Red Light Camera News HOW ONE MAN DID THE HEAVY LIFTING THAT KILLED L.A.’s RED LIGHT TICKET PROGRAM
And what lessons may be learned by Monroe and other cities
August 23, 2011
Sky Valley Media Group
(MONROE, WA) -- As Monroe’s Mayor and city council continue to come under fire for jumping into bed with a red light ticket camera company - and with recent revelations that a few cops in the Lynnwood police department were having a quiet, kissy-smooch email love affair with their out of state red light camera operator that seemed to shred the official party line that the cameras are all “about safety” – comes the story of one unlikely man who almost single-handedly brought down L.A.’s red light ticket camera program.
And as with Tim Eyman, a local high-profile critic of the cameras in our state, San Fernando Valley resident Jay Beeber, a sometime TV writer/producer, found the official city government claims for the cameras and facts of the camera matter were often two different things.
A little noticed, at least nationally, recent story in the L.A. Weekly revealed how Beeber, a most unlikely activist in the red light camera game, used his background in science to turn the Los Angeles camera program upside down and inside out and pave the way for its downfall.
More than 100,000 motorists were cited by the cameras over 10 years in Los Angeles and on top of the whopping $450 fine, some drivers paid traffic school fees and suffered costly insurance hikes.
Beeber did a lot of research and peppered the L.A. Police Commission and City Council with studies showing that, despite repeated claims by the Los Angeles Police Department brass, red-light cameras were not a major factor in improving safety.
For Beeber it was a matter of simple fairness. How unfair, he thought, to get a big money ticket for a lousy rolling right turn.
So he took his scientific curiosity and in 2009 began to apply the scientific method he learned at college to the data that supported the use of red-light-camera tickets.
AND WHAT DID HE FIND?
That the police department was making highly questionable claims about the safety effectiveness of the cameras based on flimsy (some would say lousy) data.
For example, one LAPD claim was that five fatal accidents occurred at specific intersections before the red-light cameras were installed, and none occurred after.
Reality: two of the five accidents were not red light related, he says, and a third involved a drunken driver who zipped through despite a camera there, mounted by a previous vendor. The fourth, "caused by a young distracted driver," likely would not have been prevented by a camera.
"They were suggesting the cameras were stopping fatalities," he says, "but the examples they gave would not have been stopped by a red-light camera," said Beeber.
He also found out the image that was being projected of people who “run” red lights was not accurate at all.
"Most people are caught in the dilemma zone: Do I stop or go through the light? In almost every case, lengthening the yellow light cuts red-light violations, as people see the light further back," said Beeber in the L.A. Weekly piece.
And the kicker to that is this: he found out that if you lengthen yellow lights by one second – just one second – red-light violations drop by 92 percent.
Ergo, no need at all for robot cameras and expensive tickets.
One expert in Florida Beeber contacted found in a 2008 study that red-light cameras actually increase accidents because drivers see the camera and slam on their brakes.
And what about LAPD stats that showed a 62 percent decrease in accidents at intersections after cameras were installed?
Beeber found that, "Most of the studies that show the cameras were effective were put out by groups with a financial interest in keeping the cameras, like the Insurance Group for Highway Safety."
What he found in his own research was this: that of some 56,000 accidents studied in Los Angeles - rolling right turns, which represent about 75% of the red-light camera tickets - caused only 45 crashes.
In case you’re counting, 45 crashes is far less than one quarter of 1% of those 56,000 accidents.
He also found out that, "many of the accidents were drunk drivers going through the red light. So the camera didn't matter" as a deterrent.
THE COLOR OF MONEY
Beeber says the deeper he got into the belly of this beast the more he began to realize the whole red light camera game was “much more about revenue than safety," and kept digging and chipping away until he found out that Los Angeles actually incurred a net cost (not profit) of more than $1.5 million in 2008 and $1 million in 2009 to operate the Photo Red Light Program.
And Beeber also found out something that perhaps could be a schoolhouse lesson for Monroe, Lynnwood and other cities in Washington.
"The city government and council had only been hearing one side," Beeber says.
And that side was from the companies that stood to make serious money with their product installed on city streets.
And in hindsight what appears to be a very “duh!” moment, it evidently never dawned on the L.A. city council members or the LAPD to question (at all) the information from the vendors who would profit handsomely from peddling those cameras or go get their own data or hire a research company to examine the data they were presented with to see if it was smoke and mirrors or tweaked to show bias for the side presenting the information.
That completely went over every “official” noggin in town, evidently.
Think of a cop investigating a homicide and only listening to the testimony of a jail house snitch who stands to get his own sentence reduced by playing ball, and then with no supporting information to validate the snitch’s testimony, the cop gets a murder indictment against some hapless schmoe who then wonders what hit him.
And if listening to only one side’s story about the cameras wasn't enough of an ethics issue for the LAPD, there was always that nagging issue of knowing – but never telling the public – that those people who failed to pay the $450 faced "virtually no consequences" whatsoever.
Bingo and ouch.
Completely unknown to tens of thousands of drivers who did their civic duty and paid the fines like law abiding obedient citizens should do, the Los Angeles Superior Court was uneasy about “robot-issued tickets” and quietly chose not to issue arrest warrants or put driver's license holds on those who failed to pay them.
Why? Because the LAPD went to the courts and told them it was often "not clear” who the driver was in the alleged infraction.
Beeber’s story offers perhaps many an interesting lesson for citizens and city governments here in the Sky Valley and elsewhere in the state.
You can read it here
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