@PowerCrazy Because they have a bunch of things that they're legally required to do and not enough money to do them all.

Some of them are easier to downgrade, ration, or scrap, than others.

Central funding was largely eliminated, while local government can no longer increase its own taxes beyond a certain threshold (requiring a referendum), thanks to laws passed by central government.

So they have to cut something.

Speed cameras save lives. It's politically easier to get rid of the speed cameras than to get rid of the roads. Mostly because our cities remain car dependent, and even buses depend on roads. Local government cannot get rid of cars for free; that will take a sustained national effort with considerable funding and political will.

Would you rather they cut the already very limited funding for helping old people who can't afford their own care needs?

Of course it's a political decision. But the cuts, the restrictions on raising taxes, and turning speed cameras from something that saves lives, enforces the law, and generates revenue, into a cost, are all carefully calculated to restrict local government's choices and blame them for the central government's cuts.

How can you be anti-car and still anti-speed-cameras?

And yes, the rule that the national treasury keeps the fines did not apply to traffic wardens. Central government specifically set out to cripple one of the main tools for reducing road deaths, to make a populist political point.

Though whether they make a profit on traffic wardens is less clear. A fair bit of enforcement is actually by the police, which is of course a different budget.

@PowerCrazy They are removing them because they *LOSE* money on them.

They are, in the UK at least, not allowed to keep any of the money generated.

But they have to pay for the costs of running them.

And they can't afford to because their budgets have been cut so far over the last 13 years of tory misrule that in many cases they can no longer provide basic services that they are legally obliged to provide.

Back when they could cover their costs, there were lots of speed cameras. Now there are very few. Because evil politicians, usually tories, have always sacrificed lives for political convenience.

@gabriel @sooper_dooper_roofer @mondoman712 You can't do statistics on speed cameras if there are almost no speed cameras.

Which is the reality today. Sometimes the police go out with mobile units. But there are very few fixed ones.

@PowerCrazy We need to substantially reduce the number of cars.

Increasing the number of speed cameras, while reducing speed limits, is a step in that direction.

@immibis @sooper_dooper_roofer @mondoman712 In the UK, local councils pay for fixed speed cameras.

Central government confiscates the fines.

When this was introduced the vast majority of fixed speed cameras disappeared more or less overnight: Councils could not afford to run them without a revenue stream. Their budgets had been cut ~50% by that same government.

The government justifies this by saying "the war on the motorist is over".

But it's a funny kind of war. The fatalities are overwhelmingly caused by motorists.

@sooper_dooper_roofer @mondoman712 Modern petrol cars contain lots of computers too.

Automatic enforcement, with the right to override it recorded in the black box to be used as evidence in crash cases, is a perfectly reasonable idea. But inevitably there will be bugs, just as there are in self-driving cars (especially the often dangerous "semi-autonomous" vehicles).

However there is a cheaper solution: Fixed, widespread speed cameras. Which right now are effectively banned in the UK, because the treasury confiscates the fines (local government pays the running costs, and therefore can't afford to run any).

While I understand there are usability issues, and design can help with that, if you're not able to drive your ton of metal safely and legally you shouldn't be driving it. If people expected to get caught, they'd drive slower.

The bottom line is speed limits are the law. And lower speed limits reduce the number of serious injuries dramatically and help to push people onto public transport. Although with old cars they increase emissions slightly; with modern hybrids they reduce them.

@mr_washee_washee Delaying the technologies that we know work, continuing to dig up more fossil fuels, and giving it a veneer of credibility by funding more research is a classic delayer tactic. Delay being a stage of denial.

@mr_washee_washee @suodrazah So do wind farms. Are you opposed to them too?

@flux @QuinceDaPence Concrete and steel (for stations, track, etc) matter. So does the electricity used to maintain stations, not just propel the train. So lifecycle emissions of a train are immensely complicated, plus then you get into how to route a new rail line without destroying too many ecosystems.

Even so, clean electricity is the easy bit compared to making planes clean. More trains please.

@oo1 @mondoman712 @CouldntCareBear As regards the wider picture, I agree that some demographics / constituencies have *way* more influence than others because of first past the post, and our politics diverges dramatically from what people actually think. People are much less cruel and bigoted, on the whole, than our current politics suggests. Politicians know this but only care about the marginal constituencies, or more often their own leadership ambitions in a soon to be smaller and out of office party.

Practically speaking, plenty of people drive because public transport isn't available or is expensive. A small investment in buses, combined with modest deterrents such as ULEZ, could shift a significant number of drivers. But to get to where we need to be - 70%+ fewer miles driven - we'll have to solve a lot of other problems e.g. housing, trains, etc.

@oo1 @mondoman712 @CouldntCareBear Yes but the stuff about ULEZ is largely fear-mongering. It will be completely irrelevant in a year's time. Most of the people worried about it won't actually be affected by it. And across London as a whole it's pretty popular.

There is plenty of historical experience across many countries on this. They're initially seen as possibly a good idea, then as it gets closer, people panic, then they get enacted, then people get used to them and *mostly* support them.

@Atemu @Aatube This is my standard response to FUD about EV carbon emissions.

https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-how-electric-vehicles-help-to-tackle-climate-change/

EVs do improve the situation. And the electricity mix is rapidly improving in most countries, it must continue to do so, and frankly it's low-hanging fruit compared to some of the other problems. But I agree that we will have a faster transition if we have fewer cars. More and cheaper buses will get us maybe 30%, but for the rest we'll need to change cities, change housing, build new rail lines etc. A lot of degrowth measures involve large amounts of construction, social change, and political challenges. They take time, potentially more time than we have.

We need to do *both*.