Dear Whiney Red Light Camera Haters,
Okay, I get it. You hate red light cameras. You dismiss all scientific studies (or at least, all studies that prove the cameras’ effectiveness at reducing serious injuries and fatalities), because the academic and insurance industry experts who have dedicated their careers to studying traffic safety are clearly corrupt and/or stupid, or something. And you’re absolutely convinced that the local elected officials who approve the installation of red light cameras are doing so solely for the purpose of sucking your hard-earned dollars out of your wallet because, what? They skim the extra dollars for themselves to spend on scotch and hookers? In fact, these electeds are soooo craven, according to you, that they’re even fiddling with the timing of yellow lights in order to create more infractions (and thus accidents!) so as to squeeze even more revenue out of you poor downtrodden drivers. The bastards!
And don’t get you started on the evil red light camera companies who you say keep most of the money for themselves, thus, in your minds, creating a financial incentive to increase the number of citations… even though they don’t. They just don’t. At least not according to the contracts Seattle and Bellevue signed with American Traffic Solutions (ATS). Both these contracts specify a monthly service fee of up to $3,750 per intersection, plus various optional processing fees, to install, maintain, and operate the cameras. Indeed, over the first two years of Seattle’s red light program, citations brought in $2,075,038 in revenues at a cost of $1,009,800, only $518,343 of which went to ATS, less than 25 percent. Oh, and in case you’re wondering, all infractions are reviewed by a police officer before a citation is issued.
So in the interest of encouraging an informed dialectic, let me ask you a question: If not red light cameras, what?
Would you prefer the traffic laws be enforced at these intersections by actual police officers, so that you could add a moving violation onto your record (along with the higher insurance premiums that might bring) on top of the $124 fine? (FYI, a red light camera citation is just an expensive parking ticket.) According to a 2007 report, it would take six officers ($121,000 a year each) to patrol an intersection 24/7; that would come to a monthly cost of $60,500 per intersection, as opposed to the $3,750 ATS charges. Forgive me for generalizing, but my impression was that the whiney,red light camera hating types were also the whiney government hating types who generally support outsourcing public sector jobs to private sector companies who can do the work more efficiently.
Or… is your real goal simply to keep our traffic laws from being enforced? Yeah, I kinda think that might be it. You simply want to continue to recklessly accelerate through stale yellow lights, don’t you, without the risk of getting a ticket should you mistime it by a second or three? Yeah, sure, dangerous behavior like this takes out the odd pedestrian or two, or causes the occasional t-boning. But it’s not like it was your mother who was killed, so what’s it to you?
So finally, let me ask you one more question. If, hypothetically, you could be convinced—like the experts are—that red light cameras reduce the number and severity of red light running accidents, how many lives would it take to get you to drop your opposition? Just one of the estimated 1,000 deaths a year nationally attributed to red light running? Ten? One Hundred? Or, is there no number of innocent lives to be saved that is worth sacrificing your freedom to determine for yourself when our traffic laws should or should not be obeyed?
I look forward to continuing our correspondence.
Love,
Goldy
@49, so it’s either complete ass-hattery riddled with straw man and Ad hominem, or “polite, he-said/she-said claptrap”? What does the latter even mean? You only care about hearing your own yapping? Seems like yet more bullshit – characterizing anyone who could possibly disagree with you with terms like that, rather than actually addressing any points anyone’s posted. “Suddenly” because, yes, you’re often abrasive on here, but today your level of hostility seriously borders on psychosis.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgBSj0XII… Without a camera, it’s I saw this guy getting t-boned by someone running a red light. With a camera, you can see the walk signal turn, you can see people squeezing the most they can out of the yellow and blocking the crosswalk decreasing visibility, and you can see how many seconds after the the walk signal appears that the driver blows through the red light. The camera cuts out all of the he did, she did bs and shows the facts. When any bs starts to happen, if I point at my camera, it immediately stops. Hence, I will continue to wear a camera because it makes me ride safer and helps a lot when an accident happens.
@42,
Suddenly? He effectively accused supporters of liquor privatization of wanting children to die.
Oh, I just remembered, I also hate red light cameras because I hate being blinded at night when they randomly go off for no reason.
Ok, so we know Goldy has a temper. Anyone who disagrees with him is a whiny little bitch, or wants children to die. He’s all about law and order and corporate plutocracy — no privatization of liquor, but go ahead and privatize law enforcement if the insurance companies say to. He’s somewhere between moderately and extremely dishonest, twisting and omitting facts to prove his point.
In short: how do we know that this Stranger writer is not, in fact, a Republican?
Everyone saying that if you aren’t guilty then you have nothing to fear: that’s the same line used by the conservative blowhards every time the Patriot Act is ratcheted up a notch. Et tu?
Goldy, you truly suck. It’s nice to see the most people now agree with my opinion of you. I feel like a trendsetter.
Giving out tickets for not completely stopping while doing a right turn in the middle of the night is fucking bullshit. There is the spirit of the law and the letter of the law, and a camera can’t differentiate. And who cares what the details of the deal is – Goldman FUCKING Sachs profits from those cameras. Cities absolutely view these cameras as revenue generators these days and nothing more. If the cameras are so incredibly valuable to preserving human life, why are they being dismantles across the country (last week it was L.A.)?
If not red light cameras, what?
Oh, I dunno, how about cops that are out on patrol?
Get the cops out of Dunkin’ Donuts, and stop kicking the “Mexican piss” out of the citizenry, and get them into the communities they are here to protect and serve and doing their damn jobs.
What seems to get missed by proponents of red light cameras, no matter how many studies show that they actually increase accidents and injuries and serve as an income source more than a traffic control method, is that we are giving the decision of our guilt or innocence over to a machine.
So far, I have had THREE separate friends who have gotten tickets for “running a red light” by making a legal right turn onto a street and triggering the red light camera.
‘Take it to a judge,’ you say.
They all did.
The judges response: “Camera says you did it. Camera is always right. Guilty as charged. Pay up!” And it stays on your record AND your insurance goes up.
I am not asking politely to be tried by a court of human beings after being accused by another human being, I DEMAND it.
@53, I think maybe I haven’t actually read much “Goldy.” These hothead Stranger writers, they kind of blend together.
well, if I was on the fence before, I am effectively 100% against traffic cameras now. thanks a bunch!
@59,
I don’t know about other states, but, in Washington, running a red light as caught by a camera is not considered a moving violation, so it doesn’t stay on your “record” or have any effect on insurance rates.
Fnarf, when you stated, “And no one is getting a ticket via red light cameras who did not in fact RUN A RED LIGHT.” you were incorrect, per Goldy’s account of his own experience at http://horsesass.org/?p=16129:
“I finally got to see the video and it clearly shows the light yellow at the time I enter the intersection, but turning red while my car is still in it making a right turn. So from what I understand, I guess technically, that’s a violation, if only by a split second.”
Goldy, your understanding and guess in your account of your own experience were also both incorrect, per State Patrol trooper Curt Boyle’s answer at http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattle911/201…
“It isn’t illegal to be in the intersection when the light is yellow.
The yellow light is a warning light to inform drivers that the light will be turning red and to prepare to stop.
If a driver has already entered the intersection when the light changes red then they can clear the intersection.”
I was incorrect to ignore the note stating, “HTML is not allowed in anonymous comments. Any HTML in your comment will be removed.”
One can get to State Patrol trooper Curt Boyle’s answer by Googling “seattle pi illegal to enter on a yellow light” and clicking on the first result.
Handy guide to getting out of red light camera tickets:
(this only works in Seattle as far as I know).
1.When you get the infraction in the mail, call the court and explain how you loaned the car to a friend that day, and that this friend will be the one paying the fine if they could just manage to accept his/her check.
2. You’re done! The court currently has no system in place for dealing with this situation, and will throw out the ticket ON THE SPOT, over the phone.
“If not red light cameras, what?”
Humans are horrible at driving cars. Most of us are perfect, and will live our life never crashing, never speeding, never causing accidents. But if you look at it from the point of everyone’s life is sacred in some way, we’re horrible. Humans shouldn’t be driving cars.
We have the technology to have cars that drive themselves, at that point cars just become pods. They always stop at red lights. They always change lanes safely. They find a place to park without murdering anyone. At a certain point when tens of thousands of people stop dying EVERY YEAR (32k last year) we’ll increase speeds, and traffic will disappear. For our response on 9/11 to be that, and for our response to well over ten times the same tragedy happening every year to be this is just pathetic. Red light cameras are going to bring this number down? Barely. Go big or go home.
Of course, automated systems would require real political courage. Within our current system I would argue that we could find people to watch intersections for way less, where’s your capitalistic instincts? If all we need is picture proof what’s the point of the police officer? Give some jobless person a camera and pay them to take pictures of law breakers. The camera can have an immediate upload to police officers who can verify that there were laws broken, and dispatch an officer immediately to issue a citation. This citation, if fought in court, now has a witness, a photograph, and an issuing officer. Way better than some machine that takes random pictures. Oh and finally, I’D INCREASE YELLOW LIGHT TIMES.
Privacy concerns? Don’t run a red light! It’s that frocking simple. I ran through a yellow on Aurora and 85th. The light turned red mid-way through. I didn’t get a ticket. The fact was i claimed the intersection before the green light. These dip-sheets who claim ” My rights, my rights; what about my rights?” Don’t run a late yellow light!
Goldy ftw.
Lawbreaking red light and stop sign runners for the accident-causing child-killing society-hating epic fail.
@37
No no — saying that it “will seem ridiculous” implies that it’s not actually ridiculous. Which it is.
The constitution protects against unreasonable searches. Consequently, the constitutional standard for electronic surveillance is that it may not infringe upon a reasonable expectation of privacy. That means I can’t put a bug in a phone booth, if the booth has a door that closes. I can’t put a bug in your house, pretty much ever, unless you’re also using your house as a business. I can’t put a listening device in your car. But I can take photos of you in your car. I don’t even need a warrant for that. Because why? Because you have no reasonable expectation of privacy in public. Observing you in your car, from a distance, in public is not an unreasonable search. And it doesn’t matter, legally, if I’m using my eyeballs or a camera.
Acting like a camera that records things that happen in public violates a right to privacy that you currently have only demonstrates that you have no understanding of what rights you do or — in this case — don’t have. It’s not opening a door to more surveillance because, constitutionally, the door is already open wide enough to allow this. It’s disingenuous (or ignorant) to pretend that cameras in public lead logically or legally to cameras in private.
PS – Obviously (or, sadly, maybe not so obviously) the government is empowered to violate even a reasonable expectation of privacy if they have grounds for a warrant. I assume everyone knows that, but then I realized how optimistic that is.
@62 No, in *Seattle* it’s not a moving violation- I have a co-worker in Lynnwood who got one recently, and it was a moving violation.
@37 “In my humble opinion, privacy trumps traffic deaths.”
That sums it up for me. I’m very law abiding when it comes to red lights, which annoyed my husband, until he crowded a yellow light that turned red and he got a ticket from a physical law officer. I didn’t say I told you so, but he stopped telling me to step on it through yellows. Still, the red-light cameras bother me immensely because they are the beginning of a slippery slope of cameras enforcing laws.
I would rather have the physical police presence–you know why? because at busy intersections (at least here in Atlanta) running red lights is the most minor of infractions compared to the scary traffic violations–illegal lane changing, cutting cars off, blocking intersections…if there were a police presence more often, these kinds of behavior would lessen. Or maybe if we increased the fines for moving violations around intersections this would do more, say, a $1,000 fine for swerving across three lanes in heavy traffic to turn left in front of three lanes of cars?
Fines and should not be significant revenue streams for law enforcement or the city. If they are, then we’re doing something wrong by basically trapping the public for monetary gain. There are many reported cases of cities reducing yellow light times at intersections with cameras.
If so many people are getting tickets then we need to re-enginner the system so they aren’t while still providing the same level of safety. Like by changing light timing, dedicated bike lanes, adjusting arterial flows, etc.
Jesus. Sometimes Goldy can be a real arrogant self-satisfied douche fucker.
As long as the cameras ticket bike riders that NEVER EVER stop for red lights, I am all for them!
It was you! You left the pop can.
@65 – actually, that’s not quite accurate. If you say you loaned the car to a friend, you’re required to provide the friend’s name and mailing address. They then send the ticket to them, along with a notation that you said they were the driver. Good way to lose friends.
If they deny they were driving the car, the ticket bounces right back to the car owner.
@71 – not true. It’s a statewide statute; see here for explanation.
http://www.statehighwaysafety.org/html/s…
has anyone compared anyone to Hitler yet? If not… HITLER!
@22: I had to skip all the other comments just to add: YOU ARE SO RIGHT ABOUT UTAH DRIVERS! I thought our local drivers were bad until I had to drive through Utah, including rush hour in SLC!!!!! If you think people here cut you off, don’t use signals, etc, several times we had drivers cut in front of us with what looked like INCHES to spare! No signals, ever. Scary!
@1 “Way to categorically” fail to rebut the arguments Goldy made by merely tossing out the phrase “privacy concerns” without actually explaining what those privacy conerns happen to be, but that would be, like, work. Probably almost as much work as moving your foot from the gas to the brake when approaching a yellow light.
how quickly will Facebook facial recognition technology be linked to law inforcement cameras?
oops. I meant enforcement
How about we don’t these systems because private companies who have a profit motive to run these systems have a proved track record of manipulating the lights to increase revenue? How about we don’t want a robots making decisions about traffic infractions because there is a difference between someone spacing out and someone intentionally running a light, and a cop has the discretion to give a warning?
How about we don’t want to reward private out of state companies who have been caught filling up boards like this with company PR hacks posing as local people in favor of the cameras – not once but OVER and OVER again? As well as suing to keep initiatives off the ballot so they can continue to make profits in spite of what the communities want?
How about we look for real design solutions like roundabouts instead of habituating people to the surveliance state?
How about because there are studies that suggest rear impact crashes increase where these cameras are installed?
I haven’t gotten a ticket in 15 years – I’m pretty good at stopping at red lights, but these machines are entrapment devices, designed to make money. They’re about as right wing as you can get. I hate it when I agree with Eyeman, but he’s right on this one.
They’re right up there with privatizing prisons.