Posted on 08/18/2019 10:57:14 AM PDT by MarvinStinson
Speed and red-light cameras are the bane of many motorists. A modern idea made possible by technology, they have been installed in at least 24 states. Although these cameras are a revenue boon for governments across the nation, their intrusion into daily life is disturbing, and their constitutionality is dubious.
Specifically, use of these cameras could violate the Sixth Amendment. The Confrontation Clause grants criminal defendants the right to be confronted with the witnesses against them. Since it is a camera and not a person that witnessed the offense, such violations generally cannot be considered a criminal offense. The ticket is issued to the owner of the vehicle, not to the person driving it, leaving a lack of certainty as to the identity of the offender.
Therefore, the “ticket” in most places is nothing more than a civil fine, making enforcement and collection difficult. To date, governments have avoided this problem by requiring payment of the fine before motorists can renew their driver’s license or auto registration. Although there generally are appeals procedures, they typically do not give drivers a day in court. In other words, what happened to being innocent until proven guilty?
There are several for-profit companies that install and operate the cameras, some of them foreign-owned. In a typical arrangement, a camera company will contract with a local government to pay the capital cost of installing the cameras in exchange for a share of the revenue generated via fines. In short, governments get a new revenue stream without any operating cost, and the camera companies make a tidy profit.
The companies and government officials argue that greater safety will result from fewer accidents and that the increased government revenue will benefit the local communities.
Studies to confirm those claims have yielded mixed results. Studies paid for by the camera companies or governments usually show fewer accidents. Independent studies and those financed by opponents usually show no gains and sometimes worse results.
There is more evidence that greater public safety actually depends on the timing of yellow and red lights. Longer yellow and all-way red times have been shown to significantly reduce accidents. Sometimes local governments actually decrease yellow-light timing to catch more red-light runners, a result of the perverse financial incentives that tempt government officials and camera companies. Studies also show motorists are more likely to hit the brakes hard at camera-enforced intersections, increasing rear-end collisions.
Unsurprisingly, these cameras are deeply unpopular. Since 1991, there have been 42 elections on adopting or prohibiting either speed or red-light cameras or both. In all but two of these, voters have opposed the cameras by an average margin of 63 percent.
However, polling on the issue can show different results. A recent Public Opinion Strategies poll of 800 likely voters nationwide found 69 percent of respondents either strongly or somewhat support red-light cameras, while 29 percent somewhat or strongly oppose. Interestingly, 47 percent of those same respondents thought most of their neighbors opposed the cameras.
A possible explanation is that, as a national poll, most respondents do not live in a locality with red-light cameras since less than half the states allow them and not all jurisdictions in those states have them. Therefore, many have never experienced them. Familiarity breeds contempt.
Most citations for speed and red-light cameras are simply civil fines. The offender essentially has no recourse in court. The financial incentive creates a conflict of interest for local elected officials and camera companies to game the system in their favor. These factors can undermine citizens’ faith in government and breed mistrust.
We are brought up to respect the legal system that was handed down to us through English common law. We expect the laws to be just and fairly applied. We expect to always have recourse in the courts. And most importantly, we always expect to be treated equally before the law. Speed and red-light cameras are contrary to those expectations. This is not good for the civil society, especially at a time when distrust in government is high.
They should team the red light cameras to catch people smoking dope and playing with their cell phones!
Burn them all!
Consider this reality and red light cameras. Your car, your license plate, and you as the owner gets the ticket. Even if someone else is the one who was driving your car you are the one guilty of running a red light whether you were physically there or not because you are the owner of the car.
You will suffer all the consequences of points on your license, higher insurance rates, Etc. Even though it was not you. Now if it was an officer who physically detains you this possibility is just not there, whoever actually ran the light will get the ticket to their own license and you are not guilty of anything as it should be.
Would you consider this to be an acceptable personal sacrifice on your part to make folks safer?
Oh please.
“A good defensive driving class will TEACH you that GREEN means take your foot off the gas pedal and look before entering the intersection.”
I have a million accident free driving miles.
You nailed it. Never enter a green intersection before looking both right and left. All other drivers are out there to kill you. Nearly all irresponsible drivers can be avoided. A vehicle pulling immediately in front of your vehicle, from a cross street, stopped, is the only thing that cannot be avoided. Most of them have Darwined out though.
But cars drive reckless. It is their nature.
Such as, cars merge into the lane as a group. Instead if they space out, they have a safety buffer. But few car drivers create buffers.
If you ever merged on to the freeway, but needed the emergency lane as a buffer, you are a dangerous group pack driver.
Offset driving is safer, but cars love staying in social packs.
Car drivers have a lot more control over safety than they realize, but few use it. They drive socially unaware of their surroundings.
Don’t want bureaucrats in your town to shorten yellow lights to the point it causes lots of accidents?
Texas found that particular problem so ubiquitous that camera tickets had to be banned.
Out of state come back and fight it. Cost more than the ticket.
I was visiting Chicago a few months ago and noticed that I actually could tell an intersection was patrolled by a camera by how short the yellow was. People get used to a certain length of time with all the non-camera locations, then get nailed by the cameras. It’s dispicable.
I live in Kentucky. Their solution is simple. The light turns red and then, a couple of seconds later, the other direction’s light goes green.
How would you "fix" it?
If those camera’s save on life it is worth it.
When red light camerss go up:
Angular “T-bone” collisions go down.
Rear end collisions go WAY up.
WHERE DO YOU DRIVE? I've been driving for 60 years and driven over 800,000 miles and only once did I have a close call with a light runner.
Don’t want a traffic ticket? Don’t break the law.
I think for most situations, roundabouts would solve the safety issue and also enable traffic to flow smoothly. I love those things.
It’s a habit you catch onto real fast after a couple close calls when riding street bikes. Even if you have the right of way and cross traffic has stop signs in quiet neighborhoods.
And let’s be frank. Most of those deaths at intersections are not from someone trying to “beat a read light”. They are from someone that didn’t see it. It had been red a long time before they entered. Just watch the crash compilation videos on Youtube.
anything more than a moderately busy turn circle is a death trap...
FWIW, I’ve watched hundreds of crash compilation videos. I’ve seen a LOT of obviously fatal accidents at standard intersections, but not a one at turn circles. There simply is not enough kinetic energy involved and, most importantly, the cars are all going, in essence, the same direction.
no they are not worth it
when police officers were directing traffic through red lights along a major road as a traffic control measure after a major event at the Prudential Center.
i.e. the one you mentioned suggests something far more nefarious than simply “making a mistake”.
For those not familiar with red light cameras, most of the money made is not due to actually nailing people running red lights, it is for the unpardonable sin of putting your front tire on or across the first white line of the pedestrian walk.
The favorite location is one where signs or vegetation blocks your view to the right so you have to pull forward to see to safely make a right turn. That will be $75.
Not to mention previous to red light cameras, when the fire truck came up behind a line of cars they would clear the intersection as it was safe to do so. Now they just plant until the light turns. I don’t blame them a bit.
I used to follow this stuff really closely. There was one camera in the Chicago area that had the proud distinction of every single ticket it wrote was for failure to come to a full and complete stop before making a right hand turn. And this was a road where there was very little cross traffic and vision was clear for a very long way. i.e. it should have been a “right turn yield” sign anyway.
There is one on the route to return rental cars to O’hare that is brutal. People are in a hurry. There’s obviously no traffic, and they nail you. It almost nailed me once and I knew it was there!
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