It's every city's dream: Punish the law breakers and sit back and collect revenue. Red Light Camera's (RLCs) are the lazy politicians dream who love to make "no-brainer" decisions.
Are installing RLCs and the expected outcome really that simple? No. If you think about it, red light congestion and subsequent "light running" means that there has been growth in the city. This growth is good, and it means people are living in the community and commuting through your roads. It's my opinion that politicians should not use technology as a band-aid to fix this problem. There are many other solutions which include standardizing or increasing the time threshold for yellow lights or re-engineering the intersection.
Currently there are many studies that show RLCs actually increase accidents. As a result of these accidents, the argument then becomes: which accident is safer? A rear end collision, or a side impact one? The argument should really be:
should the city's profit motive be connected to any accident reduction effort?
Red light cameras, by comparison, are very cheap compared to other CCTV surveillance equipment. The Lower Manhattan Security Initiative will cost taxpayer at least $90 million dollars
Some students in Maryland have fooled these systems and have used RLCs for revenge. Some other cities have been caught tampering with yellow light time thresholds hoping to increase profit.
So are RLCs a "No Brainer" decision? You know what they say about people who make "no brainers", they typically have no brains.
What is your argument against RLCs? Are you saying that practice of running red lights results from too much traffic congestion and the law should not be enforced? I'm not sure that I understand the point of this blog.
This sounds great until you get a mysterious fine notice in the mail 6 months later. Don't remember running a red light? So sorry! The city wants its money.
It's very clear that there is nothing altruistic about red light cameras — it's a money grab by greedy politicians. There's no defense against mistakes.
Well-written opinion piece John. If governments were using traffic cameras purely for deterrent or safety value, that would be one thing, but overwhelming news coverage indicates that cities only see more $$$ when considering RLCs. Time-and-time again Cities have shown that revenue is more important than safety or common sense. You can recall a few years back when the city of Santa Monica arrested a senior citizen because she was adding change to expired parking meters to keep people from getting tickets. The city passed an ordinance stating that only the driver of the vehicle could put change in the meter. Why? So they could issue more parking tickets and rake in more revenue, of course.
Finally, the thing that makes me the most sick about RLCs is that not only does the city see $$$, but they don't even want to pay for the installation of the systems, instead often opting to pay the installer a portion of revenues. Of course this sets entirely the wrong incentive, because now the installer doesn't care about the safety aspect of the RLC at all, they want it to issue as many tickets as possible to increase their revenues.
There are some instances where RLC cameras have a great amount of potential, such as use on School Busses to penalize drivers for passing a school bus when it's lights are flashing. This is a legitimate safety issue.
Another point s that the latest studies I've seen, ( but don't have a cite here) show that RLCs never meet the cities revenue projections. In fact some cities are taking them out because they cost more to operate than the revenue they produce. The reason? Within a few months everyone who drives thru that intersection on a regular basis learns about the RLC and is especially cautious about running it. Tickets quickly drop off as the citizens respond to the RLC. Within a a year it costs more to operate than it is bringing in.