Challenges to red light cameras span US

This is good news. Law enforcement should be done by law enforcement personnel not private companies and cameras.



Challenges to red light cameras span US - US news - Life - msnbc.com
In more than 500 cities and towns in 25 states, silent sentries keep watch over intersections, snapping photos and shooting video of drivers who run red lights. The cameras are on the job in metropolises like Houston and Chicago and in small towns like Selmer, Tenn., population 4,700, where a single camera setup monitors traffic at the intersection of U.S. Highway 64 and Mulberry Avenue.

One of the places is Los Angeles, where, if the Police Commission gets its way, the red light cameras will have to come down in a few weeks. That puts the nation's second-largest city at the leading edge of an anti-camera movement that appears to have been gaining traction across the country in recent weeks.

A City Council committee is considering whether to continue the city's camera contract over the objections of the commission, which voted unanimously to remove the camera system, which shoots video of cars running red lights at 32 of the city's thousands of intersections. The private Arizona company that installed the cameras and runs the program mails off $446 tickets to their registered owners.

The company's contract will expire at the end of July if the council can't reach a final agreement to renew it.

Opponents of the cameras often argue that they are really just revenue engines for struggling cities and towns, silently dinging motorists for mostly minor infractions. And while guidelines issued by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration say revenue is an invalid justification for the use of the eyes in the sky (see box at right), camera-generated citations do spin off a lot of money in many cities — the nearly 400 cameras in Chicago, for example, generated more than $64 million in 2009, the last year for which complete figures were available.

Its disgusting that red light cameras almost always result in a shorter yellow actually resulting in more accidents. Even more appalling when the camera's are installed by a private entity who then takes a cut of the tickets. Justice is not a business.

Running a red light is not a minor violation, it is a dangerous violation of traffic rules. While yellow lights should NOT be shortened at camera intersections, yellow DOES mean SLOW DOWN, not speed up, as so many take it to mean.

I would prefer video rather than a still photo, however, as a video can show much more context than a still and can make it clear is someone is actually in violation of the law. A still doesn't show as much (for examples, getting out of the way or an emergency vehicle or finishing a left hand turn after the light changes but you are already in the middle of the intersection awaiting oncoming traffic).