Red Light Camera News RLC fail on privacy, effectiveness: Red-light cameras are a cure that's worse than the disease.
Red-light cameras fail on privacy, effectiveness
By CHAR-LEZ BRADEN, FLORIDA VOICES
April 6, 2011 12:05 AM
Red-light cameras are a cure that's worse than the disease.
Careless drivers running red lights are a serious hazard. The desire to catch these dangerous drivers and motivate them to be safer drivers is a good one. Unfortunately, the use of red-light cameras presents us with some very disturbing problems.
First is the cameras' constitutionality. In our legal system, one has the right to face one's accuser, per the Sixth Amendment. No defendant can subpoena a camera and cross-examine it, yet it is giving testimony in a legal proceeding. No law enforcement officer was present when the photo was taken, if it was taken at all.
Indeed, it is presumed that the photo is authentic and unedited, and that the camera or street light system did not fail. None of these things can be honestly determined in a court of law.
These are not trivial points because, taken collectively, they open the door to justice by robot, where evidence is manufactured, out of the control of responsible authorities to be used in a court proceeding against defendants who are denied their constitutional protections.
Second, the citation process is prone to error. In a standard situation, a police officer stops the car in question, identifies the driver, and, after some discussion, hands the driver a citation to sign which notifies the driver of the pending charge and gives the court evidence of such notification.
What happens in the case of a red-light camera when the citation is simply mailed? What if you're not often at your official residence, as may be the case for college students? What if you recently moved? What if you're sent on military deployment immediately after the photo was snapped? What if the postal service just makes an honest mistake? There are many reasons why people may not receive their citation in the mail, and yet the court is supposed to act as if you have received proper notice?
This leads many people to conclude the use of cameras is about money for the government, not safety for the drivers. And this is not just idle paranoia as you will see with the third point: The motives of the vendors of the equipment, and those municipalities that use them, are suspect at best because neither makes any money unless someone breaks the law. This puts the municipalities in the position of being tempted to arrange yellow lights and other factors to trap motorists. This may sound like a far-out assertion, but it is exactly what was shown to be the case in Baltimore. If it happened there, why not where you live?
In a time of financial stress, do we really want to allow even the possibility of abuse?
Fourth, the use of red-light cameras is meant to curb people causing property damage, injury and death. But it merely shifts the problem. As drivers become aware of red-light cameras, they begin to drive more erratically when presented with a yellow or red light as they smash the brake pedal in an attempt to avoid a ticket, thus leading to an increased number of rear-end collisions.
Red-light cameras create accidents -- exactly the thing they were to address -- while opening a can of worms on the constitutional issues and making a pile of money for cities and vendors. Does anyone else see how these things fail to pass the sniff test?
Fifth and finally, we have every right to ask ourselves this: Do we want to live in a society where cameras record our every move? This issue is not to be left to the politicians, who have been shown to be willing and even eager to create a surveillance society. At the end of the day, those are our streets and our corners and our red lights. We have the final say about having our every move monitored.
Free people are not lorded over by faceless ones issuing citations from desks, on evidence the faceless ones cannot personally vouch for. Free people drive their cars, not looking over their shoulders for cameras.
When you add it all up, the cost to our society far outweighs the claimed benefits.
Char-Lez Braden of Bradenton is vice chairman of the Libertarian Party of Florida.
Subscribe to this comment's feed
Articles Menu
Find Info
Latest Comments
Member Login
