Traffic Cameras

Tucker, Neely. "Shudder speed [sic]: Rise of the stealthy traffic camera fuels drivers' disgust."

The Washington Post, 5 Nov. 2009. <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/04/AR2009110404747.html?nav=igoogle>

Misses surveillance in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (q.v. in Clockworks [1], under Fiction) but makes references to SF and horror film.

"* * * 'They make too much money for cities to just stop using them,' says Joe Scott, a D.C. entrepreneur who has developed Phantomalert, a downloadable software for GPS units and an app for smart phones that is updated by subscribers who spot new cameras sprouting up. He started it a few years ago by logging in a couple of hundred cameras in the D.C. region. Subscribers have since uploaded 200,000 more. It's like Terminator, humans against machines. * * *

"'There's a well-intentioned principle to get drivers to change their behavior, but there's overwhelming evidence that doesn't happen,' he says. 'As soon as the cameras are gone, people go right back to driving what they were before.' / He also brings us back to the Man vs. Machine debate. / He says the cameras are hardly infallible, but that courts often treat them as if they are. For example, the Maryland report showed that Montgomery County, in screening the tickets to mail out, has had to kick out 23,266 'violations' from May 2007 to June 2009 because 'No violation occurred/operator error.' And 10,813 were tossed for reasons including 'power interruption' and 'equipment malfunction.' / Once in court, though, it wasn't even close. Machines 3,098, Revolting Peasants 10. * * *"

Not mentioned but another useful allusion: Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano (cited in Clockworks [1]. During the Revolution in that novel, one person specializes in shooting out a variety of traffic machines (of the friendly persuasion type); and at least one person Erlich knows celebrated Fidel Castro’s victory in Cuba by smashing a parking meter.