Posted on 06/07/2013 7:43:57 PM PDT by george76
Edited on 06/09/2013 7:00:47 AM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
Those traffic cameras drivers hate and municipal bean counters love have brought a small village in Ohio to a grinding halt.
Elmwood Place (pop. 2,188) has seen four of its six Village Council members resign amid public outrage over a flurry of fines issued by the cameras. The devices have raised nearly $2 million for the tiny Cincinnati suburb, but angry drivers and shopkeepers complain the ticket blitz from above could turn downtown Elmwood Place into a ghost town. Now, with two-thirds of the council gone, partly in protest over the cameras, the governing body can't reach a quorum to conduct the people's business.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
I don’t necessarily mind speeding/red light cameras, but I do mind when the lights are manipulated to maximize revenue.
It’s not about public safety, it’s about generating revenue for the city.
Red light cameras and speed cameras generating hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for municipalities across the country-politicians refer to this as “not raising taxes on the working class”.
They only generate revenue to be in the black when the yellow is shorter than reasonable.
Increase the yellow by a second and you decrease revenue by 90%.
Let's see if the town even misses its governing body.
Those cameras are all over the greater area around Denver with quite a few here and there in tourist areas on the Range in CO. Plus the tricky, new ammunition magazine laws targeting out-of-staters, marijuana law traps, fire bans in place, recreational firearms use outlawed, etc.
They sometimes shorten the yellow lights to up revenues. That gets people killed. Those who do so need to go to prison (not jail).
Bipartisan politicians don’t call the funds taxes, BTW, but “revenues” (re. Boehner comments). The political/regulator class constituents and their pet bureaucrats need them to enforce political correctness and prevent competition from the unworthy.
> I don’t necessarily mind speeding/red light cameras, but I do mind when the lights are manipulated to maximize revenue.
Then you should hate them all the time because they just used YOUR tax dollars to buy and install them so they can suck more money out of your wallet. Hell I know some lowlife towns tht set them at intersections where they know a car or two is going to get stuck under the red light like near railroad crossings and traffic lights that dont have a left turn signal at an intersection that’s o busy it’s almost impossible to make a left turn. Hell they know what they’re going. Half the time you hear cars hit their brakes hard to keep from going through a yellow light and half the the time they get rear-ended. Automated traffic cams are like Mafia goons that force you to fork over your hard cash by rigging the contest so you lose everytime...
This did that.
That's just us.
/johnny
We have several of the damnable things in our town. I don’t mind the ones in the school zones because that’s a static, fixed speed situation.
I know that it’s an entirely anecdotal observation on my part but the impression I get now with the large intersections is more, not less extreme behavior as drivers race to avoid the red.
Our mayor claims that the streets are safer but we recently had a fatality where the car accelerated wildly to beat the light only to hit and kill a pedestrian a hundred feet down the way. They aren’t including the incident in the stats because (they say) it “didn’t occur in an intersection”.
A pox on them and all who enable them.
Sickening.
For me, for traffic light cameras to be acceptable:
1. They would have to provide proof that the car entered the intersection while the light was red (and not just proof that the car was in the intersection while the light was red), and
2. they would have to provide proof of who was driving, and
3. the vendors who installed and operated the cameras would have to be on a fixed-price contract, so that they would have no financial incentive to falsify the system, and
4. the funds raised through fines must not, in any way, be used in a way that provide any sort of financial or political benefit to any level of governmental authority that had any level of oversight, no matter how indirect, over the management and installation of the traffic lights.
In other words, there should be no motive, either on the part of the vendor or of the government to manipulate the lights and/or the cameras so as to increase revenues.
Then you should hate them all the time because they just used YOUR tax dollars to buy and install them so they can suck more money out of your wallet. Hell I know some lowlife towns that set them at intersections where they know a car or two is going to get stuck under the red light like near railroad crossings and traffic lights that dont have a left turn signal at an intersection that’s so busy it’s almost impossible to make a left turn. Hell they know what they’re doing. Half the time you hear cars hit their brakes hard to keep from going through a yellow light and half the the time they get rear-ended. And forget that adding one second decreases their revenue. They shouldn’t be there in the first place. Automated traffic cams are like Mafia goons that force you to fork over your hard cash by rigging the contest so you lose everytime...
??? I live in police Mommy state Maryland and red light/speed cameras are the last of my concerns.
They have to be visible to work and my phone warns me whenever I approach one.
In fact we have roving speed camera vans in my county and while they make lots of money they are just too easy to see and beat. In fact I regularly take pictures of them and I report their positions on my phone app.
Honestly, people HERE who I lecture on how these work get caught more than once by them afterward, People are clueless/
Its like the state lottery, for morons.
So you don’t “mind” them huh? If your not doing anything wrong you have nothing to fear?
Trade freedom for safety? Willing cede personal power to strangers to keep your butt safe? Nice. Go to DU. Lets keep gubment small. Lets keep gubment small, fearful and ineffectual. Lets keep King George where he belongs, across the pond.
I want Liberty! The price one MUST pay for Liberty, is Risk. They are flip sides of the same coin. If you want to save your sorry butt, wear bubble wrap, but please, please, please, never ever contact your city councilman or vote.
Uh, you forgot the main problem with the cameras. They increase the number of rear end collisions by changing the meaning of a yellow light from "Stop if you can do so safely." to "Slam on your brakes instantly or risk a ticket."
One study found that a one second increase in time a yellow light was displayed resulted in an 80% reduction in red light violations. The lesson is obvious: if you want to decrease accidents, increase the length of the yellow and get rid of the damn cameras. Some greedy municipalities do exactly the opposite, adding cameras and shortening the yellow to generate more revenue. Bring on the lawsuits.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.