I would happily pay higher taxes (and, probably, higher fines at least occasionally) if jurisdictions would remove all their speed cameras and replace them with actual officers--especially if it meant putting more cameras at traffic lights.
I believe that it was the city of Vancouver, British Columbia, that discovered a life sized sign of a police car and an officer standing next to it was as effective a traffic calming measure as actually having a cop and car present.
My city currently has over 180 speed cameras (up by something like 50 just over this past summer). They also dropped speed limits in many of those camera areas by 10 Kmh, without calling attention to the change. Just quietly changed the speed limit signs. I got caught by one at 51 Kmh in what had been a 50 Kmh limit for as long as Canada has used Kmh as a measure of speed (mid-'70s), but is now a 40 Kmh zone. Also a "community safety zone" now with double fines.
Around here, a lot of "school zones" (a distinction that seems to be kinda arbitrary) have speed cameras. Maryland has a law that they can't ticket for less than 12 MPH over the limit, and they don't matter to anyone's driving record, and they're relatively inexpensive tickets, and there's a company processing them (and I'm sure taking a cut); they couldn't be more obviously revenue enhancement tools, in spite of those things.
Where I live they passed that law where your supposed to change lanes for someone else being traffic stopped. What this does to traffic here is more egregious than any left lane lane camper I’ve witnessed.
There's a similar law here in Maryland that has the proviso "if possible" in it, and pretty clearly is not intending or expecting people to cause accidents or make traffic even worse than the flashing lights would already make it. I do it kinda automatically these days (after checking that I'm clear to change lanes, of course). I'll do it for any vehicle with flashing lights, not just first responders--tow trucks, some poor schmuck trying to change a tire, whatever--it just seems safer and kinder.
Yea we have the if possible as well, but I guess people don’t trust the police to agree with them on what was possible.
There's plausibly some of that around here, too. A very quick poke-around on the Internet tells me that the Move Over laws have (at least mostly) been written to like a template that A) includes "if possible" and B) mandates slowing down if it isn't possible. (The law where you are might not be to that template; Maryland's is.)
considering the tangent that arose out of me posting the content of a meme here, I think this has that other beat.
In the Midwest it's called "hoggin the lane" considered poor etiquette. I'm usually grandpa in the right doing 70. Yeah, no telling when some maniac will be on top of you. Plenty of bad drivers on interstates that are just in ruins, there are sections of I 70 so rough, it's wtf? In a 4x truck.
