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Mississippi Passes Law To Ban Traffic Light Cameras

Posted by Soulskill on from the guess-i-know-where-i'll-go-to-run-red-lights dept.

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."

31 of 629 comments (clear)

  1. Wow... by Akido37 · · Score: 5, Funny

    An elected government responding to the wishes of the electorate?


    Inconceivable!!

    1. Re:Wow... by starglider29a · · Score: 4, Interesting

      You enter the intersection under a green or yellow. Traffic stops ahead of you. Yer stuck in the middle of the intersection. Photo taken of you in intersection. No indication of velocity. Fair cop? Reasonable doubt?

    2. Re:Wow... by Shakrai · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.
    3. Re:Wow... by Pinckney · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If the far side of the intersection is not clear, you're not supposed to enter. So yes, it's sort of fair.

    4. Re:Wow... by Joey+Vegetables · · Score: 4, Informative

      In cities like NYC this is considered a serious offense because you are creating gridlock. But no matter where you are it is a good idea (and, in some places, a legal requirement) that you enter an intersection only if/when there is sufficient room to leave it again.

      --

      Nonaggression works!
    5. Re:Wow... by Ihlosi · · Score: 4, Insightful
      You enter the intersection under a green or yellow. Traffic stops ahead of you. Yer stuck in the middle of the intersection. Photo taken of you in intersection. No indication of velocity. Fair cop? Reasonable doubt?

      That's why red-light cameras set up by anyone who's not a totally incompetent moron take two or more consecutive pictures. Duh.

    6. Re:Wow... by Nos. · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    7. Re:Wow... by Ambiguous+Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      This is more about running reds, I believe, than speeding.

      And on that note, I drive a motorcycle, and quite often a motorcycle does not generate enough of an EM field to be noticed by the sensors. Pull up to an intersection that is slow in your direction and you can wait all day if you like and never get a green. The common solution here is to simply wait for traffic to slow, and then run the red when there's a break. This particular problem happens even more often when waiting for left-turn arrows.

      Do you suggest I should just wait half an hour for a car to coincidentally be going my way, or just accept my ticket for running the red light, simply because a camera saw me do it? I would say that would be a pretty fair ticket. The "picture as proof" fails to consider context. The above is simply one example where context makes a world of difference. There are other situations as well.

      Furthermore, I should not have to spend a day in court because an automated system is incapable of properly considering the entire situation, so don't tell me "well then you can just get it thrown out of court." That still costs me time (and therefore money.)

      Additionally, on the topic of context and your (2): suppose someone took a picture of me shooting someone in the chest with a gun. Wow! You've got proof I committed murder! Maybe I should go to jail? Nevermind the fact that a similar picture from just a few seconds before would depict the other person coming at me with a knife, intent on killing me for the few dollars in my wallet. We don't have that picture, so clearly it is irrelevant.

      Wtf? A picture of a moment in time is not the entire story; don't treat it as if it is.

      --
      Their may be a grammatical error, misspeling, or evn a typo in this post.
    8. Re:Wow... by gfxguy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.
    9. Re:Wow... by mdmkolbe · · Score: 4, Informative

      unfairly ticketed ? if there's a picture as proof I'd say it's fair you get a ticket..

      Read the summary. The camera's were rigged to give out bogus tickets. A common trick was to set the yellow-light time so short that it is physically impossible to safely stop in time.

      Assuming a driver slams the breaks and the car decelerates at 3/4 G, it takes a car traveling at 35MPH a full 4.2 seconds to stop and that doesn't even count driver reaction time. There have been many cases where cities would set their yellow-light times as low as 3 seconds. (IIRC the legal minimum is 5 seconds.)

      Any way you cut it, traffic cameras were being used by cities to abuse their citizens. Some sort of reform was needed. (Though perhaps regulation would have been better than completely banning them.)

    10. Re:Wow... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If you can't see and/or know, you don't enter. It really is as simple as that.

    11. Re:Wow... by DavidTC · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
    12. Re:Wow... by JustOK · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      rewriting history since 2109
    13. Re:Wow... by brkello · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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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    14. Re:Wow... by jargon82 · · Score: 4, Informative

      No, most people believe they have the "right" to block the intersection in order to get home 12 seconds earlier. By blocking the intersection, they impact dozens (or hundreds) of other drivers. Actions like this, taken by vast numbers of people, are a large part of the reason the traffic is backed up in the first place.

    15. Re:Wow... by hairyfeet · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.
    16. Re:Wow... by NoodleSlayer · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Then there's also moronic city planners that don't know how to set traffic lights up and create conditions under peak traffic that have their lights timed so that there never is any space for people making turns onto the road. By the time space clears out to make that turn your light has already turned red and the space is being filled by more people going straight on the road.

      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.

  2. Democracy works?!? Huh? by Kostya · · Score: 5, Funny

    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."

    So despite the company and local municipalities profiting from this, constituents actually made their voices heard and their representatives acted accordingly?

    I am deeply confused. This is not the democracy I am used to. I'm going to have to find something else to be cynical about today.

    --
    "Doubt your doubts and believe your beliefs." -- Switchfoot, Ode to Chin
    1. Re:Democracy works?!? Huh? by weav · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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...

  3. now mississippi can be like my hometown..... by Shakrai · · Score: 5, Insightful

    .... 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.

    --
    I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
    We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
    1. Re:now mississippi can be like my hometown..... by Svartalf · · Score: 4, Interesting

      In most cases, the timings HAVE been dinked with.

      I've seen all too many short yellow lights, especially with the cameras in place. If you're in that intersection and it goes yellow, and you see that it's a camera monitored intersection, you'd better either be 1/2 or more the way through the intersection or you'll get the ticket period, even though a human would not have considered it a violation at that point in most cases.

      --
      I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
  4. Not to mention that they might be dangerous by eyal0 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Not to mention that they might be dangerous by The+Moof · · Score: 4, Informative

      As someone who was behind a "oh shit, yellow SLAM ON THE BREAKS BECAUSE THAT SIGN SAYS THEY'RE WATCHING ME skid to a stop" driver earlier this week, I agree with the parent. I narrowly avoided an accident and the guy in front of me panicked when the light turned yellow with plenty of time for him and me (and if anyone was behind me, them also) to go through. I've also witnessed one accident caused as a direct result of the camera (same type of driver mentioned above). Our cameras have only been up for 6 months, and that was the first accident I've ever seen at that intersection.

    2. Re:Not to mention that they might be dangerous by Hatta · · Score: 5, Interesting

      When you reward a government with money per traffic violation, obviously it will be in their interest for there to be more traffic violations

      .

      Fixed that for you. Allowing the government to profit from law enforcement is just as big of a conflict of interest. People need to be punished, so there need to be fines, but the fines should simply be destroyed. That would avoid any conflict of interest, and make the people (infinitesimally) richer as a consequence of constricting the money supply. This rule belongs in the Constitution.

      --
      Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
  5. I agree; also, why invoke privacy? by langelgjm · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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?

    --
    "Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
    1. Re:I agree; also, why invoke privacy? by Shakrai · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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?

      What I don't understand is why a red-light camera that only fires when you run the red-light is an invasion of your privacy but a police officer pulling you over for the exact same thing isn't.

      Either way, people are asshats. They'd rather run the light and place the other drivers at risk than wait 30 fucking seconds to get to where they are going. I don't like seeing traffic tickets used as a revenue source -- I think they should be set at the smallest amount possible to fund aggressive traffic safety classes. Make everybody who violates the traffic law twice sit in one of those classes or lose their license. Most people value 8 hours of their time more than they value a lousy $100. Let that and the subsequent increase in your insurance premiums serve as the deterrent.

      --
      I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
      We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
    2. Re:I agree; also, why invoke privacy? by Sloppy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      What I don't understand is why a red-light camera that only fires when you run the red-light is an invasion of your privacy but a police officer pulling you over for the exact same thing isn't.

      Either way, people are asshats.

      Murderers are asshats too. But I'm not quite as sure about accused murderers.

      The problem isn't really about privacy and the people who complain about their privacy being invaded when they're in public are full of shit.

      The problem is that the cop gives the alleged offender a criminal citation, and they have due process. The defendant can go to court and have a judge look at the situation, face their accuser, etc. Nobody's camera laws work like that.

      If you uphold the "civil citation for normally criminal matters" system, then you're opening a huge door to injustice. The local governments might as well create a parallel civil law for every single type of criminal misconduct, and they would be able get around all the rights that we thought the constitution protected.

      Seriously, what's the point of the 4th and 5th amendments, if you can just get around them with civil law? If you think those amendments were a bad idea and have made society too lenient on the bad guys, then stand up and advocate their repeal. Using civil law as a loophole, is a really lame thing for government to do, and we ought to have nipped this abuse in the bud right away.

      --
      As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
    3. Re:I agree; also, why invoke privacy? by RingDev · · Score: 4, Informative

      You appear to be under the misconception that red light cameras reduce accidents.

      It simply isn't the case. http://www.motorists.org/blog/red-light-cameras-increase-accidents-5-studies-that-prove-it/

      For intersections with high rates of run through, the answer is to send an engineer out and rework the light timings to make sure they work in conjunction with surrounding lights and have a sufficient yellow time, to reduce the travel speed on the road close to the intersection, or to re-engineer the intersection to better control traffic.

      They are a gimmick designed to turn a profit for the state and the private contractors who operate them. They have a vested interest in making intersections LESS safe by inducing more revenue generating red light tickets.

      -Rick

      --
      "Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
  6. NH considering passing a law to enable cameras by OhPlz · · Score: 4, Informative

    This is a timely article. The state of NH is currently considering passing a law allowing cities to put up these cameras. As usual, we're a bit behind the times.

    SB 113:

    http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/legislation/2009/SB0113.html

  7. 1 second green, 1 second yellow by natoochtoniket · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I live in Fort Lauderdale. The stoplight at the exit from my neighborhood has been adjusted, just a couple weeks ago. They recently installed cameras on this intersection. The new cycle appears to be: 1 second of green, 1 second of yellow, 28 seconds of red. The main street is getting 27 seconds of green, and 1 second of yellow, and 2 seconds of red. There appears to be no overlap of the red.

    The state law says the yellow must be 4 seconds, if I recall correctly. But even if the camera-tickets can be successfully challenged in court, and even if a judge eventually orders the city to change the timing, it is still tying up the traffic. And, there have been more collisions at that intersection in the last two weeks than there were in the previous 20 years.

  8. Different approach... by sribe · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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 ;-)