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Ohio Judge Rules Speed Cameras Are a Scam
Hugh Pickens writes "The Columbus Dispatch reports that southwestern Ohio Judge Robert Ruehlman has ordered a halt to a speeding-ticket blitz in a village that installed traffic cameras saying it's 'a scam' against motorists and blasting the cameras and the thousands of $105 citations that resulted. 'Elmwood Place is engaged in nothing more than a high-tech game of 3-Card Monty,' Ruehlman wrote. 'It is a scam that motorists can't win.' The village began using the cameras in September, resulting in 6,600 speeding citations in the first month, triple the population of the village of 2,188. Optotraffic installed the Elmwood Place cameras and administered their use, in return for 40 percent of ticket revenue — which quickly topped $1 million. But business owners and motorists struck back, charging in a lawsuit that the cameras hurt the village's image and said they were put into use without following Ohio law for public notice on new ordinances. 'This is the first time that a judge has said, "Enough is enough,"' said plaintiffs' attorney, Mike Allen, who called the ruling a victory for the common people. 'I think this nationally is a turning point.'"
I don't know what's happening recently, but it's a pleasant surprise to see these kinds of article cropping up more frequently on /.
Now if only we had the same kind of possibilities here in Europe, where there are more and more cameras everywhere, and the margin before you get a ticket is in some places ridiculosly low. I'm all for enforcing safer driving, but many camera emplacements are obviously for revenue-generating rather than safety.
They don't do anything to discourage the single-biggest cause of road deaths either, drunk driving.
It would be interesting to see a breakdown of the speeds that people were going when they received a citation. If it's within 10% of the speed limit, then yeah it's probably a scam. Yet my experience is that speeders tend to go over 20% faster than the posted speed limit. In that case, it's not a scam. You break the law, you pay the price. As long as people are receiving notification of a speeding ticking before receiving their next speeding ticket, the police are perfectly within their rights to use highly efficient technology to catch those law breakers.
6 teens killed in Ohio SUV crash is the next article on the same site. Quite consistent, both articles show that reckless driving is high priority for the people in Ohio.
Between automatic cameras, GPS, and OBD we could completely eliminate speeding. Or, at the very lease, insure than anyone who speeds _even a little_ is instantly ticketed. If speeding really is dangerous, maybe we should take these steps to eliminate it. If speed limits are too low, maybe we should raise them. But we seem to prefer these strange cat and mouse games.
You're not really wrong here, but there's something awful about being watched all the time and being busted for every minor and often harmless infraction. There's also something awful about being fined and then told you have to pay to contest the fine.
The mere fact that they issued 3 times as many tickets as there are people in the town is an indication that something is wrong here. That the company gets 40% of every ticket they issue is a massive conflict of interest. It's been proven before that some municipalities do fun things like shorten yellow lights so they can ticket more people. If these cameras are to be used at all, it should be for public safety, not making the roads less safe (yellows lasting 0.9 seconds in some cases I recall) so some company can rake in more money.
If only this would hold up in The Netherlands, where speeding camera's are everywhere.
Nowadays, we even have systems in several places that measure average speed over a certain distance, meaning braking for the camera won't work.
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell
Optotraffic installed the Elmwood Place cameras and administered their use, in return for 40 percent of ticket revenue
So 40% of all fines aren't actually fines, but revenue for the camera company. Holy shit, that's flawed.
This sort of setup doesn't exactly persuade the camera company to ensure the correct margins to adjust for measurement errors are used either. Who checks if the camera's comply with the spec? The company who receives 40% of the revenue or the government who receive 60%?
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
You missed the part where the judge said it was unconstitutionally difficult to challenge the fine. You're basically at the mercy of the enforcement agency and you have to rely on the accuracy of a company which profits massively from fining you.
I'm not totally against speed cameras, but I believe in one important thing about parking and traffic enforcement; nobody should ever profit from issuing fines, because the incentives to be arseholes are just too big.
Parking and traffic enforcement on public property and public roads should always be performed by public employees and the fines should go to a random, approved charity. The costs of running the operation should come out of tax income and no bonuses or "performance related pay" should ever be given. At least this way you take away the very real profit incentive for fining as many as possible. The sole purpose of parking and traffic enforcement should be to improve safety and flow of traffic.
Is it set to go off if you are over the white line at a red? Then if I stopped 3-5ft long at a light, I'm getting a ticket for running it? Seems like a scam to me.
How? The law says don't cross the white line if the light is red. You cross it when the light is red, you've broken the rules. It's not exactly a massive safety violation but the number of times I've seen people stop with their back wheels on the line and their nose peeking out into the junction so that it blocks pedestrian crossings is infuriating. You break the rules, you get a fine. Simple. It's not like the rules are obscure or hard to remember, there are signs and lines everywhere they apply.
TFA makes it sound like they're all speed cameras anyway, not line cameras, and points out that of the two cameras which were operating one was in a school zone where you really do want these things enforced. The plaintiff's attorney said "people who were unemployed, working poor and single mothers were hit with $105 citations they couldn’t afford". Well, boo-hoo. Don't speed in the school zone and you won't get fined, simple.
What if to brake safely you come to a stop over the line? (large truck behind you or someone riding your ass, speeding etc?)
" 'It is a scam that motorists can't win.'"
I'm sure they are also against the IRS using computers to catch revenue cheaters, because it gives them an unfair advantage.
Sure they can win, just don't speed. The motorists are just used to breaking the law and not getting caught most of the time.
Did somebody check how many tickets the judge got?
I think the issue is not that people are getting caught, but that there is a lack of due process when they are; which inevitably leads to some innocent people being wrongly convicted.
I don't know how things work in the US, but in the UK it works thusly:
- You get somehow "caught" alledgedly committing a traffic offence. This may be that a speed camera photographed you speeding, or a traffic warden decided that you were parked illegally or whatever.
- You get notified by post (note: if a member of the general public needs to send legal documents to someone they are required to employ a process server to ensure they got there. On the other hand the police are allowed to just pop them in the post and retain proof of posting (*NOT* proof of delivery) so its entirely possibly that you will never even get the notification and still a court will deem that it has been served and that you were responsible for responding to the notice you never received.
- You will be offered a choice: Accept a fixed penalty notice (a fixed fine (probably £30 - 60) and possibly a fixed number of points on your licence); you *may* be offered a "training course" instead of a fine and points; or you can decline the "fixed penalty" notice and have an automatic criminal conviction, £1000 fine.
- If you want to appeal, you are required to decline the fixed penalty notice and training course; therefore you voluntarily agree to be convicted and be fined £1000. Once you have been convicted, you may take the case to the appeals court and appeal the conviction.
The upshot of this is that if you believe you were wrongly accused, you have to be *absolutely* sure you would win in court before you can risk appealing, because if there's even the slightest chance that the court will side with the police then you're risking an enormous fine. I know a good few people who have just accepted the fixed notice, even though they believe they were not in the wrong, because they simply can't risk the possability that they would be hit with a £1000 fine if they lost the case.
In order for things to be just, the cards should not be so heavily stacked against the accused that they can't risk defending themselves when they believe the accuser (the police or traffic warden) is wrong.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
Like when you make a legal right turn on red, and stop again to make sure it's clear...You missed the part where the judge said it was unconstitutionally difficult to challenge the fine. You're basically at the mercy of the enforcement agency and you have to rely on the accuracy of a company which profits massively from fining you.
I thought they were speed cameras, not red light cameras. The question is not about lines, it's if they are set to go off when you are going 56 in a 55 zone, and so forth. If they do not allow for imperfections in speedometer readings, they will overticket the population. There is also a question of how many are mounted and where; if you drive down a main thoroughfare going 60 in a 55 zone and get three tickets for it in one day, that's an issue.
Reading the first linked article, it sounds like they one had two cameras total, one where you enter the city and the limit drops from 35 to 25, and the other in a school zone. The town is a small town on an interstate that has a lot of through traffic to get from larger towns to major centres of employment. The city officials are confident this will hold up in appeals court, and I suspect they may be correct.
- W. Blaine Dowler
http://www.bureau42.com
I'd like to know how incidences of rear-end collisions are affected in areas where red-light cameras are installed, and how many of those who are involved in rear-end collisions (the collisionee, if that is a word) have been subject to fine by one of these cameras, especially if the ticket was later contested because the amber phase was shortened to increase revenue.
Back of the napkin math here; Breaking distance from 30MPH (14m/s) is 23m including a thinking distance of 9m in ideal conditions. Therefore, you require 23m to stop your car from 30mph, but are only given 12.6m to do it in (14m[distance travelled in 1s] * 0.9[length of amber phase]) and 3/4 of that is going "Yellow light... I had betOHSHITITSREDNOW." It's demontrably impossible.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
The exotic situation is ice or snow on the street.
Costs to be picked up by the loser
Your optimism is showing. Doesn't work that way in real life.
Change the penalty for moving violations from a monetary fine to a mandatory community service.
The incentive for police to write frivolous tickets will disappear, and people who are caught will be made to spend real time helping their community in some way, benefitting them, and costing them time, which is more valuable than money.
Zing!
Start braking a bit earlier.
You mean when the light is still green?
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
Actually, in many places with red light cameras, the city has decreased the length of the yellow light below that recommended by national safety guidelines in order to get more ticket revenue.
Let me say that again: they've shortened the length of the yellow lights, not for safety, but in spite of safety, so they get to write more tickets.
At many of these places, it's possible to be driving along at a safe speed and see the light turn yellow, and be put in a situation where you have to absolutely slam on your brakes in order to stop behind the line -- and this is me driving a small passenger car with brakes limited only by the coefficient of friction. Drivers of large trucks which can't brake as hard complain even harder about this.
From the article:
"Police say up to 18,000 vehicles a day drive through the village, which links some big employers with I-75."
The population of the town is somewhat immaterial. Also as someone noted earlier they are speed cameras, not red light cameras. To be honest, the article does not mention why they are considered a scam, although it gives some (in my opinion weak) arguments against them. I think their biggest concern is the impact on the local businesses from the people who drive through.
I read in one place where the company that did a similar deal over red light cameras recommended to the city to shorten the yellow light time thus increasing the chances you would get burned having proceeded on a green and still been in the intersection when it turned red. The result apparently was that people would massively slam on their brakes if the light turned yellow just as they were about to pass through.
The key problem here is simple; when you have a company that can make profits backed by laws they will make sure that there are as many law breakers as possible. Since you can't sell people on breaking the law the next best step is to basically set them up to fail. In my shitty city Halifax they switched to a private company doing parking tickets. They are relentless. If your meter runs out they will get you. Plus the parasites know where the best meters are such as those near the emergency rooms of Hospitals where people are not thinking about things such as putting change in the meters.
No private company should have almost anything to do with the legal system. Running prisons, enforcing laws, scanning our emails, Nothing. Not only will they not use common sense but they will use the worse common sense possible and that is to make as much money as possible and at any cost.
Setting speed limits below the maximum safe speed under ideal conditions is also "overticketing". Setting speed limits and designing a traffic enforcement program with revenue, rather than public safety, in mind is a subversion of the purpose of law enforcement and ought to land the folks doing it in prison for a very long time -- it's just as bad as bribery, as far as undermining the legitimacy of the rule of law.
Honestly, I'd like to see statewide referenda passed wherever possible saying that all revenue from traffic and parking tickets goes not to any particular government body but gets donated to the "offender"'s choice of charity. Taking the profit out of claims of "but it's for your saaaaafety!" ought to nip this nonsense in the bud.
The city that collects the fines sets the length of the yellow light. Now do you see the problem?
The city that collects the fines sets the length of the yellow light. Do you see the problem now?
The exotic situation is ice or snow on the street.
Or water or sand or anything else other than street.
Likely the town was there before the highway that drove up their traffic volume was built. If people are not paying attention and speeding through the city just to get somewhere else, fuck 'em, write 'em tickets so they learn to slow down or find a different route. Perhaps I am jaded by all the people speeding down my street rushing to the highway on ramps. 35MPH and not many are doing it. I've taken to tossing gravel at them as they race by while waiting to put my kindergartener on her school bus. People live on these streets and their lives are just as important as the one you have living in your mcmansion on a cul-de-sac.
Perhaps they ought to leave a little earlier for work in the morning
There is a difference between driving 100mph, weaving in and out of traffic, on a crowded road where the traffic pattern is going 65mph... and driving at a safe speed that just happens to be higher than the one on the sign. I've gotten plenty of speeding tickets doing the latter (and none doing the former, but that's probably because I don't do it).
It's worse than that, because in many places everyone acknowledges that the speed on the sign is unrealistic and drives faster than that. So it becomes this sadly hilarious guessing game, where people have to guess how fast they should really drive, and what speed the cops will actually object to. In places it's 15 or even 20 mph over (the stretch of I-83 through Baltimore where the speed limit is 45mph comes to mind, as does the whole Beltway). None of these folks are driving particularly unsafely, though.
In most of the criminal code, we've asked ourselves "What things are actually harmful to others and worth criminalizing?" You can tell that there's been a lot of thought given to this in places. Yet with the speed limits there seems to have been no such care taken.
We have this here - a steep downhill slope rated at 40MPH with a light at the bottom and a yellow of about 4.5 seconds. There's no way to do it properly, and semi trucks always run the red, because, y'know, physics. Locals know not to trust the opposite green but out-of-towners can be caught unawares.
The thing is, red light and speeding cameras are illegal by statute in NH, so there's no revenue incentive - they could park a cop at the bottom of the hill but they rarely do. It's more of a safety problem than anything, but the City won't do anything about it.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I can agree on taking the incentive out of ticketing for the sake of ticketing, but unfortunately, it would never happen. There's way too much money to be made.
I can agree on taking the incentive out of robbing people for the sake of profit, but unfortunately, it would never happen. There's way too much money to be made.
Or the yellow is too short.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
There is a light at an intersection in the middle of nowhere along my morning drive that has a 5 second green light, if you don't start going as soon as it turns green you won't make it through. That is without ice and snow, both of which make it harder to get going. It is quite possible at such a light to sit at it while it's red, have trouble getting started, and 'run the red' because you haven't cleared the intersection. God forbid you have people behind you who actually think they can make it.
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
If you're driving so fast towards a traffic light that you can't stop in twenty yards without screeching the tires, you're doing it wrong, yes.
You just said nobody should ever drive over 15 MPH. Yellow lights are supposed to be calibrated for the required braking distance, at the posted speed limit, for the worst of the typical range of common road conditions.
Trouble is, they often aren't - either for revenue enhancement or due to a lack of competence. Both are at the expense of safety.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
You've never driven a horse trailer loaded with two large horses. When I come up on a traffic light that is green I cannot really slow down trying to anticipate if/when it goes to yellow for I still need to maintain traffic speed. When that light goes yellow I have an instant to make a decision, because I cannot hit the brakes hard and throw 3000 lbs of horse forward. I can only either ease then add more firm brakes or continue on, hoping the yellow is long enough for me to get through or hold opposing traffic enough to see I cannot stop.
Stop thinking everyone drives high performance cars. If a town was really interested in traffic safety they would install count down timers on traffic light intersections so an approaching driver can best gauge whether to brake in a reasonable time frame, brake firmly, or continue on. My stopping distance is minimum two times that of a passenger car so knowing how much time I got would really take the stress of of every light I come too when hauling horses.
Life is a great ride, the vehicle doesn't matter
+ in bad weather conditions don't drive so fast
If you expect people to notice how long the light has been green and to slow down if it has been too long, then your problem is that your yellows are too short. Period. Drivers should pay attention to the road and the traffic around them, not the duration of lights in the distance.
"I've taken to tossing gravel at them"
Here in the UK, you'd be arrested in short order for that, anywhere. You may be correct about traffic coming through the town too fast, but you seem to have a lot to learn about justice and proportionality. I hope a semi comes through and drops his load of gravel on your driveway. Maybe then you'd learn something about proportionality, but knowing people like that over here ("my car and my daughter are more important than everybody else, screw you") you'd probably be happy for the donation of ammo to throw at passing vehicles.
This tagline was transcoded to result in at least one smirk. If you experience failure to smirk, please consult your Gen
Here in Switzerland when they build highways they actually think about on ramps, and off ramps. Heck they do so in Germany, and France and so on. They realize that if you create a highway with an on ramp and off ramp there will be quite a bit of traffic that will go through the town.
Oh wait, this is the United States, the land of the free, small government and where we can't invest in infrastructure! Seriously, these days when I travel to Canada and the States what I see is how urban sprawl is killing the countries. No planning, no thought, just greed, and the thought that private money is always right. I am no socialist, nor a commie. BUT sometimes government has a role and sometimes people need to accept that.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
I hate those towns too.
My wife and I are from a large rural area in our province, referred to as the Valley. Normally we'd take highway 101 to get there from where we live, but in the summer when it's nice and we want a more scenic drive we use to take the old #1 highway. The 100 series highways are 110 Km/h, the older single digit highways are 80 Km/h.
So it's a nice day and we're driving along at 75 Km/h enjoying the weather, then hidden behind some tree or other type foliage, blink and you miss it, there's a speed sign and all the sudden you're in a 50 Km/h zone surrounded by cattle and corn fields, 30 km/h if you're entering a school zone (speed fines doubled between 30 and 50 Km/h, triple if you're over 50 Km/h). Lately it seems schools have been popping up all over the place... well at least the signs for school zones have been, which seems odd since I keep reading about the rural schools closing and the students merged into schools in other counties.
We don't dare take the #1 highway anymore, something we've been doing for nearly 15 years, because all the little stick friggn' nowhere towns along the way started using the #1 as a money maker with hidden or poorly maintained speed signs.
I drive a lot in Germany, it is a joy to drive there because there are no speed traps, as a consequence people obey the law _more_ because the traffic signs mean something, you see a sign for 100kph then you go 100 because the road or conditions will not allow that speed (god help you if you get a ticket because you really fucked up). In the US most speed signs fall in the "overticket" category, the interstate highways were designed for 75MPH cruising not 55 or 65, an lots of little towns get a large amount to money from tickets from speed traps - the town should just tax approriately to support themselves instead of creating speed traps which, if anything, discourage safety and erode respect for the law.
Stop modding this down, guys. "Troll" and "incorrect" are not synonyms. He is expressing a commonly held viewpoint, and we are better off if both his comment and my on-point reply above are visible.
What I really would like to see in the US is the introduction of flashing green. In xUSSR countries and in lots of European countries, green traffic light starts flashing about 5-10 seconds before the yellow light.
I'm so used to it that I'm still shocked by the sudden switches to yellow in the US - you have a split second to decide whether to stop immediately or continue driving and risk running the red light.
Is it set to go off if you are over the white line at a red? Then if I stopped 3-5ft long at a light, I'm getting a ticket for running it? Seems like a scam to me.
How? The law says don't cross the white line if the light is red.
Just want to point out that something being "the law" doesn't make it not a scam, or at least stupid. Running a red light to me doesn't mean "over the line," it means, to me, driving through the intersection when the light is red. This isn't a sport, there's no reason the line should be regarded as magical just because the law says so. Most motorists stop where they think is reasonable, and that is safe. Accidents usually don't seem to be caused by people stopping three feet into the crosswalk, they're caused by people driving through.
If a town was really interested in traffic safety they would install count down timers on traffic light intersections so an approaching driver can best gauge whether to brake in a reasonable time frame, brake firmly, or continue on.
This is exactly correct. On the mornings when I drive my children to school I use the crosswalk timers to gauge when I can or cannot make it through a light. Traffic cameras have nothing to do with keeping people safe, they are all about lazily collecting fines from unfortunate drivers.
I got here through a series of tubes
Lights ARE part of the road and the traffic around of them.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
A lot of lights don't have a long enough yellow for you to stop braking soon enough to come to a safe stop in time in icy conditions - should we start braking for green just in case? or should we speed through to make sure we get through before it turns red instead?
Those people should be ticketed, but that doesn't tell you anything about the average driver. Most people are not habitual criminals, and if the law is so screwed up that it makes criminals of most people, it's the law that's the problem, not the people.
You can see through the snow and know exactly where the line is?
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
Especially when the yellow is too short because the traffic camera company severely reduced their duration shortly after installing the cameras. That's what they did around here. 4 second yellows became 1 second yellows and suddenly people doing what they had always been doing were getting tickets. The worst part is that it made the roads less safe, because people slam on their brakes when they see the light go yellow when they're just about to enter the intersection and cause more rear-end collisions.
I read the internet for the articles.
You should always be prepared to stop, but that's why we have yellow lights - to allow people to know when they should stop rather than proceed. I know the duration of lights in my home town, but when traveling there's no way I could know when to take my "foot off of the gas pedal", because I've never seen that light before. Are you seriously arguing that people should observe every signaled intersection for a full cycle before attempting to pass through it?
> They don't teach slowing down for "stale" greens anymore? Damn, even I remember that from almost 40 years ago!
No. I think you're just making that up so you can take pleasure in being a sanctimonious jackass.
People like you are why we rebelled against England and why people continued going west afterwards.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
... or one can't see the line, which is pretty damn common around here in wet/dirty/winter road conditions, especially since the city gets pretty lazy about repainting the damn things.
Further to that, if the sensor trips when you're 1" over the line, is it detecting your tires, bumper, what?
Regardless, traffic laws are supposed to be about safety, not a source of revenue. That 1" over the line isn't meant to pump out $100k worth of tickets. When things are that sensitive, you end up with *more* accidents as people freak out about crossing the line and drive stupidly as a result.
When my mother was learning to drive in England, the instructor told her the first rule of the road was this:
"Everybody else on the road is a bloody idiot."
The problem with your logic is, if somebody rear ends me, it still cost me 500 dollars deductible, trip to the hospital, time off work, etc.etc.
Not to mention, a friend of mine, who's an ex-police officer, has seen people die in rear end accident that were so light they didn't even scratch the paint on the car.
Just because "it's the other guy's fault" is no valid reason to not try to avoid an accident.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
If someone rear-ends you, then that's their fault. 100% of the time.
If someone rearends you while driving it may legally be their fault, but that doesn't change the fact that you get to live with whatever injuries you or your family get out of the deal. If you can't stop safely then it is actually in EVERYONE's best interest that you don't stop... unless of course keeping going is even more dangerous for others. Then you have to make a choice. The only way you can know that and to make good choices is to have a circle of awareness that includes what is going on behind you, to your sides, and in front of you. A sphere of awareness is even better, but most of the time, on the road, a circle will suffice.
I rearended someone myself--going 50mph--because I was looking in my rearview mirror too long while doing a lane change, and they were stopped dead on the highway.
You're obviously speaking from a personal experience here, and I hope everyone was okay, but it sounds like you learned the wrong lesson. The lesson you learned should NOT be that you don't need to know what's going on all around you and that you don't need to use your mirrors other than when changing lanes - rather it should be that you shouldn't focus on any ONE area sufficiently long that you fail to notice important things in another area. Who is "legally" at fault only helps you in the courtroom - not in the morgue and not in the operating room... those are where it counts. And yes, you might end up having to defend yourself from a fine (line/red lights) in order to keep yourself out of the morgue.
My present is the activity I am currently engaged in with the purpose of turning the future into a better past.
as amusing as this thread is, none of you have even read the summary.
it's about Speeding Ticket Camera, not Stoplight Cameras.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.