Red Light Camera News Getting rid of red-light cameras right thing to do (Naperville, IL)
Getting rid of red-light cameras right thing to do
By Bill Mego
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November 8, 2011 10:54PM
Reprints 4Updated: November 9, 2011 2:45AM
It was probably the best way for it to happen. In fact, given the polarization of positions that occurred over the last three years, it was probably the only way for Naperville to end, probably forever, its experiment with robotic policing.
As you probably know, we’ve been operating red-light cameras on Route 59 and on Aurora Avenue. Whether they’ve actually made those intersections safer is a matter of some debate, as it is all around the country.
Advocates of the cameras, and the considerable revenues they produce, have tended to look at the numbers very optimistically.
When a careful statistical analysis has been done, such as one by a Chicago professor, the cameras were generally found to have little or no effect, or even to have caused additional accidents. Because of that, a dozen cities in Washington state, Colorado, Arizona and California are removing them, and there are laws pending in several eastern states.
There is also an ethical problem. The companies that run the cameras generally receive part of the fine, giving them a powerful incentive to write as many tickets as possible and to exaggerate the camera’s effectiveness. In fact, most city officials were approached by red-light camera companies before they knew anything about the cameras, and were given great but false expectations of public safety and millions in extra revenue.
In some cases, not in Naperville’s as far as I know, towns actually signed agreements promising not to increase the length of the yellow light interval and not to have a one-second all-red interval. There are few if any violations or accidents if both of those things are done.
Where the yellow interval alone was increased in a few towns, the cameras didn’t generate enough money and they were removed.
Red -ight cameras are universally despised, largely because most of the people who got tickets were not intentionally breaking the law. They either couldn’t react fast enough to a changing light or were trying to avoid some worse situation. I’ve talked to many police officers who have said that they would never have personally written many of the tickets that were issued. In any event, I sincerely doubt that mailing a ticket constitutes legal service, like getting a citation from an officer or process server.
Right-turn tickets are especially problematic, and most towns including Naperville stopped issuing them, even though they provided most of the revenue from the cameras. Yet, the cameras themselves have fierce defenders who will always believe in them, at least in theory. Our own City Council is divided on the matter.
We would not have removed our cameras if Route 59 were not being improved. The cameras had to go during construction and replacing them will require three years of traffic data. The remaining camera on Aurora Avenue wouldn’t have paid for itself. So everybody got to save face, and nobody on either side had to admit they might have been wrong.
However, let me suggest that this is exactly the time to begin a community discussion on robotic policing, surveillance, and privacy in general. Technology is continually slouching toward an Orwellian world, and it will not be long before someone wants to sell the city devices that track or detect everything we do or have ever done. Before we let some enterprising company get paid to probe our most personal and intimate affairs, while shredding the Fourth Amendment, we have to know exactly what we and the courts think about the idea. Our policies toward such things must be decided in the public forum, not in the back offices of the Municipal Center, and they must be in place long before we have to confront these brave new inventions.
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