http://www.aurorasentinel.com/articles/2010/04/08/opinion/columnists/doc4bbde56b990a5825380913.txt

Perry: Red-light cameras aren’t safe, they’re just sorry
BY DAVE PERRY
The Aurora Sentinel
Published: Thursday, April 8, 2010 8:49 AM MDT
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Yeah, I’m seeing red over the city’s push to install more cash-cameras at dangerous intersections across Aurora, and you should be, too.

You know the ones I’m talking about. Big, beige, bird-house looking things at poorly designed intersections that snap your sorry mug with a flashing light if you’re caught in the intersection when the light turns red. The result is a blurry picture of you behind the wheel of your car, grimacing or mouthing four-letter words or just being another mouth-breather in the wrong place at the wrong time. The picture comes with a bill for $75 for your trouble and the city’s.

It’s the scam of the century. Send the bill to the city council and tell them you won’t pay the fines until they pay closer attention.

Now you’re probably thinking that I’m one of those grumpy, old, road-raging, red-light running, tail-gating, slow-lane budging drivers from hell just waiting to go all John McCain on you for no good reason. I’m sure I’m tempting the fates here, but I have never, ever been in a car crash. I politely let just about anyone merge in front of me on highways. I take special care not to block intersections on grid-locked streets. I drive 7 miles per hour over the speed limit on highways and creep through school zones. I never trust the car signal of a car coming my way. I haven’t had any kind of a traffic ticket in more than 30 years. And the time I almost rammed the cop when I was 16? Not my fault. Honest.

I’m really no better driver than anyone else pushing a couple tons of rolling steel and plastic down the road, but I do pay attention to what’s going on around me. And I pay very close attention to what goes on at intersections with red-light cameras. There’s one right by the newsroom at East Alameda Avenue and Abilene Street.

Invariably, especially during rush hour, the split second the signal turns yellow at this intersection, drivers slam on their brakes to avoid being caught red-lighted. In a similar intersection just a few hundred feet away, sans the red-light cameras, people normally gauge their speed and either move in during the yellow light, or come to a reasonable stop instead of a screeching halt. And what happens next at the red-camera intersection? The car behind slams into them.

And police and traffic officials from Aurora and all over the country know this. They know that national studies show that in almost every instance, when these red-light cameras are installed, rear-end crashes increase substantially, anywhere from 15 percent to almost 40 percent. Even here in Aurora, police officials admit that at the intersections they’ve installed these red-light cameras, rear-end crashes have gone up.

Despite this, city officials say they want to install more of these dangerous devices, to make the city streets safer.

Duh.

They say they make the intersections safer because they also decrease the number of side-swipe or T-bone accidents in intersections. And that’s true. But here’s the thing, Aurora: there are dozens if not hundreds of rear-end crashes in these intersections. National highway statistics show that rear-end crashes make up about three-fourths of all intersection traffic crashes. There are only a few side-swipe crashes, so saying these cameras reduce them by 20 percent or so means little to those getting whiplash or car-body work done only because these cameras helped cause a crash.

Here’s the clincher. Numerous studies have shown that simply designing better intersections and just extending the length of yellow lights by a second or two does more to reduce red-light violations and crashes than anything else.

In fact, the National Motorists Association is offering any city a $10,000 award if it can prove that red-light cameras can reduce violations and prevent crashes better than things like proper signal timing and other accepted intersection engineering practices.

These cameras are a scam cooked up by the companies that sell and operate these devices and happily devoured by city governments across the country.

It’s not about safety. It’s about cash. And sadly, it’s not about much cash these days.

City officials estimate Aurora will net about $6,000 a month from having a company install these systems at 10 more intersections across the city. That may not be for long. Dallas TV station KXAS-TV recently reported that officials there are shutting down the cameras because they no longer pay for themselves and are losing money. Motorists know which intersections are photographed, slam on the brakes instead of running red lights, cause more rear-end crashes and generate less ticket revenue for being red-light runners.

Any “safety” created by these devices is a delusion, folks, not even an illusion.

Unplug these things and send them back to the bonehead who sold it to the city. If Aurora officials want safer intersections, build them.

Dave Perry is editor of the Aurora Sentinel. Reach him at 303-750-7555 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .
 

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