Sounds like we're moving in the direction of Russia where every driver has a cam because the cops literally don't care and it's the only way to prove that someone didn't stop mid road and went into reverse into you.
I caved in a year ago and boought two $15.00 dash cams off Amazon. I haven't been pulled over for No Reason since I got the cam. (I bought two because they were cheap, and keep one behind my seat in case the device fails.)
I thought about buying Gopro, but figured for my needs the price was too high, and a potential thief might break a window to get to the expensive cam?
I have been pulled over for no reason so many times,
I wish they had these cheap cams when I turned 16.
I have never understood bail. Why don't they make it coincide with a person's yearly income? While I'm at it, why aren't traffic infractions tied to income? I gringe when
I hear about $500 traffic tickets, or $280 for jaywalking? A wealthy person gets a ticket--he tells his wife over diner. A poor person gets a ticket, it can ruin their living situation? Never seemed fair?
I have been pulled over for no reason so many times, I wish they had these cheap cams when I turned 16.
I didn't get my first car until I was almost 19 but I agree. I wish there had been cheap cameras back then.
I know a lot of people who have the "If you haven't done anything wrong, you have nothing to fear from the police" mindset. They stare at me in disbelief when I tell them some of the things I have been stopped for by police.
The most egregious example was the time I got pulled over because "your rear passenger tire looks kind of low". Two police cars, on the side of the road in a distant suburb of Pittsburgh because it LOOKS LIKE the air in one of my tires is low...
Bail is punitive, regressive and coercive.
I remember another occasion where I got a ~$100 ticket and the cop says he's doing me "a favor" by not writing me a ~$200 ticket. This was at a time when I was making $9.00/hr. After taxes, that was two days of work to pay that ticket.
There's also the part where people with money are less likely to be arrested or ticketed in the first place. The fact that you can afford to hire a good lawyer and fight the good fight discourages police officers from making nonsensical arrests and writing bogus tickets in the first place.
If you wouldn't mind, will you tell us that make and model of the dash cams you bough? I have been thinking about getting one and I prefer to hear from actual users than to read spec sheets.
"Finland’s system for calculating fines is relatively simple: It starts with an estimate of the amount of spending money a Finn has for one day, and then divides that by two—the resulting number is considered a reasonable amount of spending money to deprive the offender of. Then, based on the severity of the crime, the system has rules for how many days the offender must go without that money. "
That's so sensible it almost feels insane to read...
Completely agree with you that it's the right thing to do, for exactly the reasons you state.
Making bail/tickets linear still places a disproportionate burden on the poor. If a poor person looses a week of income, it could mean struggling to put put food on the table until the next paycheck. If a middle class person looses a week of income, they are much more likely to have liquid savings they could dip into.
Fighting insurance fraud is exactly what the previous commenter was referring to, I'm sure. Joe Citizen stops, backs into you, then claims you rear-ended him. Or a pedestrian throws himself on your hood, claims you ran over him. There are montages floating around (too lazy to look, sorry) that demonstrate this. It's worth searching for, as they're pretty hilarious yet sad at the same time.
Right, but my point was that it has very little to do with cops. Unless they witnessed the 'accident', what exactly would you expect from them without video footage of your own?
Until the OP chimes in, I assume that "cops don't give a shit" means you can call them, but even if they show up they won't file a report or do anything useful. I'm with you, it was at best an orthogonal comment, I just thought perhaps you were not informed of why so many cars in Russia have dash cams.
As to "without video footage of (my) own", in many U. S. states you are obligated by law to call a cop if the damage is over $XXX. They come out, file a report with details of the circumstances. Does it do any good? Meh, probably not. The last time a person ran into me, I called the plods and he handed us both the paperwork to fill out, stating that if he (the cop) did it, he'd have to issue a ticket. Umm, yeah, issuing a ticket to the incompetent driver who ran into me might be a good idea.
