Camera-equipped buses could automatically ticket San Franciscans

Not long after hearing about England's newfangled auto-ticketing system comes word that San Franciscans could soon be facing something similar. If signed into law by Governor Schwarzenegger, "forward-facing digital video cameras would be installed on city buses," which would then be used to automatically ticket the owners of vehicles that are caught "blocking buses." The cameras would presumably be used to photograph vehicles that are in bus-only lanes, and interestingly enough, the proposed law also authorizes Municipal Transportation Agency "employees to access sensitive personal data" from the DMV for ticketing purposes.

[Sam @ Sep 12th 2007 3:58PM]

Is it 1984 already?

[yoshi @ Sep 12th 2007 5:40PM]

I am SO glad I left that state earlier this year and am reminded of it every single day.

[TrevynPaige @ Sep 12th 2007 4:13PM]

I live in Minneapolis, MN. Here we had traffic cameras that were taking pictures of drivers as they sped through red lights. It was challenged in court and suspended as it was deemed unconstitutional on the grounds that the camera cannot prove that the owner of the vehicle was driving it and, under law, you can only ticket drivers. So the whole law was bounced and now those that got tickets and paid are now demanding refunds.

I imagine this will have the same or similar outcome. At least it wastes a lot of tax-payer money though!

[purezerg @ Sep 12th 2007 4:23PM]

here in singapore, buses with camera has been here since a few years ago. unlike minneapolis, unless the owner of the car can provide details of the driver of his car, the owner is always given the ticket. then again, singapore didnt even announce camera equiped buses. they just install silently. her in is, it's called dictatorship.

[CJ @ Sep 12th 2007 4:56PM]

California has been using red light cameras for a while now, sorry.

[Asha Kydd @ Sep 12th 2007 8:21PM]

Frankly, I think that you should be responsible for your vehicle, regardless of who is driving it. You know what, you are the one who has 'supposedly' lent it out to someone else and you should be responsible (up to a point) for how it is driven. If a friend/family member asks to borrow your car and they aren't a responsible driver, then don't lend it to them.

[newgalactic @ Sep 12th 2007 4:11PM]

Not to worry, the highly professional individuals at the bus company can be trusted with access to the DMV database of drivers automobile owners.

...though you may want to reconsider joining that Witness Protection Program.

[Greg @ Sep 12th 2007 4:11PM]

They are using such a system in several European cities already.

[andy @ Sep 12th 2007 4:11PM]

Oh come on, how can you guys miss a chance like that to use the term "Governator"? That was a gimmie.

[sp @ Sep 12th 2007 4:17PM]

i'm in favor. public transportation is better for the earth and they deserve to have their own dedicated lanes. it also forces people who normally eat the environment at the cost of others' futures to prefer public transportation.

[Josh L @ Sep 12th 2007 4:39PM]

That is about the most insipid thing I've read all day.

[Wesburl @ Sep 12th 2007 5:12PM]

Will hippies blend??? Find out at will it blend (dot) com

[Boynamedsue @ Sep 12th 2007 4:20PM]

i'm not in favor, there are circumstances in which you can use a bus lane. What determines if a ticket is given, if the camera spots a car in the bus lane at all? If the bus driver see's it and hits the camera button?

People are going to be pissed if they're in a bus lane to turn and get ticketed. That and bus drivers drive like crazy people anyways.

[alex @ Sep 12th 2007 4:47PM]

I don't know where you live but in NYC, you're more likely walk to your destination faster than taking the bus. The buses take their own sweet time. There have been instances of physical violence on the bus drivers by riders just because the buses was going to damn slow. If by installing these cameras and deterring people from blocking the bus stop and slowing traffic I'm pretty much all for it.

[Boynamedsue @ Sep 12th 2007 4:56PM]

I work in san francisco. which is geographically disparate from NYC, with its own traffic patterns and everything! Also, our burritos are better.

[Eric Leung @ Sep 13th 2007 4:24AM]

i live in SF and those bus drivers are crazy people... they block the lanes more than cars block lanes

(my driver jumped off the bus with a bus load of people to get a sandwich at a store...)

[Jon @ Sep 12th 2007 4:25PM]

Isn't it legal to use the right hand bus lane if you are turning right? How can they ticket you without that information...?

- Jon

[Robert Johnston @ Sep 12th 2007 10:53PM]

If !((Near_Corner) && (Vehicle_Has_Turn_Signal_On)) {
Issue_Ticket(Vehicle);
}

Wow, wasn't that easy?

[Jon @ Sep 13th 2007 11:59AM]

And if you have your turn signal on, but the bus driver pushes the button in between your bulb glows, you are screwed? I don't think we should be making the Muni drivers cops...

[JBo @ Sep 12th 2007 4:25PM]

Yeah this is generally a bad idea in a cluster-*%$* of a city like SF. It's hard to know what the rules on any particular street are, let alone whether or not you're breaking them. The most cautious driver probably breaks an SF traffic rule at least daily. Besides, MUNI is grossly incompetent, they should not be trusted with personal information.

[noxious @ Sep 12th 2007 4:30PM]

I'm also in favor of this since I ride the buses here in SF to and from work every day, and all around the city. However, I wish they would spend money on developing a more bike friendly downtown. Biking down Market St. is scary for even the most veteran city bikers. The bus divers here are pretty out of control on the roads when it comes to going around vehicle who are in there way. It's hard though because there are only 4 lanes going up and down(2 up, 2 down) Market St. so the buses have to move over to the left lane to get around the cars that are stuck waiting for the pedestrians to walk across so they can make there right turn, then they have to jet back over to the right lane so that they can pick people up. It's very scary for people who bike since the buses just cut right in front of them cutting them off. I wish the lawmakers would ride downtown for a day and see how crazy it is.

[JBo @ Sep 13th 2007 12:43AM]

Bikes have got no business on Market. Market is too major an arterial for there to be vehicles like bicycles. Its nerve racking enough to be in a car around the busses on market. Bikes should also not be on Van Ness, Oak, Fell, Park Presidio, and a couple of others I'm sure I'm forgetting. It is just too dangerous for there to be mixed traffic, and to make those streets safe for bikes will grind the traffic to a halt and make SF an even less livable city than it is now. You wanna see people get truly pissed off? Make it so that they can't get to their jobs on the Peninsula where there's no public transit alternatives. There aren't enough jobs in the city to support all of the residents, so it needs to be easy for residents to commute out. Until the bay area gets serious about public transit (which at the moment they are not), cars are the only option for most.

If the bike riders mafia were truly concerned about rider safety, they'd advocate several bike only routes, but not on major arterials. As for secondary streets, well, bikes and cars can coexist pretty well.

Anyway, sorry, totally off topic, but I've heard just about enough from the overly influential bike riders in SF. What are they? Like 10,000 people in a city of almost 800,000?

[jonthedog @ Sep 12th 2007 4:30PM]

I live in Toronto and I was actually thinking about something like this for here. I think it's a great idea. The law is to yield to buses. People don't. I say ticket them.

And don't stop at buses. Also give tickets to people who speed past a stopped steetcar (it's not allowed with the doors open).

Viva transit.

[TrevynPaige @ Sep 12th 2007 11:17PM]

Suppose you are the driver, in the bus/right-turn lane, intending to go right as soon as pedestrians are out of the cross-walk. How does that driver "yield" to a bus that is behind them hitting a camera button and sending them a ticket?

I am all for public transportation, but the "holier than thou" speeches of bus-riders is often times sickening. There are perfectly reasonable and good reasons (not to mention the right to be able to) drive your car into a metro downtown and not be some kind of urban-gas-guzzling terrorist.

I pay taxes on the roads too...just because I have to occasionally drive doesn't make me some kind of miscreant. I take the bus most of the time, but sometimes have to drive and I don't like being judged by dipshits that think I'm killing their baby's baby's babies.

...now to be fair, that wasn't all intended towards the post I'm directly replying to.

[fuma @ Sep 12th 2007 4:30PM]

So how does one in England get into that hardware store without getting ticketed? They're dooming everyone to drive around endlessly in circles!

"Hey Kids, there's Big Ben again!"

[anonymous @ Sep 12th 2007 4:46PM]

This will never happen with the access to information capability. I am for it though if they remove that portion.

[LordJohnWhorfin @ Sep 12th 2007 4:53PM]

Only one thing sucks more than SF public transit: DRIVING in SF.

[Lionel Mandrake @ Sep 13th 2007 10:45AM]

Hey SkyNet is LIVE already. Good thing for SF, since ignoring traffic laws is a varsity sport.

LM

[LM @ Sep 12th 2007 4:56PM]

It would be hard to catch people in the bus lane due to the right hand turn issue as others have stated.
This would be great for the idiots that block a whole intersection because their little brains could not calculate that their light would go red before they got to the other side of the intersection. I think the technical term is impeding the flow of traffic.

[Jim Bailey @ Sep 12th 2007 8:15PM]

For which SF Muni does regularly, but something tells me the camera will "miss" that moment.

[oshean @ Sep 12th 2007 4:57PM]

In San Francisco, buses ticket you.

[Boynamedsue @ Sep 12th 2007 4:58PM]

is everyone in the thread from SF? are we all wasting time at work?

[Ken S @ Sep 12th 2007 5:10PM]

Will they also be used to ticket bus drivers who drive over their lane line into vehicles (I had my quarterpanel taken of by an SF MUNI bus) or who just sit in the bus stop zone block traffic even when they don't need to?

[Mike @ Sep 12th 2007 5:11PM]

They should put cameras like this on ambulances, firetrucks, etc. The people that don't pull over for them are the ones that really need to get tickets.

[spamhere-engadget.com @ Sep 12th 2007 5:22PM]

bingo.

[kuonji @ Sep 12th 2007 5:16PM]

I'm in SF right now riding a bus and I have just confirmed that these buses can, in fact, play doom.

[Mitch @ Sep 12th 2007 5:42PM]

Nice 1970's era bus

[Zach @ Sep 12th 2007 5:59PM]

guys, i have a new radical idea...

how about a bus boycott?

[Mick O @ Sep 12th 2007 6:21PM]

Come to think of it, this is such a narrow view of what cameras on municipal busses could do.

Imagine Google street-view stuff... only updated hourly?

At the very least, you could make the cameras side-mounted and capture every illegally parked car on the bus route.

[gheeren @ Sep 12th 2007 6:28PM]

How about giving tickets to buses who stop in the middle of the street because the drivers are to lazy to be bothered to use these bus lanes.
Jackasses.

[duffyb @ Sep 12th 2007 8:30PM]

Another result of the fascist American we are becoming under this joke we call our President.

[Matt @ Sep 12th 2007 9:40PM]

Grr! I'm sick of you anti-Bush wackos making everything that happens about Bush! You wanna know what Bush had to do with this? NOTHING, you pinhead. Pull your head out of your butt and grow up. Just be glad that--right or wrong--Bush won the count in 2000. If Al Gore were president we wouldn't be worrying about bus-mounted ANYTHING because by federal mandate we'd all be bike-riders and pedestrians by now.

[Brian Duffy @ Sep 13th 2007 8:25AM]

Blow me, Matt.

[Hank @ Sep 12th 2007 7:12PM]

I read a bunch of articles about this when they were first developing the plan and I believe that the main purpose is to ticket people who leave their cars double-parked on streets with little space for the bus to edge around them. If you've ever been on a bus when this happens it can be extremely frustrating since the bus can go essentially nowhere until traffic in the other direction lets up or the driver returns to their car.

There are also talks of using the cameras (combined with GPS data) to ticket people who wander into bus-only lanes while moving but (as I understand it) this is still a very controversial idea in San Francisco and is very much not the main point of the cameras.

If you read the linked article some of the stuff they are talking about is in regards to London, not SF.

[Jade @ Sep 12th 2007 9:32PM]

I was thinking about this a couple of months ago for a different application school buses and the a-holes that run that sign. There I said it in the cloud if someone uses it there is proof and I'll sue your *ss

[Curtis @ Sep 12th 2007 9:32PM]

Um... Lots of people have access to your "private" dmv information. I used to work for a Parking department at the University of California and had plenty of access to that information. What they are, most likely, referring to is vehicle history, driving history, address and license stuff, and ticket history. These are things pretty much anyone can get to with a small amount of effort.

It just goes to show that you aren't as anonymous as you think you are.

[Christopher Hevey @ Sep 13th 2007 12:24AM]

What this is for is not those turning in the same lane that a bus stop is in.
It for the idiots who decide that they will PARK (not ups/dhl etc)in the bus zone (sometimes 2 deep)
And either make the bus have to use the street as a loading zone, or if that is jammed full, hanging their ass out into cross traffic (bunch of extention buses)
The only thing they should being doing is using it like a red light camera,photo sent to database sent to owner.
Having the same people who ignore their ban on cellphones for the driver (20+m NON STOP)ignore the occasional stoplight etc. is a BAD IDEA

[Eddy @ Sep 13th 2007 2:16PM]

Only in a eutopia of freedom and civil liberties (i.e. San Fransicko)...

[Eddy @ Sep 13th 2007 2:25PM]

Ha! Typical left wing argumentative tactics. How about backing statements with facts and sources? If Bush could do half the things you people blame him for, I'd gladly vote him King/Dictator/Emperor/etc.

[HairyT @ Sep 16th 2007 3:19AM]

I live in San Francisco. The "bus company" is already operated by the same agency that runs the parking patrols, so accessing the DMV records is already done by employees of that agency. And people who double park and block buses are hardly the freedom-loving-wonderful sorts that we should bewail (not that I think that's a good test on civil liberties issues).