California City Finds Optimum Balance Between Safety And Profit, Trims Yellow Light Times To Produce Spike In Citations

from the tickets-will-continue-until-fiscal-morale-improves dept

If your city has red light cameras installed, the length of time that yellow lights stay yellow largely depends on how much revenue the cameras are generating, rather than how much safer the intersection is.

The Newspaper reports Fremont, California officials are mucking about with yellow light timing, supposedly to adhere to local regulations. But one can't help but notice the dramatic drop in citations that follows any lengthening of yellow lights.

City leaders are [...] fully aware of the impact that a small change in yellow time can have on citations. In 2010, a local activist, the late Roger Jones, asked the CalTrans to investigate the signal timing at the intersection of Mission Boulevard and Mohave Drive. CalTrans agreed with Jones that the timing was too short and ordered Fremont's engineers to boost the yellow from 4.3 to 5.0 seconds. The number of monthly tickets issued at the location immediately plunged and stayed down by an average of 77 percent, while in the rest of the city the average number of tickets issued did not change.

But safety! someone exclaims (possibly red light camera provider Redflex and a handful of legislators):

In fact, the city formally recognized that the cameras by themselves did nothing to reduce violations.

Since that point, Fremont has continued to "experiment" with its yellow light times. It shaved 0.7 seconds off the timer at a pair of intersections. It originally had them set at 4.7 seconds, something it couldn't alter because of CalTrans regulations that required "realistic speed limit estimates" when adjusting yellow light timing. Since CalTrans's regulations weren't helping the city (or Redflex) make the most of this revenue stream, the city chose to alter the terms of the deal. It switched to a more permissive traffic survey -- one that allowed it to take 0.7 seconds away from the yellow light, and add millions of dollars to its bottom line.

The effect was immediate. Increasing the yellow time by 0.7 seconds in 2015 slashed the number of tickets issued at Farwell Drive by 77 percent, and shortening it back to 4.0 seconds in February 2016 caused a 445 percent spike in ticketing. At Blacow Road, the change to a 4.7 second yellow slashed violations by 68 percent. Shortening it back to 4.0 seconds sent violations skyward by 883 percent.

For undisclosed reasons, the city switched the yellow lights back to 4.7 seconds in November. The city refused to discuss its traffic light timing alterations. In fact, as The Newspaper reports, it actually pretended it never happened.

"I've been assured by my staff that the yellow light timing was only changed (increased to 4.7 seconds) in July 2015 and has not changed since then," [Public Works Director Hans S.] Larsen wrote in a February 4 email chain.

According to Larsen, any number of ridiculous theories could explain the 445-883% leap in tickets: seasonal traffic spikes, navigation apps [?], the "rebound effect" [??]. He then accused the local media for "misleading the public" about the city's yellow light windfall.

Shortly thereafter, Larsen reversed course. It wasn't all those implausible things he said it could have been. Taking his criticism like a man and upstanding servant of the people, Larsen blamed the yellow light timing changes on an intern.

"Despite my staff's strong belief that the signal timing wasn't adjusted as the KPIX report suggests, we are looking into the possibility that a student intern (who is no longer with us) may have facilitated a timing change without key staff knowing about it," Larsen wrote on February 5.

Larsen looked into it some and confirmed that, yes, it was all the fault of consultants and interns. A few Public Works staff members may have played a part as well. As for which interval is the most profitable correct timing? Larsen says it's the one that produces the most citations.

Rather than keep the current low level of red light violations in place, however, Larsen declared the 4.0 second signal timing "correct."

"The period of time the signals were operating with 4.7 seconds of yellow time was above and beyond the minimum standards," Larsen wrote on February 13.

That assertion will be worth about $2.4 million to Fremont over the next year. Of course, it's the "correct" call, even if the cameras do nothing to discourage violations or increase the safety of Fremont's drivers.

Filed Under: california, fremont, red light cameras, yellow lights

Texas Judge Indicted For Making Secret 10-Year Deal With Red Light Camera Company

from the perverts-and-their-incentives dept

The market for red light cameras obviously can't sustain itself, even with certain legislators drooling over the prospect of installing these revenue generators at every intersection.

Part of the problem is the technology is still incredibly fallible. Cameras have issued tickets to walls, parked vehicles, and many, many drivers obeying all traffic laws. Millions of dollars of refunds have been paid out by municipalities who once thought they'd have to do nothing more than sit back and let the cash roll in.

Citizens aren't fans, so legislators have often pushed these through with a minimum of discussion. Major players in the traffic cam industry lobby hard for placement of their products -- sometimes going as far as to engage in good old analog bribery and corruption.

Officials, both public and private, have been indicted (and convicted) for their participation in the proliferation of traffic cams. Not that the cameras themselves were necessarily illegal, but because the only thing better than an uptick in public funds is an uptick in private funds.

Out in Texas, a judge is facing charges for sneaking ATS (American Traffic Solutions) in through the back door.

A Texas judge arrested for making a secret deal committing his county to a 10-year contract with a red-light camera company was suspended Tuesday for allegedly blowing right past the state's Sunshine Laws.

Judge Joel Patrick Baker of Smith County was arrested last week, after an activist group complained his 2014 meeting with American Traffic Solutions officials violated the Texas Open Meetings Act. Baker was charged with three misdemeanor counts of violating the act.

Baker allegedly hooked ATS with an exclusive 10-year deal to install its cameras in Smith County -- despite the technology being banned in Texas municipalities, despite county residents being deeply opposed to the cameras, and despite never consulting with county commissioners.

Now, Baker is suspended and facing three counts of violating the state's open records law. ATS did not comment so presumably its illegally-approved cameras are still in use -- even if it's now apparent that the tickets issued by the company will have approximately zero legal weight.

When an industry's market starts drying up, it will often turn to legislators in hopes of propping its business model up. In this case, ATS skipped most of the legislative process and found a judge willing to bypass local statutes on its behalf. If an industry can't support itself, it needs to stagger off in the direction of the graveyard, not seek assistance in screwing taxpayers in increasingly creative ways.

Filed Under: corruption, joel patrick baker, red light cameras, texas
Companies: ats

Missouri Court Upholds Right Of Citizens To 'Vote' Traffic Enforcement Cameras Out Of 'Office'

from the the-unbearable-red-lightness-of-being-kicked-right-the-fuck-out dept

Citizens don't care much for red light/traffic cameras. These revenue generators do little more than turn moving (or parked) vehicles into ATMs for the governments that deploy them. Obviously, local governments love them. They love them so much they're willing to overlook badly-broken systems, crooked manufacturers and increases in vehicle collisions.

Sometimes the citizens win the fight against red light cameras. That's when the government's hate for the little people really shows through. Late last year, residents of St. Charles, Missouri, showed Redflex the door by voting for a ban on camera-based traffic enforcement.

In St. Charles, Missouri, it was the county council, not a petition, that put the question of a photo ticketing ban on the ballot. County Councilman Joe Brazil came up with the measure as a means of reining in automated ticketing in St. Peters. Len Pagano, the town's mayor, insisted it violates "local control" to allow voters to decide such an issue. They did decide by a margin of 72.6 percent that the cameras should be banned.

It's unclear if Pagano's relationship with traffic enforcement camera manufacturer Redflex is as close as his predecessor's was. The former mayor, Shawn Brown, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for soliciting a bribe from the traffic camera company -- threatening to withhold approval until it paid him off. Redflex's hands were clean in this incident (not so much in other cases).

Pagano hasn't been tied to any financial malfeasance. That doesn't necessarily make him a friend of the common man, though. Shortly before this measure went up for public vote, Pagano told constituents he would spend their money to prevent them from enacting the ban they clearly desired.

"There is the strong potential for litigation," Pagano warned in a letter to County Councilman Joe Brazil, the amendment's sponsor.

"You may be raising serious constitutional questions that may take several years and potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees to answer."

Pagano said his city "and other interested parties at the local and state level and in the private sector" will carefully scrutinize any actions taken by the county that "restrict municipalities' roles and responsibilities."

The constituents of St. Charles County have been handed a victory by the court -- something that will slightly lessen the sting of having to fight a taxpayer-funded opponent just to be granted the ban taxpayers had already overwhelmingly declared they wanted.

The cameras will not return to St. Peters after Judge Pelikan decided that counties in Missouri do indeed have the power under the state constitution to regulate "any and all services and functions of any municipality" through the county charter.

"Plaintiffs incorrectly contend the charter amendment invades the province of general legislation involving public policy of the state as a whole, contending the public policy of the state of Missouri delegate directly and exclusively to the cities the authority to control traffic on municipal streets, including, as applicable here, the authority to use 'red light cameras' and other 'traffic control devices," Judge Pelikan ruled. "The county relies on its police power in conjunction with the police power of the municipalities to enact its charter amendment to serve the public good. The acts contemplated by the charter amendment are squarely within the powers granted to the county and the municipalities and are therefore valid and enforceable."

In essence, the government claimed the public couldn't tell it what to do through the use of charter amendments. The court says it can indeed do this and that the use of charter amendments to force the government to give the people what they actually want is perfectly constitutional. The public gets a win, but nothing is more bittersweet than the last sentence of the order, which ultimately means nothing in this context. A single party is footing the court costs for both sides, even if the wording in the order makes the situation seem far more equitable.

Each party shall bear its own costs.

If only.

Filed Under: joe brazil, len pagano, missouri, red light cameras, speed cameras, st. charles
Companies: redflex

Traffic Cam Company 'Bagman' Pleads Guilty To Bribing Chicago Transportation Official

from the that's-'safety'-with-a-capital-$ dept

John Bills
Managing Commissioner
Chicago Transportation Department
30 N. LaSalle Street
Suite 1100
Chicago, IL 60602  
(312) 744-3600



Mr. John Bills,

As the Commissioner of Chicago's DOT, you are undoubtedly aware that unsafe driving kills or injures hundreds of people every year.* While not every death or injury can be prevented, there are proactive measures that can be taken to reduce this terrible toll.

*[Stats tk, but probably a lot.]

One of the best deterrents is a non-intrusive camera: one that acts as both a recording device and a police officer. (And a judge and jury, truth be told.) In fact, these cameras -- which can* monitor speed and red light violations -- perform 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, generating a possibly unlimited amount of revenue for your department, as well as for the city itself. They may also make your streets safer, both for commuters and pedestrians -- something that can be highlighted when pursuing funding.

*[The spirit is willing, but the tech is weak.]

Unlike more static revenue streams like vehicle registration feeds and road taxes, camera systems can be tweaked as needed to guard against budget shortfalls. Working in conjunction with Redflex specialists, you'll be able to avail yourself to a variety of revenue boosters like shortened yellow lights, sudden speed limit changes, unchallengeable tickets and any number of camera malfunctions or programming errors that will almost always* result in more generated revenue.

*[Caveats apply. See 135-page agreement for further details.]

Choosing the best traffic camera solution for your city is a daunting decision. We at Redflex believe we can offer what many of our competitors can't, or at least likely won't. In addition to our traffic camera "expertise," we also offer the following:

• A condominium in Gilbert, Arizona
• Deep, deep, deep, deep, deep discounts on hotel rooms, car rentals and meals
• Debt consolidation plans for select transportation officials
• Multiple personal finance options

We realize your have your choice in traffic control systems, but would like to remind you that only one company can offer you up to $570,000 in cash over the next eight years.


Sincerely,


Martin "Bagman" O'Malley
Senior Consultant

Redflex Traffic Systems
Phoenix, Arizona
866 703-8097

[h/t velox -- and, yes, if you hadn't figured it out yet, this is satire, but based on a true story]

Filed Under: bribery, chicago, john bills, red light cameras, speed cameras, traffic cameras

Shocking: Red Light Camera Company CEO And Chicago City Official Indicted On Corruption Charges

from the the-chicago-way dept

We've long-argued that red light cameras, those little flashy things that ticket you for going through a stop light, have always been way less about safety and almost entirely about generating revenue for municipalities. And, while we've covered how corrupted the money-flow of these systems can be, you just have to admire the brazenly "Chicago-way" story of how the windy city got into bed with camera peddlers.

The former chief executive officer of Redflex, a major red light camera (RLC) vendor, has been indicted on federal corruption charges stemming from a contract with the City of Chicago. On Wednesday, in addition to former CEO Karen Finley, government prosecutors also indicted John Bills, former managing deputy commissioner at the Department of Transportation, and Bills' friend Martin O'Malley, who was hired as a contractor by Redflex.

Now, I can tell you as a native of the area that city officials getting indicted on corruption charges along with the company bribers barely registers as news here any longer. Hell, we send governors to prison like it was the official retirement plan for the office. The charges in this indictment, however, are a special brand of sleazy. Redflex sold the city on the cameras, hired O'Malley as a contractor for $2 million dollars, and O'Malley then sent much of that cash directly back to DoT official John Bills, like some kind of monetary boomerang. Redflex then got into the act directly, because why the hell not.

Via Redflex employees, Bills also acquired a Mercedes and a condominium in Arizona. A May 2014 affidavit written by an FBI special agent suggests that Bills likely used some of this money to purchase and store a boat, buy a car, pay for an addition to his Michigan cabin, pay for his girlfriend's mortgage, pay his own mortgage, pay his kids' schools, and hire a divorce attorney over the course of several years.

To be fair to Bills, it costs a lot of money to keep your side-piece living happily while you divorce the mother of your children and update that sweet cabin-pad. Oh, it should also be mentioned that Redflex employees sent Bills on a couple of vacations over half a decade, and by "couple" I mean seventeen. This all adds up to 23 counts of mail fraud, wire fraud, bribery, and some additional charges thrown in because screw these guys. And it's not as though these stupid cameras all this corruption paid for actually, you know, worked. The Chicago Tribune's reporting indicates that something like 13,000 bogus tickets were issued to city residents via Redflex cameras, which were dropped in 2013 due in part to this scandal.

But, hey, don't worry, guys. Redflex is all over this problem.

"Last year we announced aggressive leadership changes, industry leading compliance policies and procedures, and a distinction between our past and present," Jody Ryan, a spokeswoman, wrote to Ars. "Redflex Traffic Systems is moving forward. Since we announced these changes we have signed, renewed, or executed over 100 contracts. Redflex has cooperated fully with the investigative authorities while maintaining the integrity of our customer programs. Our focus is on making a life-saving difference in the communities we serve across the country."

Except their cameras don't do any of that and nobody is going to trust anything coming from the company or city officials about the effectiveness of the cameras, either, what with the details on how the Chicago bid was won by Redflex being revealed. It turns out that Bills actually coached Redflex on how to win the bid, rigged the voting order so that members of the evaluation committee Bills had convinced to vote for Redflex would vote first (indicating broad support to other members), and then had the company hire his buddy, O'Malley, as the Chicago account manager for Redflex.

When it comes to Chicago politics, contracts, and the like, this is as Chicago as it gets. However, given that the whole red light camera thing is a money-making scheme to begin with, the whole concept reeks of corruption. Kill these things off now, please.

Filed Under: chicago, corruption, john bills, karen finley, martin o'malley, red light cameras
Companies: redflex

Red Light Cameras On The Decline, As Everyone Realizes They Don't Make Roads Safer, They Just Make Money

from the good-riddance dept

For many years we've written about the problems of red light cameras. Installed over the past few years in many cities, the public statements supporting them were always about increased safety on our roads. However, as we've noted, plenty of studies showed that the cameras actually tended to increase accidents, showed little to no safety benefit, and were almost always driven by monetary incentives. Because of this, there were numerous reports of various municipalities actually deciding to decrease the time on yellow lights, thereby getting more money from tickets, but massively increasing the safety risk. Multiple studies have shown that the one way to make intersections safer is to increase the yellow light time -- but in order to make more money, many were decreasing it (often below legal limits).

The anger over these tactics has been increasing quite a bit over the past few years and a variety of cities decided to cancel their programs, causing the leading company providing these systems (who takes a large cut of every ticket), Redflex, to face some financial difficulties.

It appears that the trends are definitely against red light cameras. Cyrus Farivar has a great article (though, annoyingly paginated) about the decline in red light cameras, noting that 2013 was the first year where more red light camera systems were turned off than turned on.

Redflex's US operations took a hit in 2013 as the company installed 54 new systems—but removed 101. Redflex’s recent fiscal report (PDF) shows that its after-tax net profits in a six-month period have dropped by half: plummeting from $7.1 million in the first half of 2012 to $3.6 million in the first six months of 2013.

Meanwhile, the article also takes on the various "competing studies" concerning red light cameras, and pointing to one study that compared a whole bunch of the studies, evaluated their methodologies, and found that the ones that showed benefits to red light cameras, almost invariably had dreadful methodologies that didn't take into account the basic variability in accidents at any given intersection, and the likelihood of a return to the mean (in short: intersections with an abnormally large number of accidents frequently see that amount go down the following year -- and red light camera makers and the studies supporting them rarely took into account that variability, but assigned such a decrease to the cameras). When correcting for such problems, the study of studies found the data showed that red light cameras are a problem, not a solution:

The meta-analysis concluded that, when only the best studies were considered, "The results of the meta-analysis are rather unfavorable for RLCs... According to the results from these studies, right-angle collisions are reduced by about 10 percent, rear-end collisions increase significantly by about 40 percent, and the overall effect on all types of crashes is an increase by about 15 percent. Only studies with weaker study designs yield results that are more favorable for RLCs."

The study which those researches said had the best methodology also found significant negative impact overall:

the increase in costs from the increase in rear-end crashes more than offset the reduction in costs from the decrease in red light running crashes.

Hopefully, this is the beginning of the end for red light cameras. We're all for making intersections safer, but the way to do that is to increase the time on yellow lights -- and for places that still don't have this: have a brief interval where lights in both directions are red, rather than switching simultaneously to red in one direction and green in the other. And yes, every time I make that last point, people who don't live in places where that's the case marvel that any place in the world has this, but it's true in many, many places. Switching that to having an interval with both directions red, plus a longer yellow light, will actually make people safer, and yet... it doesn't make any more money, so very few have been willing to make this simple switch.

Filed Under: red light cameras
Companies: redflex

New Orleans Cops Caught Filling Their Pockets With Red Light Camera Cash

from the that's-uptown,-throw-a-stack-at-'em dept

Red light cameras have proven popular in certain communities (mainly the "law enforcement community"). They're a rather painless way to generate cash, both for the city itself and for the private contractors chosen to install and maintain the system. This influx of cash tends to pervert incentives, leading to questionable tactics being deployed, like shortening yellow lights to increase the "take," while doing little to nothing to increase public safety.

While law enforcement usually benefits indirectly from this new revenue stream, the officers themselves rarely benefit directly from red light tickets. But where there's a will (and a lack of oversight), there's a way. Some enterprising police officers in New Orleans decided the incentives weren't perverse enough, and formed their own company to review photo citations.

Police officers in New Orleans, Louisiana filled their own pockets with red light camera cash by setting up a private company to "review" photo citations off the official clock. The city's inspector general, E. R. Quatrevaux, on Friday released a report documenting how Edwin Hosli, the New Orleans Police Department's (NOPD) 8th District commander, formed his own limited liability company called Anytime Solutions to take advantage of the lucrative business opportunity.

Over a four-and-a-half month period in 2010, Hosli pulled down $7420 from the arrangement for himself. The inspector general released documents not included in the report that show Hosli and several other officers overbilled ACS by $9075. Hosli's share of that was $2055, according to the documents.

The Inspector General noted it's illegal for law enforcement members to form an LLC in order to "manage a detail." Not only that, but the officers' actions violated ethics policies. The low-level corruption began when American Traffic Solutions subcontracted its photo reviews to Affiliated Computer Services, which oddly enough, already handled parking tickets for the city. The then-chief of police, Warren Riley, declared he couldn't spare on-duty officers to review the photo citations. A workaround presented itself when ATS subcontracted review duty to ACS, which then hired off-duty officers to review the collected photos. Robert Mendoza, head of the public works department, greased the wheels.

Soon a handful of hand-picked officers ("Hosli's detail officers") were making money on the side, performing a task that was meant to be part of their normal on-duty workday. The officials involved with illegally enriching off-duty officers then went one step further, attempting to add another criminal charge to their rap sheets.

Officials meeting about the issue decided payments for the detail should be laundered through the New Orleans Police and Justice Foundation, a tax-exempt organization that describes itself as "dedicated to supporting the people and processes of the criminal justice system in New Orleans."

Unfortunately for the involved personnel, ACS decided to pay them in a more straightforward (and implicating) fashion.

Instead, ACS paid Hosli's company directly. After investigators got wind of what happened, the kickbacks were terminated.

The report notes that as soon as the officers were caught, they went back to doing it the right way.

"It should be noted that immediately upon notification, the NOPD placed the responsibility of the red light camera image review with on-duty traffic division officers," Quatrevaux concluded.

Well, I suppose that makes everything OK. Wrongs righted by way of business as usual. Other than the "loss" of extra income, no further punishment has been dealt out to those involved. New Orleans will apparently continue to be policed by a combination of opportunists and their deputized cameras. The approval process is back in the hands of on-duty officers, which is an almost imperceptible tilt of the scale back towards "right." The perverse incentives remain, but those reaping the benefits will have to settle for routing it through official channels.

Filed Under: corruption, new orleans, red light cameras

Florida's Redlight Program Designed To Make Driving More Dangerous By Shortening Yellow Lights

from the putting-lives-in-danger dept

For years, we've been critics of red light cameras, which have been shown time and time again to actually increase accidents rather than decrease them -- which you would think should be the goal. Of course, we all know that's not really the goal. The goal has always been revenue generation for cities. If they actually wanted to increase safety there's a very simple way to do it: you increase the timing of yellow lights (and for the places, like where I live, that don't have an interval between when one direction turns red and the other turns green, you add that brief interval where all directions are red). Do that, and you increase safety and decrease accidents. And it's incredibly easy and cheap to do.

But, of course, various governments hate that idea, because it would decrease the massive revenue from red light camera fines. That's why over and over and over again, we see that various governments are caught redhanded lowering the time for yellow lights. Make no mistake about it: this increases the danger, and puts many more people at risk. Stupidly, it probably also could end up costing the city more in terms of having to respond to more accidents and deal with more injuries. But, boy, I'm sure it pumps up the revenue on red light camera violations.

The latest example of this comes via Darby Keene, who points out that the Florida Department of Transportation quietly tweaked its own standards for yellow light intervals in 2011, allowing them to be shorter without breaking the law (after many cities have been caught violating official standards). And, of course, various cities quickly did lower the interval timing. Yes, revenue at the expense of public safety. Research has shown that reducing the time of a yellow light by a mere half a second can double the number of red light camera citations -- and in some cases, the changes to FDOT's regulations meant cities reduced the length of a yellow light by an entire second. Smell that? It's the smell of revenue for cities, intermingled with wrecked cars and destroyed lives!

Even worse: while FDOT is claiming that it changed its regulations to clean up some wording, and not because of potential revenue, the report from WTSP, also found emails from FDOT engineers telling local government officials to lower their yellow light intervals to the absolute minimums allowed. That is, they weren't even saying it was just an option, they were being told to decrease the timing to make the intersection less safe, but more profitable.

And, while FDOT defended the whole thing claiming that they changed the policies to "match federal guidelines," the report explains that federal guidelines actually recommend longer yellow light times, just as we discussed above.

A USDOT/Federal Highway Administration (FHA) report said cities should not use speed limit in the yellow interval equation because it results "in more red light violations and higher crash rates." And if drivers' average speeds cannot be calculated, it's recommended engineers use the "speed limit plus 10 mph" variable to producing more conservative, and safer, yellow intervals.

Another report stresses the importance of using 85^th percentile speed to calculate yellow intervals, while slide 28 on this report indicates when yellow light times are lengthened, severe crashes drop.  

USDOT also recommends an extra half-second of yellow time at intersections with lots of trucks or elderly drivers to allow them to react safely. And despite the fact that Greater Tampa Bay is home to five of the nation's 12 oldest counties (by median age), it's also home to some of the shortest yellow lights.

Don't you feel safer now?

Filed Under: fdot, florida, red light cameras, yellow light timing

Sticking It To The (Camera) Man: Inventor Develops License Plate Frame That Defeats Red Light Cameras

from the i-see-your-functional-flash-and-raise-you-two-xenon-strobes dept

Tech is all about disruption. When a problem presents itself, someone will find a way to route around it. Red light cameras, the controversial jackpot generators favored by certain law enforcement agencies, are the problem. The solution?

Jonathan Dandrow has developed noPhoto, which renders the pix snapped by those revenue-generating robo-cams useless. The technology behind noPhoto is fairly simple. At the top of the gadget, which doubles as a license plate frame, there’s an optical flash trigger that detects the flash of the traffic-light camera. That trigger sets off one or both xenon flashes in the sides of the noPhoto, so when the traffic-light camera opens its shutter, there’s too much light and the picture of your license plate is overexposed. Big Brother can’t read your plate.

Some will argue that technology like this will only be used by scofflaws wishing to run red lights. But as the inventor points out, there's plenty of shady activity on the other side of the camera, not the least of which is some more erosion of civil liberties.

“I just had a lot of reservations about the cameras,” Dandrow says. “They are trying to circumvent the constitution.”

As Gary Biller, the president of the National Motorists Association, recently wrote in U.S. News and World Report, traffic-light cameras violate “several key tenets of a citizen’s due process rights,” because there is “no certifiable witness to the alleged violation,” and so therefore, “the defendant loses the right to cross-examine his accuser in court.”

This isn't just an overreaction from minor league anarchists. Once the camera has "decided" you're guilty, that's it. Arguing your innocence is next to impossible. Case in point: this woman's ordeal with being falsely accused by a red light camera.

The New Star-Ledger’s Bamboozled column has the story of a woman whose license was suspended by authorities in New Jersey for a red-light ticket, even though the car in the photo is clearly not hers — oh, and she hadn’t even been in the Garden State in more than a year when the violation occurred.

Despite having moved from New Jersey to Colorado 18 months before being ticketed, she still had to jump through a ridiculous number of hoops to clear her record and get her suspended license back. Starting with the city staff in Edison Township calling her a liar and a long game of paperwork tennis between the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission and the township, it finally reached the point where the driver realized it would be easier to pay the fees than travel 1800 miles for a court date. Appealing the ticket runs $75 plus fees and a personal appearance. The final breakdown? $200 to restore her license plus $81 for the ticket and $33 in court costs. $314 to clear a ticket issued to the wrong person.

Despite the obvious flaws in the "camera-as-cop" system, there's a very good chance Dandrow's noPhoto will be forced off the market before too long. There's already a law against obscured license plates. But will that hold when the license plate is only obscured when being photographed? The other angle will likely be "concern" about "safety," as if this bit of civil disobedience will lead to rampant red-light running. Will some people ignore red lights if they have this equipped? Sure, but I doubt they'll use it to drive through heavily-trafficked intersections against the lights. This will most likely result in a few more "California stops" at quiet intersections. If the cops don't like this, maybe they should consider the example they set when they flip the light bar on momentarily to blow through traffic signals.

If this disruption hastens the demise of the rightfully-maligned red light camera, so much the better. The cameras, which some municipalities adore for their money-making ability, have been linked to increased accidents and shady law enforcement activity, like issuing tickets signed by a deceased patrolman, lowering the yellow light time to increase the chance of violations, and lying about the length of a red light to hide the fact a bogus ticket had been issued. Fighting back against technology being used badly for lousy ends with a simple, effective solution is the best kind of disruption.

Filed Under: blocking, license plate, red light cameras

LA Police Admit That Red Light Camera Payments Are Now 'Voluntary'

from the if-you'd-like-to-contribute-to-the-police-red-light-fund... dept

We recently wrote about how LA was considering dumping its red light cameras, and Jay Matteo was the first of a few of you to let us know that, rather than getting rid of them entirely, the police appear to be publicly stating that paying any such red light camera fines is entirely optional:

Officials said that paying the fines was optional and the city had no legal power to force people to pay.

The tickets are part of a "voluntary payment program," without sanctions for those who fail to submit fines, said Richard M. Tefank, executive director of the city's Board of Police Commissioners.

"The consequence is somebody calling you from one of these collection agencies and saying 'pay up.' And that's it," said committee member and Councilman Bill Rosendahl. "There's no real penalty in terms of your driver's license or any other consequences if you don't pay."

Of course, they never said that publicly before, and those who already paid can't take back their money, but it's still quite a revelation for the police to make.

Filed Under: la, red light cameras, voluntary