US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg's plan to 'promote speed safety cameras' is raising the troubling specter of ubiquitous automated traffic enforcement in the style of the UK, where the cameras are widely despised.
Buttigieg's 42-page road safety plan that was unveiled on Thursday and is backed by $14 billion in funding from the new infrastructure bill contained only brief mention of the speed camera plan, but it was enough to set alarm bells ringing for worried motorists.
Fox News host Tucker Carlson slammed the plan as a misuse of the funds in the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Bill, fuming that 'you're about to get a lot more speeding tickets from robots.'
'When the country applauded $1.2 trillion going to fixing the roads, bridges and buildings, a lot of us were dumb enough to think that's what might actually happen,' he said.
Nonpartisan motorist advocate groups are also against the plan. The National Motorists Association has a top 10 list of why speed cameras are bad, arguing 'they can actually make our roads less safe.'