reckless disregard for the law and safety can not be trusted as a police officer to uphold the law.
Are you saying you don't trust the people I mentioned for the reasons I mentioned? That a doctor who has demostrated a reckless disregard for his health outside of the law etc. etc.? Like, I get why trust is more important in this context, but I don't think it's at all normal to assume someone can't do their job because of decisions they make in their personal life.
It was, and I was pretty clear that I understood that. It dodges my point, though, and I've asked that they acknowledge it: should you distrust unhealthy doctors, not can you? Is unhealthiness in one's personal life disqualifying for the ability to provide stellar health advice in one's professional life? Should cops be held to the standard of being exemplary citizens who don't even speed? Have you ever sped? Do you know anyone who has never sped?
Maybe! Is their health status directly related to their specialty? Is it a readily curable condition? Is their advice reasonable?
Or are they a lung cancer specialist chain smoking cigarettes at the appointment?
> Should cops be held to the standard of being exemplary citizens who don't even speed?
Yes, cops should be held to a higher standard than the general public. Being a cop while committing a crime should be an aggravating circumstance in the justice system, not a get-out-of-jail card.
Should we expect perfection? No. But 547 speeding tickets is unacceptable.
Yes, the doctor's advice is reasonable and no the doctor is not smoking at a lung cancer appointment. The premise is that they are messing up off the job. If you think an oncologist shouldn't be able to get as good of a job because they smoke cigarettes or eat burgers, that is where we disagree. Apart from calling that illiberal or saying it has negative utility in its consequences, I don't know how to argue that; it's a values difference. I appreciate you actually taking the position, though.
Same for your cop positions. You say they should, I say they shouldn't. If it's clarifying, I can add that I agree that cops should be held to a higher standard while being cops, ie. that things like qualified immunity are working in the wrong direction, and that they shouldn't be held to a lower standard, on- or off-duty.
As far as I'm concerned, speeding tickets in the course of your private life are between you and the ticketing authority. If he's not paying his fines, if he's violating the social contract, sure, escalate. If we want to punish speeders with more than fines because of endangerment, like the article strongly suggests, sure, change the law. But as long as he's compliant with his fines and we're only giving him fines, it's not just to continue to pile on consequences.
Each of those examples varies widely, and I don't think most people would treat each of them the same way.
In general when the stakes are higher and the ambiguity of outcome is less clear, secondary signals become more important.
Concretely: I don't give a shit if my housecleaner doesn't make their own bed as long as they make mine; the outcome I need is easy to verify and the stakes are fairly low so the secondary signal doesn't matter very much. Conversely, I care a lot if the therapist I'm relying on to help me manage my depression is visibly unable to manage their own; the outcome I need has a slow feedback loop and the stakes are high so I'm much more likely to rely on secondary signals like "is this person able to manage their own mood successfully?"
In your version of the therapist example, you don't trust them to do their job because they are failing to do their job. This is fine by me. My issue is with punishing people at their job over actions taken outside of their job, as in the example under discussion.
Huh? Your examples are all people failing at something that merely resembles their job. For the analogy to work, Giovansanti would need to be failing at something in his personal life that resembles traffic enforcement. Instead he's doing the exact thing his job exists to prevent.
TFA mentions a need for the "Stop Super Speeders Act"
Reading the actual response from his police managers I think what is more needed are the "Abolish Qualified Immunity Act" and the "Cleanup Thoroughly Police Corruption Act" , in addition to the "Hire Professional And Responsible Police Officers Act".
I don't understand, doesn't NY have a points system for driving licenses? In most places you could speed at most half a dozen times before you lose your license.
> State law classifies camera-based tickets as mere violations, and they don’t add any points to a driver’s record, even though exceeding the speed limit by 11 miles per hour is worth four points on a license — but only if the offender is caught by a cop instead of a camera. Just three of those tickets suspends a driver’s license, but Giovansanti can keep on driving.
In California cops, family members of cops, and related personnel (e.g. police union officials) can get a special insignia on their license. So when they're pulled over and are asked to present their license....
The FOP (Fraternal Order of Police). Also a thing in NY and NJ.
Fun facts... the insignia you put on your license or on your car also has a thing like a registration tab... The FOP says its "to show your ongoing support", everyone else with a room temperature IQ knows its "to show you're 'paid up' on your protection money for the year".
Oh, and some enterprising souls have created "counterfeit" FOP insignia and stickers and other regalia (or for those tabs), and sold them on eBay... only to have the weight of the police union's attorneys come down on them with cease and desists, etc.
It's probably for the better they're taken down. In California, and perhaps NY and NJ, too, the status shows up on your DMV records, so when a cop runs your license or your plate (and I presume plates are scanned and run automatically), they'll see the discrepancy immediately. So someone is just asking for trouble by using fake stickers, just like if they went around flashing a gang sign when they're not actually a member.
That in itself blows my mind, why on earth should someone see your membership in this order? It's not a LE agency, and in many states the FOP allows membership for retired cops.
I do agree with what you're saying, though, but the issue to me is why that's even something that should show up when your plates are run, "Oh, you're a cop somewhere, or used to be".
I don't remember if the DMV status is actually FOP, or something else, but I knew a lawyer who worked with a police union who had this status. But that's just icing on the cake compared to stuff like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_Enforcement_Officers%27_Bi...
I have a friend who's a union leader (as in actually runs a sizeable union) and, in the eyes of most people, a straight-up socialist. He convinced me public sector unions are a horrible idea precisely because of the above. I had known about the above, but I always had trouble squaring my support for the right to unionize with the problems with public sector unions. He basically gave me permission to call a spade a spade.
What about the Federal register of LEOs who have been terminated or resigned to avoid termination? Very useful concept for transparency...
... but the police unions that represent approximately 70% of the nation's police have negotiated it into their CBAs that this register "cannot be used for hiring or promotional purposes".
I think the FOP stickers are quite bad, but it's obviously not a "protection racket"; virtually nobody around here has them, and for a protection scheme to work there has to be some pressure to buy in.
They do! But their speed cameras can’t establish the identity of the human who was driving, at least to a legally sufficient standard.
While I imagine it’s reasonable to assume “one vehicle per licensed driver” across much of America, that assumption seems much less reliable in NYC, where space is at an extreme premium and large families often share space. Can’t punish Mom for Dad’s speeding habit just because the car’s in her name. Plus, that doesn’t get Dad off the road!
And it doesn’t really seem cost-effective (or politically viable) to build out an elaborate appeal system to litigate which human was driving every single time. (Or to layer some kind of AI facial recognition onto the cameras. No. Bad hackers. :) )
In parts of Europe, it's a crime in and of itself to fail to identify the driver of a vehicle. Under that system, if the vehicle is registered to you, you can be charged criminally for its conduct, and even if you prove you weren't behind the wheel, you can be charged criminally for failing to identify the actual driver.
Driving isn't a game. It's the most deadly daily activity, and while I'm not sure I want Euro-style speed enforcement, it shouldn't be something that you can just shrug off, especially 30%+ over the limit in a low speed area.
You can always just target the vehicle, since the vehicle was obviously involved.
Except in cases where the vehicle was stolen, then it was driven by one of the owners or by someone the owners permitted to drive the car. Either way, the owners are responsible on some level. Maybe not to the level of jail, but certainly to the level of paying off fines (initially), and eventually having the car seized (if the number of tickets is extremely high, as in this case).
If you can't arrest the human, arrest the vehicle. The vehicle is obviously guilty, and is not protected by the right to confront its accusers, which are also machines.
Of course, with the advent of AI-enhanced surveillance and "smart" cars, we have have to have a separate traffic court for machines.
Then snowflake SJW machine-huggers will demand a machine Bill of Rights ...
I must be an old man because if I _could_ speed that much I don't think I would. I have gone over the posted limit but I find it stressful - part of that is I'm looking out for cops/cameras but part is when I'm going that fast I'm generally a bit more on edge because anything that'll happen is going to happen that much faster plus everyone else on the road is going so much slower.
The big question they didn't even scratch is doesn't he have to pay the fines in the end?
I don't understand why someone would be ok to pay probably 10k to 40k of fines every year just for a dozen of mph excessive speed.
I would easily guess that he does that because he is able to have the fine waived by abusing of his status!
Fine should be scaled to your income and have an escalating multiplier for reoffense within the same category of offense with a cool down period of a few years if they don't break the law.
I've brought this up many times online and people usually reply with something like "lots of people who have no income on paper but are wealthy speed" and a recent solution that I've seen posted is to scale the fine to the value of the vehicle.
Quite often fines are a pretty limp and ineffective way of modulating an individual's behaviour which is ultimately a choice by society.
We can make a better choice there to induce the behaviour that we want from antisocial people.
> escalating multiplier for reoffense within the same category of offense with a cool down period of a few years if they don't break the law.
My country - Poland - implemented this part a couple of years ago. Specifically a reoffense in the same category within two years results in a higher tier fine - about twice the usual amount. Fines were also adjusted for inflation after over 20 years of being nominally the same.
The rate of cars passing me doing 180km/h+, so 40km/h+ above the local 140km/h limit, fell drastically.
Particularly speeding cars in poor condition (like dangling linkages etc.) vanished. Nobody wants a ticket that's worth more than the car.
It's really not, especially on a highway. Makes me sad to read about more and more speed restrictions - there is nothing wrong with those in areas there cars and pedestrians cross, but seeing a highway with a 110 (or sometimes even 80) speed limit just feels stupid. Sometimes I'm happy to live in a place with relatively modest speeding fines (also, you have to speed A LOT to loose your license over it, it's a very rare occasion).
It looks like it changed in 2011? The trend was already decidedly downward from 2000 to 2011, so it’s hard to say what if any impact raising the speed limit had. Xkcd 552
Yes - the interesting bit is that this downward trend was stronger than the effect of this legislation.
Truth be told a lot of this has to do with most fatalities being that of pedestrians. Personally I witnessed two such accidents, fortunately minor ones. Both times it was a pedestrian crossing on their green, but the car turning right also having green.
For Americans, 120 kph is ~75mph and 140kph is ~85mph. I think there is a single road in the US with an 85 speed limit, and only some states use 75-80.
I’ve definitely driven 85mph on the I10 in texas. The roads are flat and straight, so it almost makes sense - but you have basically zero margin for error at those speeds. If I recall, the road fatality numbers for texas aren’t exactly good.
typically, tickets issued by cameras dont cause demerit points because they are unreliable at knowing who specifically is driving at the time of the ticket.
they want to avoid giving you points on your license just because your kid/spouse/friend/whatever was speeding.
if these tickets were issued via a cop, rather than a camera, they would be 4 points each.
Traffic cameras identify the owner, the person who registered the vehicle, not the driver meaning there's no license to put points on. There is no points system (At least in NY) for registration to my knowledge.
In the UK, the owner is liable for identifying the driver at the time of the incident. This is how it works with e.g. rental cars. If the owner doesn't identify the driver, they get the points
In the US, you have the right to face your accuser. Since that's not possible with a camera, photo-based enforcement becomes a non-moving violation.
You can still point the finger at someone else when you get the ticket in the mail. Or just put a bunch of question marks in reply as it is on the State to prove their case, not for you to snitch on your own bad driving habits.
At least that is how it works in the state I live in.
That's obviously not true. Camera evidence is used as evidence of crimes all the time. Security cameras would be utterly worthless if they couldn't.
Right to face your accuser in that context means that you have the right to cross-examine relevant witnesses about how that camera evidence was collected and applied.
You lie, say it "Bob", then you're guilty of perverting the course of justice. They then write to Bob,
If Bob agrees, then he's also guilty of perverting the course of justice, but most of the time you'll both get away with it.
If Bob disagrees, then they look more into it.
If you refuse to answer then you're guilty of not saying who was driving the car, a completely separate offence to the original speeding one, and one which is typically more serious
In the US you can mow down a child, drive away, and despite people having your plates and giving them to the cops, they can't actually arrest you because it was only your car which was used to kill someone?
They could arrest you, because probable cause, but you would not have to plead guilty, which is what paying a ticket is. If speeding was an arrestable offense, they could arrest you but unless they could prove beyond reasonable doubt that you were driving they should not find you guilty. Plus what other commenter said about you can not force some one to incriminate themselves.
That would run afoul of the right against self-incrimination in the US[1]. The government can't compel someone to admit they were driving, and can't punish people for refusing. The government has to provide proof they were driving.
Courts have held that people have less rights while driving then they do in other settings (such as walking down the street or as a passenger in a vehicle). For example, the doctrine of implied consent allows the government to compel you to submit to a blood alcohol test without a warrant. I wonder if something similar could be applied here.
I certainly support civil liberties, but they need to be balanced against the government's strong interest in preventing the bloodshed that comes from the reckless operation of vehicles.
I think there are many ways you could address this issue that don't involve circumventing constitutional rights.
Most of these systems take a photo of the car, which you can often use to verify who the driver was. For serious offenses you could chose to investigate who was driving and issue a normal ticket rather than an administrative fine. You can create laws about window tinting levels (where they don't already exist), and if you can't identify the driver because the car is violating those laws you can revoke the registration.
You could also institute a point system for vehicle registrations, where if an offense cannot be assigned to a person, it is assigned to the vehicle, and after points exceeded a certain limit the registration is revoked.
I don't know about NYC in particular, but in many jurisdictions a major reason that red-light cameras are treated like administrative fines rather than civil or criminal offenses is to avoid full due-process rights, making it harder to contest the fine, and saving money by making everything automated. Our safety is more important than that.
>In the US you can mow down a child, drive away, and despite people having your plates and giving them to the cops, they can't actually arrest you because it was only your car which was used to kill someone?
Not quite. In the US you get in trouble for driving off, but drivers that wait for the police to show up and then blame the child that they mowed down have a decent shot at having zero consequences, especially if the child was riding a bicycle.
Seems like one solution could be that after a certain number of violations the registration is revoked. And it can only be re-registered under special registration that allows use by a single driver.
Setting aside any concerns about cops being examples, public servants, etc, I'm shocked the NYPD's insurance doesn't have a problem with it.
My wife worked for a County government agency in Ohio. Her job duties included driving. She was required to report all traffic citations or crashes, regardless of when they occurred (during or outside of work hours), to the County and sign an affidavit annually attesting to such reporting.
If she exceeded a threshold of violations in a year the County's insurer would refuse to cover her. Because her job duties included driving this was considered grounds for termination.
Life as a cop is extremely different than the typical citizen, at least in most countries where I've spoken to cops, which doesn't include the US though, but I'm sure the same applies there because points everywhere.
Was a firefighter, same. And not so much a "threshold of violations in a year" but "clean driving record for three years at time of hire, and maintained."
Because he shouldn't be allowed to do that? Because police officers should be held to a higher standard than others? Because being immune to consequences isn't a thing anyone should be? Those are just the reasons I could think of in ten seconds, I'm sure others could come up with more.
It's already a well known problem. That's what the Stop Super Speeders Act is meant to solve. So pass the bill and move on. No need for investigative journalism to expose a problem we already know about.
> The laws says if you do this, you owe a fine. If you pay the fine, it's following the law.
You're following the part of the law that punishes you for violating the other part of the law, not the law that originally punished you. This is an important distinction.
Some people in the thread are claiming he's not in fact paying the tickets. I don't know if that's true or not but the people I see on the road acting that willful generally have look to have put some forethought into it i.e. they have their license plate obscured.
They're leveling some hefty accusations and signing their name on it. It would be monumentally stupid for J.K. Trotter, the author, to say these things without having any proof that holds up in court. If it's false, they would be sued and lose quickly. The data is pretty much all public record combined with standard journalism work.
They went to the guy's house, workplace? Followed him and took pictures?
This article reads like a Kiwi Farms thread. Just saying. I'm not a fan of what they do, but that's what came to mind. And when people do undesirable things, documenting them for public awareness is important. But how deep is too deep when it comes to freelance investigative journalism of this type?
e: critically I'm _agreeing_ that the reporting is important, and I'm not passing judgement either way here, only making a comparison and posing a question
His workplace is a public governmental building, so that seems like standard journalistic practice. It is also normal and appropriate to visit his house to seek a comment when he didn't respond through other channels. It would have been irresponsible and unethical to not put in an effort to speak with him before publishing this article. And taking a photo of a government official in public is again very normal, and it's good that they confirmed the vehicle is actually used by the guy they're naming.
For investigative journalism, if it even qualifies as that, this is pretty shallow. It's good work but it's just some public data and a couple hours of work, not a deep invasive investigation. It also is not freelance, this is a staff reporter for a decades-old publication.
Yeah, if he wasn't a public servant, and he wasn't a police who is supposed to enforce the laws, then I'd agree with you. But he is (hopefully "was" at one point) a public servant, and supposed to enforce the law, so if he flagrantly breaks the law almost every single day, then it's in public interest to know who is he and what he does.
> Among the questions he would not answer was: “While driving the RAM 1500, have you been involved in a collision with a car, pedestrian or cyclist?” (We can’t independently find that out because license plates are not in the city database of crashes for some reason.)
It's not so much whether someone has hit anyone - speeding laws exist for a good reason to protect other drivers, pedestrians, cyclists, etc. There's a good reason that school zones are 25 mph for survivability in the case of a car hitting a pedestrian (especially for small children).
There's certainly issues with speeding laws and enforcement, but at the end of the day the US is so car-centric that removing someone's license for dangerous driving can severely impact their ability to get to work, etc.
The offender may be an exceptionally alert driver who doesn't get into an accident, unlike the average person (and statistics show that higher speed results in a higher accident rate.) You also ignore the claim made by the article that it is not known how many accidents are made by the offender, because the license plate data isn't available. Or the fact that the offender is a cop and we all know how they tend to be treated differently by other cops.
Maybe you want to system where the speed limit is variable and based on some driving aptitude test. What could possibly go wrong with that.
> If he hasn't, then why would he refuse to say so?
Because he doesn't need to nor should he respond to a blogger? We continually point out that no one should ever talk to the police, the same absolutely goes for the media, particularly when you're a civil servant.
I am of two minds about it. On one hand, speeding alone when done by a mature highly-attentive driver isn't really dangerous no matter the limit, because the driver has enough expertise to know what his personal limit ought to be. The residual risk is more from immature drivers, the mistakes of other cars, cyclists, and pedestrians.
I have been on both sides of it. I have been the speeder who can drive very safely, and much earlier than that I have been the one to get hit by a car on a street. If the car had been going faster, or if it had been an SUV or a truck, I could have been less than lucky.
I settle for a middle position, which is that the speed limit should be no less than 35 mph on most streets, with heavy mandated use of automated collision avoidance systems. Moreover, I think that all pedestrian collisions, no matter how small, must be investigated thoroughly, with a hard action taken to minimize such an incident. School zones and other low-speed zones are a complete moneygrubbing racket because we already use schoolbuses which have protections.
Bicyclists must be mandated to wear light-colored high-visibility clothing, reflective gear, and a helmet, otherwise their bicycle should be confiscated.
> the driver has enough expertise to know what his personal limit ought to be
It is actually somewhat amusing that you worded this as "ought to be" rather than "is". Because one of the big problems with most drivers is they have an overly inflated idea of how competent they are at driving (I am not so churlish as to exclude myself from the category). And our system does nothing to bring drivers' beliefs about their capabilities in line with their actual capabilities--drivers are tested generally once on their competence [1], and that pass result then gets to hold for several decades, physical or mental decline notwithstanding.
> I settle for a middle position, which is that the speed limit should be no less than 35 mph on most streets
Most residential streets are not safe to travel at 25 mph, let alone 35 mph. There's a line of parked cars in the shoulders, children playing in the driveways, sidewalks, and street? Yeah, if you're traveling 35 mph, you've got no hope of stopping in time (recall that stopping distance goes to the square of speed).
> Moreover, I think that all pedestrian collisions, no matter how small, must be investigated thoroughly, with a hard action taken to minimize such an incident.
We already know how to minimize collisions. The top 3 actions to take are a) reduce speed limits, b) redesign roads to be narrower to make drivers less comfortable traveling at speed, and c) ban right turns on red.
> Bicyclists must be mandated to wear light-colored high-visibility clothing, reflective gear, and a helmet, otherwise their bicycle should be confiscated.
Why? It's not like wildlife like bears, moose, or deer that wander onto the roads wear such gear, and a "mature highly-attentive driver" should be equally aware of such dangers.
[1] And to be honest, even that is somewhat generous a statement.
Speed limits below 30 are lazy copouts by lazy people that have for decades come in the way of instituting proper safety systems that don't require lowering the speed. Making roads narrow is worse; it is simply horrific. Extending your depraved logic, disallowing cars on the road would work even better. Your metric is one-sided in that it accounts for wanting pedestrian safety but not driver utility.
If you actually begin to use your head, there are other ways to lower collisions:
1. Make roads and lanes substantially wider. This allows pedestrians to be seen from the edges before they come in the front of a car.
2. Shoulder parking is a pathetic substitute for a absence of multilevel parking lots, so these lots should be constructed and used. The shoulder parking should be eliminated as it is very detrimental to pedestrian visibility.
3. There should be well-maintened painted crosswalks, with a walk button that actually works, also with dynamic traffic lights to go with them. These exist at some places in NYC. No-stair bridges also work if they stay maintained.
> On one hand, speeding alone when done by a mature highly-attentive driver isn't really dangerous no matter the limit, because the driver has enough expertise to know what his personal limit ought to be. The residual risk is more from immature drivers, the mistakes of other cars, cyclists, and pedestrians.
The problem is the vast majority of drivers overestimate their skills and underestimate the risks. Many people are also emotional drivers and will drive faster when angry or stressed. A great combo.
> I settle for a middle position, which is that the speed limit should be no less than 35 mph on most streets, with heavy mandated use of automated collision avoidance systems.
So what are you going to do about all the millions of existing cars out there without collision avoidance systems?
Given all this, the easiest solution is for people to drive the speed limit, especially in urban areas with pedestrians and bicyclists.
If you really want to gas it, go to a racetrack or buy a motorcycle and donate your brain.
What you are describing is a legislation of the attitude of the average careless driver in the United States. I should be able to drive however I want until or unless I kill someone, the car should be the thing that keeps me from killing people, and anyone who doesn't use the roadway like me should be responsible for preventing me from killing them.
Spot on, well said. Personally I think inattentive driving is a bigger problem than speeding, but by the time someone is justifying it for themselves by saying they're safer than everyone else, they've lost the plot.
In my experience, the only thing that really feels too fast in a car is going faster than you've become used to driving.
And yeah, how someone talks about cyclists is always a tell.
> I settle for a middle position, which is that the speed limit should be no less than 35 mph on most streets, with heavy mandated use of automated collision avoidance system.
Why does it need to be so contrived when there's empirical evidence from many other countries in the world about measures which do make traffic safer for everyone involved? Why can't the USA look at that and implement what has worked? It doesn't even need to do the heavy lifting, it's been done, just improve measures which have already saved countless lives in other countries...
Or don't and keep killing 30-50k people every year in traffic.
I live near a middle school in the suburbs and it may come as a surprise but kids are frequently crossing a busy street using a regular, unprotected crosswalk.
No amount of child deaths and dismemberments are enough to deny me the right to get to where I'm going 30 seconds faster. Don't you know how important I am?
It is an engineering problem. Almost all pedestrian concerns are engineering problems. If kids are doing this, they should be instructed repeatedly to use the painted crosswalk instead. If there are no painted crosswalks, ideally with a walk button to press, there should be more, potentially also with traffic lights. If this is insufficient, a well thought out and maintained stair-free bridge could be better.
> Bicyclists must be mandated to wear light-colored high-visibility clothing, reflective gear, and a helmet, otherwise their bicycle should be confiscated.
The leading cause of death for car occupants is head injuries, I assume you believe that all car occupants must wear a helmet.
I actually absolutely believe that all cars should be brightly colored. It doesn't have to be orange. It is an easy win.
As for helmets in cars, yes, it's a particularly good idea for small cars that have a lower collision safety score. An appropriate helmet should be used that does not obstruct viewing mirrors or the blind spot. Pedestrians too can benefit from a helmet.
I don't believe that is possible. If it were possible, it wouldn't be called a blindspot. Of course a mirror should be well adjusted, but I don't see how it substitutes for checking the blindspot. Try it in a driving test; you will fail the test.
Is your underlying assumption that cars should be have the highest priority as a method of transportation, everywhere? Do you live in a rural area or something?
> School zones and other low-speed zones are a complete moneygrubbing racket because we already use schoolbuses which have protections.
What does this even mean? Does every kid ride a bus where you are? Do your school buses have seat belts and crumple zones?
When I go faster than usual, I always slow down around other traffic. So if the law accounted for that, that would be nice. It seems silly to be pulled over if you're the only one on the road.
However I can understand that slower speeds can reduce catastrophic results if a tire blows.
I suppose it's akin to wearing seatbelts: As long as you're driving reasonably around other traffic and only speeding when you're by yourself, then the law primarily is there to protect the one person.
Does the person have children? If so then the law benefits more than just the driver, even if they are the only one on the road.
We already have a precedent of compelling parents to pay child-support.
I don’t know if I’m really advocating for a nanny state, but last month I went to the funeral of a friend that was driving without a seatbelt and was alone on the road. Now his pregnant wife has to raise their child alone.
I guess what I’m trying to say is: Wear a seatbelt.
You may not have any concern for your own safety, but there’s probably somebody who does.
I agree with wearing seatbelts. I always wear mine. In fact, I hate the feeling of not wearing it. I like to be positioned securely in one spot when driving.
However, should it be illegal for someone with no dependants?
At a certain narrow point, what's the use of carving out a particular class of people from a general "use seatbelts in cars" law?
I suppose logically though someone with no dependents who signed some sort of waiver could be allowed, but it complicates enforcement measures quite a lot either way.
I would say you are rationalizing as is the parent of your reply, whose own reply is now invisible as it's been dv into oblivion.
Statistically if you speed the chances of a mishap increase. It's just a fact of observation. You are making a rationalization that statistics don't apply to you, and HN has judged you accordingly.
Is Staten Island like Hawaii, where everyone drives slow? Because they're talking like 41 mph is super fast, but to me it's not that fast at all (here the interstate is 70 mph, arterial city streets are 40-50 mph, and people regularly speed).
If you get a camera ticket at 41 mph it's because you're driving in a zone where the limit is 30 which sounds pretty residential to me. Is that more or less dangerous then doing 76 mph on a highway? I don't know, it's the difference between hitting a pedestrian and another car so less dangerous for you but more dangerous for the other person involved.
Seems like they should have phrased it differently, like "...he pilots a 4,800-pound RAM 1500 truck at more than 41 mph across through residential areas..."
The Dangerous Vehicle Abatement Program was meant to deal with drivers like this, but it was allowed to expire in 2023 after the NYC DOT failed to actually implement it.
The program allowed the DOT to make drivers with more than 15 speed camera or 5 red light camera tickets in a year to take a safe driving course or have their car siezed. The DOT only took action against a small fraction of eligible offenders however.
More: https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2023/09/22/analysis-dangerous-ve...
That's absolutely horrifying...
Relatively small increases in speed dramatically increase the stopping distance and as such the danger of driving. Especially with a huge truck like that. That's why Amsterdam (with much more food traffic) has recently reduced speed limits a lot.
> At 30km/h, the stopping distance of a car is 13 metres. At 50km/h it’s more than double at 27 metres. That 20km/h reduction is the crucial difference between a pedestrian or cyclist surviving the impact of an accident – at 30km/h it’s estimated that 95 per cent of pedestrians would emerge relatively unscathed.
https://www.intertraffic.com/news/road-safety/amsterdam-30-s...
What you're saying is all true, but typically road design influence driving speed more than anything. Changing speed limits rarely has an impact on that (at least in the US).
Not sure, but I think that in the Netherlands a municipality is not allowed to slap some 30kmh road signs along a roadway and call it a day. If the street does not 'communicate' that it is designed for that velocity, i.e. it is too broad, too many car lanes, then it must be adapted first to slow down traffic. There are a number of interesting design guidelines and manuals on the web, like CROW [0] for bicycle traffic, applied across the Netherlands.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CROW_Design_Manual_for_Bicycle...
That's how it should work but the UK definitely doesn't do that. I don't think the US does either.
One thing that may also help: an Amsterdam local told me that virtually all drivers there (and their parents/kids) are cyclists _also_, and so have more empathy for bikes and tend to operate motor vehicles safely them.
Really you should do both. Otherwise you do end up with roads that feel like you have to go slow but nominally you're allowed to go fast (and some drivers will certainly take that opportunity).
> The expert, former cop turned criminal justice professor Michael Alcazar, said Giovansanti should face “serious discipline.” But that’s not happening — an NYPD spokesperson shrugged off the suggestion of punishment because Giovansanti’s tickets are “not related to his job or his duties in the department.”
This angers me. Police officers are granted special privileges that ordinary citizens are not, and should be held to higher standards of conduct both on the job and off. In a just world, police officers would be exemplar citizens while wearing the uniform and while not. If they are not, how can we trust them to wield special privileges and authority over us?
What that spokesperson is saying isn't the whole truth. Departments can discipline or terminate people who dont meet their character clause, including being a scofflaw. They only apply it in whatever way they feel benefits them.
That’s my point, essentially, that they chose not to fire such a BS reason that doesn’t even suffice.
This kind of thing is egregious, but they get away with stuff like this all the time. I live a few blocks from an NYPD precinct house and they park all their personal vehicles on the sidewalk all the time every day. It's less dangerous than speeding, but it's a quality of life issue as well as simple fairness. They are in charge of ticketing parking violations but explicitly ignore their own violations.
The same way we can trust an overweight doctor, a depressed therapist, a housecleaner who doesn't make their bed, or me to verify code I push to corporate repos even while I vibecode apps at home for fun without paying attention. I don't understand the basis for applying this standard to cops.
If I don't trust my doctor, I can ignore them and find a new doctor.
If I don't trust my therapist, I can ignore them and find a new therapist.
If I don't trust my housekeeper, I can fire them and hire a new housekeeper.
If I don't trust a police officer, it doesn't matter. If they detain me and order me to step out of my vehicle, I have to comply under threat of the law and violence. I don't get to only listen to police officers whom I trust.
That is why they must be held to a higher standard, because they wield elevated authority not granted to ordinary citizens.
A police officer who has demonstrated such a reckless disregard for the law and safety can not be trusted as a police officer to uphold the law.
Are you saying you don't trust the people I mentioned for the reasons I mentioned? That a doctor who has demostrated a reckless disregard for his health outside of the law etc. etc.? Like, I get why trust is more important in this context, but I don't think it's at all normal to assume someone can't do their job because of decisions they make in their personal life.
Their point was pretty clear: you can’t opt out of a cop you don’t trust. You can opt out of seeing the unhealthy doctor.
It was, and I was pretty clear that I understood that. It dodges my point, though, and I've asked that they acknowledge it: should you distrust unhealthy doctors, not can you? Is unhealthiness in one's personal life disqualifying for the ability to provide stellar health advice in one's professional life? Should cops be held to the standard of being exemplary citizens who don't even speed? Have you ever sped? Do you know anyone who has never sped?
> should you distrust unhealthy doctors?
Maybe! Is their health status directly related to their specialty? Is it a readily curable condition? Is their advice reasonable?
Or are they a lung cancer specialist chain smoking cigarettes at the appointment?
> Should cops be held to the standard of being exemplary citizens who don't even speed?
Yes, cops should be held to a higher standard than the general public. Being a cop while committing a crime should be an aggravating circumstance in the justice system, not a get-out-of-jail card.
Should we expect perfection? No. But 547 speeding tickets is unacceptable.
Yes, the doctor's advice is reasonable and no the doctor is not smoking at a lung cancer appointment. The premise is that they are messing up off the job. If you think an oncologist shouldn't be able to get as good of a job because they smoke cigarettes or eat burgers, that is where we disagree. Apart from calling that illiberal or saying it has negative utility in its consequences, I don't know how to argue that; it's a values difference. I appreciate you actually taking the position, though.
Same for your cop positions. You say they should, I say they shouldn't. If it's clarifying, I can add that I agree that cops should be held to a higher standard while being cops, ie. that things like qualified immunity are working in the wrong direction, and that they shouldn't be held to a lower standard, on- or off-duty.
As far as I'm concerned, speeding tickets in the course of your private life are between you and the ticketing authority. If he's not paying his fines, if he's violating the social contract, sure, escalate. If we want to punish speeders with more than fines because of endangerment, like the article strongly suggests, sure, change the law. But as long as he's compliant with his fines and we're only giving him fines, it's not just to continue to pile on consequences.
Each of those examples varies widely, and I don't think most people would treat each of them the same way.
In general when the stakes are higher and the ambiguity of outcome is less clear, secondary signals become more important.
Concretely: I don't give a shit if my housecleaner doesn't make their own bed as long as they make mine; the outcome I need is easy to verify and the stakes are fairly low so the secondary signal doesn't matter very much. Conversely, I care a lot if the therapist I'm relying on to help me manage my depression is visibly unable to manage their own; the outcome I need has a slow feedback loop and the stakes are high so I'm much more likely to rely on secondary signals like "is this person able to manage their own mood successfully?"
In your version of the therapist example, you don't trust them to do their job because they are failing to do their job. This is fine by me. My issue is with punishing people at their job over actions taken outside of their job, as in the example under discussion.
> I don't understand the basis for applying this standard to cops.
Because those other examples don't involve breaking the law.
At the risk of pointing out the obvious: society holds breaking the law to be more serious than being fat or not making your bed.
Now, speeding is very much a lesser form of breaking the law...but then again, very few people have literally hundreds of speeding tickets.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donatism
Huh? Your examples are all people failing at something that merely resembles their job. For the analogy to work, Giovansanti would need to be failing at something in his personal life that resembles traffic enforcement. Instead he's doing the exact thing his job exists to prevent.
TFA mentions a need for the "Stop Super Speeders Act"
Reading the actual response from his police managers I think what is more needed are the "Abolish Qualified Immunity Act" and the "Cleanup Thoroughly Police Corruption Act" , in addition to the "Hire Professional And Responsible Police Officers Act".
No, all you need is the "Abolish Public Sector Unions Act".
I guess I'm most surprised that there are any NYC cops who don't deface their plates: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/17/nyregion/license-plate-vi...
Looks like they found the one cop on the force who doesn't obscure the license plate of their private vehicle.
> James Giovansanti lives and works on Staten Island.
ya don't say
(sincerely, ex-resident)
I don't understand, doesn't NY have a points system for driving licenses? In most places you could speed at most half a dozen times before you lose your license.
From the article:
> State law classifies camera-based tickets as mere violations, and they don’t add any points to a driver’s record, even though exceeding the speed limit by 11 miles per hour is worth four points on a license — but only if the offender is caught by a cop instead of a camera. Just three of those tickets suspends a driver’s license, but Giovansanti can keep on driving.
Can't he be considered as the arresting cop, after all he has witnessed all the speeding offenses? Sounds like dereliction of duty at best 8)
Ah. Well that sounds like the perfect system for a cop to exploit.
There's a reason why ACAB was coined.
It does, but according to the article it doesn’t apply to tickets issued by camera.
Well, that, and cops.
Cops don't give tickets to other cops.
In NYC, cops' friends are also exempt.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/16/nyregion/mathew-bianchi-n...
In California cops, family members of cops, and related personnel (e.g. police union officials) can get a special insignia on their license. So when they're pulled over and are asked to present their license....
The FOP (Fraternal Order of Police). Also a thing in NY and NJ.
Fun facts... the insignia you put on your license or on your car also has a thing like a registration tab... The FOP says its "to show your ongoing support", everyone else with a room temperature IQ knows its "to show you're 'paid up' on your protection money for the year".
Oh, and some enterprising souls have created "counterfeit" FOP insignia and stickers and other regalia (or for those tabs), and sold them on eBay... only to have the weight of the police union's attorneys come down on them with cease and desists, etc.
Biggest gang, etc.
It's probably for the better they're taken down. In California, and perhaps NY and NJ, too, the status shows up on your DMV records, so when a cop runs your license or your plate (and I presume plates are scanned and run automatically), they'll see the discrepancy immediately. So someone is just asking for trouble by using fake stickers, just like if they went around flashing a gang sign when they're not actually a member.
That in itself blows my mind, why on earth should someone see your membership in this order? It's not a LE agency, and in many states the FOP allows membership for retired cops.
I do agree with what you're saying, though, but the issue to me is why that's even something that should show up when your plates are run, "Oh, you're a cop somewhere, or used to be".
I don't remember if the DMV status is actually FOP, or something else, but I knew a lawyer who worked with a police union who had this status. But that's just icing on the cake compared to stuff like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_Enforcement_Officers%27_Bi...
I have a friend who's a union leader (as in actually runs a sizeable union) and, in the eyes of most people, a straight-up socialist. He convinced me public sector unions are a horrible idea precisely because of the above. I had known about the above, but I always had trouble squaring my support for the right to unionize with the problems with public sector unions. He basically gave me permission to call a spade a spade.
What about the Federal register of LEOs who have been terminated or resigned to avoid termination? Very useful concept for transparency...
... but the police unions that represent approximately 70% of the nation's police have negotiated it into their CBAs that this register "cannot be used for hiring or promotional purposes".
I think the FOP stickers are quite bad, but it's obviously not a "protection racket"; virtually nobody around here has them, and for a protection scheme to work there has to be some pressure to buy in.
They do! But their speed cameras can’t establish the identity of the human who was driving, at least to a legally sufficient standard.
While I imagine it’s reasonable to assume “one vehicle per licensed driver” across much of America, that assumption seems much less reliable in NYC, where space is at an extreme premium and large families often share space. Can’t punish Mom for Dad’s speeding habit just because the car’s in her name. Plus, that doesn’t get Dad off the road!
And it doesn’t really seem cost-effective (or politically viable) to build out an elaborate appeal system to litigate which human was driving every single time. (Or to layer some kind of AI facial recognition onto the cameras. No. Bad hackers. :) )
In parts of Europe, it's a crime in and of itself to fail to identify the driver of a vehicle. Under that system, if the vehicle is registered to you, you can be charged criminally for its conduct, and even if you prove you weren't behind the wheel, you can be charged criminally for failing to identify the actual driver.
Driving isn't a game. It's the most deadly daily activity, and while I'm not sure I want Euro-style speed enforcement, it shouldn't be something that you can just shrug off, especially 30%+ over the limit in a low speed area.
You can always just target the vehicle, since the vehicle was obviously involved.
Except in cases where the vehicle was stolen, then it was driven by one of the owners or by someone the owners permitted to drive the car. Either way, the owners are responsible on some level. Maybe not to the level of jail, but certainly to the level of paying off fines (initially), and eventually having the car seized (if the number of tickets is extremely high, as in this case).
If you can't arrest the human, arrest the vehicle. The vehicle is obviously guilty, and is not protected by the right to confront its accusers, which are also machines.
Of course, with the advent of AI-enhanced surveillance and "smart" cars, we have have to have a separate traffic court for machines.
Then snowflake SJW machine-huggers will demand a machine Bill of Rights ...
Nevermind. ;-)
This would be an interesting use of civil forfeiture.
> 527 since January 2022
That's more than two a week, every week!
Guy is living his best life.
I must be an old man because if I _could_ speed that much I don't think I would. I have gone over the posted limit but I find it stressful - part of that is I'm looking out for cops/cameras but part is when I'm going that fast I'm generally a bit more on edge because anything that'll happen is going to happen that much faster plus everyone else on the road is going so much slower.
The big question they didn't even scratch is doesn't he have to pay the fines in the end? I don't understand why someone would be ok to pay probably 10k to 40k of fines every year just for a dozen of mph excessive speed.
I would easily guess that he does that because he is able to have the fine waived by abusing of his status!
I gather his fines are waived administrativelly by the PD itself.
The solution is pretty straight forward.
Fine should be scaled to your income and have an escalating multiplier for reoffense within the same category of offense with a cool down period of a few years if they don't break the law.
I've brought this up many times online and people usually reply with something like "lots of people who have no income on paper but are wealthy speed" and a recent solution that I've seen posted is to scale the fine to the value of the vehicle.
Quite often fines are a pretty limp and ineffective way of modulating an individual's behaviour which is ultimately a choice by society.
We can make a better choice there to induce the behaviour that we want from antisocial people.
> escalating multiplier for reoffense within the same category of offense with a cool down period of a few years if they don't break the law.
My country - Poland - implemented this part a couple of years ago. Specifically a reoffense in the same category within two years results in a higher tier fine - about twice the usual amount. Fines were also adjusted for inflation after over 20 years of being nominally the same.
The rate of cars passing me doing 180km/h+, so 40km/h+ above the local 140km/h limit, fell drastically.
Particularly speeding cars in poor condition (like dangling linkages etc.) vanished. Nobody wants a ticket that's worth more than the car.
Jesus christ, 140kph?!? That’s fast. Max speed limit where i live is 120kph and that feels too fast for most roads.
It's really not, especially on a highway. Makes me sad to read about more and more speed restrictions - there is nothing wrong with those in areas there cars and pedestrians cross, but seeing a highway with a 110 (or sometimes even 80) speed limit just feels stupid. Sometimes I'm happy to live in a place with relatively modest speeding fines (also, you have to speed A LOT to loose your license over it, it's a very rare occasion).
I feel like you live somewhere where highways are flat and straight. I don’t.
It was increased from 130km/h in the 21st century.
What's surprising/weird/hilarious is the traffic fatality rate before and after the change:
https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/Poland/mortality_traffic_ac...
I'll let you google when that was so as not to spoil it.
It looks like it changed in 2011? The trend was already decidedly downward from 2000 to 2011, so it’s hard to say what if any impact raising the speed limit had. Xkcd 552
Yes - the interesting bit is that this downward trend was stronger than the effect of this legislation.
Truth be told a lot of this has to do with most fatalities being that of pedestrians. Personally I witnessed two such accidents, fortunately minor ones. Both times it was a pedestrian crossing on their green, but the car turning right also having green.
For Americans, 120 kph is ~75mph and 140kph is ~85mph. I think there is a single road in the US with an 85 speed limit, and only some states use 75-80.
I’ve definitely driven 85mph on the I10 in texas. The roads are flat and straight, so it almost makes sense - but you have basically zero margin for error at those speeds. If I recall, the road fatality numbers for texas aren’t exactly good.
> a recent solution that I've seen posted is to scale the fine to the value of the vehicle.
Sweet. My vanagon has a license to speed... not on highways though, it can barely hit the speedlimit.
> Since 2022, traffic cameras have caught his pickup truck blasting through school zones or running red lights more than 547 times in that one borough
In the UK speeding tickets get you 3 points (or more if you're really over like 50+ in a 30).
Get 12 points in a 3 year period and you are banned from driving.
I thought that the US had something similar for "moving violations" (rather than say parking).
Is the penalty for ignoring the law seriously just a fine (i.e. if you're rich you aren't affected)?
typically, tickets issued by cameras dont cause demerit points because they are unreliable at knowing who specifically is driving at the time of the ticket.
they want to avoid giving you points on your license just because your kid/spouse/friend/whatever was speeding.
if these tickets were issued via a cop, rather than a camera, they would be 4 points each.
Worth noting that speeding past a school is also an aggravating factor in the UK for sentencing if you're required to go to court over speeding.
Traffic cameras identify the owner, the person who registered the vehicle, not the driver meaning there's no license to put points on. There is no points system (At least in NY) for registration to my knowledge.
In the UK, the owner is liable for identifying the driver at the time of the incident. This is how it works with e.g. rental cars. If the owner doesn't identify the driver, they get the points
In the US, you have the right to face your accuser. Since that's not possible with a camera, photo-based enforcement becomes a non-moving violation.
You can still point the finger at someone else when you get the ticket in the mail. Or just put a bunch of question marks in reply as it is on the State to prove their case, not for you to snitch on your own bad driving habits.
At least that is how it works in the state I live in.
That's obviously not true. Camera evidence is used as evidence of crimes all the time. Security cameras would be utterly worthless if they couldn't.
Right to face your accuser in that context means that you have the right to cross-examine relevant witnesses about how that camera evidence was collected and applied.
Please read the remainder of the thread. Context matters. Pedantry, not so much.
That sounds like guilty until proven innocent.
Not really, you are asked who was driving.
If you are driving:
You say "Me", then they give you the points
You lie, say it "Bob", then you're guilty of perverting the course of justice. They then write to Bob,
If Bob agrees, then he's also guilty of perverting the course of justice, but most of the time you'll both get away with it.
If Bob disagrees, then they look more into it.
If you refuse to answer then you're guilty of not saying who was driving the car, a completely separate offence to the original speeding one, and one which is typically more serious
In the US you can mow down a child, drive away, and despite people having your plates and giving them to the cops, they can't actually arrest you because it was only your car which was used to kill someone?
They could arrest you, because probable cause, but you would not have to plead guilty, which is what paying a ticket is. If speeding was an arrestable offense, they could arrest you but unless they could prove beyond reasonable doubt that you were driving they should not find you guilty. Plus what other commenter said about you can not force some one to incriminate themselves.
That would run afoul of the right against self-incrimination in the US[1]. The government can't compel someone to admit they were driving, and can't punish people for refusing. The government has to provide proof they were driving.
[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/self-incrimination
Courts have held that people have less rights while driving then they do in other settings (such as walking down the street or as a passenger in a vehicle). For example, the doctrine of implied consent allows the government to compel you to submit to a blood alcohol test without a warrant. I wonder if something similar could be applied here.
I certainly support civil liberties, but they need to be balanced against the government's strong interest in preventing the bloodshed that comes from the reckless operation of vehicles.
I think there are many ways you could address this issue that don't involve circumventing constitutional rights.
Most of these systems take a photo of the car, which you can often use to verify who the driver was. For serious offenses you could chose to investigate who was driving and issue a normal ticket rather than an administrative fine. You can create laws about window tinting levels (where they don't already exist), and if you can't identify the driver because the car is violating those laws you can revoke the registration.
You could also institute a point system for vehicle registrations, where if an offense cannot be assigned to a person, it is assigned to the vehicle, and after points exceeded a certain limit the registration is revoked.
I don't know about NYC in particular, but in many jurisdictions a major reason that red-light cameras are treated like administrative fines rather than civil or criminal offenses is to avoid full due-process rights, making it harder to contest the fine, and saving money by making everything automated. Our safety is more important than that.
>In the US you can mow down a child, drive away, and despite people having your plates and giving them to the cops, they can't actually arrest you because it was only your car which was used to kill someone?
Not quite. In the US you get in trouble for driving off, but drivers that wait for the police to show up and then blame the child that they mowed down have a decent shot at having zero consequences, especially if the child was riding a bicycle.
https://nextcity.org/features/how-much-is-a-cyclists-life-wo...
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/livable-city/la-oe-schultz-p...
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/30/opinion/why-drivers-get-a...
Seems like one solution could be that after a certain number of violations the registration is revoked. And it can only be re-registered under special registration that allows use by a single driver.
It's amazing that the record only makes Giovansanti the second-most-reckless driver in the city.
What is the point of this article?
> Like all drivers in New York State, Giovansanti is immune to consequences as long as he pays the $50 tickets
So he's allowed to do this. Why are we talking about it?
Setting aside any concerns about cops being examples, public servants, etc, I'm shocked the NYPD's insurance doesn't have a problem with it.
My wife worked for a County government agency in Ohio. Her job duties included driving. She was required to report all traffic citations or crashes, regardless of when they occurred (during or outside of work hours), to the County and sign an affidavit annually attesting to such reporting.
If she exceeded a threshold of violations in a year the County's insurer would refuse to cover her. Because her job duties included driving this was considered grounds for termination.
Life as a cop is extremely different than the typical citizen, at least in most countries where I've spoken to cops, which doesn't include the US though, but I'm sure the same applies there because points everywhere.
Was a firefighter, same. And not so much a "threshold of violations in a year" but "clean driving record for three years at time of hire, and maintained."
Because he shouldn't be allowed to do that? Because police officers should be held to a higher standard than others? Because being immune to consequences isn't a thing anyone should be? Those are just the reasons I could think of in ten seconds, I'm sure others could come up with more.
We are talking about this because part of the job of a journalist is to expose broken policies.
It's already a well known problem. That's what the Stop Super Speeders Act is meant to solve. So pass the bill and move on. No need for investigative journalism to expose a problem we already know about.
I didn't know about this. And if that bill hasn't passed yet, a reminder to push politicians to get their act together is never bad.
You don't get to decide what information journalist get to write about.
NYPD policy should probably consider repeated reckless disregard for the law to be a discipline issue.
If he paid the fine, I don't know that it's disregard for the law.
The laws says if you do this, you owe a fine. If you pay the fine, it's following the law.
The law says if you murder someone you go to jail. Therefore, it’s following the law to murder someone as long as you take the punishment.
Of course not, the punishment is actually what happens because you disregarded and didn’t follow the law.
> The laws says if you do this, you owe a fine. If you pay the fine, it's following the law.
You're following the part of the law that punishes you for violating the other part of the law, not the law that originally punished you. This is an important distinction.
The law actually says it’s illegal to speed. It doesn’t say it’s ok to speed as long as you pay the fine.
Some people in the thread are claiming he's not in fact paying the tickets. I don't know if that's true or not but the people I see on the road acting that willful generally have look to have put some forethought into it i.e. they have their license plate obscured.
No doubt police should not be above the law and we should call that out.
However this article reads more like hyperbolic slander.
They're leveling some hefty accusations and signing their name on it. It would be monumentally stupid for J.K. Trotter, the author, to say these things without having any proof that holds up in court. If it's false, they would be sued and lose quickly. The data is pretty much all public record combined with standard journalism work.
which part is hyperbolic, and which part is slander?
(remember that a statement has to be false to be slander)
It also can’t be written, or the defamation would be libel, not slander.
Universal surveillance at its most terrifying
What’a scary about this, specifically? Speed cameras? Logs of tickets issued?
They went to the guy's house, workplace? Followed him and took pictures?
This article reads like a Kiwi Farms thread. Just saying. I'm not a fan of what they do, but that's what came to mind. And when people do undesirable things, documenting them for public awareness is important. But how deep is too deep when it comes to freelance investigative journalism of this type?
e: critically I'm _agreeing_ that the reporting is important, and I'm not passing judgement either way here, only making a comparison and posing a question
His workplace is a public governmental building, so that seems like standard journalistic practice. It is also normal and appropriate to visit his house to seek a comment when he didn't respond through other channels. It would have been irresponsible and unethical to not put in an effort to speak with him before publishing this article. And taking a photo of a government official in public is again very normal, and it's good that they confirmed the vehicle is actually used by the guy they're naming.
For investigative journalism, if it even qualifies as that, this is pretty shallow. It's good work but it's just some public data and a couple hours of work, not a deep invasive investigation. It also is not freelance, this is a staff reporter for a decades-old publication.
Yeah, if he wasn't a public servant, and he wasn't a police who is supposed to enforce the laws, then I'd agree with you. But he is (hopefully "was" at one point) a public servant, and supposed to enforce the law, so if he flagrantly breaks the law almost every single day, then it's in public interest to know who is he and what he does.
>But how deep is too deep when it comes to freelance investigative journalism of this type?
when the subject is a cop? no such thing.
Has he ever hit something or someone? If the answer is no, then speeding laws are too strict and must change.
> Among the questions he would not answer was: “While driving the RAM 1500, have you been involved in a collision with a car, pedestrian or cyclist?” (We can’t independently find that out because license plates are not in the city database of crashes for some reason.)
It's not so much whether someone has hit anyone - speeding laws exist for a good reason to protect other drivers, pedestrians, cyclists, etc. There's a good reason that school zones are 25 mph for survivability in the case of a car hitting a pedestrian (especially for small children).
There's certainly issues with speeding laws and enforcement, but at the end of the day the US is so car-centric that removing someone's license for dangerous driving can severely impact their ability to get to work, etc.
Would you apply the same reason to drunk driving? If not, why?
…yes? My point is if someone can break the law 547 times and no one is affected then the law is stupid.
Your point is wrong.
The offender may be an exceptionally alert driver who doesn't get into an accident, unlike the average person (and statistics show that higher speed results in a higher accident rate.) You also ignore the claim made by the article that it is not known how many accidents are made by the offender, because the license plate data isn't available. Or the fact that the offender is a cop and we all know how they tend to be treated differently by other cops.
Maybe you want to system where the speed limit is variable and based on some driving aptitude test. What could possibly go wrong with that.
Reminds me of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqYyxvM85zU
Nobody knows. He was driving too fast to get his plate.
If he hasn't, then why would he refuse to say so?
> If he hasn't, then why would he refuse to say so?
Because he doesn't need to nor should he respond to a blogger? We continually point out that no one should ever talk to the police, the same absolutely goes for the media, particularly when you're a civil servant.
I am of two minds about it. On one hand, speeding alone when done by a mature highly-attentive driver isn't really dangerous no matter the limit, because the driver has enough expertise to know what his personal limit ought to be. The residual risk is more from immature drivers, the mistakes of other cars, cyclists, and pedestrians.
I have been on both sides of it. I have been the speeder who can drive very safely, and much earlier than that I have been the one to get hit by a car on a street. If the car had been going faster, or if it had been an SUV or a truck, I could have been less than lucky.
I settle for a middle position, which is that the speed limit should be no less than 35 mph on most streets, with heavy mandated use of automated collision avoidance systems. Moreover, I think that all pedestrian collisions, no matter how small, must be investigated thoroughly, with a hard action taken to minimize such an incident. School zones and other low-speed zones are a complete moneygrubbing racket because we already use schoolbuses which have protections.
Bicyclists must be mandated to wear light-colored high-visibility clothing, reflective gear, and a helmet, otherwise their bicycle should be confiscated.
> the driver has enough expertise to know what his personal limit ought to be
It is actually somewhat amusing that you worded this as "ought to be" rather than "is". Because one of the big problems with most drivers is they have an overly inflated idea of how competent they are at driving (I am not so churlish as to exclude myself from the category). And our system does nothing to bring drivers' beliefs about their capabilities in line with their actual capabilities--drivers are tested generally once on their competence [1], and that pass result then gets to hold for several decades, physical or mental decline notwithstanding.
> I settle for a middle position, which is that the speed limit should be no less than 35 mph on most streets
Most residential streets are not safe to travel at 25 mph, let alone 35 mph. There's a line of parked cars in the shoulders, children playing in the driveways, sidewalks, and street? Yeah, if you're traveling 35 mph, you've got no hope of stopping in time (recall that stopping distance goes to the square of speed).
> Moreover, I think that all pedestrian collisions, no matter how small, must be investigated thoroughly, with a hard action taken to minimize such an incident.
We already know how to minimize collisions. The top 3 actions to take are a) reduce speed limits, b) redesign roads to be narrower to make drivers less comfortable traveling at speed, and c) ban right turns on red.
> Bicyclists must be mandated to wear light-colored high-visibility clothing, reflective gear, and a helmet, otherwise their bicycle should be confiscated.
Why? It's not like wildlife like bears, moose, or deer that wander onto the roads wear such gear, and a "mature highly-attentive driver" should be equally aware of such dangers.
[1] And to be honest, even that is somewhat generous a statement.
Speed limits below 30 are lazy copouts by lazy people that have for decades come in the way of instituting proper safety systems that don't require lowering the speed. Making roads narrow is worse; it is simply horrific. Extending your depraved logic, disallowing cars on the road would work even better. Your metric is one-sided in that it accounts for wanting pedestrian safety but not driver utility.
If you actually begin to use your head, there are other ways to lower collisions:
1. Make roads and lanes substantially wider. This allows pedestrians to be seen from the edges before they come in the front of a car.
2. Shoulder parking is a pathetic substitute for a absence of multilevel parking lots, so these lots should be constructed and used. The shoulder parking should be eliminated as it is very detrimental to pedestrian visibility.
3. There should be well-maintened painted crosswalks, with a walk button that actually works, also with dynamic traffic lights to go with them. These exist at some places in NYC. No-stair bridges also work if they stay maintained.
> On one hand, speeding alone when done by a mature highly-attentive driver isn't really dangerous no matter the limit, because the driver has enough expertise to know what his personal limit ought to be. The residual risk is more from immature drivers, the mistakes of other cars, cyclists, and pedestrians.
The problem is the vast majority of drivers overestimate their skills and underestimate the risks. Many people are also emotional drivers and will drive faster when angry or stressed. A great combo.
> I settle for a middle position, which is that the speed limit should be no less than 35 mph on most streets, with heavy mandated use of automated collision avoidance systems.
So what are you going to do about all the millions of existing cars out there without collision avoidance systems?
Given all this, the easiest solution is for people to drive the speed limit, especially in urban areas with pedestrians and bicyclists.
If you really want to gas it, go to a racetrack or buy a motorcycle and donate your brain.
What you are describing is a legislation of the attitude of the average careless driver in the United States. I should be able to drive however I want until or unless I kill someone, the car should be the thing that keeps me from killing people, and anyone who doesn't use the roadway like me should be responsible for preventing me from killing them.
Spot on, well said. Personally I think inattentive driving is a bigger problem than speeding, but by the time someone is justifying it for themselves by saying they're safer than everyone else, they've lost the plot.
In my experience, the only thing that really feels too fast in a car is going faster than you've become used to driving.
And yeah, how someone talks about cyclists is always a tell.
> I settle for a middle position, which is that the speed limit should be no less than 35 mph on most streets, with heavy mandated use of automated collision avoidance system.
Why does it need to be so contrived when there's empirical evidence from many other countries in the world about measures which do make traffic safer for everyone involved? Why can't the USA look at that and implement what has worked? It doesn't even need to do the heavy lifting, it's been done, just improve measures which have already saved countless lives in other countries...
Or don't and keep killing 30-50k people every year in traffic.
I live near a middle school in the suburbs and it may come as a surprise but kids are frequently crossing a busy street using a regular, unprotected crosswalk.
No amount of child deaths and dismemberments are enough to deny me the right to get to where I'm going 30 seconds faster. Don't you know how important I am?
Sandyhook showed that we don't care about kids...
It is an engineering problem. Almost all pedestrian concerns are engineering problems. If kids are doing this, they should be instructed repeatedly to use the painted crosswalk instead. If there are no painted crosswalks, ideally with a walk button to press, there should be more, potentially also with traffic lights. If this is insufficient, a well thought out and maintained stair-free bridge could be better.
> Bicyclists must be mandated to wear light-colored high-visibility clothing, reflective gear, and a helmet, otherwise their bicycle should be confiscated.
The leading cause of death for car occupants is head injuries, I assume you believe that all car occupants must wear a helmet.
All cars needless to say need to be bright orange
Any infringement should have the car crushed.
I actually absolutely believe that all cars should be brightly colored. It doesn't have to be orange. It is an easy win.
As for helmets in cars, yes, it's a particularly good idea for small cars that have a lower collision safety score. An appropriate helmet should be used that does not obstruct viewing mirrors or the blind spot. Pedestrians too can benefit from a helmet.
People should be taught how to adjust their mirrors properly so that they do not have a blindspot.
If a car is designed so that no amount of adjusting can get rid of the blindspot, then that car should be illegal (Chevy Malibu).
I don't believe that is possible. If it were possible, it wouldn't be called a blindspot. Of course a mirror should be well adjusted, but I don't see how it substitutes for checking the blindspot. Try it in a driving test; you will fail the test.
I literally have no blindspot in my vehicle, my parents' vehicles, or the vehicles I have rented except the Chevy Malibu.
When the mirrors are positioned properly, other cars transition from the side window, to the side mirror, to the rear mirror.
There is literally no spot that a vehicle or person standing in the next lane, is not visible.
Is your underlying assumption that cars should be have the highest priority as a method of transportation, everywhere? Do you live in a rural area or something?
> School zones and other low-speed zones are a complete moneygrubbing racket because we already use schoolbuses which have protections.
What does this even mean? Does every kid ride a bus where you are? Do your school buses have seat belts and crumple zones?
When I go faster than usual, I always slow down around other traffic. So if the law accounted for that, that would be nice. It seems silly to be pulled over if you're the only one on the road.
However I can understand that slower speeds can reduce catastrophic results if a tire blows.
I suppose it's akin to wearing seatbelts: As long as you're driving reasonably around other traffic and only speeding when you're by yourself, then the law primarily is there to protect the one person.
Edit: is there something wrong with my comment?
Does the person have children? If so then the law benefits more than just the driver, even if they are the only one on the road.
We already have a precedent of compelling parents to pay child-support.
I don’t know if I’m really advocating for a nanny state, but last month I went to the funeral of a friend that was driving without a seatbelt and was alone on the road. Now his pregnant wife has to raise their child alone.
I guess what I’m trying to say is: Wear a seatbelt.
You may not have any concern for your own safety, but there’s probably somebody who does.
I agree with wearing seatbelts. I always wear mine. In fact, I hate the feeling of not wearing it. I like to be positioned securely in one spot when driving.
However, should it be illegal for someone with no dependants?
At a certain narrow point, what's the use of carving out a particular class of people from a general "use seatbelts in cars" law?
I suppose logically though someone with no dependents who signed some sort of waiver could be allowed, but it complicates enforcement measures quite a lot either way.
I would say you are rationalizing as is the parent of your reply, whose own reply is now invisible as it's been dv into oblivion.
Statistically if you speed the chances of a mishap increase. It's just a fact of observation. You are making a rationalization that statistics don't apply to you, and HN has judged you accordingly.
First, thank you for replying to my edit.
> You are making a rationalization that statistics don't apply to you
I reread my comment, and I don't see that at all.
The only thing I said about me is that sometimes I drive faster than usual, which is not even an admission of exceeding the speed limit.
Most of the time I set my cruise control to the speed limit, and it is surprising how many people I pass that way.
> at more than 41 mph across the island
Is Staten Island like Hawaii, where everyone drives slow? Because they're talking like 41 mph is super fast, but to me it's not that fast at all (here the interstate is 70 mph, arterial city streets are 40-50 mph, and people regularly speed).
If you get a camera ticket at 41 mph it's because you're driving in a zone where the limit is 30 which sounds pretty residential to me. Is that more or less dangerous then doing 76 mph on a highway? I don't know, it's the difference between hitting a pedestrian and another car so less dangerous for you but more dangerous for the other person involved.
Seems like they should have phrased it differently, like "...he pilots a 4,800-pound RAM 1500 truck at more than 41 mph across through residential areas..."