Trafic Light Cameras

[roadman65]

What is your opinion of the new camera instalations in some states? Do you think it is fair, or just?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/54480415@N08/6695938319/in/photostream/

[kphoger]

I don't think any ticket should be issued without a police officer having witnessed the infraction to determine that (a) the action was actually unsafe and (b) the action wasn't actually performed to avoid a dangerous situation.

In the first case, I don't think a camera should ticket a driver for running a red light at 3:30 AM when there isn't a signle other vehicle nearby.  In the second case, a person might run a red light to avoid being rear-ended or to evade a nearby drunk driver.  A uniformed traffic stop is one thing, as a person can plead his case at no expense before a ticket is issued; an ticket automatically generated by a camera is something else, with no real human involvement unless you want to go before the judge.

[Duke87]

Red light cameras I dislike but tolerate. Speed cameras... fuck speed cameras.

[6a]

I don't think any ticket should be issued without a police officer having witnessed the infraction to determine that (a) the action was actually unsafe and (b) the action wasn't actually performed to avoid a dangerous situation.

In the first case, I don't think a camera should ticket a driver for running a red light at 3:30 AM when there isn't a signle other vehicle nearby.  In the second case, a person might run a red light to avoid being rear-ended or to evade a nearby drunk driver.  A uniformed traffic stop is one thing, as a person can plead his case at no expense before a ticket is issued; an ticket automatically generated by a camera is something else, with no real human involvement unless you want to go before the judge.

Plus there's that pesky sixth amendment.

[NE2]

Depends. If they're operated fairly, i.e. yellows are long enough, then I don't have a problem with them.

[kphoger]

Huh?  How does the 6th Amendment factor in?

I don't think any ticket should be issued without a police officer having witnessed the infraction to determine that (a) the action was actually unsafe and (b) the action wasn't actually performed to avoid a dangerous situation.

In the first case, I don't think a camera should ticket a driver for running a red light at 3:30 AM when there isn't a signle other vehicle nearby.  In the second case, a person might run a red light to avoid being rear-ended or to evade a nearby drunk driver.  A uniformed traffic stop is one thing, as a person can plead his case at no expense before a ticket is issued; an ticket automatically generated by a camera is something else, with no real human involvement unless you want to go before the judge.

Plus there's that pesky sixth amendment.

[SidS1045]

Huh?  How does the 6th Amendment factor in?

The right to confront (and cross-examine) the witnesses against you.

[Tarkus]

Huh?  How does the 6th Amendment factor in?

The notion of being able to confront your accuser.  It has often been argued that the accuser in a red light/speed camera ticket case is the camera or the private company operating the camera, the former of which is a non-human entity that cannot testify, and the other is often located a good distance away from the site of the alleged infraction and cannot/will not testify.  The police officer is little more than a witness, an intermediary, when the process is boiled down to its essence.

My opinion on red light cameras, over the course of the past 1 1/2 years, has gone from being mildly opposed to being very strongly opposed.  My change of heart toward them came after I had a very close call with a recently installed system at this very large intersection in Sherwood, Oregon in October 2010, where I narrowly escaped getting flashed.  The signal timing was clearly off (all the phases were unreasonably short) and just didn't seem right--so I started doing some research and really didn't like what I found.

In theory, the idea sounds reasonable enough . . . a camera photographs people that run red lights.  I think running a red light is something which just about every motorist (and non-motorist) can agree is generally an unwise thing to do.  However, the actual implementation, logistics and practice of red light camera operations is absolutely horrible and extremely questionable from an ethical standpoint.  Here's why:

1) Profit motive.  This is a two-pronged issue, actually.  

The first is your basic "speed trap"-type situation.  The city or other municipality that operates the signal can make adjustments in the signal phasing (while yellow phases are often addressed, oddities in green and red phasing can also make a huge impact) so as to rig the signal to force people to run the red, increasing ticket revenue.  Other times, it won't necessarily be a purposeful manipulation--sometimes, there will simply be some engineering negligence or other failings with the intersection itself that are the reason for the red light running problem, but this is in and of itself ethically shady.  In effect, the municipality is exploiting defects in the intersection or signal setup for profit.  Note that even when the city that has the camera does not maintain/operate the signal, state/county laws and arrangements relating to camera installation usually result in the state and county getting a cut of the ticket revenue.  You know that intersection I cited in Sherwood?  Turns out the Oregon DOT deleted the signal control software at the intersection, causing irregularities in timing and resulting in a ton of profit.  The city was later forced to refund some tickets after the expose.

The other is the matter of who actually operates the cameras.  Red light camera systems are quite expensive for municipalities (particularly small/mid-sized ones, and even places as large as Los Angeles and Houston) to be able to own and operate outright.  So 99% of the red light cameras in the US are not owned by the municipality whose jurisdiction they are under.  Instead, the municipalities usually sign a BOOM (Build/Own/Operate/Maintain) contract with a red light camera vendor, such as Redflex, American Traffic Solutions (ATS), or Affiliated Computer Systems (ACS).  All of these are for-profit companies that are traded on stock exchanges--Goldman Sachs owns a large stake of ATS (somewhere around 30-40%), ACS is owned by Xerox outright, and Redflex, in the past 2 years, had buyouts on the table from Macquarie Bank of Australia and ATS itself.  Virtually all of these BOOM contracts mean that this private vendor actually controls all the equipment, and usually gets a pretty substantial cut of the revenue from the tickets as partial renumeration (in addition to "monthly rent"), sometimes on a sliding scale based on quotas.  To my knowledge, the contract that the City of Beaverton, Oregon has with Redflex stipulates that Redflex gets a 44% cut of every red light camera ticket (a pretty hefty sum when you consider that Beaverton's fine for a red light moving violation is around $400).

While these camera vendors often cite "safety", at their core, they are in it to make money.  Lots of money.  They often will try to take advantage of every technicality they can to issue tickets, even with the supposed "safety net" of having the municipality's police department "check" the violations.

2) The actual technology itself is problematic and inherently flawed.  Almost all red light cameras operate on the principle of a series of piezo pickups embedded in the roadway that detect a vehicle crossing them.  Usually, these are situated on the first crosswalk line/stop line at the intersection, though it varies according to state laws and the design of the intersection (making it rather inconsistent).  If the vehicle trips the piezos while the signal appears to be red, the camera system goes off.

This sounds simple enough, but there are some inherent problems with this.  As the municipalities are generally forbidden from handing control or in any way directly over to the private vendor, the camera system is not actually hooked up to the signal.  The reason behind this is one of the few ethical checks-and-balances in the typical red light camera arrangement: do you really want a for-profit corporation, whose business is extracting money from red-light running violations and not traffic engineering, to be controlling the signal timing directly?  This does, however, create some other problems.  Because the camera is not directly synchronized with the signal, it has to be manually calibrated to coincide with the timing of the signal phases.  If there's any change in the signal phase, or a complex phasing arrangement, it gets more difficult to manage.  As these cameras can go off so frequently, it can often become rather difficult for the police department to really proof the evidence they're getting from the vendor, and it's quite possible to get a ticket for legally passing through on a yellow or even a green light.  There are no standards for calibration, and it's almost purely up to the vendor to keep up on it.  And they can profit handily from being negligent.

Redflex has also recently started trying to convince some municipalities to hand over control of signals to them with their promise of some "newfangled" technology to prevent red-light running--Chandler, Arizona's police chief seems to be taking the bait already.

Additionally, there's the technicalities.  One of the most common ones is the stop line/crosswalk situation.  If you stop just a little bit into the white line, you're probably going to get flashed and there's a good chance you'll be cited for running a red light (even if you never actually entered the intersection or were any real threat to traffic safety).  The City of Denver (an ACS/Xerox client) has recently quadrupled the revenue of its camera program by exploiting this.

Furthermore, many red light cameras are set up so as to try to "predict" if a motorist is going to run a red light, using algorithms involving the average breaking speed.  If you travel over the preliminary sensor fast enough but manage to stop faster than the camera vendor thinks you can and do not actually run the red light, the camera can go off and you can still be cited.  This gets to be a favorite sticking point of vendors particularly with "right-on-red" situations.  If you do not stop for an arbitrary amount of time before making your turn, or drive over one of the piezos above a certain speed, flash.  That's right, you can actually get a ticket for red-light running just because a computer "thinks" you're going to run it.

Examples of these technicalities can be read about here, or seen in the video below.  While the Prius driver in the video could be cited for entering the crosswalk at this intersection in Newark, California, it's a stretch to call it red light running, and the camera flash actually goes off even before they get up to the crosswalk.  

3) The jury is still out on whether or not red-light cameras actually do anything to improve safety.  The results are mixed at best, and muddied by the fact that some of the groups that have issued studies have an inherent conflict-of-interest.  The IIHS, being an insurance industry group, profits from being able to increase insurance premiums after camera citations, and Redflex and ATS have been known to start phony astroturf "advocacy" groups (such as the "Coalition for Safer Roads") and publish bogus studies (and there's also the matter of now-former ATS Vice-President William Kroske playing internet troll on some newspaper online comment sections).  Of the legitimate studies out there, the common theme is that while side-angle collisions can be reduced, rear-end collisions often increase, and these results vary to a wide degree.  And one study done last year by the Oregon DOT about a camera system installed in Salem, Oregon showed that there was a 77% increase in accidents across the board after installation, a situation that was actually downplayed in the report by the fact that the "before" study period was much longer than the "after" period (50 months vs. 21 months)--I did an analysis of the discrepancy here.

4) Delivery of citations.  The standard practice is to mail the citation to the registered owner of the car.  But what if the registered owner wasn't driving?  Or the car is registered to a company or governmental agency?  Or the driver can't be identified at all?  Often times, this can create some major legal questions that could have easily been avoided if a police officer had simply pulled the driver over.  Sometimes, the camera companies (especially Redflex) will send out bogus, unprosecutable tickets called "snitch tickets", where the driver of the car is clearly not the registered owner (e.g. gender/age mismatch), in an attempt to get the registered owner to "snitch out" the actual driver.  

Additionally, as the volume of these tickets can be quite high, it can also be quite difficult to challenge them.  Some cities/counties will have massive lines backed up out of the courthouses with people trying to challenge red light camera tickets, and some places have even decreed that camera tickets cannot be challenged, citing the sheer volume of potential challengers.

-Tarkus

[roadman65]

Huh?  How does the 6th Amendment factor in?

The right to confront (and cross-examine) the witnesses against you.

Not always, a person can get accused of sexual harrassment and that person will not know the one who made the complaint.  I have seen people get demoted and fired from positions, because usually a woman filing a complaint of this nature usually is trying to rid herself of a boss that she does not like for personal reasons.   Always, the name is withheld to protect the complainer from harm, but the one who is innocent of the ordeal cannot face and deal with the action brought against him.  There is no way to prove innocence as well, cause case is closed after the person fired or demoted.

We live in an age where we gave up privacy so we can rid ourselves of certain crimes, so the constitution will only protect you limited.

[jemacedo9]

I believe there are some cases (PA and NY) where there is an appeal process as a first step, that doesn't involve court.  You can file an appeal by sending in a form, to the jurisdiction in charge of the signal, and they then review the photo.  In the case of obvious camera error (for example, the stop line/crosswalk example above) the ticket is then rescinded no harm no foul.   Someone can correct me or fill in details as I'm going off the top of my head. 

Also in PA and NY, the intersections are clearly marked as "Photo Enforced".  So at least in PA and NY, it seems like they're trying to be somewhat fair so I have no problem with it.  The Oregon examples seem pretty bad. 

As far as the statistical analysis, it seems in general that red light cameras possibly make those intersections slightly safer.  Is it worth the hassle the cameras cause?  Don't know.  And in some cases, there definitely seems to be a revenue "goal".

[Scott5114]

Huh?  How does the 6th Amendment factor in?

The right to confront (and cross-examine) the witnesses against you.

Not always, a person can get accused of sexual harrassment and that person will not know the one who made the complaint.  I have seen people get demoted and fired from positions, because usually a woman filing a complaint of this nature usually is trying to rid herself of a boss that she does not like for personal reasons.   Always, the name is withheld to protect the complainer from harm, but the one who is innocent of the ordeal cannot face and deal with the action brought against him.  There is no way to prove innocence as well, cause case is closed after the person fired or demoted.

We live in an age where we gave up privacy so we can rid ourselves of certain crimes, so the constitution will only protect you limited.

That's private employment practice and has nothing to do with the 6th Amendment, which has to do with how governments conduct themselves in court proceedings. Most states allow privately held companies to fire employees "for any reason, or for no reason". Unfortunately you're not really guaranteed anything like due process or constitutional rights by private companies, except where laws exist that specifically compel companies to give you such things.

[roadman65]

Huh?  How does the 6th Amendment factor in?

The right to confront (and cross-examine) the witnesses against you.

Not always, a person can get accused of sexual harrassment and that person will not know the one who made the complaint.  I have seen people get demoted and fired from positions, because usually a woman filing a complaint of this nature usually is trying to rid herself of a boss that she does not like for personal reasons.   Always, the name is withheld to protect the complainer from harm, but the one who is innocent of the ordeal cannot face and deal with the action brought against him.  There is no way to prove innocence as well, cause case is closed after the person fired or demoted.

We live in an age where we gave up privacy so we can rid ourselves of certain crimes, so the constitution will only protect you limited.

That's private employment practice and has nothing to do with the 6th Amendment, which has to do with how governments conduct themselves in court proceedings. Most states allow privately held companies to fire employees "for any reason, or for no reason". Unfortunately you're not really guaranteed anything like due process or constitutional rights by private companies, except where laws exist that specifically compel companies to give you such things.

I really do not know about that, cause a lawyer said to me once that sexual harrassment does not fall under the "Right to Work" status of Florida and employers do not have to follow that ruling.

The main point I was making is that we as a society is changing and pulling away from the privacy of the consitution.  I just used the sexual harrasment thing as another example.

[realjd]

Huh?  How does the 6th Amendment factor in?

The right to confront (and cross-examine) the witnesses against you.

You can. The accuser is a police officer. He uses video or picture data captured by the camera as evidence. He shows up in court. At least around here, the ticket process isn't automatic. A cop has to look over the camera data before writing the ticket. What bugs me from a legal standpoint is that the car owner gets the ticket, not the driver.

I'm not a fan of the red light cameras personally. Studies have shown that they actually increase rear end accidents. And ticketing RTOR drivers is dumb. But in the big picture, there are bigger issues to worry about.

[roadman65]

Huh?  How does the 6th Amendment factor in?

The right to confront (and cross-examine) the witnesses against you.

You can. The accuser is a police officer. He uses video or picture data captured by the camera as evidence. He shows up in court. At least around here, the ticket process isn't automatic. A cop has to look over the camera data before writing the ticket. What bugs me from a legal standpoint is that the car owner gets the ticket, not the driver.

I'm not a fan of the red light cameras personally. Studies have shown that they actually increase rear end accidents. And ticketing RTOR drivers is dumb. But in the big picture, there are bigger issues to worry about.

True, you loan your car out to somebody and they run the light, and you PAY not only the fine, but it goes on your driving record.  What if you have a girlfriend who you break up with who decides to get even with you after seeing the Kelly Clarkson video of Since You've Been Gone and goes on a rampage with your vehicle and drives through every traffic signal around to get your car's license tag photographed?  You get in trouble! 

[6a]

You can. The accuser is a police officer. He uses video or picture data captured by the camera as evidence. He shows up in court. At least around here, the ticket process isn't automatic. A cop has to look over the camera data before writing the ticket. What bugs me from a legal standpoint is that the car owner gets the ticket, not the driver.

I'm not a fan of the red light cameras personally. Studies have shown that they actually increase rear end accidents. And ticketing RTOR drivers is dumb. But in the big picture, there are bigger issues to worry about.

That's what I was getting at - IF there is an officer review.  It was hinted earlier that that isn't always the case.  Twice now I've triggered the camera near my house while the light was turned off for the night.  Neither one got me a ticket, so that part of the process works (even if the camera apparently doesn't.)

[SidS1045]

Huh?  How does the 6th Amendment factor in?

The right to confront (and cross-examine) the witnesses against you.

You can. The accuser is a police officer.

Absolutely WRONG.  The police office was not a witness and was not anywhere near the camera installation/intersection, so he/she has no first-hand knowledge of the facts and cannot lawfully accuse the alleged violator of anything.

Just keep in mind that famous line from "Jerry Maguire:"  "Follow the money."

[Brandon]

Ban both red light cameras and speed cameras!  I damn near got rear-ended at 135th and IL-59 in Plainfield due to one of these fucking things.  Had the truck behind me not gone into the right turn area beside, YES, BESIDE, me, I would've been suing the shit out of the village, IDOT, and whatever camera company the village contracts to.  Without the camera, I would've sailed on through on the late yellow and gotten away from the truck.

[Tarkus]

Ban both red light cameras and speed cameras!

I'd agree with that entirely.  In fact, in the past week or so, several state-level efforts to ban cameras have popped up.  Lawmakers in Colorado, Iowa, Missouri and Florida are currently discussing bans, and there is a ballot initiative proposal that was just announced in Washington.  Honestly, I think it'll only be a matter of time before the cameras go the way of the dodo.  There's just too many problems with them on technical and ethical grounds.

whatever camera company the village contracts to. 

According to The Expired Meter, Plainfield appears to use a smaller vendor, LaserCraft.

-Tarkus

[NE2]

Ban tailgaters!  I damn near got rear-ended at 135th and IL-59 in Plainfield due to one of these fucking things.

Fixed for you.

[1995hoo]

One way states get around the Sixth Amendment issue is to classify lots of traffic offenses as "civil infractions" rather than as "criminal offenses," especially things enforced by cameras. The Sixth Amendment doesn't apply in non-criminal matters.

[connroadgeek]

Red light cameras I dislike but tolerate. Speed cameras... fuck speed cameras.

Luckily for us they are illegal in our state. New Haven wanted to install red light cameras but couldn't because of state law.

[Alps]

Red light cameras I dislike but tolerate. Speed cameras... fuck speed cameras.

Luckily for us they are illegal in our state. New Haven wanted to install red light cameras but couldn't because of state law.

They were illegal in NJ. Then Newark tried them out. Now they're everywhere.

[Hot Rod Hootenanny]

Speaking of Red Light Cameras, the following was in the Columbus Dispatch on Sunday.
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2012/01/15/red-light-offenses-arent-all-close.html

[kphoger]

One way states get around the Sixth Amendment issue is to classify lots of traffic offenses as "civil infractions" rather than as "criminal offenses," especially things enforced by cameras. The Sixth Amendment doesn't apply in non-criminal matters.

That's what I was getting at.  The 6th Amendment and a traffic violation don't seem to have a link IMO.

[InterstateNG]

I'd like to invite anyone in the anti-red light camera camp to have their car totaled by a red light runner, as mine was a few months ago in an incident where I was fortunate to avoid serious injury.  Would such an installation prevented the accident?  Maybe, maybe not, but I'd feel better that some entity was trying something to use as a deterrent.

Any place where I've seen red light cameras had signs at the intersection clearly alerting the driver to the installation (and they should always be signed but that's a different discussion) so it isn't a surprise.  Is the whopping amount of seconds that you save not going through a late yellow really worth a) the fine or b) your safety or that of someone else?  We all have to make cost-benefit analysis so to each their own, but I find the whinging about not being able to go through late yellows to be hollow and rather despicable, to be frank.