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 ...
Well, of course he didn't. Have you ever traveled between Carlsbad, NM and Odessa, TX? there is no place to hide, but plenty of places to blend in.
What I left out of this story is, we didn't get a ticket. The officer was polite and friendly, as I'm sure a camera would not be.
BTW, with or without a ticket, we would not have needed to replay events. We KNEW we were speeding.
I once drove from Pecos to Ft.Stockton at over 90 MPH when my grandfather died. I had my flashers on for the sake of other drivers, but totally expected a ticket. Personal issues are No defense to breaking the law.
Cameras don't change the facts, they are just lazy.
Who said they were? I said the complete opposite. To have to repeat, When we got those tickets its because we were not paying attention.
Now you tell me the cop didn’t cite you for ‘breaking the law’ even though he caught you, as you put it.
If you are not smarter than a highly visible and well known (published location) traffic trap cam, then you deserve a simple fine.
Yep, They are sheep here for sure.
Where do you reside?
Texas or New Mexico?
Because if you don’t reside in either, don’t tell me what cops will or will not do to honest people.
And, I don’t need to be smarter than a damn camera. A camera is an inanimate object incapable of thought. They are a travesty of justice.
You should. They are almost never put in for safety issues. It’s all about revenue collection. Many places futz with the light times. They also have been shown to be positioned at incorrect angles to garner more tickets.
And besides, there was a case just recently where a guy won because the picture taken doesn’t show who’s driving the car, the ticket is just sent to who it is registered to. Won the case - they did not prove he was the one driving.
This is now going to be the technique to defeat the speed/redlight revenue generators.
Look, your argument is completely ridiculous.
Claiming that we should raise a big stink about fixed position well known location traffic law violation ‘fine only’ cams just because your local police have always let you off the hook every time they caught you breaking the law, just because they like the way you look.
I don't give a crap about your claims that your police are so gullible (unlike a cam) that your great personality only works to get you off with a human being not a camera. That is just nonsense arguments.
Yep we been going through the same crap in our town. Property taxes falling due to foreclosures and real estate prices crashing meaning local tax levies producing less and less drying up the city coffers.
So the brilliant new female mayor decides to suddenly enforce a badly worded ordinance that makes anyone who owns a recreational camping trailer and parks it on there property in violation if they don't move it every 48 hours. (The ordinance was to keep people leaving junk cars sitting around in their yards. At one time it got pretty bad around here with dozens of housing with up to 15 cars on their property and not one capable of being driven.)
The service director issued 23 fines in a single day at 500 bucks a piece. Two days later his car and the mayors both got cement blocks through the windshield with notes attached saying change the ordinance now.
Council repealed the law unanimously and also repealed it retroactively so none of the fines issued were valid. No one investigated the windshield incidents because they knew no one was gonna talk.
It came out a few weeks ago that Florida DOT shortened yellow lights from national standards. To increase revenue of course.
These cameras have nothing whatsoever to do with safety. Get rid of them.
Regards,
A simple way to starve the gaping maw of government (at least here in New York State) is to set a recurring yearly reminder on your computer or smart phone to get your car inspected and/or your registration renewed in time. Local governments are now dependent on setting up police road blocks to pull people over and charge ridiculously high surcharges on top of fines for expired stickers. These surcharges are more than the fine itself. If even half the people who are now being snagged this way were in compliance in the future, these mindless bureaucrats would being to feel some pain and have to look for another, more obvious way, to bleed the taxpayers.
That video illustrates the mentality of a lot of our traffic engineers in this country. Instead of setting up the lights in a sequence that allows smooth, flowing traffic at a reasonably fast speed, they seem to have them timed to snarl up traffic by creating unnecessary, repetitive bottlenecks. The newer "on demand" lights are no different - a car pulls up on the side road and instantly, traffic on the main thoroughfare is brought to a halt so that the one lonely car can proceed (and is often making a right turn which can be done legally on red).
That and the excessively long red lights on major routes are why people are intent on pushing the yellow to the limit. For to stop means 2-3 minutes more travel time.
That might not seem like a lot, but it adds up quickly. I can make the 12 mile venture to work at 04:30 in about 15 minutes. It takes almost a half hour to drive home because of traffic lights (and slugs that clog up the road, but that's another issue).
Is that because most brits don’t own to .22s
In Illinois where I used to live, the red light cameras issue the most tickets for right turn on red without a full stop. Not a safety issue at all. I just refused to turn on red at these intersections.
Back around 1990 or so, I was driving back to Texas from Lowery AFB on leave.. Going through NM, miles and miles of straight road and nothing or no one else.
(I was on a 600cc motorcycle).. Was cruising at a little over 130mph (I was young and stupid) and finally saw a car up ahead in the distance...
It went from being an ant in size to a full size car in less than 30 seconds.. was a NM state trooper! I quickly slowed down in enough time to avoid passing (probably had to change my shorts after that ;))..
I could see the driver looking in his rear-view at me and could imagine the big smile on his face.. He never stopped me (phew). He turned off several miles later.
Finally going across the border into Texas, I gunned it again, and not even 5 minutes later, I got stopped by Texas DPS >.< (hahaha)... I signed the ticket, waited 4 hours for the JP to get to his office so I could pay the fine.. and went on home (stying within the speed limit the rest of the way :p
(No, I would NOT drive that way now that I am older... I know it was stupid, all it would have taken to take me out was a rabbit running across the road :/)
I too live in MD and have hatred for the camera’s although my county (Harfgord) doesn’t have them. I work in Baltimore but there are none on my route so the only one I need to worry about is the mobile one on I-95 but they are too stupid to move around so it’s always in the same place.
And then there’s the tunnel cops. As I understand, their jurisdiction is within 3 miles of a toll bridge or tunner yet I see them daily raising revenue on I-95 miles from the tunnel.
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