And I speak from personal experience.Posted on 12/28/2014 9:36:52 AM PST by Kaslin
Like the good people of Arizona, I despise speed cameras.
But not because I want reckless driving. Instead, my disdain is based on the fact that governments set up cameras where speed limits are preposterously low in order to generate revenue. And I speak from personal experience.
Like the good people of Houston, I also despise red-light cameras.
But once again, this isn’t because I want jerks racing through red lights and endangering innocent people. Instead, my opposition is based on the fact that greedy governments – operating recklessly – use such cameras as tools to fleece drivers.
Holman Jenkins has a column in today’s Wall Street Journal, explaining how the industry was supposed to operate.
A promising industry betrayed by the behavior of its customers—that’s the story of the red-light camera business. …Redflex Traffic Systems, leading practitioner of the once-sparkling business of setting up automatic traffic-enforcement systems for municipalities. The company and its industry were set to grow. The product improved traffic safety, freed up officers for more important work, and paid for itself. Towns and cities didn’t even have to budget a dime upfront because Redflex assumed the costs and risks of setting up cameras at designated intersections.
But in the real world, that’s not what happened. Politicians all over the nation used cameras as revenue-generating devices.
…serial revelations by the Chicago Tribune about the city’s buccaneering ways—running its camera system for profits rather than safety. …New York state conspicuously authorized cameras at various upstate locations in 2010 to close a budget gap. When New Jersey last week let a five-year experiment lapse amid a voter backlash, Moody’s called the decision a “credit negative” for local treasuries. In California, public acceptance steadily eroded as politicians kept piling on “surcharges” that turn a hundred-dollar traffic offense into a $500 fine in the mail. …the Trib cited the city’s “long-standing reliance on using the lowest possible yellow light time” to maximize revenues even at the cost of encouraging more accidents. …a universal peeve of motorists, being fined for a harmless rolling right on red.
At this point, some people may be thinking that this is no big deal. After all, they might argue, at least the cameras make the roads safer.
But according to research commissioned by the Chicago Tribune, the cameras simply replace one type of accident with another, at least in part because the city government rigged the system to maximize revenue rather than safety.
Here are some excerpts from a report published by Reason.
Chicago’s red light camera program hasn’t made driving in the city any safer and has replaced one type of car crash for another. The cameras are there obviously to make money for the city, not for the benefit and safety of the residents. The Chicago Tribune commissioned a study to break down the city’s claims that cameras have reduced right-angle crashes at intersections by 47 percent and calls the number nonsense. They calculate that it actually dropped the rate of crashes that caused injuries by only 15 percent. That wouldn’t be such a terrible number if engineers hadn’t also calculated that their cameras didn’t also cause a 22 percent increase in rear-end collisions that caused injuries. …the Tribune story makes sure to point out how much revenue the city has gotten from the program—$500 million over 12 years. The Tribune also reminds readers of the many, many, many scandals and issues the program has faced, like tickets handed out for lights that had yellow signal times below the national standard, unexplained ticket surges, and outright bribes from a company operating the cameras to city officials.
By the way, this data from Chicago isn’t an anomaly. Radley Balko has reported on similar accident-causing scams all over the nation.
So now, perhaps, you’ll understand why I wrote more than three years ago that Jay Beeber is a hero.
Anyway he told me it was against the law here in Clarksville to use those covers (it was an excuse of course to increase the revenue for the police department) and told me to take the cover off after I was finished with my appointment. He didn't give me no ticked so after I got home I took the cover off
One encounter sounds awfully low...
IOW, they’re working just the way liberals want them to work.
I have seen stories on the news about people in Britain smashing and sabotaging the cameras on their roadways, especially in rural areas. See Freeper dead’s post, # 21.
Here in Maine, as I’ve said, I have never see a red-light camera, but I have seen cameras at some intersections...not all, but some. The powers-that-be claim they use them to monitor the flow of traffic and/or to quickly respond to accidents. So they say....
The police here give tickets the old fashioned way...in person. Although I’ve never gotten one.
I just realized that you’re in Maine, too.
Have you seen actual red light cameras in your part of the state? I’ve never seen one anywhere I’ve been in Maine. An occasional camera, yes, but not of the red light variety.
Then again, the Maine Turnpike in my area of Maine has no toll booths, unlike southern Maine.
Recently I was listening to the local news on a local radio station. The news story was about a traffic light in a local town being on the fritz. The light had a couple service calls and was once again out of service. One brilliant town councilman noted that the stop signs erected at the intersection were doing an adequate job regulating the traffic and made a motion not to apply for a PennDOT grant, and install a new microprocessor-controlled, “security” camera equipped, LED traffic light with all new paving, markings, crosswalks with ADA compliant tactile warning strip curbs and audio alarm crosswalk signals...
...but to take down the light and just leave the stop signs to regulate the traffic.
Whodathunk such a SIMPLE solution might 1) be a fully effective one, and 2) be the solution that cost the least amount to the taxpayers? The motion was seconded, and the motion was approved.
As noted by so many, they make that difficult with their cameras. When you set up a camera, one would think they wouldn't be in zones that are so slow that such a rate of speed is hard to keep without constant attention. Create a 20 to 25 mph zone, allow only 3 mph or less flex, and you have made a situation that is bordering on the difficult for drivers to actually handle, even if they do have good intent.
And quick yellow light times is another issue, and the rolling stop into a right turn. Then there are the flat out speed traps, setting a complete slowdown at the bottom of a hill from a previously much higher speed.
These are fund-raising devices. And to be honest with you, there's real problem with simply getting a ticket in the mail that says you were speeding on a freeway during rush hour with hundreds of cars around you at some point a few weeks earlier. How do you respond to that, and especially if it's just a few mph over the limit?
Were you? You don't know. You don't remember. Was it your car? Who knows really?
But it would be awful easy just to take a bunch of pictures and send them a letter demanding cash.
The Mafia probably aches that they didn't come up with this first.
“In the UK, that’s exactly what people were doing. In response, they kept hardening the cases, but the people just got bigger explosives. They were blowing them up with quarter sticks of dynamite at one point”.
Wow, where did you hear this? We could use a few ‘Cool Hand Lukes’ in the USA.
Re: “A universal peeve of motorists, being fined for a harmless rolling right on red.”
Harmless?
The author must have no experience as a pedestrian.
I live in a busy downtown area and walk everywhere.
My greatest fear and most frequent close call?
People making right turns on red.
If you happen to be on the right side of their car, they are staring left, at oncoming traffic, and have NO idea you are there.
“Angry Populace Burning British Surveillance Cameras”
Cool, thanks.
ping me
“Yellow intervals for traffic signals aren’t just pulled out of thin air. The yellow interval is computed based on engineering principles, with the travel speed of the roadway as the main factor in determining the minimum yellow time for safe stopping”
In my city, I think we have “smart” signals that go yellow when my car is about to go through the intersection. I suspect it is OK to go through, but need to make a very quick decision.
It is not too hard to imagine the light being set to change so that it is not OK to go through.
**
There is one intersection right by one police station that takes a while to cycle all three directions. One day, the light went green and bam, it went yellow. I thought it was a malfunction. The next day, bam it goes yellow, one car goes through the red. Bam, a squad car materializes. Maybe it wasn’t a malfunction.
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