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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."

15 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 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.
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    2. 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.

    3. 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.

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    4. 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.

    5. 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?
    6. 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
    7. 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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    8. 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.

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  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.
  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 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.

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  5. 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.