So, basically in Tennessee they punish you for wanting your day in court, ain't that something...
One way to beat a red-light camera: Don’t enter the intersection on a yellow light.
One way to beat a red-light camera: Don’t enter the intersection on a yellow light. I know someone who had to pay $300.
Naples, FL has this red light system. I have heard stories on the local news that people were getting tickets for turning right on red.
It's time that they too caught up with reality and put safety above revenue enhancement.
"After a number of independent studies began to show that the devices fail to deliver the promised safety benefit, some states moved to ban their use (view studies)."
http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/26/2690.asp
I got a ticket from a red-light camera in my home city and I went back and timed the length of the yellow light at that camera and then timed several other yellow lights not connected to red-light cameras. The results were not surprising given the way cops cheat with these cameras and radar guns: the yellow light at the intersection with the red-light camera was 3 seconds long, but all the other yellow lights were 4 seconds long. I ran the red light by 0.6 seconds, so I would have been OK if it had been a standard yellow light. The same company that installed the red-light cameras was caught using short yellow lights in another city near me.
Mr. Burton, if you’re reading this thread, the first thing you should do is go back and time the length of the yellow light at that intersection with a stop watch. Then time several other yellow lights at intersections without a camera in the same city, and see if the yellow light at the intersection with the camera is shorter than the other yellow lights. This is apparently a scam frequently used by these red-light camera companies to generate more tickets, and I’ve heard some of these companies get a payment for each ticket they generate. So they have an incentive to scam the public by setting the yellow lights up with a shorter time than the usual time.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/apr/05/the-traffic-camera-scam/
Increasing the length of the yellow light by one second reduces these violations by up to 80%. But some municipalities choose to reduce yellow-light length, to increase revenue.
So, if it's the "middle of the night", you can break the law. I go to work very early on Mondays and I must say, a lot of people on the road have that same attitude. They don't stop at stop signs and some just breeze through red lights.
If you don't want a ticket, don't break the law.
I sincerely believe that these cameras should be outlawed for a very simple reason.
That is, they record the license plate of the vehicle and issue the ticket to it’s registered owner.
What if the registered owner was not the driver? Seems like wrongful persecution doesn’t it? Violation of civil rights?
The cameras must be outlawed. If the intersection is a problem then put police there. End of story.
They killed off that Golden Goose in our state.
State law said all the fine money from traffic tickets had to go to the schools. The school systems sued for “ALL” the money generated from the photo cameras.
Since the police departments paid a private company to run the cameras they would be losing money - so they all stopped and now the schools get nothing.
Personally, I support blowing them off their mounts with a shotgun.
They are not there for safety purposes. They are nothing but a revenue producing scam, no different than excessively low speed limits on highways that run through rural towns.
I am firmly opposed to criminalizing behavior for the sole consideration of how much money it will make the municipality.
If they play their game by cheating with three second yellow lights, I don't feel bad to cheat back.
“Smith also said the cameras violate Tennessee’s open courts law because every time you get a ticket you owe $50.”
In CA it is $370.