The cameras were nothing but a money maker for the local governments. If you look they tended to be installed at locations that had few accidents but are prone to red light running because of poor light timing/street design.
You really can't justify high volumes of red-light runners you know.
I think you must be thinking of DC's light system for catching speeders. The answer there is, of course, don't speed.
In Virginia, you guys shouldn't have been running red lights, and you would have been able to stop the lightmeisters in their capitalist footsteps.
As it is I'm happy we have "shall issue" and "open carry" in our law. You just never know when you are going to need to confront some yahoo who just tried to murder you with a 3,500 LB SUV at the intersection down the street.