Free Republic

The Legislature is debating bills that would allow police to impound the cars of people arrested on prostitution-related charges.

Kansas City is about to put the pedal to the metal on its first red-light camera. Beginning Saturday, red-light runners at 39th Street and Southwest Trafficway can expect to receive a letter in the mail with instructions on where they can send their $100 fine plus $13.50 in court costs. Visa and MasterCard will be accepted. *****SNIP***** Sensors in the road are linked to the cameras, which capture still and video images. One photograph captures a vehicle as it nears the intersection after the light has turned red. The system tells the monitoring officer which lane the vehicle is traveling...

Legislators in Mississippi and Missouri want to rid their respective states of the private companies looking for lucrative contracts to operate automated ticketing machines. Photo ticketing firms have been trying to gain a foothold in Mississippi, but so far have failed. In Missouri, however, high-powered lobbyists were brought in to convince local authorities to install camera systems without authorization from the state legislature. The city of Arnold began issuing tickets in 2005 and was soon followed by nearly forty cities with an interest in installing automated ticketing machines. That was too much for newly elected state Senator Jim Lembke (R-St....

A bill introduced last week in the General Assembly quietly seeks to eliminate a significant motorist protection built into Virginia's existing red light camera law. The proposal of a pair of Democratic state delegates representing Virginia Beach, Joseph F. Bouchard and Robert W. Mathieson, would delete just three words from that statute, but the change would have wide-ranging effects. Under current law, cities that want to install traffic cameras must first submit a detailed engineering justification to state transportation experts. "A locality shall submit a list of intersections to the Virginia Department of Transportation for final approval," Virginia Code Section...

Two New Hampshire GOP House members have added their names to a Legislative Service Requestion seeking to introduce a bill allowing red light cameras in the Granite State. House members Ken Hawkins (R-Bedford) and John A Graham (R-Bedford) have joined NH State Senator Sheila Roberge (R-Bedford) in sponsoring LSR 2009-S-0874-R, titled "authorizing the electronic enforcement of traffic signal violations." Red light cameras snap a digital photo of vehicles caught inside the intersection when the the signal changes from yellow to red, not just those entering the intersection after the signal changes to red. With no video to contest the situation...

The economy is in the toilet. So do yourself a favor and ease up on the accelerator. That's the indirect message of a recent study by two economists, who found that when government revenues dry up, police write more speeding tickets. After analyzing 14 years of data in North Carolina, the pair found that for every 1 percent drop in government revenue, the number of traffic tickets issued per capita increases by 30 percent the following year. “It's significant,” said University of Arkansas-Little Rock economics professor Gary Wagner, who co-authored Red Ink in the Rearview Mirror: Local Fiscal Conditions and...