Per the News Sentinel, TDOT now has a Knoxville traffic camera website.
I’m not sure if the system is currently working, because I don’t see any traffic problems. Of course none of the cameras in West Knoxville appear to be online yet.
If we’re going to have big brother, at least give us something like this, that we can use.
Despite the plethora of cameras that can be swung around 360 degrees, TDOT officials emphasize they are not spying on motorists and will not use the system for law enforcement. Dahlinger said TDOT doesn’t record the camera images.
“We don’t record anything because, if we did, we’d be bombarded with requests from attorneys for videos of crashes,” he said.
The system also will have more than 200 speed sensors, most powered by solar panels, which will alert the Transportation Management Center employees of congestion problems. Dahlinger said the devices don’t record the speed of individual vehicles, but of the overall traffic.
Anyone else have trouble believing they don’t record or can target individual vehicles? Hasn’t that become Homeland Security doctrine by now?
Personally, I just love the shots of empty Inerstates and particularly the ones of an empty Alcoa Highway they show on the evening news, as the lament about all the bad traffic. Especially in light of the hundreds-of-millions-of-dollar projects TDOT proposes to “fix” these horrible “problems”.
Hey, I lived in Orlando for 17 years. I drove through Atlanta coming back home to visit Knoxville during all of those years.
Trust me. Knoxville does not have a “traffic problem”. What we have is a spoiled goober/pork barrel politician/asphalt lobby problem.