Traffic Cameras in D.C.

Kappelmeister writes "The Washington Post has an article about red-light-running and speeding cameras all over D.C. that have issued over half a million citations to date. (Police send you a ticket and photographic proof up to a month after the fact.) Though the cameras successfully reduce dangerous driving and boost the city's revenue, a lot of wrongful citations fall through the cracks and give some that guilty-until-proven-innocent feeling. Once again, how far is too far?" I came across this much more informative investigation of D.C.'s traffic cameras a few weeks ago. It's heavy on facts and figures, and hammers home the observation that an extra second of yellow light is at least as good at promoting good behavior, but much less lucrative for the local government and the contracting firm.

Extra Yellow...

[Golantig]

...surely, once drivers become used to the 'new' length of yellow they will jump the lights as frequently as they do now. Will they keep increasing the length indefinately?

Green doesn't mean go, it means "go, if the way is clear"...

Driving is not a right

[mattreilly]

Yes we live in a free country and you are allowed to exercise your freedom until it starts to impinge on the freedoms of others. Now, I would say your freedom to run a red light unless you get caught by a physical police officer impinges on my right to walk across the street without being killed.

This is not a freedom or privacy issue, it's a public safety issue. If your worried about getting tickets because someone else ran a red light in your car, be more careful about who you lend your car out to. Or maybe we should go for a more technical solution and do away with car registrations and me your license a transponder you put on your windshield so if a violation is committed in your car the correct person will be charged.

More profitable to die

[Anonymous Coward]

There was a safety study done I believe in Mesa AZ that shows it was safer to add more time to the yellow then use these red light runner cameras. Just not as profitable for the city or the company contracted to run the program.

So.. several people will have to DIE and sue successfully before Mesa does the right and safe thing and increase the yellow.

Try and get a copy of the contract I'll bet you $$$ that you can't. The company running the equipment (red light cameras and photo radar get the VAST majority of the take.

Here in AZ it has become a sport to ignore those mailed tickets, it's too damned expensive for the cities using traffic cameras to follow up every one with a hand delivered summons(?).

Guess just the sheep send in the money!

Your darn right I'm posting Anonymously the Photo Radar companies make the record industry look like Boy Scouts (appologisies toi the Boy Scouts)

Re:innocent until proven guilty...

[ralphus]

Another trick is that in many areas there is a law on the books that specifies the amount of time that you must get a court date within if you request one. If you get your traffic ticket in a busy district than request your court date, it is quite possible that you will not be granted the court date within the legally required time. Check the laws in your area and figure this out. If they don't grant it in time, make a motion for a dismissal and cite the law. You will get it. My wife has personally gotten 3 tickets dismissed this way over the years.

Traffic court is very weak. Often you can find something wrong and get a dismissal if you look hard enough. OJ got off right? this is just traffic court, but they count on the fact that you won't have a good lawyer and won't fight too hard or figure out how to legally defend yourself.

there are many seemingly minor things that can cause the court decision to go your way, or better yet, get a dismissal.

Loopholes exist....

Rip the system.

/. Knee Jerking

[the phantom]

Now, without jerking a knee so hard it falls off, can some one please explain to me why these cameras are such a bad thing? Really, I want to know. The three arguments that I have seen thus far are as follows:

(1) The cameras are an invasion of privacy.
I am unwilling to accept this argument. Is it an invasion of privacy when a cop sits behind a billboard with a radar gun looking for speeders? Are security cameras in the local Kwik-e-Mart an invasion of privacy? Hell, when you get your driver's licsence, they want to know your height, weight, age, eye color, and a whole slew of other information about you. Is that invasive? I certainly don't feel I need to tell people how much I weigh. The cameras are in public places. If they used tax dollars to put a cop at every one of these intersections to catch people who are speeding or running red lights, instead of complaining that it is an invasion of privacy, I'll bet anything people on /. would be complaining that it is a waste of money.

(2) The cameras are inaccurate.
This could be a problem. It is really the only argument that I buy. However, can police officers not also be inaccurate? mean? nasty? in a bad mood? How many people do you suppose get pulled over for speeding when they are within just a couple of miles of the speed limit, but the cop thinks they are going faster than they are or is just in a bad mood? Sure, you can try to contest such tickets, but you will generally loose. It is your word against the police officers, and who do you think a judge is going to believe. In the end, I don't think that the cameras are any worse than a cop on a bad day.

(3) The cameras are nothing more than a money making scheme.
I can't accept that at all. Certainly, they make money for the city, and for the corporation that reviews the photos, and I could understand how one could accuse a mayor or other city official of doing nothing but making money off of the cameras, but it would seem from the Washington Post article that the cameras are well liked by everyone in the enforcement business, from the lowly cop on patrol to those in power. Yes, it makes some money, but it also serves the function of keeping people safe. Drugs like Aspirin make a lot of money too. Is that a bad thing? In my opinion, no.

I am sorry to rant, but I really do not understand what is so wrong with delegating much of the grunt work of law enforcement to machines. This should allow police officers to focus on things that many would consider to be more important, like citing drunk drivers and solving crimes like homicide and rape. The system does not seem to be trampling any freedoms, and it is freeing up the police to get on to other things. What is so wrong with that?

Re:North Carolina too...

[Riskable]

If you had actually read the report [weeklystandard.com] you would realize that these cameras DO NOT "make the streets safer". As a matter of fact, the statistics showed that red light cameras actually INCREASED the number of rear-end accidents by as much as 700+ percent in some areas (just about ALL intersections with cameras showed increases in rear-end accidents)!

Also, if they were truly intended to increase safety, they would be installed at the worst intersections (i.e. the ones with the most accidents), right? Well, they're not. Every one of these cameras is installed at intersections with the lowest yellow light times. It has nothing to do with safety. They are positioned in such a way as to maximize revenue.

If you start heading into an intersection with a yellow light and "miss the red" by one second or less (as over 75% of all 'violators' do), what, exactly, are you guilty of? Did you just make the roads unsafe? Imagine if you got fined $270 every time you were one second late for something, anything. That's what's happening to most of these people who get fined.

Also, a single photograph of your car in mid-intersection with a picture of a red light above it doesn't tell the whole story. The lights make absolutely no distinction of the rest of your driving behavior leading up to the incident. For instance, a drunk driver swerving all over the road, then running a red light will merely be fined for running the red light. What would happen if a cop was there instead? A DWI arrest.

safety first, then tickets

[aeloff]

It's truly disappointing that these devices are being used to rake in cash in the name of public safety, especially when the same input data could be used to make the interesections work "better", e.g. minimize the possibility that a car will run a yellow, decrease or increase (to prevent speeding) the stop time at intersections.

We need to finally be beyond the era where a driver has to wait at an empty intersection at 3AM for a light to change.

Re:Contest these

[topham]

Here atleast, the result is: you have a monetary fine, but you are not considered guilty of a traffic violation. Your car is. And you are responsible for any fines on your car. The same as you would be responsible for any parking tickets your car gets while someone you lent the car to it parks illegally.

People who defend peoples rights to run RED LIGHTS deserve to be shot. Here the light is Yellow for far longer than is necessary to clear an intersection on a typical day, yet people se the yellow light and speed up to make it.

Note: red light camera rules here are:
No ticket will be issued unless the car ENTERS the Intersection on a Red Light. The speed of the vehicle will be recorded on the picture as well. A 3 person panel will determine if a ticket is appropriate, in the event any 1 party disagrees no ticket will be issued.

I have NEVER had an intelligent conversation about this topic where everyone didn't conceed that any valid reason to run a red light would make the fine anything other than a nuisance.

If you run the red light because your rushing someone to the hopsital that is bleeding to death in the backseat of your car, tell me, do you give a shit about the fine? I doubt it.

If you roll through the light to get out of the way of an emergency vehicle you arn't likely to get a ticket since your speed will be signifantly less than usual.

People who run red-lights risk my life, and yours, not just their own.
I watch people run red lights EVERY DAY. At some intersections I have been nearly hit by people running redlights while I was a pedestrian. I don't expect I would have survived had I been hit.

(As for if your car is 'stolen'; you arn't reposnible if you car is reported stolen. You'll have to sue the individual yourself if it isn't reported stolen. What would you do for a parking ticket issued when you didn't have the car?)

Re:Driving is not a right

[dboyles]

A public safety issue? I think you're being too naive. It's a profit issue. Red light cameras provide a disincentive to fixing the problem because the existence of the problem generates revenue.

You might want to check out The Truth About Red Light Cameras [freedom.gov] for a little more information on this.

Re:Extra Yellow...

[richard.kilgore]

I think the point is that people run red lights
when the yellow is too short for another reason
as well. If the yellow light is too short, the
moment you have to decide what to do is too short,
and therefore you can make bad decisions.

If they increase the length of the yellow light,
you might still make the decision to run a red
light on purpose, but the extra second will help
you to avoid making the bad decision to run the
light when it would actually cause an accident.

The pro-traffic camera side of the argument claims
that the whole purpose is safety, so preventing
people from running red lights is not the end
goal. Preventing accidents is. Longer yellow
lights accomplishes that goal.

Re:Driving is not a right

[bperkins]

I'm rather astonished at the number of people who are chanting this mantra. It is clear that you haven't read the article. The author makes a very good case that the whole thing stinks, no matter how you look at it, and that its sole effective purpose is to generate revenue, possibly at the expense of safety.

Driving isn't a right, but handing out arbitrary fines isn't either. The aricle takes every reason people give for these red light cameras, and gives very good reasons and evidence that it is misguided or even flat out wrong. A lot of people hate these things for selfish reasons. Nobody wants to get fined. On the other hand, why should we put up with something we hate if it doesn't do any good, and might do measurable harm?

I was hoping to find a comment that refuted something in the article, as it seems rather one sided. Unfortunately, I'm not seeing much of anything like that.

People that protest these fines are broken

[0x0d0a]

People who run red lights risk my life, and yours, not just their own

I agree completely. The number of people protesting actual *punishment* for running red lights here on Slashdot is disgusting. This is something that's easily avoidable (yes, you may have to going back to not accelerating when you see a yellow light), potentially fatal, and has a picture to allow human review if necessary.

So far this is the best solution to the problem. I say apply it until something better (like computer-driven cars) can be widely deployed.

This isn't a freedom issue or a tech issue. This isn't a "should music copy protection be allowed?" question, where the consequences aren't that awful one way or the other. This is about preventing people from committing a potentially fatal crime.