Judge shuts down red light cameras
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Burning Brakes
Joined: Jun 2001
Posts: 969
Likes: 13
From: CT
Judge shuts down red light cameras
Judge shuts down red light cameras
Police in Minneapolis shut down automated cameras on Tuesday that were used to ticket drivers after a judge struck down the ordinance that had authorized the program, according to the Associated Press. "Naturally, we're elated," said Howard Bass, a volunteer attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota who represented a motorist who challenged the program. "Judge Wernick's opinion renews my confidence in the judiciary's commitment to protecting due process rights." The Minneapolis cameras were installed at 12 intersections in July. The city had not yet decided whether to appeal, said Assistant City Attorney Mary Ellen Heng.
http://www.leftlanenews.com/
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related...
Red-light cameras and the secret Gotcha! line.
BY PATRICK BEDARD
February 2002
A certain stench hangs over the idea of bounty hunters. Behold the freebooting opportunist, pocketing profits for being just a hair quicker than cops to reach the prize. Or worse yet, for nabbing someone not worth a lawman's chasing.
It gets even worse. Sometimes the law does a mutual back-scratching deal with the privateer, and they divvy up the loot.
Which brings us to red-light cameras, a boondoggle that franchises bounty hunters, setting them up in the business of snooping out infractions too small to be seen with the naked eye. These are honey-pot deals where the city governments keep jacking up the take and rejiggering the split until there's profit enough to make both sides fat.
When the flapdoodle over red-light running began to drown out the ball scores a few years ago, I called Tim Hurd at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. For every imaginable form of highway mayhem, he always has the latest body count.
What did he have on red-light running? Exactly zip. NHTSA has never tracked it. Best he could do was fatalities within a few hundred feet of intersections (I've forgotten the exact distance). No smoking gun. In fact, no gun, period.
Never mind the lack of evidence, NHTSA's sister agency, the Federal Highway Administration, was pumping money into one of those public-private partnerships that act as smoke-making machines for issues too weak to smoke on their own. Like those menacing green antifreeze puddles in parking lots, menacing because dogs love to lap them up. You'd never hear of such death threats if there weren't a public-private partnership making smoke over it.
The name of this machine was "Stop Red Light Running," a three-way among the Federal Highway Administration, the American Trauma Society, and DaimlerChrysler. Instead of facts, it had a fancy logo. From an address on Wacker Drive, in the heart of Chicago's advertising and PR district, it was belching out brochures and press releases and public-interest spots for radio and TV.
In my driving, I rarely see red-light running. So I called the government guy on the project (Hurd gave me the number) and asked for details. "Are cars blowing right through full reds, or is this just stretching the green like always, now being whooped up to pandemic proportions?"
He had no idea. His job was just to keep the machine smoking.
The smoke is very good for red-light cameras. Lockheed Martin has been the 900-pound gorilla of the ticket-by-mail business. Its camera-enforcement division was sold this past summer for a cool $825 million, prompting congressman Dick Armey, a Texas Republican, to say, "Consider[ing] they only get a cut of the entire ticket amount, you can see that red-light cameras are a multibillion-dollar industry."
Two years ago I talked to Dana King, Lockheed's vice-president of marketing for photo enforcement. He allowed that the public is wary of photo radar. "Most folks speed a little." But they don't run red lights. And they have no tolerance for offenders. So he uses red-light cameras to get a foot into a community's door. After a year or two, up-selling to include the photo-radar package is as easy as saying, "May I?"
Mesa, Arizona, is a fast-growing, slow-thinking burg on the outskirts of Phoenix, and it signed up for the full Lockheed Martin program in 1999, including five photo-radar vans and 13 intersections eyed by cameras. In the language of the bounty hunters, Mesa has 17 camera "approaches," 11 straight through and six left turns.
The red-light fine was set at $105, then hiked to $115. When the system became fully operational in May 2000, it proved to be a money loser for the city. So that October, city officials jacked up fines to $170. In November 2000, the city's traffic-engineering department decided a three-second yellow was too brief for the lefts and increased the time to four seconds. Bam! Violations dropped 73 percent at left-turn intersections.
The city's contract with Lockheed promised the bounty hunters a minimum of 18 violations per approach per day, or Mesa would have to pay a monthly fee of $2500 for each low-yielding approach. In the early months of 2001, 15 of the 17 approaches were hemorrhaging cash.
Let's call this crop failure what it is — a sturdy case of law-abiding traffic. Obviously, Mesa didn't have a problem.
The town had started the program with lofty tones, allowing a 0.3-second grace period into the red, "so anyone ticketed was really guilty." Starting in April 2001, adios, grace period. "It was believed this action might address the vendor's loss," said the city council report.
In effect, Mesa had shortened its yellows to raise the take. It helped, but not enough. So the city and Lockheed set to renegotiating the contract. Instead of pocketing $48.50 for each paid violation, Lockheed would reap $73 for the first 900 each month, $65 for the next 300, then it was back to the original rate. The city also agreed to ease Lockheed's labor in writing out complaints, but if the vendor's costs didn't drop enough, the city promised to renegotiate again. Talk about a sweetheart deal!
The sharp pencils at city hall said the new pact would raise its "break even" to about 2600 complaints each month (combined radar and red light) from 1800 before. But it planned to rejigger the law to give itself more time to serve complaints, "thus mitigating some of the negative fiscal impact."
Just as casino odds favor the house, Mesa and Lockheed have rigged the cameras to favor themselves. On approach, first you cross the wide white "stop bar" painted on the pavement. You're supposed to stop before you reach it. Next comes the crosswalk. If you cross both on yellow, you think you're into the intersection and should continue through. Nope. Mesa flags a violation "when your car clears the second inductance loop" buried in the pavement, according to Mesa police officer Terry Gibbs. I checked with the system engineer. No, the system triggers when your car first breaks into the loop; so much for her court testimony. The cops are confused, and so are the drivers, because this Gotcha! line is completely unmarked.
By making the Gotcha! line invisible, and by placing it long after the stop bar, Mesa does a late grab on cars at the tail end of the yellow, nabbing them when they think they're in the continue-through zone. Just a little trick to dig enough cash out of unsuspecting pockets to create a profitable business.
They protest: This is a safety program. With a secret Gotcha! line? Yeah, right.
http://www.caranddriver.com/article....rticle_id=1979
i LOVE bedard... why i look forward to C&D every month
Police in Minneapolis shut down automated cameras on Tuesday that were used to ticket drivers after a judge struck down the ordinance that had authorized the program, according to the Associated Press. "Naturally, we're elated," said Howard Bass, a volunteer attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota who represented a motorist who challenged the program. "Judge Wernick's opinion renews my confidence in the judiciary's commitment to protecting due process rights." The Minneapolis cameras were installed at 12 intersections in July. The city had not yet decided whether to appeal, said Assistant City Attorney Mary Ellen Heng.
http://www.leftlanenews.com/
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
related...
Red-light cameras and the secret Gotcha! line.
BY PATRICK BEDARD
February 2002
A certain stench hangs over the idea of bounty hunters. Behold the freebooting opportunist, pocketing profits for being just a hair quicker than cops to reach the prize. Or worse yet, for nabbing someone not worth a lawman's chasing.
It gets even worse. Sometimes the law does a mutual back-scratching deal with the privateer, and they divvy up the loot.
Which brings us to red-light cameras, a boondoggle that franchises bounty hunters, setting them up in the business of snooping out infractions too small to be seen with the naked eye. These are honey-pot deals where the city governments keep jacking up the take and rejiggering the split until there's profit enough to make both sides fat.
When the flapdoodle over red-light running began to drown out the ball scores a few years ago, I called Tim Hurd at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. For every imaginable form of highway mayhem, he always has the latest body count.
What did he have on red-light running? Exactly zip. NHTSA has never tracked it. Best he could do was fatalities within a few hundred feet of intersections (I've forgotten the exact distance). No smoking gun. In fact, no gun, period.
Never mind the lack of evidence, NHTSA's sister agency, the Federal Highway Administration, was pumping money into one of those public-private partnerships that act as smoke-making machines for issues too weak to smoke on their own. Like those menacing green antifreeze puddles in parking lots, menacing because dogs love to lap them up. You'd never hear of such death threats if there weren't a public-private partnership making smoke over it.
The name of this machine was "Stop Red Light Running," a three-way among the Federal Highway Administration, the American Trauma Society, and DaimlerChrysler. Instead of facts, it had a fancy logo. From an address on Wacker Drive, in the heart of Chicago's advertising and PR district, it was belching out brochures and press releases and public-interest spots for radio and TV.
In my driving, I rarely see red-light running. So I called the government guy on the project (Hurd gave me the number) and asked for details. "Are cars blowing right through full reds, or is this just stretching the green like always, now being whooped up to pandemic proportions?"
He had no idea. His job was just to keep the machine smoking.
The smoke is very good for red-light cameras. Lockheed Martin has been the 900-pound gorilla of the ticket-by-mail business. Its camera-enforcement division was sold this past summer for a cool $825 million, prompting congressman Dick Armey, a Texas Republican, to say, "Consider[ing] they only get a cut of the entire ticket amount, you can see that red-light cameras are a multibillion-dollar industry."
Two years ago I talked to Dana King, Lockheed's vice-president of marketing for photo enforcement. He allowed that the public is wary of photo radar. "Most folks speed a little." But they don't run red lights. And they have no tolerance for offenders. So he uses red-light cameras to get a foot into a community's door. After a year or two, up-selling to include the photo-radar package is as easy as saying, "May I?"
Mesa, Arizona, is a fast-growing, slow-thinking burg on the outskirts of Phoenix, and it signed up for the full Lockheed Martin program in 1999, including five photo-radar vans and 13 intersections eyed by cameras. In the language of the bounty hunters, Mesa has 17 camera "approaches," 11 straight through and six left turns.
The red-light fine was set at $105, then hiked to $115. When the system became fully operational in May 2000, it proved to be a money loser for the city. So that October, city officials jacked up fines to $170. In November 2000, the city's traffic-engineering department decided a three-second yellow was too brief for the lefts and increased the time to four seconds. Bam! Violations dropped 73 percent at left-turn intersections.
The city's contract with Lockheed promised the bounty hunters a minimum of 18 violations per approach per day, or Mesa would have to pay a monthly fee of $2500 for each low-yielding approach. In the early months of 2001, 15 of the 17 approaches were hemorrhaging cash.
Let's call this crop failure what it is — a sturdy case of law-abiding traffic. Obviously, Mesa didn't have a problem.
The town had started the program with lofty tones, allowing a 0.3-second grace period into the red, "so anyone ticketed was really guilty." Starting in April 2001, adios, grace period. "It was believed this action might address the vendor's loss," said the city council report.
In effect, Mesa had shortened its yellows to raise the take. It helped, but not enough. So the city and Lockheed set to renegotiating the contract. Instead of pocketing $48.50 for each paid violation, Lockheed would reap $73 for the first 900 each month, $65 for the next 300, then it was back to the original rate. The city also agreed to ease Lockheed's labor in writing out complaints, but if the vendor's costs didn't drop enough, the city promised to renegotiate again. Talk about a sweetheart deal!
The sharp pencils at city hall said the new pact would raise its "break even" to about 2600 complaints each month (combined radar and red light) from 1800 before. But it planned to rejigger the law to give itself more time to serve complaints, "thus mitigating some of the negative fiscal impact."
Just as casino odds favor the house, Mesa and Lockheed have rigged the cameras to favor themselves. On approach, first you cross the wide white "stop bar" painted on the pavement. You're supposed to stop before you reach it. Next comes the crosswalk. If you cross both on yellow, you think you're into the intersection and should continue through. Nope. Mesa flags a violation "when your car clears the second inductance loop" buried in the pavement, according to Mesa police officer Terry Gibbs. I checked with the system engineer. No, the system triggers when your car first breaks into the loop; so much for her court testimony. The cops are confused, and so are the drivers, because this Gotcha! line is completely unmarked.
By making the Gotcha! line invisible, and by placing it long after the stop bar, Mesa does a late grab on cars at the tail end of the yellow, nabbing them when they think they're in the continue-through zone. Just a little trick to dig enough cash out of unsuspecting pockets to create a profitable business.
They protest: This is a safety program. With a secret Gotcha! line? Yeah, right.
http://www.caranddriver.com/article....rticle_id=1979
i LOVE bedard... why i look forward to C&D every month
Senior Moderator
Joined: Jun 2004
Posts: 18,097
Likes: 1,440
From: NYC
Originally Posted by deandorsey
A certain stench hangs over the idea of bounty hunters. Behold the freebooting opportunist, pocketing profits for being just a hair quicker than cops to reach the prize. Or worse yet, for nabbing someone not worth a lawman's chasing.
It gets even worse. Sometimes the law does a mutual back-scratching deal with the privateer, and they divvy up the loot.
Which brings us to red-light cameras, a boondoggle that franchises bounty hunters, setting them up in the business of snooping out infractions too small to be seen with the naked eye. These are honey-pot deals where the city governments keep jacking up the take and rejiggering the split until there's profit enough to make both sides fat.
When the flapdoodle over red-light running began to drown out the ball scores a few years ago, I called Tim Hurd at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. For every imaginable form of highway mayhem, he always has the latest body count.
Pinky all stinky
Joined: Jul 2003
Posts: 20,679
Likes: 194
My friends and I were lost in NY, Queens to be exact, and we blew right through a red light, unintentionally. I saw a flash afterward and knew it was a camera light (the ticket came in the mail a few weeks later). But from that experience, I would have to say that these cameras give you quite some leeway. I mean we ran right through the red light probably a full 2 seconds after it turned red.
Fahrvergnügen'd
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 13,494
Likes: 1,569
From: Maryland
Originally Posted by phile
My friends and I were lost in NY, Queens to be exact, and we blew right through a red light, unintentionally. I saw a flash afterward and knew it was a camera light (the ticket came in the mail a few weeks later). But from that experience, I would have to say that these cameras give you quite some leeway. I mean we ran right through the red light probably a full 2 seconds after it turned red.
That camera would have taken a picture .5 seconds to 25 seconds after it turned red.
Just because you blew through it 2 seconds afterwards doesn't mean anything
Thread Starter
Burning Brakes
Joined: Jun 2001
Posts: 969
Likes: 13
From: CT
Rear-end crashes go up after red-light cameras go in.
BY PATRICK BEDARD
September 2002
When the nation's No. 1 cheerleader for red-light cameras admits there might be one teensy-weensy downside to the program, you just know it's going to be a lulu so large it couldn't be crammed under the carpet without making a bulge the size of a circus tent.
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) recently enthused over traffic-tickets-by-mail schemes for an entire issue of its Status Report. On red-light cameras, however, it did allow that "most studies also reported increases in rear-end crashes."
It went on to say, "This isn't surprising. The more people stop on red, the more rear-end collisions there will be."
Duh!
Not to worry, however, because "photo enforcement leads to significant overall reductions in crashes," assures Susan Ferguson, the institute's senior vice-president for research.
Well, that depends on who's telling the story. The institute itself did two studies, both in Oxnard, California, the most recent one published in 2001. Other studies have been done, but the IIHS roundly pooh-poohs them. Why? Because they don't follow a curious methodology the IIHS invented especially for Oxnard.
IIHS insists that all red-light-camera studies must account for "regression to the mean" and for "spillover effects."
Regression to the mean is a fact of life; in any one year, there could be an extraordinarily large number of crashes at a particular intersection, but over several years the count will revert back to average (mean).
Funny that IIHS insists regression be accounted for in studies at stoplights when it never considers the same factor in its studies of speed limits.
Spillover effect is IIHS's trick for giving the cameras credit for reducing fatalities even where they aren't. It assumes that red-light cameras at a few intersections will cause drivers to stop promptly all over town, or all over the county, or maybe all over the state, so improvements outside the cameras' ZIP Codes are credited to them nonetheless. As statistical acrobatics go, this one is breathtaking.
But you ain't seen nothin' yet. The obvious way to gauge the payoff of red-light cameras is to compare intersections with cameras to those without, then zoom in on crashes actually caused by drivers running red lights. Instead, IIHS considered all crashes at all 125 signalized intersections in Oxnard and concluded that injury crashes dropped by 29 percent due to the cameras, even though they were installed at only 11 intersections.
Spillover effect, don't you know.
Skeptics will notice that crashes went down rather randomly all over town, and some ordinary intersections outperformed those with the gotcha equipment. The cameras look remarkably ineffectual until, just in time, spillover effect arrives to snatch victory from the jaws of ho-hum.
Skeptics will also notice that these IIHS studies, which pretend to be about red-light running, never bother to isolate those crashes specifically caused by running red lights. Why? It says, "The crash data did not contain sufficient detail to identify crashes that were specifically red-light-running events."
This is believable only to those who've never heard of police reports. Oxnard, like most California jurisdictions, reports crashes according to the California Highway Patrol protocol, which includes a "primary collision factor," i.e., the cause of the crash. Those reports are collected into a CHP database (SWITRS). Running red lights falls under the category of "stop signals and signs." According to Steve Kohler of the CHP, it includes stop signals and stop signs. Nothing else.
Since all signalized intersections in Oxnard are, by definition, controlled by signals and not stop signs, red-light running should be neatly isolated as a "primary collision factor." When IIHS finds numbers that support the story it wants to tell, it jumps on them like a trampoline. When it hides from numbers as it did in this case, you can bet they go the wrong way.
IIHS has refused to release the study's raw data so that others may verify its conclusions, but Jim Kadison, a disarmingly sincere member of the National Motorists Association, went directly to SWITRS for crash data on the nine signalized Oxnard intersections used in the first IIHS study. He smelled something funny in IIHS's breakdown of crashes; just nine percent were rear-enders. Across the nation, it's about 40 percent, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Looking at the data, Kadison could reduce rear-enders down to a single-digit share only by narrowing the definition of intersection to "between crosswalks." Narrowing that way chops off the entire approach to the intersection, exactly where rear impacts happen. It looks like IIHS purposely designed its study to avoid seeing rear-enders.
Sure enough, when he opened the "intersection" to include crosswalks and 100 feet each side of them, rear crashes rose to a more normal share. Over this enlarged zone, rear-end crashes increased by 33 after red-light cameras were installed. At the same time, side impacts dropped 25 percent. Kadison concludes that the cameras merely trade one type of crash for another.
IIHS's claim of safety from cameras is flatly contradicted by a number of cities that have tried them. "At some intersections [with cameras] we saw no change at all, and at several intersections we actually saw an increase in traffic accidents," admitted San Diego police chief David Bejarano on ABC News's Nightline.
In Charlotte, North Carolina, station WBTV had this to say, "Three years, 125,000 tickets, and $6 million in fines later, the number of accidents at intersections in Charlotte has gone down less than one percent. And the number of rear-end accidents, which are much more common, has gone up 15 percent."
In Greensboro, the News & Record reports, "There has not been a drop in the number of accidents caused by red-light violations citywide since the first cameras were installed in February 2001. There were 95 such accidents in Greensboro in 2001, the same number as in 2000. And at the 18 intersections with cameras, the number of wrecks caused by red-light running has doubled."
The granddaddy of all studies, covering a 10-year period, was done for the Australian Road Research Board in 1995 (cameras went up in Melbourne in 1984). Photo enforcement "did not provide any reduction in accidents, rather there has been increases in rear end and [cross-street] accidents," wrote author David Andreassen in the page-one summary.
Red-light cameras turn out to be a very expensive way to crank up rear-end crashes. Motorists in Washington, D.C., alone pay a half-million dollars a month in fines. That's not enough, IIHS says. It wants points on driving records, too.
http://www.caranddriver.com/article....&page_number=2
BY PATRICK BEDARD
September 2002
When the nation's No. 1 cheerleader for red-light cameras admits there might be one teensy-weensy downside to the program, you just know it's going to be a lulu so large it couldn't be crammed under the carpet without making a bulge the size of a circus tent.
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) recently enthused over traffic-tickets-by-mail schemes for an entire issue of its Status Report. On red-light cameras, however, it did allow that "most studies also reported increases in rear-end crashes."
It went on to say, "This isn't surprising. The more people stop on red, the more rear-end collisions there will be."
Duh!
Not to worry, however, because "photo enforcement leads to significant overall reductions in crashes," assures Susan Ferguson, the institute's senior vice-president for research.
Well, that depends on who's telling the story. The institute itself did two studies, both in Oxnard, California, the most recent one published in 2001. Other studies have been done, but the IIHS roundly pooh-poohs them. Why? Because they don't follow a curious methodology the IIHS invented especially for Oxnard.
IIHS insists that all red-light-camera studies must account for "regression to the mean" and for "spillover effects."
Regression to the mean is a fact of life; in any one year, there could be an extraordinarily large number of crashes at a particular intersection, but over several years the count will revert back to average (mean).
Funny that IIHS insists regression be accounted for in studies at stoplights when it never considers the same factor in its studies of speed limits.
Spillover effect is IIHS's trick for giving the cameras credit for reducing fatalities even where they aren't. It assumes that red-light cameras at a few intersections will cause drivers to stop promptly all over town, or all over the county, or maybe all over the state, so improvements outside the cameras' ZIP Codes are credited to them nonetheless. As statistical acrobatics go, this one is breathtaking.
But you ain't seen nothin' yet. The obvious way to gauge the payoff of red-light cameras is to compare intersections with cameras to those without, then zoom in on crashes actually caused by drivers running red lights. Instead, IIHS considered all crashes at all 125 signalized intersections in Oxnard and concluded that injury crashes dropped by 29 percent due to the cameras, even though they were installed at only 11 intersections.
Spillover effect, don't you know.
Skeptics will notice that crashes went down rather randomly all over town, and some ordinary intersections outperformed those with the gotcha equipment. The cameras look remarkably ineffectual until, just in time, spillover effect arrives to snatch victory from the jaws of ho-hum.
Skeptics will also notice that these IIHS studies, which pretend to be about red-light running, never bother to isolate those crashes specifically caused by running red lights. Why? It says, "The crash data did not contain sufficient detail to identify crashes that were specifically red-light-running events."
This is believable only to those who've never heard of police reports. Oxnard, like most California jurisdictions, reports crashes according to the California Highway Patrol protocol, which includes a "primary collision factor," i.e., the cause of the crash. Those reports are collected into a CHP database (SWITRS). Running red lights falls under the category of "stop signals and signs." According to Steve Kohler of the CHP, it includes stop signals and stop signs. Nothing else.
Since all signalized intersections in Oxnard are, by definition, controlled by signals and not stop signs, red-light running should be neatly isolated as a "primary collision factor." When IIHS finds numbers that support the story it wants to tell, it jumps on them like a trampoline. When it hides from numbers as it did in this case, you can bet they go the wrong way.
IIHS has refused to release the study's raw data so that others may verify its conclusions, but Jim Kadison, a disarmingly sincere member of the National Motorists Association, went directly to SWITRS for crash data on the nine signalized Oxnard intersections used in the first IIHS study. He smelled something funny in IIHS's breakdown of crashes; just nine percent were rear-enders. Across the nation, it's about 40 percent, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Looking at the data, Kadison could reduce rear-enders down to a single-digit share only by narrowing the definition of intersection to "between crosswalks." Narrowing that way chops off the entire approach to the intersection, exactly where rear impacts happen. It looks like IIHS purposely designed its study to avoid seeing rear-enders.
Sure enough, when he opened the "intersection" to include crosswalks and 100 feet each side of them, rear crashes rose to a more normal share. Over this enlarged zone, rear-end crashes increased by 33 after red-light cameras were installed. At the same time, side impacts dropped 25 percent. Kadison concludes that the cameras merely trade one type of crash for another.
IIHS's claim of safety from cameras is flatly contradicted by a number of cities that have tried them. "At some intersections [with cameras] we saw no change at all, and at several intersections we actually saw an increase in traffic accidents," admitted San Diego police chief David Bejarano on ABC News's Nightline.
In Charlotte, North Carolina, station WBTV had this to say, "Three years, 125,000 tickets, and $6 million in fines later, the number of accidents at intersections in Charlotte has gone down less than one percent. And the number of rear-end accidents, which are much more common, has gone up 15 percent."
In Greensboro, the News & Record reports, "There has not been a drop in the number of accidents caused by red-light violations citywide since the first cameras were installed in February 2001. There were 95 such accidents in Greensboro in 2001, the same number as in 2000. And at the 18 intersections with cameras, the number of wrecks caused by red-light running has doubled."
The granddaddy of all studies, covering a 10-year period, was done for the Australian Road Research Board in 1995 (cameras went up in Melbourne in 1984). Photo enforcement "did not provide any reduction in accidents, rather there has been increases in rear end and [cross-street] accidents," wrote author David Andreassen in the page-one summary.
Red-light cameras turn out to be a very expensive way to crank up rear-end crashes. Motorists in Washington, D.C., alone pay a half-million dollars a month in fines. That's not enough, IIHS says. It wants points on driving records, too.
http://www.caranddriver.com/article....&page_number=2
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Thread Starter
Burning Brakes
Joined: Jun 2001
Posts: 969
Likes: 13
From: CT
ok last one i promise.
The day the red-light ticket machine got wrecked.
BY PATRICK BEDARD
They've got the traffic-ticket machine cranked up now, and the cash flow has turned deliriously blurry. In Washington, D.C., the take from "camera enforcement" is $63,000 a day.
Let's zoom in: That's $44 a minute, day and night, seven days a week.
Since a modest start in August 1999 with two red-light cameras, D.C. has expanded to 39 camera intersections and five photo-radar teams. And the loot keeps piling up, over $25 million at last summer's start.
So far, all camera-enforcement schemes in the U.S. require at least some involvement by the local police. Somebody has to put down his Krispy Kreme and rubber-stamp the citations already written up by a profit-making contractor. But if the most enthusiastic camera cheerleader, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, has its way, the first fingers to touch your next ticket will be yours. In a recent issue of its Status Report, it wistfully dreamed about "fully automated systems . . . that can recognize license plates, link to motor-vehicle registration databases, and issue tickets."
"Judge, jury, and executioner, all in one convenient box," says Richard Diamond, staffer in Congressman Dick Armey's office.
Cashier, too, let me add.
Instamatic enforcement is unquestionably about revenues. Some folks think it's about safety, too, but the pile of evidence to the contrary grows as fast as the revenues. Here's my favorite example, this from San Diego's red-light camera program: On ABC's Nightline, police chief David Bejarano said that "it's true in a few intersections we found a few more accidents than prior to the red-light photo enforcement. At some intersections we saw no change at all, and at several intersections we actually saw an increase in traffic accidents."
An analyst with San Diego's Police Department traffic division, Elizabeth Yard, told the same story in an interview with the San Diego Union-Tribune: "I would have to say that the cameras themselves have not reduced the number of [injury] collisions that have happened at these intersections."
Here's another thing the cameras aren't about: justice. The argument for them starts out with one foot on a banana peel and the other on a fast freight. On the one foot, it maintains, speeding and red-light infractions are so serious they need 24/7 enforcement with an unblinking eye. On the other, they're so insignificant that we needn't bother with the usual constitutional niceties such as right to a trial and innocent until proven guilty and the right to be confronted by your accuser.
Just send in your check, and don't bother us with your sniveling "yes, buts."
I could make intellectual arguments. Common sense says if the offense is grievous enough to need surveillance by electronic means, then it's also threatening enough that the perp ought to be stopped immediately. That's what an officer does when he hands a ticket in through your lowered window. But sending out a notice in bulk mail, to be opened a few weeks later, has too much in common with credit-card billing to be confused with law enforcement.
Moreover, if these traffic transgressions are truly dire, then authorities are obligated to grab the right guy. The officer at your window performs that service, too. But Instamatic justice doesn't even try. The car owner gets the ticket, no matter who is driving. And if the owner didn't do it, and can prove same by showing his face is not the one in the photo, most jurisdictions still make him pay. They let him off only if he rats out the actual driver.
But why make principled arguments against camera enforcement when it indicts itself with its own fumbling? "We don't need no stinkin' trials," camera enthusiasts say, "because the meter is always right."
The everyday stories of Washington, D.C., say otherwise. There, about 45 percent of red-light and 41 percent of photo-radar infractions get tossed before they get mailed. That's because of "irregularities." Regular screw-ups, on the other hand, go through the system like water in a hose. About two years ago the camera at H and North Capitol NE was removed after police decided it had been wrongly positioned, according to the Washington Post. But some 13,000 innocents had already paid up. Tough. There are no plans for refunds.
The paper went on to detail just how faulty the system really is. In another example, about 330 innocents received photo-radar tickets because, it was later discovered, the camera had been improperly calibrated. "'Officers occasionally do enter an incorrect speed limit,' [Lt. Pat Burke] said, 'and some erroneously issued tickets slip through the review process.'"
"'Fairly often,' according to one examiner at the DMV's Bureau of Traffic Adjudication, 'motorists bring in separate speeding tickets showing their vehicles were cited at two different places in the city—at the same time.
"'Those ones we don't even delve into,' she said. 'We just dismiss.'"
The examiner went on to say that many motorists, preparing their own defense, ask to see the camera's maintenance records. "'It's a request that is denied,' she said, and when it is, 'most people are upset.'"
Typical of the photo cities, Washington, D.C., throws plenty of boulders in the path of anyone attempting to exercise his constitutional right to defense. "Regina Williams, a DMV spokeswoman, said those who appeal their tickets also have to pay a $10 appeal fee and $10 for each page of any hearing transcript, both nonrefundable. In addition, motorists must pay the fine until the appeal is resolved, which usually takes two months."
One Gotcha! piles on another. "William Roberts of Fort Washington got a speeding ticket in October. His citation said he was photographed in the 900 block of Southern Avenue SE going 44 mph in a 30-mph zone. He contested the ticket and was given an April 10 hearing.
"'In the meantime, they wrote me a letter telling me that my fine had doubled while I was appealing it,' Roberts said."
D.C. police defend their ticket machine by saying red-light running has dropped 64 percent since they cranked it up. Congressman Armey, a skeptic, observes that all those violations that were dismissed due to irregularities are back in the count to make "before" look worse that it was.
If reducing violations were really the point, then D.C. would follow the example of nearby Fairfax County, Virginia, which chopped red-light running to less than 1/10th its former rate at the corner of U.S. 50 and Fair Ridge Drive. The miracle was accomplished by lengthening the yellow to 5.5 seconds from 4.0. No civil rights were trampled in the process.
But there was a casualty. With citations dropping to less than one a day, the ticket machine is a total wreck.
http://www.caranddriver.com/article....rticle_id=1934
The day the red-light ticket machine got wrecked.
BY PATRICK BEDARD
They've got the traffic-ticket machine cranked up now, and the cash flow has turned deliriously blurry. In Washington, D.C., the take from "camera enforcement" is $63,000 a day.
Let's zoom in: That's $44 a minute, day and night, seven days a week.
Since a modest start in August 1999 with two red-light cameras, D.C. has expanded to 39 camera intersections and five photo-radar teams. And the loot keeps piling up, over $25 million at last summer's start.
So far, all camera-enforcement schemes in the U.S. require at least some involvement by the local police. Somebody has to put down his Krispy Kreme and rubber-stamp the citations already written up by a profit-making contractor. But if the most enthusiastic camera cheerleader, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, has its way, the first fingers to touch your next ticket will be yours. In a recent issue of its Status Report, it wistfully dreamed about "fully automated systems . . . that can recognize license plates, link to motor-vehicle registration databases, and issue tickets."
"Judge, jury, and executioner, all in one convenient box," says Richard Diamond, staffer in Congressman Dick Armey's office.
Cashier, too, let me add.
Instamatic enforcement is unquestionably about revenues. Some folks think it's about safety, too, but the pile of evidence to the contrary grows as fast as the revenues. Here's my favorite example, this from San Diego's red-light camera program: On ABC's Nightline, police chief David Bejarano said that "it's true in a few intersections we found a few more accidents than prior to the red-light photo enforcement. At some intersections we saw no change at all, and at several intersections we actually saw an increase in traffic accidents."
An analyst with San Diego's Police Department traffic division, Elizabeth Yard, told the same story in an interview with the San Diego Union-Tribune: "I would have to say that the cameras themselves have not reduced the number of [injury] collisions that have happened at these intersections."
Here's another thing the cameras aren't about: justice. The argument for them starts out with one foot on a banana peel and the other on a fast freight. On the one foot, it maintains, speeding and red-light infractions are so serious they need 24/7 enforcement with an unblinking eye. On the other, they're so insignificant that we needn't bother with the usual constitutional niceties such as right to a trial and innocent until proven guilty and the right to be confronted by your accuser.
Just send in your check, and don't bother us with your sniveling "yes, buts."
I could make intellectual arguments. Common sense says if the offense is grievous enough to need surveillance by electronic means, then it's also threatening enough that the perp ought to be stopped immediately. That's what an officer does when he hands a ticket in through your lowered window. But sending out a notice in bulk mail, to be opened a few weeks later, has too much in common with credit-card billing to be confused with law enforcement.
Moreover, if these traffic transgressions are truly dire, then authorities are obligated to grab the right guy. The officer at your window performs that service, too. But Instamatic justice doesn't even try. The car owner gets the ticket, no matter who is driving. And if the owner didn't do it, and can prove same by showing his face is not the one in the photo, most jurisdictions still make him pay. They let him off only if he rats out the actual driver.
But why make principled arguments against camera enforcement when it indicts itself with its own fumbling? "We don't need no stinkin' trials," camera enthusiasts say, "because the meter is always right."
The everyday stories of Washington, D.C., say otherwise. There, about 45 percent of red-light and 41 percent of photo-radar infractions get tossed before they get mailed. That's because of "irregularities." Regular screw-ups, on the other hand, go through the system like water in a hose. About two years ago the camera at H and North Capitol NE was removed after police decided it had been wrongly positioned, according to the Washington Post. But some 13,000 innocents had already paid up. Tough. There are no plans for refunds.
The paper went on to detail just how faulty the system really is. In another example, about 330 innocents received photo-radar tickets because, it was later discovered, the camera had been improperly calibrated. "'Officers occasionally do enter an incorrect speed limit,' [Lt. Pat Burke] said, 'and some erroneously issued tickets slip through the review process.'"
"'Fairly often,' according to one examiner at the DMV's Bureau of Traffic Adjudication, 'motorists bring in separate speeding tickets showing their vehicles were cited at two different places in the city—at the same time.
"'Those ones we don't even delve into,' she said. 'We just dismiss.'"
The examiner went on to say that many motorists, preparing their own defense, ask to see the camera's maintenance records. "'It's a request that is denied,' she said, and when it is, 'most people are upset.'"
Typical of the photo cities, Washington, D.C., throws plenty of boulders in the path of anyone attempting to exercise his constitutional right to defense. "Regina Williams, a DMV spokeswoman, said those who appeal their tickets also have to pay a $10 appeal fee and $10 for each page of any hearing transcript, both nonrefundable. In addition, motorists must pay the fine until the appeal is resolved, which usually takes two months."
One Gotcha! piles on another. "William Roberts of Fort Washington got a speeding ticket in October. His citation said he was photographed in the 900 block of Southern Avenue SE going 44 mph in a 30-mph zone. He contested the ticket and was given an April 10 hearing.
"'In the meantime, they wrote me a letter telling me that my fine had doubled while I was appealing it,' Roberts said."
D.C. police defend their ticket machine by saying red-light running has dropped 64 percent since they cranked it up. Congressman Armey, a skeptic, observes that all those violations that were dismissed due to irregularities are back in the count to make "before" look worse that it was.
If reducing violations were really the point, then D.C. would follow the example of nearby Fairfax County, Virginia, which chopped red-light running to less than 1/10th its former rate at the corner of U.S. 50 and Fair Ridge Drive. The miracle was accomplished by lengthening the yellow to 5.5 seconds from 4.0. No civil rights were trampled in the process.
But there was a casualty. With citations dropping to less than one a day, the ticket machine is a total wreck.
http://www.caranddriver.com/article....rticle_id=1934
Safety Car
Joined: Sep 2002
Posts: 4,426
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From: philly
Originally Posted by deandorsey
Rear-end crashes go up after red-light cameras go in.
Banned
Joined: Feb 2005
Posts: 7,309
Likes: 0
From: Champaign, Illinois
Who cares! I got a can of Photoblocker in my hands, and on Sunday, I will be spraying the entire can all over my body and rolling in it ... I mean, I'll be spraying it all over license plate.
Chicago and Cleveland can suck my salty Wolverine ballz, I'm not being scammed by their red-light camera games!!!!!!!!
:ibIlinkthisthreadtomyPhotoBlockerthread:
Chicago and Cleveland can suck my salty Wolverine ballz, I'm not being scammed by their red-light camera games!!!!!!!!
:ibIlinkthisthreadtomyPhotoBlockerthread:
Thread Starter
Burning Brakes
Joined: Jun 2001
Posts: 969
Likes: 13
From: CT
HA!
Red light cameras produce more accidents, but the money is great
Red light cameras have many motorists so worried that they slam on their brakes at the sight of a changing light — sometimes to their detriment. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the number of rear-end accidents at nine intersections in Gwinnett have doubled in some cases, since the installation of cameras. (Meanwhile, an additional $1 million in revenue have been generated). An increase in rear-end collisions was predicted by experts, who also said the number of more dangerous t-bone accidents would decrease. At the same intersection where rear-enders doubled, t-bone crashes fell from 22 in 2005 to 18 in 2005. The Leftlane Perspective: While we agree t-bone accidents are more dangerous, has no one ever heard of not turning left in front of a speeding car? (Of course, a drunken idiot could run an intersection when the light has been red for minutes, but these cameras are designed to catch those who like to try their luck with the amber light.)
http://www.leftlanenews.com/2006/04/...oney-is-great/
Red light cameras produce more accidents, but the money is great
Red light cameras have many motorists so worried that they slam on their brakes at the sight of a changing light — sometimes to their detriment. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the number of rear-end accidents at nine intersections in Gwinnett have doubled in some cases, since the installation of cameras. (Meanwhile, an additional $1 million in revenue have been generated). An increase in rear-end collisions was predicted by experts, who also said the number of more dangerous t-bone accidents would decrease. At the same intersection where rear-enders doubled, t-bone crashes fell from 22 in 2005 to 18 in 2005. The Leftlane Perspective: While we agree t-bone accidents are more dangerous, has no one ever heard of not turning left in front of a speeding car? (Of course, a drunken idiot could run an intersection when the light has been red for minutes, but these cameras are designed to catch those who like to try their luck with the amber light.)
http://www.leftlanenews.com/2006/04/...oney-is-great/
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