Traffic intersection cameras: freeing up police for more useful tasks, or Big Brother earning revenue for the city?
This article in the Monitor describes some of the debate. What I find annoying are some of the arguments against such cameras. For example, “critics say too many violations involve drivers who enter an intersection just tenths-of-a-second after the light has changed to red.” Well, duh. That’s what the yellow light is for. If you try to run the signal, then, yes, you’ve had your warning, and you deserve a ticket.
(And for “you” I also include “me.”)
“Opponents, such as the ACLU, also complain the cameras are one more step down the path to a ‘surveillance society.'” That’s irrelevant. We’ve already decided that entering intersections when the light is red is illegal. Is there a problem with enforcing that law? If we had a cop on every corner, issuing tickets for such violations, wouldn’t that be a “surveillance society,” too?
“Others worry that cities will become dependent on ticket revenue from the devices.” Ah. The Law of Unintended Consequences. Now there’s a worry. Maybe. Certainly there are worries when there are quotas issued to traffic cops, that they will bend the rules a bit in order to meet the quota. But can intersection cameras be tweaked for this? If they are producing photos as proof of the violation, that should be that, right? Can these photos be actually manipulated?
The argument is made that the yellow light period is manipulated.
traffic engineers laugh when they hear accusations of shorter yellow-light times. “They’re the only people who are allowed to set the yellow-light time in most places, not the police or the vendor running the camera program, and they traditionally follow national engineering standards. Their concern is safety,” says Leslie Blakey, coordinator of the National Campaign to Stop Red Light Running.
Fact is, there is recourse at present to inappropriate signal timing, just as there is recourse to inappropriately low posted speed limits. These have been successfully challenged in court, because there are objective standards and reasonability tests that can be applied to such things. This works with “live cop” standards — it’s not clear why it would not work with cameras.
Going back to the cult of victimhood (ironic, given the speaker), “House majority leader Dick Armey has also called the cameras a hidden tax. Also of concern to Mr. Armey: The presumption of innocence is lost even if a driver ran a red-light unintentionally by misjudging a yellow light.” Um, a cop would still ticket such a “misjudgment.” And rightfully so — the point is that the person entered an intersection on red … which means that they could well have caused an accident, resulting in injury, crippling, and death. Yeah, maybe that misjudgment should have some consequences, even if the driver dodged the bullet (or, in this case, another car).
“‘”The way to correct red-light running is to go back and look at timing, maintenance, and other intersection design issues and correct those problems rather than just spending $50,000 a pop to put up cameras and issue citations to people,” says Mr. Baxter.'” Yeah, maybe. And maybe “the way” to correct bank robbery is to go back and look at child rearing and poverty and stress management and a whole raft of social ills and issues.
But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t arrest and convict robbers. And it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t do what we can to keep folks from entering intersections after the light has turned red. And if that means folks start slowing down earlier, or actually pay attention to the yellow … well, damn, I can’t think of any reason why we wouldn’t do that.
The Monitor has a link to the National Motorists Association page on red-light cameras, which they oppose. Again, looking at their opposition fails to move me.
The NMA states, “With properly posted speed limits and properly installed traffic-control devices, there is no need for camera-based traffic law enforcement devices.” Excuse me? The cameras seem to indicate otherwise. Unless the NMA is claiming that all traffic signals are too inconveniently timed for people to possibly obey them, this just makes no sense.
“Taking a reckless driver’s picture does not stop that incident of reckless driving,” they continue. True. But it’s not clear that cameras are being purchased at the expense of additional traffic police, so there seems to be little way to stop a given incident. And at least it provides some measure of accountability that may dissuade someone from a further incident — especially where points are levied against their license.
Only two arguments are made which seem to hold much water, and I’ll offer them up here for the sake of fairness.
First these camera systems do not always provide proof positive that the owner of the car (who gets a ticket from the system) is the actual driver. In such cases, as long as the law is as written, the ticket should not be issued, and if it is, it can be (and has been) challenged in court. Note, though, that this does not indict the use of red light cameras per se, but only how they are used. The same counter-argument can be made about (legitimate) concerns on how the tickets are issued — cases, for example, where the picture is not sent, but the accused has to go to a courthouse to view it, or where the citation is not sent through registered mail. These are “implementation issues,” and can and should be dealt with as such.
The second argument goes back to the money incentive. If a city has a poorly designed intersection, one that might cause accidents or have other problems, then the city, once it’s getting ticket revenue for the intersection, is disincented to actually fix the problem. The same is true today, of course, if an intersection is merely used as a “speed trap” or the like. But just because an intersection is poorly designed cannot be considered a justification for running it. Pushing for better, more efficient and effective traffic controls is a matter of democratic reform, of electing folks who will take action, of speaking up at public meetings.
But places where such public policy is not met should not prevent the use of such a tool, any more than the existence of speed traps in some communities should prevent the use of speed limits there.
That having been said, the NMA’s own “model law” guidelines on red-light cameras seem like a good set of guidelines on use of such devices.