@pony @FailForward other than the sheer density of population and ancient street layout, I suspect a big reason the London speed limits were introduced is to try and slow down traffic to a point all the camera operators can keep an eye on it. Its not perfect but its made some improvement, people don't get run over quite as often and its even possible to cycle in London which was positively dangerous 30 years ago...

@vfrmedia @FailForward this car is currently moving at 0 km/h, yet...

@vfrmedia @FailForward this is a tram stop... if there was anyone with a child stroller in the middle section, they are kinda fucked, but who cares...

@FailForward @vfrmedia and yes, these two pictures were taken ~40 seconds and 100 meters apart

@pony @FailForward @vfrmedia i'd drive like this too if mafia was the only game i ever played

@pony @FailForward

the cameras and wardens also pick up parking violations (in most parts of London this is immediately illegal and results in £30-70 fine), elsewhere it would still be classed as hazardous parking but there are less resources available to stop it

@vfrmedia @FailForward they actually have some kind of a monitoring for it, the main bottleneck is actually administrative capacity to process and deliver the fines (and complete lack of interest, partially because there are two kinds of a police force -- state police and municipal police, state police argues parking is beneath them and won't deal with it, municipal police claims they are not actually supposed to be dealing with parking and won't do a shit either)

@pony @FailForward the setup in UK is different, the Police don't get involved unless there is really bad driving / major danger caused to other road users and its the local Council who collect the fines - many use these to pay for road repairs and public transport investment so there is an incentive to enforce traffic laws..

@vfrmedia @FailForward yeah well the municipal police *is* the council really, they are paid and run by them (and it's the municipal responsibility to hand over the fines), the only difference is the muni police role is not as clearly defined, they kinda can do anything and nothing, like, when our neighbor got high, sat in a window and yelled he's about to jump, we called the muni police, but we could as well call the state one, it sort of doesn't make sense

@pony @FailForward

that is a strange way of doing things, even Britain moved away from this in the late 19th/early 20th century...

@vfrmedia @FailForward I think having local police forces is extremely common in most of Europe, is this silly overlap that maybe doesn’t exist as much elsewhere, there are clearly things the muni police don’t do (any kind of criminal investigation for example) or can’t do (arrest anyone), but…

@pony @FailForward

We have local police (Suffolk and Norfolk Constabulary, they are partly combined for specialist units like road policing) but they concentrate on criminal investigations and bad/dangerous driving - minor stuff like parking infractions, driving in the bus lane is dealt with by the local Councils (usually the County Council), who have the power to issue fines (but not points on driving licences)

@vfrmedia @FailForward yeah I guess the solution would be a dedicated service for traffic that would not deal with anything else, but then the current situation is probably quite convenient to many people

@pony it's implemented this way in many countries indeed. Wikipedia lists it here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Municipal_police. Clearly, UK is rather an exception in Europe with not having it. @vfrmedia

@FailForward @pony

Police forces in UK are still funded by the Council (as well as general taxation) but nowadays they serve a much larger area than one council (it still says on your council tax bill so many % is paid for Suffolk Constabulary)

@pony It's clearly an enforcement problem. Here it's also municipal force (not really police, but something like that) responsible for these things. But nobody bothers really in person. We have things like the one below driving around. These scanners automatically report the cars to municipal servers, those automatically issue a fine, send it to an automated facility for printing letters and enveloping them and then it's picked up by postal service. The first time a person interacts with that fine is when I receive it per post. And that is typically also the last human being seeing the fine, with an exception of me making a complaint about it, in which case it's the first time somebody from the municipality touches the said fine. It's a bit robotic system, but it works quite well and saves costs.

@vfrmedia

@FailForward @vfrmedia we now have fancy cars that do that as well, though supposedly it’s a very new thing (it was a thing before, but now they contracted a new company that claims they can also detect illegal parking, the previous system was only meant to enforce payments, because of course), so that may help, however, I’m sceptical, especially because I know the process to actually deliver fines is also bit broken