16 Comments

This decision does not appear to be made based on really objective facts. Police say there were a lot of accidents. Were they attributed to the red light cameras? How many accidents were there over the same period of time before the cameras were installed?

It would interesting to see a breakdown of the ridiculous $2200 a day cost for operating a single camera.

Ron,
If you want statistics you can find links to studies and more news stories like the above at thenewspaper.com. The whole industry is about as evil as evil gets, they will do and say anything to get their hooks into a community and try to stay there. To make the enterprise more profitable they shorten the yellow light timing below the legal limit which is proven to cause more accidents, but more red light running.

It is not at all unusual for accidents to INCREASE at red light camera cash register locations. Our website has many examples, as does http://www.thenewspaper.com and this loss of safety is of NO concern the red light camera cash register companies that want the MONEY.
ATS, Redflex and the other scamera companies have no concern with causing more accidents, so long as they collect the MONEY.
James C. Walker, National Motorists Association, Ann Arbor, MI

The cameras should be called YELLOW light cameras. As noted by Bumper, communities are shortening the yellow light time and thus generating more red light traffic violations and more money for the community. Think of the extreme case where the yellow light time is set to 1/10 of a second. Every time the green light changes some poor driver would end up paying a ticket for running a red light.

I would also like answers to Ron’s questions. In cases where the yellow light timing is NOT changed, how do red-light cameras affect accidents? In the absence of serious information — yes, I know the camera people are evil, and I know that the cameras make a lot of money except when they don’t — I would guess that the number of minor accidents go up and the number of major accidents go down.

If this is wrong, please enlighten us evil people.

LTEC, does not appear to be the case, link goes to a synopsis of studies with links to the actual reports. My recollection is that t-bones go down and rear-endings go up. Neither are minor.

http://thenewspaper.com/news/04/430.asp

And the evilness, in my less than humble opinion, comes from the extremes the companies will go to keep their cash cow out in the pasture, shortening the yellows, fake public interest groups, attempts to thwart elections and referendums, etc. In my little community the local council turned them off after they became aware of the questionable relationships from the sellers to the buyers. Some of which has been covered here, but I can’t see where you were called out as evil, unless of course you work for one of these companies.

If they shorten yellow while installing the camera, then the cause of accident is short yellow and the camera itself. Btw, there is regulation about minimal length of yellow on semaphore? I through that they are more or less standardized.

Off topic: some traffic lights blink green for very short time before changing to yellow. So, you have: green, blinking green, yellow, red. I like that, there is no necessary sudden breaking on such lights. You can judge accurately whether you are going to make it or not.

I favor camera enforcement of red lights, but *only* with rigorous
safeguards. There are too many jerks in my area
who deliberately run red lights and cause a disproportionate number of
accidents. (I tend to oppose cameras for speeding, however, which are
more likely to be abused.)

Before red-light cameras are allowed, legal safeguards should be in
place, eg:
(1) a State-wide system of licensing and monitoring camera-sites
(2) no ticketing for yellow lights
(3) legal minimum times for yellow lights, dependent on the legal
speed limit for incoming traffic.
(a) No reduction in the time of a yellow light without several
weeks of prominent notice.
(4) a minimum “tolerance” for which even red lights would go
unticketed.
(5) All proceeds from camera fines go directly into the State highway
fund. This would remove the incentive for towns and their police
departments to cheat. It would take at face value their claims to be
motivated by safety rather than revenue enhancement.
(6) a bell or flashing blue light to go off whenever a presumed
violator is photographed. This would give the alleged violator a
realistic chance to contest the ticket, if they believed themselves
innocent.

there is the “Traffic Engineering Handbook”, but jurisdictions are not required to go by these standards.

James, I did not see anything on your website although saw a lot of advertisement for traffic ticket attorneys which are a kind of lawyer I think few people actually need. I did look at the cherry picked list of studies. I only go through the first two. The first was just a study of studies. The second showed that in Virginia, cameras decreased serious accidents which is kind of what LTEC says above.

Look, I don’t know the answer. I do know what I fear. People who don’t like the privacy invasion are cherry picking studies and to prove the point that cameras cause more serious accidents. It is like Bush-Gore: whoever you wanted to win the election, you agreed with how they view the counting of a hanging chad. Too many of us – all of us – retrofit facts to provide support to an outcome that we seek for another reason.

If the real issue is you think they are too Big Brother for you, I think you should just say that.

But I want to read more of the studies on that you list – including reading the VA study again – to learn more about it.

I have a much bigger problem with the change from a criminal to a civil case. I don’t get tickets (at least not in years) so I can’t really tell you what the differences would truly be, but it rubs me the wrong way that the authority rests with an administrative judge regardless of evidence. Even though a live body is to review each case, I still remember a situation where a tow truck driver ran a red light and the camera sent the ticket to the towed car’s owner. Apparently they were out of bananas that day and the trained apes were restless…

The cameras all by themselves don’t bother me much. Use them to assign blame and liability after an accident. Use them to see what rally occurred. Intersection crash? Let’s go to the tape. Judge and jury from big brother is of concern to me. Why not use it as evidence in a traffic case instead of finding the easy route to more convictions and revenue?

However, given the choice of NO cameras or ones that may be abused, I would take no cameras…

For Hugo Cunningham: If the yellow are set for the posted speed limit, they are almost certain to be predatory because posted speed limits very rarely reflect the actual 85th percentile speed of approaching traffic (safest possible way to set posted limits, but VERY rarely used in the USA). Very few US red light camera cash register systems have a grace period. One-half second grace should be the norm, but is virtually never used because it cuts too deeply into the money grab revenue which is the real purpose of the cameras.

The simple fact is that if the yellows are set for the actual 85th percentile approach speeds, there won’t be any cameras because they would lose money. If you see a red light camera system that is profitable, it IS predatory with deliberately improper yellows. This IS the scam and how it works.

James C. Walker, NMA

Hugo, I twice have seen traffic cameras flash at night–it is FAR more dangerous as a distraction, much less that it is BLINDING at night; a blue light (if it is as bright as the red or green light on the traffic signal) might be enough.

A little geography may be necessary. Westminster is located in Carroll County, which is north and west of Baltimore City. The city of Baltimore is “wrapped” by Baltimore County, and Baltimore County is next to Carroll County.

This thing gets messy fast.

From the original cited article:
“These cameras were not in a break-even mode. They were literally costing the city taxpayers money,” Chief Jeff Spaulding of the Westminster Police Department said.

They were meant to make the intersection safer and generate revenue, but police say they did neither.

In the two years they’ve been up, police say there were 11 serious crashes and 35 fender benders.

This site – a subsidiary of the Baltimore Sun – gives a totally different picture:

The City of Westminster this week pulled the plug on a pair of red light cameras at one of the county’s busiest intersections — at routes 140 and 97 — saying the cameras had, by and large, done their job in helping reduce accidents and red light runners.

“You do what you say you’re going to do,” said Maj. Ron Stevens of the Westminster Police Department regarding the removal of the cameras, which was approved by the Westminster Common Council on Monday.

“We said all along that the cameras were needed because of safety issues,” Stevens said. “They’ve definitely worked — people are much more aware of the dangers of the intersection.”

Source: http://www.baltimoresun.com/explore/carroll/ph-ce-red-lights-0715-20120711,0,1274939.story

And in related news, Baltimore County is adding speed cameras around schools – even schools (Stoneleigh) that aren’t being used anymore.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-county/towson/ph-tt-new-speed-cameras-20120711,0,6682100.story

Go figure.

[…] other day we relayed a report from CBS Baltimore about the town of Westminster’s having disconnected most of its traffic […]