A Portland driver has unlocked a new level of rage. In several acts of what the Portland Police Bureau are referring to as “gunfire vandalism,” someone is driving around and shooting at automated enforcement cameras.
In a statement Thursday, the PPB said the suspect has fired a handgun at “city equipment” at least seven times and caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage. While they didn’t mention what type of city equipment is being targeted, it’s very obvious what’s going on based on a video released by PPB in an effort to track down the shooter.
In a PPB video from May 27th around 5:10 am, a man is shown driving a black Subaru WRX eastbound on SE Washington through the intersection of 103rd. When he see the traffic camera just east of the southeast corner, he hits the brakes, swerves over and parks in the bike lane, hops out, draws his weapon, aims it high, fires off three shots, then runs back to his car and drives away.
There’s a Portland Bureau of Transportation “intersection safety camera” at that exact spot. The camera snaps photos and sends citations in the mail to folks who run the light and/or speed. It was installed within the last year and is one of 27 automated enforcement cameras currently operated by PBOT (with more on the way). The agency sees the cameras as a vital part of their Vision Zero effort that has zeroed in on speed as a main culprit of traffic deaths and injuries.
It’s a setback for a program that was beset by delays for years due to what city officials said were delays in procurement and problems with the vendor. It was only last fall when the logjam broke and a flood of new cameras were able to hit the streets. PBOT chooses camera locations based on crash history and law requires them to only be used on streets with an above average rate of collisions.
Most of the revenue from the citations (around 70%) goes to the State of Oregon. Of the money that does come to the City of Portland, most of it goes back into maintaining and operating the system. Anything left over is dedicated to safety projects on high crash corridors. Some violators are given an option to attend a safety class in lieu of payment.
When I shared a video about this on Instagram this morning, several commenters expressed concern about stray bullets. Others cheered the shooter, calling him a “hero.” “Why are we mad about this? These cameras suck,” someone wrote. This situation reflects an erosion of norms since the pandemic that has resulted in more reckless driving and wanton disregard among some drivers for courteous vehicle operation and compliance with traffic laws.
PPB are asking anyone with information about the suspect to email crimetips@police.portlandoregon.gov and put “Property Crimes Unit case number 24-134019” in the subject line.
— Learn more about PBOT’s enforcement camera program here.
UPDATE, June 11th: They caught him.
The camera depicted is such a great example of how simple and inexpensive traffic safety infrastructure is turned into a ridiculous example of excess. Instead of purchasing elaborate hundred thousand dollar cameras, Oregon needs to stop requiring a facial ID for traffic tickets and start employing the cheap plate reading radar guns that are widely used in Europe. They also need to start installing cheap dummy cameras and rotating cameras so that drivers have no idea where the real cameras are.
As for Portland’s concentration of cameras in “communities of concern”, there are plenty of reckless and homicidal drivers in inner PDX and SW Portland. The Lloyd district, in particular, is just @#$%ing bonkers.
Regarding your last lines. The Lloyd area might be bonkers but much more of East Portland is bonkers. I live east of 205 and have for almost 8 years after many more years living in very inner Portland. The roads out here are straighter for longer with fewer lights/stop signs, wider than most anywhere in inner N/NE/SE and not nearly as congested with peds, cyclists and a lot of the time, other vehicles. I commute into inner SE daily and once you cross 205 or 92nd or maybe 82nd, pick one, the vibes change. Sometimes I feel like I don’t live in Portland, for a number of reasons, and the roads/traffic feels/lack of other cyclists out here is a big part of why. I absolutely welcome more automated traffic enforcement and hell, actual human police traffic enforcement, I don’t care that “communities of concern” is problematic for you.
Perhaps I was not clear but I was not arguing that we should install fewer cameras in E PDX but rather that we can mitigate spatial biases by installing more of them everywhere.
Ah, gotcha. I’m with you 100%. ^handshake emoji^
“We can mitigate spatial biases by installing more of them everywhere.”
I agree. It is grossly unfair that E Portland enjoys the protection of these cameras, while areas closer in go without.
I can’t tell if this is a joke or not.
Why would it be a joke? I would love one in my neighborhood. (inner west side.)
Because Watts is hard to read sometimes. And also…
Look at where all the most dangerous intersections are.
That’s grossly unfair.
I know where the high crash intersections are, I think folks are saying that they would like more cameras period, all over town.
Biked to costco for the first time recently, and the difference in infra after crossing 82nd was extremely noticeable, felt much less safe.
I’ve been saying this for years. We don’t need 10,000 cameras in the city. We just need a few hundred that work and then thousands of dummy installations that look exactly the same.
There was a British crime study over ten years ago that found that most crimes were occurring near cameras, simply because most cameras were dummy installations or broken, that it was impossible for any human to monitor them all. Most vulnerable people avoided any area that had cameras as being the most dangerous places. Installing too many cameras is a lot like installing too many stop signs – eventually everyone ignores all of them, even the ones that are needed. It turns out Big Brother just doesn’t care.
But why do we need red light and speed cameras at all? Wouldn’t it be more effective to monitor people’s personal phone GPS units instead, to see if they are moving too fast or passing through a red light?
I think automated traffic enforcement cameras are a bit different than “just watching whatever” cameras, in both effectiveness and intrusiveness. There doesn’t have to be a person watching to give you a ticket. If just the people who legally drove cars with license plates followed the traffic laws, that would be a huge improvement over what we have now. It’s low hanging fruit.
You want to know how society willingly becomes a 1984 style dystopia? This is how it starts. How much freedom, privacy, autonomy are you willing to part with for the perception of safety? The dystopia is coming because people like you will vote it into power. I’ve been an avid cyclist for 30 years and never once thought “we should really just have the government monitor everyone by GPS” … like, wtf?
It’s cute that you think that our government does not already monitor an awful lot of people’s GPS.
Do people living in a dystopia even recognize they are living in a dystopia?
Actually, the dystopia is already here when you signed up for your current cell phone provider and failed to read the fine print, and even if you did read it, what are you gonna do, not sign up for your service that you just signed up for? The police already monitor your signals, not just PPD but also the Multnomah Sheriff’s office, the FBI, DEA, 911, and so on. In addition, any government agency and corporation can and often do pay for comprehensive signal data for a period of time (say a month) to track everyone’s movements, to model traffic behavior. And yeah, you are the idiot (along with me) who voted these people into power who supposedly control the agencies that do all this. Welcome to Big Brother.
When you say the police “monitor your signals”, would you clarify that a bit? I’m big on privacy, but I don’t think such monitoring without a warrant is legal.
If you are one of the two people in your neighborhood who still have a home phone on a wired LANd line, then yeah, the police still need a warrant to wiretap your phone. But if you are part of the vast majority who do all of your communications by text, whatsapp, and email on your cell phone, you already signed away your 4th Amendment rights when you e-signed your phone contract with your provider – quite happily I might add. Your phone is essentially a radio that sends out signals to cell towers, most of which are in the public right of way, that really anyone with the right equipment can monitor, and many legal and illegal groups regularly do monitor those signals, quite profitably I might add. And the 911 system give police all the excuse they need to not only constantly locate you (using your built-in GPS) but monitor you in case they need to rescue you.
Obviously my provider needs to know which tower I’m connected to; that’s an essential part of providing service. I know they record this, and can use these records to roughly triangulate the location of my phone. Police can obtain these records with a search warrant.
The only other mechanism I know to tower data is to spoof the tower with a Stingray device (this is expensive equipment not generally available). Much to my surprise, the use of these devices does not appear to need a warrant (at least at the federal level), but I also do not believe they are in routine use. Stingrays (reportedly) do not capture call content (use an app like Signal if you are concerned about that).
When you call 911, your GPS data is available as part of the connection itself, so that’s not something that could be monitored when you’re not on 911.
There are other ways to get your location data (and call content), such as installing an app on your phone; these methods almost certainly need a warrant.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_use_in_United_States_law_enforcement#:~:text=The%20official%20position%20of%20the,Maryland.
The problem with plate reading cameras is that many of the lawbreakers don’t have plates on their cars. Including the Subaru referenced in this story.
In many places that would be an automatic impound of the vehicle (which doesn’t even require a cop to do)
So you want to send some tow truck driver to impound a car from someone who already shown his willingness to use a firearm. Sounds like a bad idea. Beside the only vehicular laws he violated is no license plate and parking in a bike lane, things like that in Portland won’t even get you a ticket. His crime that will get him arrested is destroying city property and discharge of a firearm in city limits. And maybe a few other charges.
Of course first you need a positive ID before a warrant can even be issued. If the police only have the video we watched then the chance is not good. I know Subarus very well. From that fuzzy video the best I could do is narrow it down to a 2015 – 2022. I also think is is a STI not a WRX. When we see the back of the car I can see a touch of red where the badge would be. The STI badge has red in it where the WRX does not. Some of you are saying what’s the difference. When your trying to narrow your pool of suspects little things like that make a difference.
Feels like a good spot to start looking is a list of recently ticketed individuals.
This is one of the newer cameras too. Admittedly the cameras along Stark/Washington have been plagued with calibration issues. Maybe if broken, PBOT will finally fix them
And no license plate, apparently? Awesome.
He took it off before committing the crimes, but I can almost guarantee that if they checked the photo ticket database for vehicles matching this description, they would find someone who got a ticket in the last year. This is most likely a reaction to one or more fines from these cameras.
Most likely the car was stolen.
Why would someone driving a stolen car care about a ticket being mailed to the owner of the stolen car?
The fact that they’re on this vendetta against traffic cameras probably means they got a ticket from one. They either took it off to commit this blatant criminal escalation, or they’ve just left it off since that last ticket.
Seems unlikely to me. There are much easier cars to steal than a WRX. Also in my experience their owners are pretty obsessed with their car so riskier, more likely to be reported right away and searched for.
It would be a lot easier to steal an older car that someone likely doesn’t even care about. Plus the Venn Diagram of someone owning a WRX and speeding is almost a perfect circle.
Its insane that someone feels so entitled to driving recklessly that they’re willing to go out and shoot up traffic cameras over it. I’m sad that we have to share Portland with psychos like him.
He could do something much less entitled, like taking over the PSU library.
Ah yes, causing mild disruption in order to highlight an ongoing genocide is just as bad as endangering the lives of innocent bystanders. I am a true Enlightened Centrist™.
No, causing a million dollars damage for the fun of it…
If you think those were enlightened Gaza “protesters er vandals” you are truly an enlightened propagandist.
Nope, just someone who thinks human lives are more valuable than property. I know that’s a difficult concept for some people.
LOL, what lives were saved by Vandals spray painting valuable books and trashing a public building to the tune of $1,000,000 damage?
These are your heroes?
Cosplaying Revolutionaries… Hilarious if they weren’t so pathetic.
“that’s a difficult concept”
I agree that it can be. How many lives were saved by trashing the PSU library?
Since we’re judging an entire group by the actions of a few, how many millions has police misconduct cost Portland taxpayers to date?
No one judged the entire Gaza protest movement by the actions of the non idealogical Idiots who trashed the Library.
You defended them.
When did I ever defend vandalism?
The Library trashing was a “mild disruption” according to your first post here.
Vandalism on the order that was done here is a mild disruption according to you.
Good job Bro.
Try again. I was responding to a comment about protesters “taking over” the PSU library. Nothing about vandalism.
I’m not judging the actions of a few, I’m judging the efficacy of the whole endeavor.
Library aside, we know the collective cost of the protest has been fairly high in regards to a sizable number of students feeling religiously and racially persecuted.
Good point, I guess successful protest movements never cause anyone’s feelings to be hurt(?).
Coplaying like you are the forefront of a great movement on this blog hilarious.
That’s the thing… this protest movement hasn’t been successful. I’m also pretty surprised at how blithely you dismiss claims of racism as “hurt feelings”.
Claims are easy to make. Substantiating those claims with facts is another matter.
It’s interesting. If someone says “all lives matter” they will be denounced by the left as racist, despite the obvious non-racist content of their message. No substantiation needed.
Yet when people complain that slogans calling for the elimination of Israel are anti-Jewish, you ask for proof.
That’s about as clear a double standard as I can think of.
I haven’t called anyone racist. But since we’re back to judging an entire group by its most extreme members, some of the most vocal supporters of Israel are white nationalists. Really makes you think, doesn’t it?
That white nationalists are closet Hebrews?
I don’t believe that you’re racist either. However, judged by their own standards, it is crystal clear that many of the protestors, perhaps a majority, are.
No, this kind of gaslighting is mind boggling. Calling for the end of a massacre and reigning in a racist ethnostate is not racist. That is not crystal clear in the slightest, and this dishonest conflation just sounds desperate.
I 100% agree. It’s the how that’s racist, not the what. One can certainly demand that end without using antisemitic and pro-violence rhetoric, and without harassing people who appear Jewish. And many protestors do exactly this.
In fact I will do so right now: I demand that Israel and Hamas agree to an immediate ceasefire that stops the disproportionate killing of civilians, and allow all hostages to return home, then negotiate an enduring peace.
Which is literally what every organized student protest has been doing. Thanks, glad you agree that “it is crystal clear that many of the protestors, perhaps a majority, are [racist]” is obviously not true.
I can say “many Americans have been president”, I mean, it’s more than I can count on two hands! But all of a sudden Mr. Clear Eyed Realist is all weasel words.
Literally every one? Nearly every protest I’ve read about* has used antisemitic** slogans and advocated for violence. Many have harassed Jewish presenting students. That’s why many were shut down.
How many citations do you want?
*I haven’t attended any; unlike the George Floyd protests, some of which I did attend, the politics of these protests is so muddled and confused that I cannot in good conscience support them, even if I support their very general aims.
**By the standard that deems “All lives matter” is racist
The politics of these protests couldn’t be more straight forward and clear. The only muddling comes from people like you who spread misinformation about what the protests represent. Tens of thousands (probably more) have been involved in protests about this, and if you find three people reported by Fox News who came in saying antisemitic things (and were quickly asked to leave by students), you take that as somehow representative. The students have done an amazing job and shown an inhuman level of restraint and calm in these protests, in the face of white nationalists and zionist provocateurs showing up and using actual (not phony “perceived”) violence to try and silence their peaceful protest.
The protests are very clear. Couldn’t be more so. The fact that you can’t support them says more about you than the protests.
Your comment about “By the standard that deems “All lives matter” is racist” makes no sense. What does that even mean? What even is the equivalent to that in this situation? The equivalent would be responding “all lives matter” to someone saying “Palestinian lives matter”, but that would be the same thing as when people said it in the BLM protests!
C’mon John… a little respect. You should know I would never cite Fox News in a context like this. Nor do I need to.
“There is only one solution! Intifada, revolution!” or “Gloablize the intifada!” are clear calls to violence. One need only look as far as the last intifada (including missiles targeting civilians and well over 100 suicide bombings on buses and other civilian targets) to see what that entails. And does “one solution” evoke any other particular “solutions” that might be relevant to Jews?
“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is a call widely interpreted by Jews as calling for the destruction of their homeland. “All lives matter” is a phrase that is interpreted by many as being a “disingenuous retort” diluting the impact of “Black lives matter”.
The left has promulgated the idea that it’s how people receive your message that matters, not what you meant by it. By that standard, even though I truly believe that all lives matter (and you probably do too), saying so is problematic because of how people will hear it. The same applies to “From the river to the sea…”. You may not intend it to mean destroying the only Jewish state, but everyone knows (including those doing the chanting) that many (most?) Jews will hear it that way. Just as I cannot chant “All lives matter” free of its associated baggage, you cannot chant “From the river to the sea…” without invoking antisemitism.
Everyone knows this, and I am quite sure you do too. And yet many protestors continue to use these slogans rather than less problematic phrases and formulations, as if Biden (who, theoretically they are trying to influence) won’t understand a less offensive message.
That’s not by accident.
Indeed, they are.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intifada
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Intifada
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_the_river_to_the_sea
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Lives_Matter
From your link:
“All Lives Matter is a slogan that was created as a negative response to the Black Lives Matter movement. It is a conservative rejection of the acknowledgement of police brutality and ethnic violence that is the purpose of the Black Lives Matter movement.”
None of this “interpreted by many” stuff. The slogan was coined as a direct counterpart of Black Lives Matter to dismiss the problem of anti-Black racism entirely.
Fixating on the 2000–2005 second intifada as though it’s equivalent in scope to the literal tens of thousands of civilians murdered by Israel in the last few months is certainly a choice. As if Israel doesn’t have its own version of “from the river to the sea”.
The slogan is, on its face, a laudable statement that I hope you agree with. It also carries considerable extrinsic baggage.
I’m not fixated on the intifada at all. I rarely think about it, unlike those out chanting about it and making signs about it and calling for it to be continued more broadly.
When Israelis hold racist protests calling for the expulsion of the Palestinians or the seizure of their land (which some do), I condemn them as well. I don’t support racism under any guise.
Funny how the “all lives matter” crowd has remained mostly silent about Israel’s bombing of hospitals and refugee camps.
“When Israelis expel millions of people from Gaza or destroy entire neighborhoods, I condemn them as well.”
Fixed it for you.
I’ll join you. See how easy it is to condemn killing civilians without using racist language? The facts are damning enough.
By the way, when were the millions expelled from Gaza?
Good point, we should wait until the ethnic cleansing is already accomplished before condemning it I guess.
Watts, you never met a freedom movement you couldn’t come up with an excuse to be on the wrong side of.
Absolutely globalize the intifada. I wish everyone who is oppressed like the Palestinians are could rise up and be free at once. That’s what that means. It was true when they said it in English in antebellum USA, and it’s true when they say it in Arabic now.
You’ve already been corrected by Steven on your misunderstanding of “all lives matter”, I hope you take it to heart.
You wrote below that Americans deserved to be “bombed into oblivion” for Vietnam, Korea*, and Jim Crow. You advocate “global intifada” with all that entails (if you meant something different, you’d use a different word; there are plenty to choose from). And you say I’m on the wrong side?
Well thank goodness for that. I’m not on the Israeli side or the Hamas side. I’m on the side of peace and hostage return, and while there’s a few of us over here, there’s still plenty of seats. I fully acknowledge that saying “I’m for peace” is exceedingly simplistic, but it’s the only position I can make sense of. Maybe I know too much, but I simply can’t muster the clear moral certainty you have found.
*Your inclusion of Korea on this list is curious; I’ve never heard the Korean war condemned in such strident terms. It was certainly a mess, but defending a country against invasion as part of a UN action doesn’t quite strike me completely morally reprobate. Do you know much of the war’s history?
So now it’s “anti-Jewish” to talk about freedom and "racist" to oppose ethnic cleansing. George Orwell would be proud.
It’s almost like you didn’t read my post.
Freedom you say… Does that apply to women, Gay people or Trans people, in the New state of Palestine you endorse?
One can condemn U.S. support for Israel’s war and the oppression of women and LGBTQ people in Palestine at the same time. Personally I don’t think dropping bombs on women and children is the way to achieve gender equality, but hey, you do you.
Whataboutism, always a good sign that you’re on the right track. “Yes, I defend ethnic cleansing, but what about the views of [some] Pelestinians [that are the same as Americans about 30 years ago]?”
Some? It is their cultural laws. It’s clear you have no idea about the Middle East. Seriously.
Sorry, Israel has cultural laws like the 70s, Palestine maybe the 50s. I was off by a couple decades.
Did everyone in the US deserve to be oppressed and bombed into oblivion in the 50s because of our unenlightened views on gender and sexuality? I don’t think so. If anything, we deserved it for Vietnam, Korea, Jim Crow, etc.
I guess the library wasn’t an important resource for students. It will be closed until at least September because of this. I don’t really care about the cost of the damage, but they destroyed that resource just before finals week for all of the PSU students, and any students attending the summer classes this year.
I saw your instagram post about it. The comments were disturbing. I hope people realize that discharging a gun into the air in an urban area is potentially deadly. I also hope people realize that cameras are a direct result of not being able to trust motorists to drive at safe and legal speeds through our communities.
What the actual %^*+??????
This person should be brought to justice ASAP.
When we find this fellow, I hope the punishment ins’t jail time. Instead, I would prefer a wise judge to sentence him to watch as his pride-and-joy WRX is crushed into a handy cube of scrap metal and plastic, suitable for use as a coffee table.
I don’t know what penalties the law currently applies to this behavior, but I believe jail time is warranted. It’s so far beyond any grey area,
“Vehicle-based violence”?! Don’t cheapen the term by using it for something tangential at best (the dude isn’t even in/on a vehicle in your photo.)
yeah i’ll reconsider that. thanks.
This is clearly “pedestrian-based violence” considering he was on foot at the time of the shooting.
How is being a speed-freak in a fast Subaru, endangering people all the time, not vehicle-related just because he stepped out to shoot? He’s probably into trashy street racing.
My friend got an expensive ticket because she was stuck in an intersection behind a car when the light turned red. The extremely dangerous drivers that I’ve seen, obviously in stolen cars don’t care about automated enforcement cameras. Rich people who can pay tickets aren’t affected proportionately. The implications of the enforcement money going into buying more traffic cameras mean that there’s just going to be more cameras and a higher cost of living. I have zero tickets (well, one ticket, but that was over twenty years ago and I was just being an assertive driver on an empty street and the cop was fund raising), and you think that putting more cameras around leading to more tickets is going to make me a safer driver? I can taste the anxiety of getting a ticket going 45 in the recently changed to 35 zone adjacent to road construction on NE Columbia when the camera flash snapped. Is my registration updated to my new address? Is there a ticket percolating through the mail to my old address that is then going to double and triple cost? Am I going to have a $600 driving fee for driving 45 on Columbia. Columbia Blvd? Are you serious? Thank you for including the bit about the fund raising revenue stream and where is the negative feedback in this loop? If the cameras make money and the money makes more cameras, then where does it level off? Is paying more money to the city and state for a ticket and then paying more money to my auto insurance company fitting into the vision zero? There’s is some negative feedback in the control loop which in this case is WRX Dude. This reminds me of that arts tax passed about 9 years ago. What a great idea, paying money for the children to have an art teacher in every school Oh wait, reading the details, the money to the individual schools is quite limited and the excess raised above the modest sum to each school goes to Oregon Ballet Theatre and Regional Arts and Culture Council and Portland Youth Philharmonic. All worthy institutions no doubt. I have close friends who benefit from each of these institutions. Have you been in the lunch room of the shop floor when it’s tax time, and your $15/hour workmates have to pay a separate check with separate form to the city for this tax. Do you know how much resentment this creates? Do you ever think about the class war implications of transportation policies? Do you know how poisonous it is when your city government is impoverishing you? Think about making $15 an hour and getting a ticket for just $80 let’s say, which is probably your fun budget for the month, and then there’s some condescending clause where, you can attend a safety class for 2 hours in your evening and make the ticket go away. Most people don’t just have free time to throw away like that. Is there childcare at these things? Bike lanes are great! Greenways are great! traffic speed-o-meters that show your speed I appreciate. This traffic photo program is so predatory. There’s REAL DANGER out there on the streets in the form of drugged out, car stealing, nihilistic, testosterstoned drivers which this program does virtually nothing to address.
Get your head straight. Spoken as a lifelong commuter bicyclist.
-Rosa
People spend an average of like 5 hours everyday on their phones cruising social media, people have time. and if you don’t have the time, dont do the crime.
Your friend got a ticket for “blocking the block.” You aren’t supposed to enter the inside square on an intersection if you can’t pass all the way through it. Pretty standard rule.
This is true, but in a large intersection, one often enters before the car ahead has cleared it, and sometimes even good drivers can misanticipate what the car in front of them is going to do.
Not saying the driver was not wrong, only that it’s possible to get stuck in an intersection while doing everything properly.
True, it can happen, especially if you drive a sedan and it’s a monster, view-blocking SUV or truck in front of you. But not often, and the rule has been around for decades.
Well, not really. AFAIK you’re not supposed to enter the intersection until there’s a place to leave it on the other side. Now if you see the way is clear for two vehicles on the other side, and the driver in front of you is proceeding at a good clip, you can chance it. Yes, following this rule may mean you hold up the people behind you, but that’s too bad!
“this rule”
Can you point me to a reference for this rule? Either a statute or driving manual reference would be useful. Thanks.
https://oregon.public.law/statutes/ors_811.290#:~:text=A%20person%20commits%20the%20offense,passage%20of%20other%20vehicles%20or
That folks don’t know that law is a strong reason for requiring periodic retesting of licenses, even if you haven’t had a moving violation.
(I once saw a NYC traffic cop totally humiliate a Jersey-plated driver on 57th street for blocking a crosswalk in heavy traffic. He kept calling him ”New Jersey” and yelling at him. It was kind of funny.)
What we really need is testing on a simulator rather than the book tests that ask stupid questions that have no bearing on practical driving.
They have a practical test, but you only have to take it once in a lifetime. It should be mandatory every 5 or 10 years.
A simulator would let you retest more often, and would allow for the construction of specific scenarios that were deemed important.
How many simulators do you think we as a state would need? What would be an appropriate cost (to the state taxpayers) for them. Should costs break even with paying a human to conduct a practical test? Should it be cheaper? Would you pay more than the cost to administer practical tests? For how long should the delivered system be in operation before it goes back out to bid for a refresh?
Good questions! I would hope a simulator would be cost-comparable or cheaper to using a human administrator, who, I’ll bet, costs the state $100K per year. If a simulator cost $100K and lasted 3 years, that would be a pretty big cost savings. I don’t know what the injury rate is among testers, but it can’t be zero.
This was in response to the proposal to routinely retest drivers every 5-10 years, which would require hiring a bunch of new people, and maybe some new folks to oversee them. It would be expensive any way you do it.
I don’t have answers to the rest of your questions, but the cost structure (and funding source) would need to be thought through before making any policy change.
I was thinking written test. And I prefer written test to driving test, there are too many drivers out there who don’t seem to understand basic rules of the road, stuff like how to behave at a four-way stop. I’m not talking idiots knowingly breaking laws, I mean … my favorite was the elderly woman who would not make her right turn because she was waiting for me to make my left turn before she went (this was not a four-way stop). She sat there, clear to go, for 20 seconds, waiting for the substantial traffic blocking me to clear up so that I could proceed first!
On my bike, I pulled up to 4-way stop yesterday afternoon. The road users waiting to clear in the intersection were (in order of arrival first to last):
The sedan’s driver waited an uncomfortable amount of time. I said, “what are we doing here?”. The driver responded incredulously that they were waiting for me to go. Then all three of us started to go at the same time. Stopped. Then eventually the motorcycle lost patience as the driver gestured me to go through.
So needlessly confusing.
This kind of thing always bugs me. Your situation sounds especially annoying because you’d have to trust both other vehicles not to go when you do. When I’m in a situation where someone waits for me who shouldn’t (which is very common), I usually just go. They already stopped needlessly, it just makes things worse and adds confusion (as you saw) if I try and wait them out.
On the one hand, it means a lot of people are trying to be extra considerate (or cynically, they don’t want the hassle of having to wait for cops if they run you over). But I just wish people would know the rules and follow them predictably.
This is one thing I really hate about the green crosswalks. As far as I know, they don’t carry any legal meaning, but it’s… suggested? that drivers should stop and let cyclists cross there. But you can’t expect it or even be mad if they don’t let you cross because they have no obligation to. At least as I understand it.
I kind of think drivers should have to stop for cyclists at any intersection just like pedestrians because all I have to do as a cyclist is throw a leg over my bike and start walking and now they legally have to let me cross, so we should just cut out the middle step.
They will cheapen out and use a PS5 and Gran Turismo 7
It should be cheaper than a practical test, especially since one of the benefits of a simulator is testing things that are unethical to test in real life. Testing things like passing cyclists when there is no protected bike lane, scenarios with children, etc.
I agree that a traffic ticket shouldn’t be life-altering to the poor and barely a minor inconvenience to the rich. It should have a proportional impact on everyone. I’d like to see a system like Finland’s, where tickets are tied to income.
The cameras are just one tool, and no one thinks they’re the only solution to reckless entitled drivers. If someone is really caught in the intersection by no fault of their own, they can submit a letter of explanation to the city to get the citation dismissed if true.
But regardless of what you think about the cameras, shooting a gun in the city is downright insane and could kill someone.
If Portland were serious about “equity”, traffic tickets would be progressive based on income. Portland’s Vision Zero action plan was ratified by city council and includes a traffic ticket diversion program for lower-income people but this has not been implemented because this city has essentially given up on prioritizing traffic safety (and equity).
I’m not sure why you want to complicate this. Just don’t drive over the speed limit and you’ll be fine (and not fined). Oh and the speed cameras won’t even issue a citation until you go 13 or more mph over the posted limit.
It’s just so simple to drive the speed limit and not be affected by any of this, I just don’t see how speeding drivers are the victims. You don’t even have to obey the speed limit, you even have a 10mph grace margin. You seem to think that your habit of driving too fast is set in stone, and it’s the evil traffic camera that’s in the wrong for giving you anxiety about a possible ticket.
I hope that the anxiety or cost does eventually become so great for that you’re forced to modify your behavior to avoid another ticket instead of just being mad that you have to pay the price more often when you break the law.
TLDR most of it. A $600 fine occasionally (almost never) is pointless. What we need is a $10 fine and face-to-face talk with a constable or a judge or a representative of the court every damn time we forget that we live in community with others. The sheer inconvenience if dealing with a certain nuisance fine would curb most carelessness. Scale the cost by vehicle price or weight or whatever, if you want, but the point is that people learn from low-cost, relative to them, certainties. They learn nothing infrequently applied theoretical punishments.
Don’t speed, don’t get a ticket. Pay attention to speed LIMIT signs.
That’s taking tactical urbanism to the extreme.
Another woke, entitled speed freak, no doubt. Can we assume that’s even his car, being so dumb as to reveal himself doing the crimes?
Strangest use of “woke” I’ve seen to date.
Unfortunately this is what happens when you have a severely understaffed police force , one property crime detective for all of Portland and a DA prone not to prosecute. Vandals, street racers and other criminals know they can operate with little chance of consequences.
After San Francisco ousted its progressive district attorney, violent crime went up. Food for thought.
Wait, they couldn’t identify the guy literally commiting his crimes on camera??? What are we even doing at this point?
https://www.koin.com/local/multnomah-county/man-accused-of-shooting-several-portland-properties-arrested/
Hey, at least he turned on his hazard lights. Safety is so important when shooting off a gun in a commercial area near a middle school.
According to KATU the driver has been arrested and is in jail.
https://www.katu.com/news/local/man-accused-of-shooting-traffic-cameras-causing-500k-damage-remains-in-jail-chase-grijalva-multnomah-county-oregon-trimet-driver-transit-prosecutors#
That’s weird, I keep hearing that the current DA doesn’t prosecute crimes. what am I missing here?