Red Light Cameras

Here in Connecticut they have been debating whether to have red light cameras or not. Those who have been arguing for the cameras say it is for safety reasons and those who are against them say it is only to raise money for the cities. In Jon Lender’s column in the Hartford Courant, Government Watch he tackled the issue this past Sunday. One of the comments he made was if it wasn’t about money why do the cities want to keep the fines instead of turning the money over to the state’s general fund. I think that is a fair question to ask.

As for safety reasons the proponents’ cite many studies showing a reduction in the side impact collisions from people running the red lights. However, what they are not saying is that there is a dramatic increase in rear end collisions which may not be as fatal as a side impact collision; they do cause server back and neck injuries, with pain that might last a life time.

In a Virginia Transportation Research Council report, “The Impact of Red Light Cameras (Photo-Red Enforcement) on Crashes in Virginia” they found that

After cameras were installed, rear-end crashes increased for the entire six-jurisdiction study area. Usually the statistical methods used in this study showed a statistically significant increase in each jurisdiction. After controlling for time and traffic volume at each intersection, rear-end crash rates increased by an average of 27% for the entire study area.
[…]
After cameras were installed, total crashes increased. The reason for this increase is that in general—whether cameras are present or not—there are more rear-end crashes than red light running crashes. For the entire study area, there was about 4.4 times more rear-end crashes than red light running crashes. Table ES1 shows that even though red light running crash rates decreased more than rear-end crash rates increased after the cameras were installed, the crash rate for all crashes (red light running, rear-end, etc., combined) increased by about 12% because of the considerably larger number of rear-end crashes.

That is something that the companies that install and operate never mentioned in their lobbying efforts. The report went on to state that the difference on injuries between before and after the cameras were installed was too close to say if there was a net increase or decrease in the total number of injuries.

ABC News reported that,

A study released in January by the Texas Transportation Institute concluded that extending a yellow light by 1.5 seconds would decrease red-light-running by at least 50 percent.

Hmm… so if we do not use the invasive red light cameras and just change the cycle times on the traffic lights we can achieve the same results.

As Jon Lender column goes on to point out that,

Fines and fees in Nassau County totaled $27.8 million in 2011. The private vendor for that Long Island program — Arizona-based American Traffic Solutions, which has been lobbying hard for the Connecticut bill — collected $8.3 million that year from the county to run the program. (That total was based on monthly leasing fees of $4,900 per month for each of the 152 cameras that had been installed at the 50 intersections by the end of that year, a county administrator said.)

So at $65 a ticket and a monthly fee of $4,900 that means that the breakeven point is 75 tickets a month. A LA Times article said,

Red-light cameras catch right turns and lots of revenue
Some experts question whether safety is the main concern.
Rich Connell, Times Staff Writer
May 19, 2008

But it is the right-turn infraction -- a frequently misunderstood and less pressing safety concern -- that drives tickets and revenue in the nation's second-biggest city and at least half a dozen others across the county.
[…]
The city of Los Angeles issued more than 30,000 photo tickets last year at 32 camera-equipped intersections. About eight in 10 involved right turns, said Los Angeles Police Sgt. Matthew MacWillie, the program's co-coordinator.

Improper right turns had not caused a major accident problem, said Glenn Ogura, a city traffic engineer. But they reflect bad driver habits.

So once again we see it is not about safety but it is about another source of revenue, kind of like a sloppy driver tax.

So who determines who gets a ticket or not? Is it some police officer watching the video? Well the answer is it is an employee of the company that maintains the cameras and they have a vested interest in issuing as many citations as they can. And who reviews the citations? It is a court clerk who is not trained as a police officer. This racket kind of reminds me of the speed traps of old, where the cop use to sit with the traffic control button and change the signal to red when he saw an out-of-state car.