Letters to the Editor: Seeing red on red light cameras

Dear Winter Park Officials,

Winter Park is in the wrong side of this issue, and with GATSO which is an out-of-state and out-of-country for-profit camera contractor.

As you know (or should know) the Florida Department of Transportation changed the rules in July 2011 on how the length of yellow intervals could be calculated. The new rules allow cities to deliberately set the yellow intervals too short for the actual approach speeds of at least 85 percent of the vehicles when traffic is free flowing under good conditions.

This mis-engineering of lights causes thousands of safe drivers to make inadvertent split-second violations of the lights.

I believe this permission to mis-engineer the lights was done deliberately by FDOT to facilitate thousands of tickets to safe drivers, so the state could get thousands more commissions of $83 from each $158 ticket.

In almost every case, simply adding one second to the yellow lights (in addition to the 0.4 seconds recently added by FDOT to accommodate older drivers’ slower reaction times) will almost always reduce straight-through violations by more than ticket cameras achieve. This is a much safer alternative, but far less profitable. http://tinyurl.com/Redcameras

The federal research by NHTSA showed that only 0.4 percent of crashes at signalized intersections involve right on red turns, and only 0.06 percent of all crashes involve a right on red turn and an injury or fatality. Ticketing right on red turns is almost entirely a revenue program, not a safety program. http://tinyurl.com/Redrevenue

It is normal for GATSO and the other camera contractors to want the highest degree of mis-engineering of the lights and the most predatory rules for ticketing safe right on red turns because that is how they assure profitability. But it should not be the goal of governments to deliberately mis-engineer lights and ticket safe drivers for more profits.

Noah Pransky, an investigative reporter in Tampa, has produced a long series of reports on how the scam of red light cameras works to ticket mostly safe drivers with deliberately mis-engineered lights and enforcement rules to ticket mostly safe drivers for right on red turns that almost never cause crashes. http://www.tiki-toki.com/timeline/entry/135673/10-News-investigates-Floridas-Yellow-Light-Trap/#vars!date=2013-05-13_00:00:00!



Poway became the 58th California city to end red light camera programs, or ban them before any could be installed. Part of their decision was based on the fact that crashes went down during a six-month trial with the cameras off. Redflex made several sour grapes statements, but the cameras are off for good in Poway. 
 http://tinyurl.com/Repealcameras

The $800,000-plus scam in Beverly Hills with just the last 0.4 seconds of yellow that is too short. That particular yellow is over a full second short and the ticket revenue stream would completely collapse at that location if the light were timed for safety instead of being timed for the malicious and predatory money-grab.

http://tinyurl.com/Shorttiming

The Ohio House passed a bill to ban all ticket cameras and it stands a decent chance to pass in the Senate, in part due to the publicity on how abusively the cameras have been used in some cities. http://tinyurl.com/Cameraabuse

A combination of the ACLU, the Police Officers Association of Michigan, the Campaign for Liberty, the Mackinac Center and the National Motorists Association managed to stop two bills in the Michigan Legislature that would have brought red light cameras to Michigan - likely to be followed shortly by speed cameras. Michigan is blessedly free of the scourge of the for-profit ticket cameras, thanks to a ruling they are illegal by the Attorney General a few years ago.

It looks like we will stay free of this money grab industry.
https://www.mackinac.org/19123



As you heard from a number of residents, they want the cameras gone – but the money won out for the time being in your commissioners chambers.

One key factor you probably did not consider sufficiently is the terrible damage that red light cameras do to your local economy.

At an average of 1,500 tickets per month at $158 each, this extracts about $2.8 million dollars a year from your local economy and roughly two-thirds of that money goes to Tallahassee and to GATSO in Massachusetts and the Netherlands to benefit their profits.

All of these monies would be of far more value to Winter Park if they stayed in your community to circulate multiple times a year in your local stores, malls, restaurants, entertainment businesses, service businesses, churches, charities, etc. which supports local employment levels and the overall economic health of Winter Park. You could have voted to revise the engineering on the lights and intersections to achieve more safety with fewer violations than the cameras achieve – and keep all of that $2.8 million a year in your local economy.

Unfortunately, that was not the Commissioners’ choice.

Respectfully submitted,



James C. Walker

Life Member, National Motorists Association

Board Member and Executive Director, National Motorists Association Foundation


www.motorists.org


2050 Camelot Road
Ann Arbor, MI 48104


734-668-7842


[email protected]