One man's fight with a traffic cam

ProDarwin wrote:

SVreX wrote: In reply to ProDarwin: Those devices will not stop speeding, or running lights. They just give someone the ability to profit when violations are (allegedly) committed.

I'm sure sometimes they are less effective. But a permanent speed camera on my street would definitely stop speeding. How many times are you going to be issued a ticket by a camera before you stop speeding in the area you know it is located? I have limited experience with speed cameras, but the areas I know with them, people know where they are and follow the speed limit strictly there. They are all pissed off doing so.

A permanent armed military brigade on your street would also stop speeding. Also unconstitutional.

ProDarwin wrote:

SVreX wrote: In reply to ProDarwin: Those devices will not stop speeding, or running lights. They just give someone the ability to profit when violations are (allegedly) committed.

I'm sure sometimes they are less effective. But a permanent speed camera on my street would definitely stop speeding. How many times are you going to be issued a ticket by a camera before you stop speeding in the area you know it is located? I have limited experience with speed cameras, but the areas I know with them, people know where they are and follow the speed limit strictly there. They are all pissed off doing so.

They don't reduce accidents though. So noise reduction and the potential positive environmental impact are really all they're good for. Oh, and padding the PD's pocket.

Toyman01 wrote:

ProDarwin wrote: ...But a permanent speed camera on my street would definitely have a bullet hole in it by the end of the week.

FTFY. Lucky for me, SC has outlawed all camera ticketing as unconstitutional.

Didn't know that, but I haz a smiley face.

I have often wondered, why arent there traffic gates just like there are railroad gates?

I understand that that much infrastructure would be a gazillion dollars to maintain, plus the implications of what could happen if even one in a major metropolitan area fails. I get it, machines break.

But the logic is solid, and that example illustrates my point: if they truly want to keep us safe, they will truly spend the money. If they simply want to assign blame (and get rich), they will simply take the money.

4cylndrfury wrote: I have often wondered, why arent there traffic gates just like there are railroad gates? I understand that that much infrastructure would be a gazillion dollars to maintain, plus the implications of what could happen if even one in a major metropolitan area fails. I get it, machines break. But the logic is solid, and that example illustrates my point: if they truly want to keep us safe, they will truly spend the money. If they simply want to assign blame (and get rich), they will simply take the money.

Ambulances

I don't worry too much about them personally because I don't roll through red lights. I actually stop at red lights. It gets me honked at sometimes, but oh well. I dislike them on principle though and am looking forward to reading the linked article.

4cylndrfury wrote: This is why we cant have nice things

A few years back I "forgot with extreme prejudice" to pay one of them in a faraway place starting with "The " near where mazduece hails from. Nothing happened. I'll use that experience to guide me in future encounters.

In TN it was a considered a non moving violation due to how the laws that allowed them were worded. They wouldn't do anything to you if you didn't pay them. It was widely known and very few people paid them.

I was in traffic court one day for something that I may have done in front of a cop and the were a lot of people there for red light camera tickets. The bailiff rounded them all up and told them something, all of them but one walked to the clerk and paid the tickets. The judge called the guy up that stayed to fight, the man said that the red light was at the bottom of a highway exit and a semi was barrelling up behind him and he moved so he wouldn't get hit. The judge asked the officer to roll the film and sure enough the truck came right through at 50mph. The judge said "well you told the truth about it, but you just admitted to me that you ran the redlight. Guilty."

I just shook my head.

Several studies have shown many more rear end collisions and more damage to property with red light cameras. I had one that totaled my car.

The same studies show that lengthened yellows do the same thing as the red light cameras are supposed to do but without the property damage.

In my small area of the world they went for lengthened yellows and it works great!! But not far from me in the big city they still do the short yellows, but no red light cameras. Things are a lot more tense there.

No law degree needed to figure out if they can't prove who was behind the wheel at the time of said violation, they have no case. That's why Mpls got rid of the red light cameras.

With all the racial profiling heat they've endured the last few years, is it no wonder they don't enforce simple traffic laws in many areas?

On the permanent speed camera installation mentioned above, I will relate an experience I had in France (which has many such cameras, with signs warning of such) a few years ago.

The rental car having crapped out, I was in a cab on the way to the rental office to pick up the replacement. Approaching a speed camera on the highway, the cabbie and several other cars traveling well above the posted limit in the left lane moved together to the point that they were almost touching bumpers and SPED UP so that the first car would be blocked from the camera's view by a truck. As soon as they were past it, they opened up formation and proceeded as before.

This did not strike me as the intended outcome of installing the speed camera.

ProDarwin wrote: If it keeps dumbE36 M3s from blasting through my neighborhood at 60mph, I am 100% for it.

You need speed humps. There are some neighborhoods around here that have a combo of 4 way stop signs and speed humps.. If you're actually doing 25 MPH, you can just sail over the humps without much issue, but you really don't want to hit them at higher speeds.

Oddly enough, going through that neighborhood at 25 MPH with the occasional stop sign is faster than going up the main road.

Great info. I hate those effen things. They're anti-American. And I don't mean to start a E36 M3 storm with that statement. That's my own opinion, but nobody will change it ... no matter how strong the argument.

mtn wrote: Very good read. Peeved me off when my wife got a ticket at a red light camera. They had video too. She rolled the stop turning right at a red light. With absolutely NO ONE around. At 11PM. And no, she didn't come to a complete stop, but she did roll at less than 2MPH for at least 10 feet. The risk was removed.

Interestingly enough, my wife ran a red light in Phoenix soon after moving to Arizona. At that time, she still had a Pennsylania plate. We even got a picture of her in the mail with an Oh-Shi... face.

She got an AZ license plate a few weeks later, and despite getting pulled over multiple times this year, the red light cam incident has not been brought up.

From what I understand, the state and even to some extent the local cops could really care less about camera tickets, it's the camera companies who make a stink out of threatening you into paying.

Years ago I went to renew my Driver's License as was told by the DMV that I had a no-show, no-pay red light infraction on my record and my license was suspended.

Long story short the the car caught in the red light camera did not belong to me but a typo at the DMV put it under my name. I had to drive to Los Angeles from San Diego (without a valid license) to grab paperwork from the traffic office and then drive it to a courthouse in another county to clear my name.

So unfortunately there was a time when those red light tickets actually mattered.

I used to hate red light cameras with a burning passion, especially when my wife got hit with a $450 "failure to come to a complete stop when making a right turn on red" ticket.

Then I moved to Colorado, holy E36 M3, people seem to think the lights here are some kind of suggestion. I will go through a light thinking that yellow was a little pinkish, and then watch in shock as 4 cars follow me through now I am not sure they are such a bad thing...

In reply to 02Pilot:

By pulling together that may have been covering the plates, or just ensuring that no one was caught alone in the camera.

I got speed camera ticket from Washington DC going from SC to MA. During my research I found the only practical way to beat it (i.e. Not lawyering up and spending more than the ticket) was if there was more than one vehicle in the picture.

Apparently, If there is more than one car in the cameras field of view it isn't possible to tell which vehicle was the one speeding (even if both might have been).

Which make sense since the last time I beat a ticket in MA I didn't try to prove I wasn't speeding, I just showed that it there was a strong possibility that the officer may have clocked a different car.

codrus wrote: The killer for red light cameras in my book, though, is that you can have the same effect without the rear-enders simply by lengthening the yellow, and that very timing is forbidden by the contracts the camera companies have with the cities that use them.

In Atlanta, the traffic planners got busted for setting the yellow light timer a half second faster than the minimum allowed by law at intersections with red light cameras. Pretty clear indication of what their real goal was.

MadScientistMatt wrote:

codrus wrote: The killer for red light cameras in my book, though, is that you can have the same effect without the rear-enders simply by lengthening the yellow, and that very timing is forbidden by the contracts the camera companies have with the cities that use them.

In Atlanta, the traffic planners got busted for setting the yellow light timer a half second faster than the minimum allowed by law at intersections with red light cameras. Pretty clear indication of what their real goal was.

clearly, they were doing that for the kids.