villasv

10% of the speed limit generates a ticket - most often even higher

In practice, it usually means near or above 10 km/h beyond the speed limit, because the accuracy isn't high enough to give tickets for 1 to 3 km/h differences. Those would be easily disputed and annulled in the courts.

When social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, author of The Anxious Generation, and a team of researchers collaborated on a Harris Poll of more than 500 children between the ages of eight and 12 in the United States, they found something striking.

Beware of anything Jonathan Haidt publishes. After his decent pop sci book "The Righteous Mind" he really took a liking to publishing conservative-centrist-coded fear-mongering. His "Coddling of the American Mind" is an atrocious piece, and "The Anxious Generation" follows a similar pattern of biased criticism against modern parenting as perceived by conservative-but-not-MAGA parents.

The average suburban parent will call the cops on you if you let your kid go fetch groceries on their own a couple blocks over

Cameras here don’t work that way. The usual implementation is that nothing within 10% of the speed limit generates a ticket - most often even higher, because the sensor doesn’t have that accuracy, so you’re making your life harder for no reason

And accidentally going a few km/h over the limit is too great a risk if one might get a ticket, so that’s why it’s best to avoid the road with the camera even if you’re nominally trying to go at the speed limit. Do I have to spell it out any more?

Yes please, because "going a few km/h over the limit" doesn't trigger those cameras, there's quite a generous threshold (manufacturers give it a healthy margin to not have it within measurement error variances). Generally you need to be 10km/h or more above the limit to get a ticket.

So if you are not speeding, there's no reason to avoid routes with cameras. So do spell it out why would you prefer going 30 to 50km/h through a residential zone instead of going 50km/h through a normal arterial just because there are cameras.

You’re a what

Sure but you haven't actually answered either question

I understand where you're coming from but I'll disagree that it's more relevant than the already existing and very real risk of people dying in traffic. Even if the city just absorbs ticket revenue and use that for another gym equipment for a bro mayor, I'll happily support more and widespread enforcement of traffic violations. I also have some privacy concerns with having surveillance everywhere, but again, people die because of driver negligence all too often and we're not going to rebuild these roads any time soon so until then yeah tax the shit out of speeders - promotional to income would be ideal but won't wait for it either.

that they trigger at too close to the limit - doing 52 in a 50 zone

This is not what happens, though

I don’t tend the speed much, but I do now avoid the areas with cameras - I just cut through smaller residential streets more. How do we know this is any safer?

Aren't residential streets lower speeds too, so unless you're speeding there you're going slower on purpose?

And if you don't speed, why do you avoid areas with cameras?

Sure, but we can have both, so let's have both. Drivers do have to keep watch on their inconspicuous speed indicator, and if they don't they're putting the lives of others at risk and should be fined.

No, he’s driving a normal speed in a residential zone (40) and then the limit suddenly changes to 30 because a school is nearby but he doesn’t know that because he’s a food delivery driver who doesn’t know the area, so he gets a ticket instantly when the speed limit changes.

In so many words, he's speeding through a school zone, so hopefully he'll eventually learn to pay attention to school zone signs. If the school zone sign is occluded or for some reason not visible, he should take that to the city and easily use that to dispute the ticket.

The fines can’t scale with income because the city doesn’t know your income (no city income tax).

That's not really an impediment. The city can know your income, even if they currently don't.

has a conflict of interest between changing behaviour and collecting revenue

This is very easily fixed via policy, i.e. by forcing via legislation that automated enforcement revenue has to be dedicated to traffic calming projects.