# New types of traffic cameras allowed by the state legislature have the potential to lead to big safety gains in Seattle -- but a potential clash over how those cameras are deployed could be on the horizon. SDOT and transportation chair Rob Saka are not seeing eye to eye.
There is also a complete lack of segregation of duties with these things. The companies that install, configure, and maintain also get a cut of the income. This is really bad.
Right; I’m considering requesting cameras in my city to protect crosswalks, pedestrians and cyclists as none of the laws are currently enforced in any meaningful way. One of the most cost-reasonable, effective ways to do that would be to have automatic cameras but the lecherous vendors that want 20-30% of the cut and authoritarian state are two massive concerns I have that make me, at the cost of my own daily safety, hesitant to call this stuff out.
Keep in mind too that they’re not always accurate. I know of one in my city that regularly takes photos of people going through on the green because it’s a bit of a wonky intersection. And that means a person gets to spend their day in court instead of at work fighting a ticket they did not deserve.
Yeah, that at least can be systematically identified and corrected; the bias and also inaccuracy of judgement of current human officers seems far worse and when combined with the fact non-vehicular safety is seen as a low priority or completely ignored, getting to “good” for safety of non-vehicular traffic is life and death. A few tickets that get waived, or in my city, Portland Oregon, a citizen sued to prove the cameras inaccurate where they were and won vs. engineers, is a small price to pay vs. the current state of zero enforcement and bodies littering crosswalks and cyclists mown down in “bike lanes”.