Automatic License Plate Readers Are Coming to Schools - Source: www.schneier.com

Comments

Safety first • August 11, 2025 7:28 AM

If they want to keep children safe, lower the speed limits around schools and make those automatic license place readers part of a speed camera system. One of the major threats school children face is stressed parents driving their kids to school. Lower speeds increase safety, and also reduce harmful air pollution which kids are especially vulnerable to.

Chris Becke • August 11, 2025 7:39 AM

@Safety first, I love watching, amongst other things, YouTube channels by civil engineers. Watching these makes it quite apparent that cameras are not effective at making cars slower or roads safer. But that there are other ways that are mostly subliminal that make roads “feel” like they need to be traversed slower while maximising pedestrian safety.

Wayne • August 11, 2025 9:14 AM

At one time, anti-surveillance people talked about IR LEDs in baseball caps to cause facial recognition cameras to flare and not record them. I’ve always wondered if a similar license plate frame would fox ALPRs.

I remember, it was probably 15 years ago, I was getting out of my car at a shopping mall in El Paso, TX and a police car was doing a slow crawl up and down the parking lot. It had ALPR cameras mounted on its light bar. I’m sure the excuse was that El Paso, being next to the border, has lots of cars stolen and then immediately taken across the border into Mexico. Which doesn’t make much sense: if the car is stolen, why would it be sitting in the parking lot at the mall before going across the border.

In Texas, their registered vehicles are required to have both front and rear license plates.

Safety first • August 11, 2025 9:57 AM

@Chris Oh, they’re effective where I’m at, no doubt about that. It’s the method they fall back to if others don’t work. Do you mean cameras that don’t actually result in fines? Other methods can certainly also work. Speed bumps, road narrowing, zig-zag lanes, etc.

wiredog • August 11, 2025 10:04 AM

Many of the local schools around here have speed bumps on the road either side of the school. Hit those at the speed limit and you get a jolt.

VDOT is placing speed bumps on lots of residential roads around here. The only complaints I’ve heard are from residents who don’t have them yet.

TimH • August 11, 2025 11:08 AM

I rented opposite a primary school in the middle of a residential area, so one narrow lane each way. At pickup time, that lane would be blocked by the line of helicopter parents waiting to pick up their little treasures. The use of the remaining lane by 2-way traffic caused much dangerous driving by frustrated drivers, and I witness a very near miss for the crossing lady. She thought so too, evidenced by the shouted “Mother F******”.

David_in_Toronto • August 11, 2025 11:12 AM

@Wayne IR LEDs in a hoodie is a plot device in the new Dexter series.

Somewhere in my collection of memes there is a parked car with banner after the license plate number adding ‘,0,0); drop database …. which instantly recalls little bobby tables with the delayed realization of the implications to an ALPR.

David_in_Toronto • August 11, 2025 1:53 PM

Yes, some safety measures seem to backfire.

Locally they started putting flexible bollards up around the street corners near schools. Narrows the road makes turns trickier. Very tricky if there are pickup trucks. But the kids now see this safety zone as a place to stand while waiting to cross making this extra dangerous as now cars and kids are closer. Plus I’ve seen someone hit the bollards, they bounce and would seriously injure someone standing next to them.

Bumps are great until you need the firedepartment.

Matt • August 11, 2025 3:03 PM

I once saw a blurb on the news where high school students were photographing teachers’ license plates, printing them in color, taping them to their own cars, and intentionally triggering red-light cameras.

Can you imaging the world of s#%@ you’d be in if you caused a crash…by intentionally triggering a red light camera…with a fake license plate?

SocraticGadfly • August 11, 2025 4:37 PM

For Safety and Chris, you can do BOTH!

Fine people who are speeding in school zones and caught on license plate readers AND

Put knuckles on intersection corners, flashing speed warning signs, speed bumps and whatever up at the same time.

Steve • August 11, 2025 8:25 PM

Bear in mind that school zones are occupied by kids only for a couple of hours every day, generally not on weekends, holidays, and intersessional breaks, and not at all during summer.

Installing permanent impediments such as speed bumps impair traffic flow all day and all night logn and can lead to accidents themselves (rear-enders, for instance).

Speed bumps can also be an annoyance to people who live adjacent to them. I briefly lived in a house on a street where the city decided that “traffic calming” was in order and they installed a speed bump more or less outside my bedroom window.

Every morning I was awakened by the serenade of the thump thump thump rattle rattle of gardening/lawn service trucks going up and down the hill as well as people gunning their engine after making it over the bump.

And the traffic? Not discernably “calmer” than before.

dug • August 11, 2025 8:39 PM

Round these parts, LEOs park at the school, lights on, and get out and direct traffic. Works great. Nobody speeds, traffic moves properly, kids are safe, it works.

Chris Becke • August 12, 2025 1:20 AM

To further divert this topic away from the growing surveillance state and towards unintended consequences in traffic control – speed bumps are more easilly ignored by vehicles with larger tyres – the kind of cars and trucks that already have poor visibility

Subscribe to comments on this entry