"A chalked tire was ephemeral. I doubt that whatever replaces it will be."
I suspect you are right and share your foreboding...
However, a very easy solution would be to just mark the asphalt around the tires ... maybe write "blue chevy" between the marks.
So easy.
Instead, a politically connected services firm will capture local mayors / council members (very, very cheaply - shockingly cheaply) and build it into their unnecessary speed/redlight camera systems.
That's error-prone (what if another blue chevy replaces it?), and takes 10 times as long as a simple mark, and doesn't work when the road is sandy or wet, and you need some quick way to erase the last marks, etc.
I can't think of anything nearly as quick and cheap and effective as a chalk mark on the tire.
What about a notebook and pen? Note car number plate and/or description of car and location. If you've got somebody going wrong chalking tyres, you can have that person take notes instead.
(This might also take a bit longer than making a chalk mark, but time is not exactly of the essence here.)
I searched for "number plate" because I am pretty sure this is what is done in UK/Europe and I have no idea why you would consider doing anything else?
But nobody saying "license plate" is suggesting this - is there some reason why not?
Chalking seems 100% unreliable and very open to legal challenge.
I've seen smartphone based license scanners, Psion-based data entry terminals (they punch in each and every offenders license plate), but parking meters tend to have a paper receipt you place on the dashboard or stick to the window. But now they have a pay-using-an-app option ... They take your licence plate details always and check it against an online db, and if not then they look for a paper ticket.
Pretty much, if you park in a time limited street zone or a metered zone or a municipal car park ... You can be assured your car number plate is captured along with entry and exit times.
I assume it's just harder to write down license plate "numbers" in the US since they are both less strictly formatted and less unique than any national plates in Europe (that I am aware of).
From a short search, it seems that license plate numbers aren't even unique across state borders in the US, for example.
I find all of these solutions wonderfully low-tech. In Amsterdam, they slowly drive google streetview-style car which autotmatically records number plates, looks them up, and issues fines where necessary. The only thing needed is someone to drive the car, and I'm sure that's also going to replaced eventually.
In urban areas the city could even work with local property owners to place video cameras that have enough angle to be able to have a constant view of all the cars that park. Could automate ticketing car owners who overstay.
*Not that I wish for this, but it's theoretically possible to implement.
They're not exactly equivalent. Tire-chalking essentially proves that the vehicle didn't move (or that the driver was ridiculously unlucky in that the mark showed up at about the same location). The number/license plate merely shows that the same car is in the same parking spot, so the (legal, if arguably too "letter of the law") approach of vacating the space and parking there again is indistinguishable from overstaying the limit.
If you require vehicles to be gone from a certain street for 24 hours, say, before parking there again for a 2 hour spot, and you check it at 1 pm then later at 4 pm, you can conclude the vehicle wasn't gone for 24 hours.
I know, but that's a little slower, way more expensive, and fails if the battery runs out or the GPS can't connect, or the license plate is too dirty to read.
Obviously the chalk method isn't perfect either, but it's close.
That is how parking enforcement works here in the Netherlands. Someone just drives a camera-equipped car around and everything happens automatically - you enter your license plate on the meter so times are known to the minute.
There are parking meters in the US city I live in, where you enter your license plate and you don't have to fill an individual meter or display a tag on your dash.
There are also a lot of advantages once you automate this via a camera. Now you can put cheap cameras near spots and/or mount the cameras on cars to automate ticketing as police are driving around on other business.
My city does this (Florianopolis, Brazil). I can use a smart phone app to start the clock or just let an officer pass by and tag my car. Chalking seems very... rudimentary.
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So easy.
Instead, a politically connected services firm will capture local mayors / council members (very, very cheaply - shockingly cheaply) and build it into their unnecessary speed/redlight camera systems.
I agree that there’s a history of questionable business practices in that industry but those systems are far from unnecessary. Motor vehicles being driven irresponsibly kill something like 40k Americans per year and cause all sorts of injuries and quality of life reductions. Cameras are a good way to discourage that without using tons of police time or dragging in questions of fairness — the call should be punishing corruption, not giving up a valuable tool.
Cities all around the SF Bay Area have been removing their red light cameras. Here in Menlo Park the city just dropped ours. And about time! They were widely hated for mailing people fake tickets for minor infractions that were not a safety hazard at all, like slowly rolling through a right turn with no other traffic in the vicinity.
I used to be annoyed by red light cameras because they triggered on "safe" infractions, like right turns on red. Over the past few years I've changed my mind, because I've almost been hit as a pedestrian and on my bike by people sliding through intersections, to the point where I've physically prevented myself from being hit by pushing off the car a couple times.
Right on red is awesome as a driver, but it makes roads really dangerous for other road users. I think bad intersection design is partly to blame for perceived "frivolous" red light tickets, but at the same time I think that drivers really should come to a complete stop before the line (and before the crosswalk if there is one) before deciding if a right turn on red is safe or practicable. If people can't even be bothered to stop for a right turn on red then it's probably better to ban them outright.
Also, I've seen enough people run red lights 2-3 seconds after the light changes that I want red light cameras at every intersection anyways. It might be 1 in every 250 people who gets dinged for the right turn on red ticket, but that's stupidly dangerous.
If a fix is needed, increase the fine for blowing the light, scale it based on the time the light had been red (so you don't excessively punish people who got caught in the zone of indecision), and reduce the fine for rolling through a right on red.
Do you always look both ways before entering the street? I always try to do that, both because that's what I was taught to do as a child, and because it seems like the best way to ensure my safety when walking. The only times as a pedestrian when I've been nearly hit by a car is when I've failed to do that.
Here are 2 scenarios that might explain OP's point of view.
You are walking up to an intersection and the crosswalk sign is green. You look right and across the intersection all the traffic is stopped. You look left and there is a car coming, but it is clearly slowing down for the red light. You step into the intersection, but the car doesn't actually stop. They turn right at the intersection. You have to jump away. The problem here is not that you didn't look, but that you misinterpreted what the car was doing. It would be best to wait until all approaching cars are actually stopped before entering the intersection, but next time you are crossing a street I challenge you to see if you always do that. It's surprisingly uncommon because the car is "obviously" stopping.
The second is more of a clear cut problem. Bicycles often travel at speeds much faster than people expect. It's not unusual for a road bike to be going over 30 km/h (just under 20 mph). Cars should wait for you to clear the intersection, but often they aren't looking for bikes and will make a right hand turn, cutting off the cyclist. It happened to me many times in Canada. I'm very happy that the turn-on-red rule is not allowed in Japan where I live now.
California has a little-known law that tries to protect bicyclists from the "right hook" accident you mention. If there is a bike lane, drivers are required to merge into the bike lane before turning right, instead of turning from the car lane and cutting across the bike lane.
This is why bike lane stripes have a dotted section when approaching an intersection, to give drivers a hint about what they are supposed to do. Unfortunately, only a minority of drivers understand and follow the hint.
> They were widely hated for mailing people fake tickets for minor infractions that were not a safety hazard at all, like slowly rolling through a right turn with no other traffic in the vicinity.
You meant to say “real tickets”, right, since you described someone actually breaking the law — and I've seen many, many times where “no other traffic” meant “no other traffic which the driver saw, correctly understood, and respected”. I've had a few close calls in crosswalks and there's nothing fake about it.
Afaik, here in Sweden they use something called "digital cameras". They take a picture of said car and placement on street and just compare it later on.
I suspect you are right and share your foreboding...
However, a very easy solution would be to just mark the asphalt around the tires ... maybe write "blue chevy" between the marks.
So easy.
Instead, a politically connected services firm will capture local mayors / council members (very, very cheaply - shockingly cheaply) and build it into their unnecessary speed/redlight camera systems.