Ask HN: What are you working on? (February 2025)

Agree, but also disagree.

Our neighboring town has a beautiful system in place. It tracks your average speed over +- 100m. If you speeded, you get a fine and even better: the light always turns red and you have to wait for a minute. If you run that red light, you get another (heftier) fine. If you drive normally, the light is always green.

It's beautiful. People actually drive slowly and safely there. And good, because that system is installed perfectly around the school and doesn't hinder anyone else. If they did this anywhere else you'd argue it's a moneygrab, but this is imo a great way to actually get people to drive slow in a school zone.

In contrast the only thing our town has done is install a bunch of big concrete flower boxes (?) that hinder your vision and causes conflicts on the road. The idea being that you'd have to slow down and that you're no longer on a straight wide road. It's absolutely only made things worse. You need to give way to others but you literally can't see them, or you need to pull weird manoeuvers to let them pass. And in the meantime cyclists need to swerve around them or are hidden behind those boxes. It's terrible.

>Our neighboring town has a beautiful system in place. It tracks your average speed over +- 100m. If you speeded, you get a fine and even better: the light always turns red and you have to wait for a minute. If you run that red light, you get another (heftier) fine. If you drive normally, the light is always green.

I have never seen a system like that. What town? Or what system?

Sounds great! Now if I could just get that installed in 100% of California

ATM we basically have lawless highways in California. Every time I go out I see outrageous traffic violations. People driving 15-20 mph over the speed limit on the freeway, weaving in and out of the carpool lane. People pulling into the left turn lane at a signal, then just crossing on a red light as soon as they think it's safe. People passing in the gutter (no lane). People cutting across 3-4 lanes of the freeway at ~70mph, across the painted barrier to exit a freeway.

I'd say the average of these incidences I see is 3 per drive and that doesn't include just you average weaver or tailgater. In other words, I take my car out for a 10-15 minute drive, (so 20-30 mins round trip) and see someone do something outrageous endangering other people's lives 3 times per drive on average.

Many places on California are more or less lawless, not just the freeways...

It's a basic trajectory control system (using ANPR cameras), combined with a red light camera. They read your license plate twice in different locations to determine how long you took to drive a section of road. They're very common here in Belgium, but it being coupled to a red light is not that common. They even have a sign that says "too fast = red light + fine".

I am not from the US but have driven a lot more in the US than the average tourist (maybe x0,000 miles). What amazes me is not only those traffic violations but how often they're justified on forums (including HN) because of things like 'it's unsafe to drive the limit when everyone's going faster'. Over there, people seem to drive with a deathwish.

It's quite jarring to come home and drive an expressway in South Australia where the "speeders" are doing 105 km/h on a 100 km/h route. Someone doing significantly more is a rarity where I live.

Is it really a beautiful system if it involves adding and maintaining a completely unnecessary traffic light? That isn’t free and costs tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars over its lifetime.

I’m not saying it’s not worth it, even 1 life saved would make it worth it, but it’s not beautiful.