Quote:Get the Feeling You're Being Watched? If You're Driving, You Just Might Be
Cameras to Catch Speeders and Scofflaws Are Spreading -- And Sparking Road Rage

By WILLIAM M. BULKELEY
The village of Schaumburg, Ill., installed a camera at Woodfield Mall last November to film cars that were running red lights, then used the footage to issue citations. Results were astonishing. The town issued $1 million in fines in just three months.

But drivers caught by the unforgiving enforcement -- which mainly snared those who didn't come to a full stop before turning right on red -- exploded in anger. Many vowed to stop shopping at the mall unless the camera was turned off. The village stopped monitoring right turns at the intersection in January.

Once a rarity, traffic cameras are filming away across the country. And they're not just focusing their sights on red-light runners. The latest technology includes cameras that keep tabs on highways to catch speeders in the act and infrared license-plate readers that nab ticket and tax scofflaws.

Drivers -- many accusing law enforcement of using spy tactics to trap unsuspecting citizens -- are fighting back with everything from pick axes to camera-blocking Santa Clauses. They're moving beyond radar detectors and CB radios to wage their own tech war against detection, using sprays that promise to blur license numbers and Web sites that plot the cameras' locations and offer tips to beat them.

Cities and states say the devices can improve safety. They also have the added bonus of bringing in revenue in tight times. But critics point to research showing cameras can actually lead to more rear-end accidents because drivers often slam their brakes when they see signs warning them of cameras in the area. Others are angry that the cameras are operated by for-profit companies that typically make around $5,000 per camera each month.

"We're putting law enforcement in the hands of third parties," says Ryan Denke, a Peoria, Ariz., electrical engineer who has started a Web site, Photoradarscam.com, to protest the state's speed cameras. Mr. Denke says he hasn't received a ticket via the cameras.

Protests over the cameras aren't new, but they appear to be rising in tandem with the effort to install more. Suppliers estimate that there are now slightly over 3,000 red-light and speed cameras in operation in the U.S., up from about 2,500 a year ago. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety says that at the end of last year, 345 U.S. jurisdictions were using red-light cameras, up from 243 in 2007 and 155 in 2006.

One traffic-cam seller, Arizona-based American Traffic Solutions Inc., recently reported it had installed its 1,000th camera, with 500 more under contract in 140 cities and towns. Rival Redflex Holdings Ltd. says it had 1,494 cameras in operation in 21 states at the end of 2008, and expects to top 1,700 by the end of this year.

Municipalities are establishing ever-more-clever snares. Last month, in a push to collect overdue taxes, the City Council in New Britain, Conn., approved the purchase of a $17,000 infrared-camera called "Plate Hunter." Mounted on a police car, the device automatically reads the license plates of every passing car and alerts the officer if the owner has failed to pay traffic tickets or is delinquent on car taxes. Police can then pull the cars over and impound them.

New Britain was inspired by nearby New Haven, where four of the cameras brought in $2.8 million in just three months last year. New Haven has also put license-plate readers on tow trucks. They now roam the streets searching for cars owned by people who haven't paid their parking tickets or car-property taxes. Last year 91% of the city's vehicle taxes were collected, up from "the upper 70s" before it acquired the technology, says city tax collector C.J. Cuticello.

Not that it's been smooth sailing. Mr. Cuticello recalls the time he tried to help tow the car of a woman who owed $536. She knocked him over, jumped in the car and drove away. She was later arrested for a hit-and-run.

City leaders have generally maintained that while revenue is a welcome byproduct of traffic citations, the laws are in place to improve public safety or reduce accidents.

But a study in last month's Journal of Law and Economics concluded that, as many motorists have long suspected, "governments use traffic tickets as a means of generating revenue." The authors, Thomas Garrett of the St. Louis Fed and Gary Wagner of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, studied 14 years of traffic-ticket data from 96 counties in North Carolina. They found that when local-government revenue declines, police issue more tickets in the following year. Officials at the North Carolina Association of Chiefs of Police didn't respond to requests for comment.

George Dunham, a village trustee in Schaumburg, says installing the red-light camera at the mall "wasn't about the revenue -- no one will believe that, but it wasn't." On the other hand, he says, with fuel taxes and sales taxes falling, its retreat on the camera has had a "painful" impact on Schaumburg's $170 million budget.

Last June, Arizona added a provision for speed cams on highways to its budget bill, with an anticipated $90 million in fines expected to help balance the budget.

State police started placing the cameras on highways around Phoenix in November. In December, a trooper arrested a man in Glendale while he was attacking a camera with a pick ax. In another incident, a troupe of men dressed as Santa Claus toured around the city of Tempe in December and placed gaily wrapped boxes over several traffic cameras, blocking their views. Their exploits have been viewed more than 222,000 times on YouTube.

Republican state representative Sam Crump has introduced a bill in the legislature to remove the cameras, which he says were approved "in the dead of night...as a budget gimmick."

In the meantime, the cameras are still being rolled out, and have already issued more than 200,000 violation notices since September. They are set to take a picture of cars going more than 11 miles over the speed limit, and they also photograph the driver.

Some entrepreneurs are trying to help camera opponents fight back. Phantom Plate Inc., a Harrisburg, Pa., company, sells Photoblocker spray at $29.99 a can and Photoshield, a plastic skin for a license plate. Both promise to reflect a traffic-camera flash, making the license plate unreadable. California passed a law banning use of the spray and the plate covers, which became effective at the beginning of this year.

A free iPhone application available on Trapster.com lets drivers use their cellphones to mark a traffic cam or speed trap on a Google map. The information on new locales is sent to Trapster's central computer, and then added to the map.

Other anti-cam Web sites counsel people to examine the pictures that come in the mail with citations. If the facial image is too blurry, they say, drivers can often argue successfully in court that no positive identification has been made of them.

Studies are mixed on whether traffic cameras improve safety. Some research indicates they may increase rear-end collisions as drivers slam on their brakes when they see posted camera notices. A 2005 Federal Highway Administration study of six cities' red-light cameras concluded there was a "modest" economic benefit because a reduction in side crashes due to less red-light running offset the higher costs of more rear-end crashes.

A study of crash causes released by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration last July found about 5% of crashes were due to traveling too fast and 2% were from running red lights. Driving off the side of the road, falling asleep at the wheel and crossing the center lines were the biggest causes identified.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB12381136...%3Darticle

It's about time people got fed up with their personal liberties being eradicated. It's sad that it took them losing money by it to become outraged.

I wonder how many millions of dollars have been lost from the legislators who passed these abominations having their own traffic tickets swept under the rug?

Now, where can I get a can of that spray?

This is one thing that really does not offend my libertarian sensibilities.
I'd rather have a camera catching them than the luck of the draw with how the officer feels that day (and how far he is ahead or behind on his quota for the month).
I'd rather have the human cops free to go after real criminals instead of getting their jollies busting motorists on the side of the road.
I travel regularly to places where this system is in effect (UK, Dubai) and I don't think it's worse than what we have here now.
I know there's a lot of b*tching and moaning about this, but I don't see it.
Use cameras for this sort of stuff. Free cops up to catch real crooks instead of play cash register. Looks like a win-win for me.

Good! I don't want to be on camera pickin' my nose!

Owl,

I see your points. Here's my biggest gripe: traffic engineering is done poorly. Many of these instances are b/c traffic engineers aren't doing their jobs. But cities take the easy way out and punish the citizen.

I run a red light almost every day, b/c they've installed a "L-turn on green arrow only" light at the intersection near my work. It's completely unnecessary, as I have a clear view of oncoming traffic for a solid 1/8 mi (do the math, that's 9 full seconds if traffic is going 50mph, and it's a 45mph road). At the busiest times, traffic would be considered "moderate".

That means a good number of cars sit waiting at an empty intersection. Moreover, by the time the arrow cycles green, oncoming traffic gets caught, meaning people in both directions wait needlessly. So, I run the light as if it weren't there. There would be no issue if that light were simply removed. In the meantime people are forced to waste gas, and the city pays for the electricity (never mind the original cost of these lights). Aren't we supposed to be doing something to fight global warming!?

Now Maryland traffic is engineered worse than most so this situation may not be common to every camera locale. But people have paid for the roads to be managed well...do that first if your real concern is safety, then we can discuss the need for cameras.

(03-27-2009 01:51 PM)DrTorch Wrote:  Owl,

I see your points. Here's my biggest gripe: traffic engineering is done poorly. Many of these instances are b/c traffic engineers aren't doing their jobs. But cities take the easy way out and punish the citizen.

I run a red light almost every day, b/c they've installed a "L-turn on green arrow only" light at the intersection near my work. It's completely unnecessary, as I have a clear view of oncoming traffic for a solid 1/8 mi (do the math, that's 9 full seconds if traffic is going 50mph, and it's a 45mph road). At the busiest times, traffic would be considered "moderate".

That means a good number of cars sit waiting at an empty intersection. Moreover, by the time the arrow cycles green, oncoming traffic gets caught, meaning people in both directions wait needlessly. So, I run the light as if it weren't there. There would be no issue if that light were simply removed. In the meantime people are forced to waste gas, and the city pays for the electricity (never mind the original cost of these lights). Aren't we supposed to be doing something to fight global warming!?

Now Maryland traffic is engineered worse than most so this situation may not be common to every camera locale. But people have paid for the roads to be managed well...do that first if your real concern is safety, then we can discuss the need for cameras.

Agree totally on the traffic engineering.

Got an interesting perspective on this the other day.

I've got a grad student that I'm mentoring on a special project. He's from Latvia, his dad is a lawyer, his mom in a law professor, both parents focusing on international law, so they've travelled quite a bit. Growing up, he moved from Latvia to the Hague, then to South Bend (mom did a tour on faculty at Notre Dame), back to the Netherlands, then to Oregon for college, then to France to play basketball professionally, then back to the US for grad school.

We were talking the other day and he noted that the first time he came to America (early 90s) he was amazed at how much better the US infrastructure was than in Europe. Now, he's amazed at how much better Europe's infrastructure is than ours. I had noted the same thing, but never realized it quite so clearly. In the last 15-20 years, a lot of Europe has passed us in terms of infrastructure. We need to catch back up. Obama is right to pursue this as part of the "stimulus" except that they need to be real infrastructure projects that will actually improve productivity--and that needs to be one part, not the primary focus, of our efforts.

sometimes at night, when no traffic is around. I treat Red lights like stop signs, I'd be pissed if I got a ticket for that

(03-27-2009 02:35 PM)GGniner Wrote:  sometimes at night, when no traffic is around. I treat Red lights like stop signs, I'd be pissed if I got a ticket for that

I actually know someone who got a ticket for running a stop light and then took it to court and got it thrown out.
No one was at the intersection but him and the cop saw him from an parked hidden position. He came to a complete stop,looked both ways and then proceeded, just as is if it was a stop sign.
He put the cop on the stand and he vouched for his story.
The judge agreed with him that he had not done anything unsafe and actually commended him for his safe driving because in over 30 years of driving, this was his first citation.
We need more judges like him and more people should go to court and fight tickets instead of just paying them off. Can you imagine what would happen to the court system if everyone demanded their day in court?

When I was in Puerto Rico if you stopped at a red light after midnight there's a good chance you'd get robbed. Going through red lights after midnight down there was an unwritten rule.

Where were you in PR? Because I've heard similar tales when I spent time in Borinquen.

(03-28-2009 03:45 PM)nomad2u2001 Wrote:  Where were you in PR? Because I've heard similar tales when I spent time in Borinquen.

Started off in Luqillo, about 30 miles east of San Juan. Then went to Arecibo where the radio telescope is. Ended up in Hato Rey which is part of San Juan. Being there for 4 years I got to see first hand why American tourists are hated - we're a selfish and arrogant bunch of pricks.

We can certainly be that way. Since I spent a good deal of my years in Canada, most of those in Quebec (Montreal and Q City), I can tell you that our countrymen don't exactly act like they've left their country. I remember once when I had just turned 18 and had gone back to Montreal for a grad gift, I went to a bar where everybody spoke French. There was a group of fellow Americans that got drunk and started insulting all of the French speakers and the Haitian bartender who knew no English. After cursing him out they stormed out with the words "damn frenchies don't speak like us." That's exactly why the Quebecois don't really like us (of course they don't like the rest of Canada either)