Cameras Go Up to Punish Drivers in the Name of Climate Change – Then Vigilantes Strike

Cameras Go Up to Punish Drivers in the Name of Climate Change – Then Vigilantes Strike

Citizens of London are furious over the city’s Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) rules that renders a large section of the city practically inaccessible by car because there are very few vehicles that meet the draconian emissions standards that permit them to enter the zone, according to The Drive. 

London city officials have designated a 147 square-mile sector as its pollution-free Ultra Low Emission Zone, supposedly to clean up the air quality in the city that was once derided as “The Big Smoke” due to its air pollution. 

The idea is to discourage citizens from driving in this zone by charging them fines for driving the wrong kind of auto into the area. Officials hope that citizens will get the message and buy vehicles that have higher emission standards and stop using their older vehicles. 

To achieve this, officials have set up a massive network of hundreds of cameras that monitor the streets and take photos of every car on the road. This photo is then compared to vehicle registrations which tell the computer system whether the license plate is on a car that meets the standards. 

If the car does not meet the standards, the owner is sent a $15.88 fine per day. And if the fines are not paid, they will be charged an additional $288.71 on top of the missed fines. 

Even worse, the ULEZ has no grandfather clause for people who live and work in the area and no immunity for them from the ULEZ rules. 

In other words, citizens were instantly barred from driving to the grocery store, their schools, their church, or their jobs unless they want to pay an additional $16 a day fine. 

This means that the second the ULEZ surveillance system was switched on, millions of residents were made instant climate change criminals whose only choices are to suffer a $16 a day tax/fine, to stop driving at all, or be forced to spend up to $50,000 or more to buy a new car, such as an electric vehicle, that meets the new ULEZ standards. 

Some residents inside the ULEZ, though, are not sitting idly by and allowing city hall to oppress them with these draconian climate change rules. A group calling themselves the “ULEZ blade runners” is striking back and has engaged in a massive act of civil disobedience by vandalizing, disabling, or blocking the Big Brother surveillance system with which Mayor Khan has burdened them. 

One man who claims to belong to this group told the Daily Mail that he and his fellow blade runners are trying to “wake up the sleeping masses.” 

“There are 24 hours in a day. We either fight it or accept it. We do whatever we can,” the man said. “What we will achieve by our actions is the removal of the infrastructure and waking up the sleeping masses to what is really going on.” 

“We are going to take down every single one no matter what,” another protester told the paper.