If you have been driving on the freeways lately, you must have noticed innumerable dangers coming from speed demons, aggressive and/or heedless drivers, eighteen-wheelers following your rear bumper too closely, and those erratic lane-switchers, not to mention the 100 mph crotch-rocket jockeys exhibiting felonious disregard for traffic laws. It’s scary out there. Recent motoring perils may have something to do with the pandemic changing the normally packed freeways to an accommodating traffic flow that allows miscreants to do their Mario Andretti imitations.
That said, it may appear strange coming from a card-carrying member of the ACLU, I am wholeheartedly behind installing automated traffic enforcement. Traffic cameras, speed measuring devices, and license plate cameras work effectively and will save thousands of lives lost in car crashes each year {38,000 killed each year per (Association for Safe International Road Travel, p. 2020)}. If used with discretion, these monitoring devices do not infringe upon privacy, nor do they set in motion a Big Brother interference of a citizens’ constitutional rights. Safeguards can be installed to assure that Fourth Amendment rights are protected.
Using these live-saving tools would not diminish our liberties. It is not a breach of our privacy to use technology in a guarded manner. Experts guess that each American is filmed by CCTV cameras as many as 75 times daily, while a typical Londoner’s image is recorded about 300 times daily). Without great public debate or discussion, we have agreed that sensible monitoring for the public’s safety is reasonable and necessary. When the TSA runs our luggage through X-ray machines, we know that the greater good is in play, and no entity is snooping into our lives. Likewise, we do not cause a stink at the ballgame when security folks look through our backpacks and guide us through metal detector portals. The idea for these intrusions, if that is what they are, is to provide security, to keep us safe from harm.
Even so, reasonable limits need to be in place before we turn policing over to the robot species. All those in favor of employing automated cops, raise your hand. Okay. Now, all those who see an era of dystopian mayhem coming in which we need to employ robots to maintain law and order, raise your hand. No, I suppose we do not want to endure living in a community managed by a government apparatchik who pushes remote control buttons on dozens of lethally armed robo cops employed to patrol crime ridden communities using predictive policing software. Also, while we are at it, let’s not surveil underserved communities with robots programed to spy on and gather sensitive information from folks willy-nilly. Our citizenry should have built-in safeguards to guard against the encroachment of government, automated or not, into our individual freedoms and rights of privacy. Scalable technology, however, as applied to traffic management promises increased safety without dystopic prying. After all, robots aren’t evil. The operator turning the dials just may be, so sufficient protections must be in place as we enter the robot age.
We certainly have the technology, and now we need the political will to drastically curtail traffic deaths in this country. If the speed limit on a given highway is 60 mph, any registered auto owner exceeding the limit might be cited, with special emphasis applied to vehicles traveling, say, over 70 mph. Red light cameras already have proven useful in stopping T-bone accidents at intersections. And license plate readers alone would save needless traffic stops that have proven dangerous for both police and drivers. If we choose to stop those motorists who endanger all the rest of us, we can. Just a matter of implementing technology to stop the slaughter.
Freeing police from dangerous and often biased tasks of pulling drivers over in order to issue a ticket and check license, registration, and insurance documents, would save time, money, and lives—untold time, tons of money, and countless lives. Police could turn their attention from highways that run through towns and cities to crime that besets those communities.
Because of COVID-19 many of us have been working from home. It’s time for traffic divisions of law enforcement agencies to also alter their work routines.