Why Don't I See Traffic Police at Work?

Nominate or accuse? I think that in this circumstance it is the same thing and should provide the same rights on the "nominated" party: namely the right to be considered innocent until proven guilty; or suffer being struck down as unconstitutional. Wouldn't you agree that the nominee has the defense of "it wasn't me" available to them and at that point the registered owner has to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt the identity of the driver who was cited at the time?



Furthermore, why would any registered owner spend the extra effort to nominate a driver for points, where the alternative would be to pay the ticket as the owner - suffer no consequences and get the ticketed amount from the driver in-private?

In-fact, if electronic enforcement was here, it would make more sense to drive each other's vehicles regularly.



That way both parties win by walking away with their driving records intact. The real losers are the public that are being told that roads are "safe", where in reality patrols will be cut down even further.



I can agree that complementing traffic enforcement with technology is a good move. But I find it highly unlikely that it will be an addition not a replacement.



My beliefs are based on reading about ATS and the mess with red-light cameras in the various small towns in the USA, where all sorts of shenanigans on the municipal and corporate levels led to situations that are the exact opposite of the intended result - instead of less accidents there are now more accidents - especially where the yellow time at a red-light-camera intersections has been cut to as little as 1 second (from standard 3-4 sec) resulting in increased rear-endings.



I've never heard of a municipality actually cutting down on the tickets it issues once any sort of electronic ticketing was installed. In-fact all such municipalities have had annual tickets increase by quite a bit (if not double) year-after-year.



If tickets are the punishment in the name of safety, wouldn't the regularly increasing amount of tickets indicate the decreasing amount of safety? The resolution of the above conflict is simple - money.



Create more rules and methods to enforce them on a pretense of safety - with the real object being a habitual budgetary supplement - loosely accounted and highly opaque.



This is the race to the bottom, just the same as automated telephone menus, ATMs, self-checkouts and  automated fast food ordering. No McDonalds or movie theater have hired-on more staff as a result of automation of its primary tasks - its quite the opposite - business needs dictate that if you are not needed, you do not get paid. As a result service/courtesy has been phased out, and for the same money - you can now talk to the machine.



I'm afraid that with the situation on the roads being fairly safe and with the trend of deaths still in-decline, human traffic enforcement is no longer necessary. I even doubt that accidents will increase dramatically if traffic enforcement were to simply vanish for an entire year - I bet most road users won't even notice.



My personal observation over the last decade driving - there were a heck of a lot more marked traffic cops on the roads 10 years ago. Noways - every 4 of 5 pull overs that I see (rarely) are all undercover "obtuse" vehicles that no-one thinks has a cop in it.



Belive it or not, I clearly remember most of my Police<->Driver interactions, and I hold them out to be quite the notable experiences in my life - from most of which I've picked up good knowledge and sound advice.



Tell me what can a speed camera teach me? An averaging camera can at-most teach me to pull over for 5 minutes before I reach the exit check-point if I think I've completed the section a little too fast for its liking :P