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Mississippi Passes Law To Ban Traffic Light Cameras
DaGoatSpanka writes with news that Mississippi Governer Haley Barbour signed a bill into law on Friday which instituted a ban on automated cameras that would snap pictures of motorists when they ran red lights. "The new law says the two cities that already have the cameras, Jackson and Columbus, must take them down by Oct. 1. Other cities and counties are banned from starting to use them." We've discussed situations in the past where cities looked at such cameras as "profit centers," and even tampered with their traffic light timing to catch more motorists. Now, in Mississippi, the contractors who installed the cameras are unhappy, since they received a cut of the ticket revenue generated by the cameras. However, lawmakers overwhelming voted to get rid of them (117-3 in the House, 42-9 in the Senate), because "the cameras were an invasion of privacy and their constituents thought they had been unfairly ticketed."
.... we don't have them around here and people run lights all the time. And I don't mean they squeak in under a yellow that turns red when they are in the middle of the intersection -- the light is red for a full second or two before they even hit the stop line.
I hate the concept of red light cameras but I'm hating the concept of being t-boned even more. If we can't have red light cameras can we at least have some fucking human enforcement of the traffic laws? There's a difference between hitting the gas to beat a yellow light and just plain ignoring the red because your selfish attitude thinks waiting 30 seconds is a worse outcome than placing other drivers at risk.
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We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
2/ unfairly ticketed ? if there's a picture as proof I'd say it's fair you get a ticket..
The unfair ticketing comes in when cities start tweaking the yellow light timing to generate more revenue. I think it would be more productive to outlaw this practice than to outlaw red light cameras. I would personally also outlaw the practice of sharing the revenue with the vendor -- buy it outright like any other system. Traffic laws shouldn't be written/enforced with an eye towards making money -- they should be enforced with an eye towards deterring behavior that places everybody at risk.
Personally I'd use the revenue to fund traffic safety courses and make everybody who violates the traffic law sit in them. I think the prospect of spending eight hours of your time being lectured would be a bigger deterrent than a sub $100 fine.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
When you reward a company with money per traffic violation, obviously it will be in their interest for there to be more traffic violations. And the traffic laws are there to protect lives. Basically, governments are rewarding companies for killing people.
http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/06/602.asp
How about giving the companies a bonus relative to the decrease in the number of traffic accidents in an intersection? Now that seems smarter.
I know what you mean. I commented on this the other day.
I know this goes against the general /. attitude, but I used to be against red light cameras on principle. That was before I moved to my current city and saw how people behaved. I don't think they're appropriate everywhere, but I do think that my city could certainly use them. It just depends on the location and people's behavior.
Also, I have a hard time understanding how privacy comes into play. When you are driving, you are doing it in a public place; why should there be any expectation of privacy?
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If the far side of the intersection is not clear, you're not supposed to enter. So yes, it's sort of fair.
That's why red-light cameras set up by anyone who's not a totally incompetent moron take two or more consecutive pictures. Duh.
That's definitely the best idea I've heard. Regulate the timings on traffic lights, specifically the minimum time a light stays yellow based on the maximum speed of the road.
I suspect the real reason is that legislators were photographed with their mistresses in their cars, and the pictures sent home to their wives. They would shut that s$#t down real quick...
I've seen outrageous examples of red-light runners, and they do occasionally kill people, so I support the idea of the cameras, when done properly. Why don't they just pass a law that says that any government entity that is caught with a red light camera on a light where the yellow is shorter than the standards say it should be, must reimburse triple damages to all recipients of tickets, and further may be sued by those recipients for triple any increase in insurance because of the ticket? That ought make these cities proceed cautiously and correctly ;-)
In our town, the camera takes a picture of you BEHIND the line at the red light and quickly takes another one of you PAST the line at the red light. QED.
If you enter on yellow or green, you don't get nailed.
Also, while creating gridlock is a ticket-able offense (personally I think you should get the rack), it's also conducive to alleviating rush hour traffic when turning LEFT to enter the intersection on green even if you can't completely go through because of oncoming traffic; when they stop because of a red light, you have plenty of time to continue before the cross street gets green...
One extra car through the light each cycle means that much less traffic to back up. Where I live some lights only allow five or six cars to get through on the green turn signal. That means if you don't make the turn, then after five cycles you've got a whole extra cycle of backup. If the cycle is three minutes, you get two extra cycles of backup every half hour until rush hour ends.
Of course, you need to know that you'll be able to complete the left turn... if the left turn is backed up, you simply shouldn't enter.
Some places encourage and teach this (some places don't).
Stupid sexy Flanders.
If you can't see and/or know, you don't enter. It really is as simple as that.
1) No profit-sharing. The city should assume all costs and all responsibilities.
2) Arrest the car. If the car is caught running a red light, boot or impound the car for 24 hours at the city's expense. No fines. No costs to the car owner. Since the citizens of the city want to encourage people not to run red lights, let them absorb the costs of law enforcement.
3) Include several seconds before and after the infraction, and include a wide-angle view so extenuating circumstances are visible.
4) Destroy all videos 24 hours after they are no longer needed.
5) No gaming with the yellow lights. Yellow light timing should be based on safety not pumping up red-light run counts.
6) Right to trial by jury, even if it is just an "administrative" penalty.
OK, #2 is not going to happen, but the rest are necessary for any automated enforcement.
Also, any intersection with a high offense rate should automatically become subject to a traffic engineering study and enhanced live-cop enforcement during times of peak red-light running. The engineering study is to make sure the intersection does not "invite" red-light running, say, by poorly timed lights, poor visibility, excessive congestion, etc., and the cops are there to further deter red-light-running.
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So this is what you'd be advocating; the light is green, but you must stop and wait at the line before the car preceeding you completely clears. Even if you're the 5th car in the line.
Isn't that called a stop sign?
Except that they gave you a ticket for running a red light, not blocking traffic, which is an entirely different offense with a different penalty, usually lower.
People who block intersections are in violation of the law and stupid, but not as stupid as the people who knowingly run red lights. Both those action place you in the intersection when the other direction has a green, but running a red light results in you *appearing* there creating a large risk you and someone else will collide, whereas blocking an intersection from the start isn't very risky until people start deciding to go around you and ending up in the wrong lanes. (Which isn't your fault.)
Anyway, you can block an intersection and it not be your fault. Perhaps someone decided to leap in front of you via turning-right-on-red. A cop wouldn't give you a ticket for getting stranded in the intersection for that (Not that they normally give tickets for blocking intersections anyway.), they'd give the other guy a ticket for failing to yield.
Or perhaps something serious happened in your lane ahead so you had to change lanes in the intersection (Which is also illegal, but, again, not running a red light), and the other lane was full.
Entering an intersection without a reasonable expectation that you can clear the other side of it is a violation of the law. But people can't predict there future, and there are plenty of 'reasonable expectation' that are wrong. And even if you broke that law, it doesn't mean you should get a ticket for breaking an entirely unrelated law.
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You do not have to stop unless you can't make it through the intersection. It's not advocating, its pointing out how it is to you.
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Do you have a driver's license? Have you been driving long? Yes, if the intersection is not going to be clear, you wait at the line. It is obvious when this is the case when traffic is backed up. It is not like you have to wait for it to be clear before entering if the car in front obviously is going to make it through and there will be room for you. But if traffic is so backed up that you are going 5 mph through the light, then yes, you stop and wait until you see there will be enough room for you. You don't even need a law for that, it's common sense. At least for MOST people.
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The problem IMHO is that everybody here by arguing about whether you get stuck in the intersection is missing the forest for the trees. What we are talking about with these cameras is ticket generators, nothing more. I have seen places that have these cameras where there is NO yellow light...the thing switches through yellow so damned fast your brain doesn't even have time to process it before you are in red and you are getting a ticket. See the problem here?
This is especially bad in these little one cop town speed traps you get throughout the rural south. Since they are pretty much living on burning out of towners they have EVERY incentive to rig it as much as they can against you. Cops having quotas is bad enough. But with these things both the company setting them up and the city have EVERY reason to make sure they can pass out maximum tickets. This isn't about safety or intersections, this is about boning those of us on the roads. A little highway robbery,if you will.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I've lived in several places where this was an exceedingly common problem, but the intersection of 9th & Mercer in Seattle is by far the worst I've seen (map) It can take 10 minutes to get from Broad & 9th to make the left hand turn on Mercer during rush hour because of that. I ended up rerouting the way I get to that intersection so I could avoid that turn and shave at least 10 minutes off the time it takes me to get to work during rush hour when I drive.
This unfortunately means the only way traffic EVER moves on that street during rush hour is if people move into the intersection while they have a green light. Thanks to how the lights are timed shortly before the left turn light turns red the light ahead on mercer will turn green and they'll get to move out of the intersection. Better traffic management could solve this problem, but if the city instead decides to place traffic cameras there to hand out tickets they would be incentivized to leave it broken.
So you pass a law that specifies the minimum time for a yellow light - depending on speed limit obviously. I'm sure there are already some guidelines in place for whoever is programming the lights. No need to ban the cameras outright, just fix the actual enforcement problem. In Maryland the camera citations have several frames showing the light turning yellow and then red and have the timings for those changes. When I've gotten a ticket, it was clear that I deserved it.