Complete Failure: Chicago's Speed Camera Traps Fail To Bring In The Revenue Mayor Emanuel Counted Upon
from the fast-cash dept
Speed cameras, just like their red-light camera brethren, have been pretty well established as nothing more than revenue machines for local municipalities. Their application results in a myriad of issues, such as the fact that the cameras don't work, not to mention that the cameras don't work, oh, and the cameras don't work and the companies behind them might try to fudge the evidence if you dispute a ticket. The excuse for these cameras that don't work has always been that they are designed to make the roads safer under the theory that if motorists know that the cameras exist, they will be less likely to speed. That supposed justification is belied by two facts. The first is that some people who have tried to warn motorists that the cameras exist have been dragged to court for doing so, which sort of defeats the entire supposed purpose of the cameras. The second fact that disproves the justification is that Chicago just can't help going all Chicago on itself.
Local reporters have the glorious story of the latest Chicago budget crisis that has Mayor Emanuel scrambling for only one reason: Chicago motorists are way better behaved than he'd planned for in his previous budget.
You heard that right: Good behavior is bad for the budget. Real bad, reports CBS 2 Chief Correspondent Jay Levine. CBS 2 has learned the speed cameras caught far fewer speeders than expected. According to the Mayor's 2015 Budget Overview, there have been "lower than expected violation rates."Think about the logic here for a moment: Rahm Emanuel wrote a spending budget for the third largest city in the country that relied on a certain revenue number from speed cameras. Where's the incentive for better behavior on the road in that? There is none. The fact is that Chicago drivers are far better behaved than the city expected. That's an outcome you'd think the city would be celebrating. Instead, it's considered a negative, because the speed cameras were never about safety, they were only a method to fill the city's coffers to the tune of milliions of dollars. That isn't so much public policy as it is an extortion racket that happens to have failed.
How much lower? Fifty million dollars lower. Emanuel's administration had figured on $90 million in fines to help balance this year's budget, but they can only count on $40 million. That's a $50 million shortfall, putting pressure on the next spending plan.
"It was a combination of the camera company’s salesmanship and the city's greed," says camera critic Barnet Fagel.You may not want to forgive the camera company their sales tactics, but how much do you really want to fault them? They're a large company beholden to nothing beyond the profit motive. They can't be expected to have the best interests of a city's population at heart. The Chicago city government on the other hand? Most citizens likely didn't elect Mayor Emanuel out of a sense of sadomasochism or the theory that we all just have a bit too much money in our pockets. Stories like these are among the reasons that Emanuel isn't considered invulnerable in the upcoming mayoral election.
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Filed Under: budget, chicago, rahm emanuel, speed cameras
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Easier said than done. I got a ticket out of pure distraction these days. I was driving in a speed that is comfortable to me (namely a pretty safe speed that's the standard for most areas here) and forgot about a speed camera in a place I know that enforces a speed 20km/h below the usual. So, yeah...
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And, of course, in a not-so-distant future there will be the matter of self-driving cars (which wouldn't surprise me if they followed the speed limits precisely, to the annoyance of the motorists).
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GPS is merely a location system, all GPS can tell you is your location.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuD5NPpTwQI
from about 50 seconds in.
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My idea is an easily re-programmable chip or strip embedded into all paved lanes (think RFID tags) which the car would read as it passed over them and automatically limit your maximum speed for you, or just warn the driver depending on your preferences.
How's that for safety? Especially in places where it really matters, like school zones. Could effectively kill most of the income a municipality gets from speeding tickets though, so it'll never happen. Revenue before safety and all that. /s
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Reading your standard speed limit sign is well within the capabilities of current technology. I don't know about this system, but there's no reason why it couldn't be as reliable as a human for this particular use case.
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That they were factoring in the revenue from the system into the budget pretty thoroughly kills off the idea that the purpose of the red-light cameras is to decrease speeding.
If that were true, and people really did speed less as a result of the system, they'd have intentionally shot themselves in the foot regarding the budget, as they'd find themselves, like what's happening now, with a shortfall in funds compared to what they had planned.
If the purpose of such systems are meant to be a safety, rather than a profit one, then any funds gathered from them would be a bonus, and one that the local governments would be trying to decrease, rather than see grow.
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Irresponsability
"wrote a spending budget for the third largest city in the country that relied on a certain revenue number from speed cameras."
What a Prince, Chicago is a shooting gallery and he's acting like a douche.
Posted: 10/20/2014 11:36 AM EDT
Chicago Gun Violence: 3 Killed, 19 Wounded This Past Weekend - An 18-year-old woman was fatally shot Sunday.
http://www.bet.com/news/national/2014/10/20/chicago-gun-violence-3-killed-19-wounded-this-pas t-weekend.html
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get rid of the mayor
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If it were possible to obey every law ... and everyone started doing so, how long before cities and local municipalities would go bankrupt? They would have to pass new taxation or new laws with higher fines, all of which are counter productive.
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One of the most telling observations I made when I moved to Chicago 25 years ago was that the vehicles driven by those giving out parking tickets do no say Police Department on them, they say Department of Revenue!
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Simple solution. Lower then speed limits and shorten the yellow light period
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Re: Simple solution. Lower then speed limits and shorten the yellow light period
The Dark Helmet City Beautification and Enrichment Proposal: variable speed limits! That's right, Mr. Mayor, we create a jobs bill based strictly off of replacing those old metal speed limit signs in the entire city with digital display speed limit signs. Then, we incorporate ASL into the mix: Adjustable Speed Limit.
Speed limits will change throughout the day in random intervals under the bullshit excuse that we're watching traffic patterns and making shit safer for puppies or whatever. What it ends up meaning is that you have no idea what the speed limit on your own block is day to day, or even minute to minute.
THINK OF THE MOTHERFUCKING REVENUE, YOU MANGLED-HANDED MONSTER!!!!
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Dark Helmet Kart ftw!
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http://www.dot.ga.gov/travelingingeorgia/Pages/vsl.aspx
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Dude, that will never get off the ground. The acronym is just unworkable: DHCBEP has no semblance to a single smarmy word that encompasses the concept. Back to the drawing board with you.
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Re: Re: Simple solution. Lower then speed limits and shorten the yellow light period
You joke, but in one of the cities I live in, they're talking about doing precisely this on major thoroughfares. They've already replaced a bunch of the speed limit signs with digital displays.
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Just how many of you are there, and how were the copies of you created?
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A personal injury attorney who takes an intersection collision case will often check the timing of the lights to see if there is a case against the City for negligently timed lights (for the deep pockets). 500ms yellows would be a good one. And the $ thus begins flowing the wrong direction (not to mention the needlessly dead people).
... oh, did I read this comment too literally?
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What people sometimes forget.....
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Also, where is the camera company's incentive to have a honest system?
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Why does the solution for spending too much always have to be higher taxes?
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The solution can't always be to raise taxes, but equally it can't always be to spend less. This probably depends on the specific city you're talking about, but in many cities tax revenue is so low that they can no longer do an adequate job with the things that everyone agrees they should be doing.
This is the major problem with all those people who are rabidly anti-tax: that attitude is destroying many communities.
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> Why does the solution for spending too
> much always have to be higher taxes?
Thank you! Someone with some common sense at last...
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Speed bumps are more cost effective.
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You can't speed in Chicago
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> gridlock in that city. I can't fathom how
> it would even be possible to go the speed
> limit, let alone exceed it
This is what always amazes me about the uniquitous high-speed police chases we have about once a week here in Los Angeles. I have no idea how these morons always manage to find the one set of freeways in L.A. that aren't crawling along at 5 MPH. Everywhere I drive, it's a mess, but some meth-head running from the cops always seems to be able to rocket along at 80 MPH or more for hours.
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potholes
Vote him out!!!
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Say what?
When you elect a Dem, that is exactly what you are doing.
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Guaranteed income
If that's the case, not only does the budget have a shortfall now, but it's going to be even worse when the bill from the camera company arrives.
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Get a PR firm on this
How much lower? Fifty million dollars lower.
Since it is obviously nothing to do with safety, they just need to rebrand this. Instead of calling them "traps", and instead of sending tickets for traffic violations, they can implement an optional speeding tax, and call the cameras "speed auditors" so they know where to send the tax bill.
This is win-win: people with extra disposable income can get to their destinations faster, and the city gets a pretty much guaranteed revenue boost.
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Demolition Rahm
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Speed Limits in Chicago
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http://thefreethoughtproject.com/ex-police-sergent-tells-fight-speeding-fines/
http://thefreethoughtp roject.com/fight-out-of-state-speeding-ticket/
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I recently got my first ticket in decades (for expired registration) and discovered that they've even automated the process. I got the car registered, had a cop inspect the car and sign a form saying it was properly registered, and the ticket was dismissed by a clerk on the spot. I didn't even have to go to court.
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Just reduce the margin for going over the speed limit to just one KPH (or in the USA's case one MPH) & drastically increase all the fines on an upward sliding scale & tell the plebs it's all for their safety, you know it makes sense!! /sarc
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Once people know about the speed cameras, they simply slow down and don't speed so they won't have to pay a fine.
It isn't rocket science here.
The mayor doesn't have any right to kick, scream, whine and complain when people adjust their driving behavior to avoid paying a fine.
What did he think would happen? People would speed, pay a fine, and continue speeding?
He's had more cocaine than former mayor Ford if he thinks this plan would work.
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