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Posted on 04/17/2014 6:21:26 PM PDT by george76
State legislators are inching toward slamming the brakes on photo red light and photo radar tickets in Aurora and around the state — a move that has city lawmakers turning crimson themselves.
...
The ban — which has the support of Republican and Democrat leaders — is now set to go before the full Senate .
(Excerpt) Read more at aurorasentinel.com ...
All about the $$$$$$, not about safety.
Whenever I’m in Chicago in a rental car and I see I’m going through one of those intersections, if the light turns yellow, I want to slam on the brakes as hard as I can. Amazingly, I have not been rear ended yet, but the day will come.
Still, police said, rear-end crashes are far less dangerous that the T-bone style crashes caused by drivers barreling through a red light.
The police were told they had to report what impact the cameras would have on traffic.
They did not. They simply installed them.
A couple of years later they were warned they had to report what impact the cameras would have on traffic.
They did not.
Instead they chose intersections that were not on the 100 most dangerous intersections in the Denver area, and it appears they shoes intersections in the more affluent part of town.
The few cameras they have generate more than $7,000,000 per year for the police.
Renfroe said, including making the yellow light a second longer, or having all the lights at an intersection sit red for an extra second.
I saw two poor saps who got caught in the intersection on left turns by traffic.
Poor souls, rather than barge through the line of cars they waited until it was safe to complete the turn.
They both got nailed by the cameras.
I guess the legislature will eliminate the jobs of the donut-eaters who spend their days looking at films to write tickets. Sounds like a good thing to me to get those people out doing something that might actually improve public safety...though that is not what the local politicos want. Those local politicos want revenue without raising taxes.
The vendor who operates the system only sends about 25 percent of all the total “triggers” back to APD for the officers to consider for tickets, he said.
It flashed me every week. But I never did anything illegal. ;-)
A fantasy of mine.
Many of those cameras are on aluminum cylindrical poles. All one would need to do is bring a nylon rope and a maul. You strike the pole with the maul, making a fairly significant crimp. You then lasso the pole and pull it down.
Or just use a paint gun.
These cameras and the light for the flash are monsters, and mounted on monster arms fastened to the signal column.
Your talking serious muscle to tear them down. Definitely would tear the rear bumper off of even a F350.
The ones in Seattle, where i used to live, were not all that big. They looked like the one in the picture in the article. A brushed “mini” light pole. Maybe 8” in diameter at the base. I don’t know what 8 lb maul would do to it, but aluminum isn’t all that strong against steel.
But it’s just a fantasy, like the one where I am in a hummer H1 in the passing lane and any passing lane nanny that doesn’t get out of the way gets run off the road.
A guy can dream...
Co Spgs., about 2 years ago ended red light cameras when the contract expired.
> All about the $$$$$$, not about safety.
Absolutely. Its like having an automated money maker 24/7. No telling how they really divvy up the money. You’d think the city council members were getting pid under the table by them. Maybe they are. At the east by donating to their campaigns which s one of their favorite tactics to get them ibstalled in cities. The red light camers.comanies also get a pretty hefty cut of the extortion i mean uh fines themselves.
> All about the $$$$$$, not about safety.
Absolutely. Its like having an automated money maker 24/7. No telling how they really divvy up the money. You’d think the city council members were getting paid under the table by them. Maybe they are. At the least by donating to their campaigns which is one of their favorite tactics to get them installed in cities. The red light camers.comanies also get a pretty hefty cut of the extortion i mean uh fines themselves.
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Those cameras are highly dependent on the people cited not showing up for court or understanding how to fight them. When you are before the Judge, you plead not guilty and then make sure at trial that the photo reviewer shows up to testify. Most of those guys are far away, and they rotate a lot too. You don’t have to lie about being or not being behind the wheel either, it’s the State’s burden to prove you were, if asked take the 5th.
Make open file disclosure requests prior to trial for the contract between the city and company running the cameras, ask for the certified calibration of the unit, research your states MUTCO (Municiple Uniform Traffic Control) standards or engineering specifications for light duration, etc... There is always an out somewhere in all the material you can dig up, and more often than not they’re going to just dismiss your case rather than have that stuff dug up because they know the other 98% of the people they cite will just pay it and they don’t want to kill the gravy train trying to fit a square peg (you) into a round (serf) hole.
Go Colorado! And Arizona, also currently doing some good things re:states rights.
The day WILL come. We don’t (yet) have the dreaded red light cams, but I did exactly that (decided to STOP on a yellow) and got rear-ended just a month or so ago.
I heard a D.C. muckity muck cop say cameras were a bad idea becausecit 1) disincentivizes cops tp make traffic stops and 2) you usually find alot more problems in a routine stop than just the traffic violation and are able to get those ppl off the street.
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