Red Light Camera News Peter Edridge: Turn lane's red-light camera is a golden goose
Thanks to CameraFraud for the link!
http://www.redding.com/news/2011/oct/02/peter-edridge-turn-lanes-red-light-camera-is-a/
Peter Edridge: Turn lane's red-light camera is a golden goose
Posted October 2, 2011 at midnight
Impossible for most of us, but it is easy to earn a half of a million dollars a year in Redding. Well, "earn" might be the wrong word, but almost a half million dollars is being siphoned out of our community each year by an Australian company headquartered in Arizona, and all in the name of public safety. Or at least, that was how this scheme was originally packaged.
If you drive in Redding you are already a part of the scheme, though not exactly on the receiving end of the deal. You will be doing your part when you are fined $459 by the Red-light Automated Camera System at North Market Street, as you turn right onto Lake Boulevard. The camera stationed at the intersection could better be described as the Golden Goose, because it continues to give and give — money that is, your money, to the camera's operator, Redflex, and to a line of eagerly outstretched hands from Sacramento to City Hall.
It's all in the timing, in this case the yellow light on this right-turn lane. Motorists approaching this turn are given only a fraction of a second more time to come to a stop from the posted 50 mph than they are given at 25 mph. On its face that is ridiculous, but thanks to an amazingly vaguely written Caltrans document and an abandonment of common sense, it is quite legal. Not sensible, and most certainly not safe, but it is legal.
During the first second and a half after this yellow light turns red — during the time it actually takes to stop from 50 mph — 831 drivers were ticketed last year in this right turn lane. Ten feet away, in the straight-through lane that gives drivers a full five seconds to stop, only five tickets were issued during the same period. That is 166 times as many drivers getting tickets in the right-turn lane as compared to the through lane beside it. Not two or three times but, suspending disbelief, 166 times as many.
Obviously, only bad drivers turn right — drawn like so many lemmings. Or, more likely, are these just ordinary drivers? And is this ticket-writing Robocop catching red-light runners or simply creating them for profit, literally by the thousands?
It happens in a blink of an eye. There's a camera flash, a $459 ticket in the mail, an option to pay another $65 for traffic school, and an assembly line ready to rubber-stamp the conviction and take your money. After all, you are a red-light runner and few have the time or the resources to question what happened to them.
Yet this camera, like so many red-light camera systems throughout California, has had no effect in reducing accident statistics. It is ticketing drivers at a right-hand turn and an infinitesimal 0.08 percent of all accidents are made during right turns, so safety is hardly the issue. Then what is?
The key to this mess, and something Redflex has a nose for, is that Caltrans has an option in its regulations. It's an odd option that allows it to ignore the posted speed and use a far shorter yellow light timing on a turn lane, a timing more suited for a fraction of the posted speed. Redflex installs a camera on the turn lane and a ticket mill is born — just as they have at North Market and just as they have in other towns. But this practice hasn't gone unnoticed.
In April of this year, a grand jury in Napa looking at a nearly identical intersection determined (along with a foot-dragging Caltrans after some daylight had been shone on the situation) that the yellow light had been timed incorrectly and all the tickets, coincidently issued by Redflex, should be refunded. And while dozens of other municipalities have thrown Redflex out because of the company's "perfidious business practices" (Loma Linda's mayor); "no noticeable safety enhancement" (Gardena's chief of police); "no statistical difference in the number of collisions because of Redflex monitoring" (El Monte's chief of police); "they (Redflex) sold us a bill of goods that was misrepresented" (Mayor Randy Royce of San Carlos), the city of Redding continues to go into debt with the company.
Three years ago, a Shasta County grand jury gave the newly installed cameras a clean bill of health, but now there is reason for a second look. This is not a rich community. A $459 fine literally takes food off a table or even a roof from over a family's head, and it is time for our city officials to fix this situation. Caltrans is indifferent, Redflex is there for the profit, and the hapless motorist is caught in between: 166 to 1.
In the end, if this red-light camera was ever supposed to be about safety, it cannot claim that fig leaf now. And whenever you hear someone say that it is not about the money it is about the money.
Peter Edridge lives in Igo.
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