Arizona has the most egregious examples of this hidden tax program. The CITY of Scottsdale is taxing citizens, er I mean issuing tickets to speeders, by positioning unmanned photo radar (speed cameras) along a stretch of STATE highway in one of the most affluent sections of Arizona.
Wait til the other states get a load of the revenue, excuse me, I mean safe driving conditions, this will generate.
Puhlease.
The highway patrol's union head (I think that's who said this) had it right:
"Convincing citizens that photo radar is in their best interest is like convincing trout that fishing in their stream is for their benefit".
One city in AZ realized they were short of revenue for their targets...so they decided to buy another camera to offset the decrease in tax revenues. Now, all these redlight cameras have been "upgraded" to add speed detection capability.
Read the Arizona Repulsive's coverage of the issue. See how they repeat the tired mantra - "its about safety, its for the children". Not content their message was getting through, they even named the section of freeway a catchy name like "the death corridor" because it had 7 fatalities in one year (or some such relatively insignificant and easily spun statistic).
With their worn out mantra about safety, they mention all the stats about tickets issued, fines collected, non-issuable tickets...conspicuously absent is accident prevention metrics where the best they can do for relevant metrics is comparing this heavily regulated, camera-covered stretch of highway to an equidistant (yet socio-demographically opposite) but non-camera covered stretch of highway on the absolute other side of town.
They have yet to "release" the metrics showing how effective these tactics have been on reducing accidents in the same section of freeway in a similar time period after the install of the cameras.
For a time, the state legislators balked at the audacity of Scottsdale to poach on their turf...right up until they got a whiff of the cash involved. Seems the state is now complicit after a deal to share proceeds. Our "Janet Reno-lite" governor is now pushing for more cities to adopt this tactic to fleece law abiding citizens and enrich the camera company that pockets the lion's share of the fine. The city of Scottsdale opened a revamped impressive payment processing center that has 20 some windows to handle the volume of transactions around these tickets.
We need to stand up and resist these veiled attempts to make law abiding citizens pay, meanwhile they do nothing to add police to the streets to pursue thefts, drunk drivers, and legitimate threats to public safety...
dang - must have hung on the "post" button a little too long. Apologies!
Those unmaned speed camera came about after constant problems with drivers doing 100+ mph on that same state highway. DPS could never take care of the problem so Scottsdale got tired of it and put cameras on the freeway.
I'd complain but I'm not in the "It's a god given right to do 115 in a 65" group.