Something you didn’t know about the Gilets Jaunes

You’ve heard how the Gilets Jaunes have brought French elitists to their knees and put the fear of We the Peasants into the Macron government. You may have heard their “yellow vest” movement is spreading into other countries, including Canada.

What you probably haven’t heard is that they and their less-visible allies also wreck traffic cameras and radar installations — big time.

David Gross, longtime chronicler of culture jamming and monkeywrenching, notes:

The gilets jaunes movement in France, with its street protests and blockades, has been getting all the press — and has indeed forced significant and painful concessions from the government, while it has grown beyond the control of its founders. But under the radar (or upon the radars, as it were), another significant protest has been taking place: the widespread disabling of traffic-ticket-generating roadside cameras.

While the gilets jaunes were in the streets, they and their allies were also knocking those cameras out of service — by the hundreds! One site that has been tracking reports noted 200 cameras disabled over the course of a single weekend, making about 870 total over the gilets jaunes protest period — about 25% of all such cameras in the country. Another year-long estimate says there have been 1,500 attacks on the 3,200 speed cameras in the country, some 250 of which resulted in the complete destruction of the device.

Many other cameras have been only temporarily disabled, for example by having a yellow vest taped over the lens. Law enforcement can quickly bring these back into service. But others have been painted over, which necessitates hundreds of euros of repair time. The ones that have been utterly destroyed must be replaced at a cost of tens of thousands of euros. This in addition to the loss of revenue from foregone traffic fines, which can be tens of thousands of euros per day per camera.

And he has links upon links upon links of detail at … em, the link.