Traffic camera bill awaits hearing

[Dos Equis]

Do you have these in your communities?  I hate the concept.  We had van cams a few years ago and after a public outcry they went away. 

Traffic camera bill awaits hearing
The state measure that aims to catch red-light runners must go before two Senate panels

By Star-Bulletin Staff and News Services

POSTED: 01:30 a.m. HST, Mar 23, 2009

A bill to install cameras at intersections in Hawaii to catch red-light runners is awaiting a hearing before the state Senate committees on transportation and the Judiciary.

State Rep. Joe Souki, who has introduced the measure every year since 2002, says he is frustrated that it keeps getting held.

"Don't they want to save lives?" he asks of his fellow legislators.

Souki's bill, House Bill 145, would allow counties to set up the system and give profits made from the tickets back to the counties.

He said he expects the cameras eventually to win approval in Hawaii.

"But every year we delay, there's one additional life that can be lost," he said.

The camera manufacturers and the nonprofit Insurance Institute of Highway Safety, a group funded by auto insurers, argue that the cameras save lives and ultimately cut costs. They estimate the cameras save about $14 billion annually, largely by reducing emergency-room trips, lowering insurance rates and cutting medical bills.

But a 2005 study by the Federal Highway Safety Administration found that after installation of red-light cameras, right-angle or T-bone crashes dropped 28 percent, while rear-end crashes climbed 8 percent.

The researchers found that with property damage included, each site saw a $40,000 annual drop in damage.

Richard Retting, a former senior transportation engineer and lead researcher who left the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety in September, said there is no debate that the cameras cut down on red-light running, but that their effect on crash severity is less certain.

Still, use of the cameras is growing in U.S. cities.

In Clive, Iowa, one of the cameras was responsible for giving Richard Tarlton his first ticket in more than 60 years of driving. But the 76-year-old said that as long as the cameras help police become more efficient, he is all for it.

"If the policemen use their time and do police work, that's great," Tarlton said.

Aaron Quinn, spokesman for the Wisconsin-based National Motorists Association, said there are cheaper safety alternatives to red-light cameras, including lengthening yellow-light times.

"We say the red-light camera wouldn't have stopped anyone from getting hit," Quinn said. "Once (a city) sees one city getting it miles away, and that first city makes a bunch of money, they want to do it, too. It's like a virus."

In St. Peters, Mo., a city of 55,000, red-light cameras resulted in 3,203 tickets issued from January 2007 to September 2008 and drew a total of $235,973. The city issued 14,836 traffic tickets in fiscal year 2006, but that jumped to 21,745 in 2008, the first full fiscal year with the cameras.

The largest red-light camera company, Redflex Traffic Systems of Scottsdale, Ariz., operates red-light or speed cameras in 22 states and added 79 cities last year. It signed a $32 million maintenance contract with Chicago last fall, and in just the last three weeks of last year, Redflex added five new cities.

http://www.starbulletin.com/news/20090323_traffic_camera_bill_awaits_hearing.html

[Dos Equis]

I am so glad we chased those things out of my state.

Ohio town must pay back millions of fines collected from speed cameras, court rules
By Andrew O'Reilly   | Fox News

A small Ohio town that lived by the red light camera could soon die by it, after a federal court ruled the speed trap has to pay back more than $3 million in automated speeding tickets.

The case of New Miami, population 2,321, highlights the controversy behind the tickets, which make stoplight-running motorists see red, but help keep the budgets of cities and towns in the black. New Miami will almost certainly go bankrupt if the Supreme Court doesn’t reverse a lower court’s ruling and spare it from refunding tens of thousands of tickets at $180 apiece plus interest.

“The village enacted this unconstitutional scheme primarily as a money making venture,” Josh Engel, the lawyer representing the plaintiffs in the New Miami case, told Fox News. “They increased their spending significantly after the scheme was put in place and it was basically used to fill holes in their budget that would traditionally have come from raising taxes.”

New Miami Cameras
A screenshot from Google Maps showing the traffic camera in New Miami, Ohio.  (Google Maps)

The case of New Miami is seen by many drivers across the country – including numerous lawmakers and lawyers – as the epitome of municipalities abusing their power by setting up speed traps and red light cameras in an attempt, not to make roadways safer, but to line their coffers.

“As with most issues there are elements of truth on both sides,” Bill Seitz, a Republican state representative from Ohio, told Fox News. “But many of these jurisdictions are using these tickets as revenue enhancements that ticket people for only minor infractions.”

Seitz is currently working to push a bill through the Ohio statehouse that would require cities to file all traffic camera cases in municipal court and would reduce state funding to cities by the same amount cities collect in traffic camera revenue.

The Ohio representative, who himself was caught on camera rolling through a red light in Columbus, added that in 2006 and 2014 lawmakers approved restrictions on photo enforcement cameras and that limits or bands on the devices enjoy wide support in cities like Cincinnati and Cleveland.

The current animosity directed at the cameras marks a shift in public sentiment toward the cameras.

While it is tough to pinpoint the national pulse as most studies are conducted at a state and regional level, but it appears that there are a growing number of areas who are starting to question whether the speed camera programs are effective or even constitutional.

Camera enforcement on the roads is up for debate throughout the nation, whether it's either safe or constitutional
Seven states are currently considering legislation to prohibit red light and speed camera use amid concerns that they are ripe for abuse and IIHS study found that the number of red light cameras in the U.S. dropped to 467 in 2015 from its peak of 553 in 2012.

“It’s really a money making venture,” Israel Klein, a lawyer in New York City, told Fox News. “They’re raking in the dollars and it’s an extreme abuse of power.”

Klein earlier this year filed a class action lawsuit against the city that argues that speed camera tickets are invalid and violate New York state law as the city failed to file all of the required paperwork with the court before allowing a private contractor to drop the photo ticket in the mail. New York City’s 2018 budget expects to haul in $119 million in photo enforcement fines.

“City officials don’t care about the law as long as they’re making money,” Klein added.

Proponents of the cameras, however, argue that they significantly lower the number of accidents on the road as both speeding and going through red lights are two of the biggest causes of car crashes in the country, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.

The most recent study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found that nearly 1,300 lives were saved through 2014 in 79 large U.S. cities that installed red light cameras and, in a study of one county in Maryland, radar cameras installed on local roads reduced fatal or incapacitating injuries by 39 percent.

“Red light running is one of the biggest factors in crashes,” Russ Rader, a spokesman for the IIHS, told Fox News. “But [these crashes] are sharply reduced when cities use red light cameras.”

But a slew of recent corruption cases across the country involving local government officials and companies selling the cameras is not helping the image of them as moneymakers for municipalities.

In Chicago, camera vendor Redflex won in 2003 a $120 million contract to install 384 cameras and collected more than $400 million in traffic fines. It was eventually revealed that Redflex bribed Chicago City hall manager John Bills with $2,000 for every camera installed as well as giving him vacations, a condominium in Arizona and Mercedes among other favors.

Bills was eventually sentenced to 10 years in federal prison in a corruption scandal that rocked the city, while two Redflex higher-ups were sent to jail and the company was forced to pay $20 million to the city to settle a lawsuit.

Redflex did not respond to Fox News’ request for comment.

In Ohio, New Miami will have to wait to see if the state’s Supreme Court decides to take a look at their plea – something it only does with roughly seven percent of cases filed annually. Engel, the plaintiff’s lawyer, says he believes that going to the state’s highest court is just another move by the village to delay making their payments.

“The village is well aware that the chances of the Supreme Court deciding to hear this issue is slim. So why are they pursuing this Hail Mary?” Engel told the Journal-News. “This is another stalling tactic to further delay having to pay back the money taken from motorists in an unconstitutional scheme.”

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/03/14/ohio-town-must-pay-back-millions-fines-collected-from-speed-cameras-court-rules.html