Electric motors are incredibly simple and have probably peaked many decades ago, however battery tech is still in its infancy as an automotive component.

While individual SUVs and trucks have sold well, they as a vehicle class didn’t make up the majority of vehicles sold in the US until last decade:

It was mainly consumers. The automakers saw the steady decline in sales of sedans/coupes, and the rise in sales of CUV/SUV’s 

“Yes”. Manufactures did a great job marketing larger vehicles that had a higher profit margin, and consumers bought them in such quantities that the profit margin for smaller cars narrowed to the point that they made little to no financial sense for some manufacturers to keep making them. So, both. 

The other day I was thinking, I bet Jalopnik would love to find a transportation angle on this story.

And as much as I often don’t like police they have discretion, you may be “speeding” but if going with the flow or the limit is stupid (have a stretch of straight rural road that is 40 mph and they never enforce it) they can use judgement and wait for the reckless drivers and aggravated speeders.

Where I lived previously there was a school zone with cameras, the only problem is they were not adjusted for non-school days, I saw people getting lit up (literally) when school wasn’t in session as they were going the base limit but the cameras were timed for school zone. Maybe they didn’t send them out from those…

Those systems usually take several days just to generate the ticket. Someone has to look at it and verify the plate (even if the software grabs the plate number). Then they have to get the driver info from a DMV database. Then they still have to print and mail the ticket out. I could easily see them not getting the…

That was my thought, they probably mail the ticket and I assume there is a lag for processing and mailing times.

Pretty much ALL traffic camera systems are like this where the lions share goes to the camera company. We had red light cameras here for a while, until it cam out the city got such a TINY amount, that and tickets given to people that didn’t in fact run the red light.  I never got stung, but driving through town one…

Yep, exactly. But, if this program (I guess?) was run correctly, the money generated from the tickets would go directly to improving or reengineering the road to stop it from happening. Then after that has been shown to work, you move to the next area that needs help. They could literally use the cameras to generate…

This. I got hit with three photos tickets in the same place over two weeks before I got a single letter in the mail. At least when a cop pulls you over, you know instantly what to watch out for 

Exactly my problem with this type of enforcement method. It doesn’t fix the root issue.

Is it at all possible that in those 10 days the driver didn’t actually know yet that they were accumulating the tickets? So, clearly, speeding in a school zone is not ideal, a presumed lag in the system would mean they didn’t realize they were racking up fines. 

As someone who wrote RFP responses to state and local governments for speed cameras, red light and parking enforcement, and toll collection systems, I’m shocked the city is getting that much.

For every $50 fine paid, $17 goes to the city, and $33 goes to the camera company.

I honestly don’t like speed cams at all as I don’t think they really do anything, especially when you live close to another state or district (Hello DC!). But the fact that of the $50, the private company gets $33 is just insane. The money should mostly go to the city to then make the school zones safer, until ticket…

This seems relevant right now:

“ because he was arrested.”