Valencia: Somebody is watching your every move!
The news this week is that the department for traffic flow in Valencia have completed the setup to monitor traffic over 300 kilometres of roadway in the province on a 24/7 basis. There are now 700 cameras watching our every move. That could be both good and bad. Good from the standpoint that reckless and dangerous driving will be seen in real time and a police car will be sent to rein the offender in. Good also because where there has been a crash, one where it could be his word against yours, the truth can now be backed up by the tape.
This is especially important for those crashes that take place on roundabouts. We are notoriously bad at lane discipline. It is a wonder that there are not more “accidents” due to wrong-lane placements.
You have to wonder what the driver, who is in the extreme left hand lane is thinking when he wants to go to the right. With 50 monitors the live and unrehearsed images are played out around the clock, so very little will escape the attention of Big Brother.
I consider myself a fairly responsible driver, but I do make mistakes, especially with traffic lights. I have seen the red on far too many occasions. It’s not something I do deliberately but a mis-timed approach to the lights that are on orange, with a madman on my tail who thinks we should keep going, and I find myself pushed through the red light.
That is a difficult situation because if I do stop that will probably mean a crash into me. There has to be time enough for me to stop and to control the person behind me. I usually don’t have to worry about the driver if it is a she, but guys are something else.
Now I feel doubly uncomfortable in that the roads administrators are watching me commit such an infraction. I have to remember that as I am going through on red someone on the other side is beginning to move off while his light is still red. This is not a good thing. I must say that this is a very rare thing to happen because I am usually moving at a rate that is calm enough for me to stop, as well as to bring the person behind me to a stop as well. But once in a long while it doesn’t quite work out like that.
Should you believe that a tape of your crash can help, you have to obtain a copy from the Sala de Control de Trafico before it is destroyed in 30 days. Good luck!
Copyright © 2010 Eugene Carmichael
The news this week is that the department for traffic flow in Valencia have completed the setup to monitor traffic over 300 kilometres of roadway in the province on a 24/7 basis. There are now 700 cameras watching our every move. That could be both good and bad. Good from the standpoint that reckless and dangerous driving will be seen in real time and a police car will be sent to rein the offender in. Good also because where there has been a crash, one where it could be his word against yours, the truth can now be backed up by the tape.
This is especially important for those crashes that take place on roundabouts. We are notoriously bad at lane discipline. It is a wonder that there are not more “accidents” due to wrong-lane placements.
You have to wonder what the driver, who is in the extreme left hand lane is thinking when he wants to go to the right. With 50 monitors the live and unrehearsed images are played out around the clock, so very little will escape the attention of Big Brother.
I consider myself a fairly responsible driver, but I do make mistakes, especially with traffic lights. I have seen the red on far too many occasions. It’s not something I do deliberately but a mis-timed approach to the lights that are on orange, with a madman on my tail who thinks we should keep going, and I find myself pushed through the red light.
That is a difficult situation because if I do stop that will probably mean a crash into me. There has to be time enough for me to stop and to control the person behind me. I usually don’t have to worry about the driver if it is a she, but guys are something else.
Now I feel doubly uncomfortable in that the roads administrators are watching me commit such an infraction. I have to remember that as I am going through on red someone on the other side is beginning to move off while his light is still red. This is not a good thing. I must say that this is a very rare thing to happen because I am usually moving at a rate that is calm enough for me to stop, as well as to bring the person behind me to a stop as well. But once in a long while it doesn’t quite work out like that.
Should you believe that a tape of your crash can help, you have to obtain a copy from the Sala de Control de Trafico before it is destroyed in 30 days. Good luck!
Copyright © 2010 Eugene Carmichael
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