Red Light Camera News If Brooksville uses RLC, should insurance go down. (Insurance Companies have already said no once).
If Brooksville uses RLC, should insurance go down. (Insurance Companies have already said no once).
Ban the Cams note: The Insurance "discount" was floated in South Florida and shot down by the Insurance Industry there. see: http://www.greeleygazette.com/press/?p=13443
Quote: The increase in accidents at red light interchanges results in increased insurance rates - not reduced rates. The proof became crystal clear when almost immediately the insurance companies responded to the city ordinances with data that discredited the IIHS method of selectively including or omitting intersections nearby to red light installations in what is called "regression to the mean" and "spillover effects."
red light cameras make streets safe, maybe insurance rates should go down
Column By NEIL JOHNSON | Hernando Today
Published: April 12, 2012 Updated: April 12, 2012 - 9:53 AM
Brooksville officials are gleefully ready to string up red light cameras at three intersections in the city now that that the state is about to sign off on approving the devices. Unless there is a hiccup, the cameras should definitely be snapping photos and scarfing revenue for the city by the end of the month and probably sooner.
By now, most drivers should be familiar with the cameras that snap photos of cars that bust red lights. Blow through an intersection equipped with a camera and you get a citation for $158. Of that, Brooksville will get $75 to split with the company operating the cameras.
The state, for no good reason, takes $83.
Brooksville officials hoped to have the cameras working by March, so a good month of income disappeared. By the city's most optimistic reckoning of its haul from the lights, that's about $50,000.
The first intersections to be outfitted will track drivers going north and south on U.S. 41 at Wiscon Road, Cortez Boulevard and Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard.
Eventually, the city hopes to have 20 of the cameras up and nabbing red light runners. The hopes also include scooping $2.6 million a year from the wallets of drivers. After the company gets its cut and the state gets its bite, Brooksville would be left with about $600,000.
Supporters say the city's major intersections will be much safer and serious crashes, the kind involving cars slamming into the side of others, will be reduced.
Except you can find dueling studies on just how significantly the lights lower the number of serious wrecks at intersections.
A study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety released in 2011 is usually used to back the red lights. It showed cities in the study with the cameras saw fatal collisions involving someone running a light dropped.
But a study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety that came out this year argues the Insurance Institute study was faulty in how it put the research together and its findings are wrong. (Ban the Cams, we believe he is refering to the USF report that Blasted the IIHS report for being manipulated. http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/36/3699.asp)
Until someone produces another look break the tie, cameras reduce the especially serious wrecks at intersections, or they don't.
What can't be argued is the cameras raise buckets of money for cities and counties.
But if the cameras will be so wonderful at making the streets of Brooksville safer, shouldn't insurance rates go down? If backers are right, there will be fewer serious crashes in towns with the deterrent of red light cameras and auto insurance companies will pay less in claims.
When was the last time you saw insurance companies lower premiums?
It could work the other way, too. For the city to grab all the money it wants, the cameras will have to generate about 80 tickets a day.
Your insurance company could look at 2,400 tickets a month and declare that Brooksville is full of lousy drivers and must be a dangerous city to drive around in, so rates have to go up.
Of those two possibilities, which do you think would be more likely?
It would be one thing if so many supporters of the cameras didn't cloak the idea in making intersections safer. And collisions involving someone running a light can be horrific and tragic. There's no argument about that.
But rushing to install the lights without trying other methods to reduce red light running like slightly longer yellow lights, a longer time when all four lights are red or stepped up enforcement kind of hints that safety isn't the main concern.
It would be easier to believe safety was the issue if the city wasn't projecting $50,000 profit a month from the lights.
It would be refreshing to see a politician stand up and say: "We need money and in a county with Florida's second-highest unemployment rate, this isn't the time to raise taxes or fees, even if we had the backbone to do it. So we're going to grab $50,000 a month from people driving through Brooksville."
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