It’s hard to make a phone call today that’s not “monitored for security purposes,” so it was hardly a shock to learn recently that one in five Americans now live in communities that use cameras to monitor their driving for presumably the same reason.
But they ought to have a different disclaimer posted on the red light–camera signs at the intersections that, in turn, experience more rear-end accidents because of the red light–camera signs. It might read like this:
“Caution. This intersection is being monitored for financial purposes.”
This was pretty much confirmed by a study titled Caution: Red Light Cameras Ahead. The Risks of Privatizing Traffic Law Enforcement and How to Protect the Public, released in late October by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. Of the nearly 700 municipalities listed as having outsourced their traffic-camera monitoring, no fewer than 30 were in the St. Louis area.
While it didn’t advocate against all traffic cameras, the report offered this understatement: “When private firms and municipalities consider revenues first and safety second, the public interest is threatened.”
The report included a litany of examples in which camera vendors and their client municipalities did just that. From contracts that punish cities when red-light violations decline to lobbying activities against safety measures at intersections—among other noxious practices—it’s clear that this unregulated industry is about cashing in on dangerous driving behavior, not eliminating it.
As reported in this space in May 2009, camera vendors and their clients have a proven history of taking actions that compromise safety in the interest of increasing red-light violations. The most common of these is the practice of reducing yellow-light times below federal standards.
The U.S. PIRG report cited a Texas Transportation Institute study that found when yellow-light durations were shortened by a second, red-light violations doubled. When yellow-light durations were increased by a second, red-light violations fell by half.
Is it a coincidence, then, that (according to the U.S. PIRG report) “camera vendors employed nearly 40 lobbyists in Florida, whose agenda included killing a bill that would have required municipalities to adopt longer yellow light times to increase intersection safety”?
Or that some “contracts give camera vendors the ability to veto proposed camera locations, sometimes referring to a minimum ticket number or revenue requirement”?
The report complained that many municipalities have entered into contracts that “require cities to share revenue with the camera vendor on a per-ticket basis or through other formulas as a percentage of revenue.” This is also known as a “ticket quota.”
The U.S. PIRG also warned about the problem of getting out of a contract. Ask Houston, where angry voters put an end to the city’s red-light cameras, only to find themselves presently on the receiving end of a $25 million lawsuit from American Traffic Solutions, the company of choice for many St. Louis municipalities.
Houston was among a handful of cities, including Los Angeles, in which voters rose up against the cameras in the past year. From the industry’s perspective, losses in those areas were more than offset by booming business—spurred by smart lobbying efforts and outstanding sales pitches—in the rest of the nation.
On this point, there can be little dispute: The red-light camera business is looking up. And during the same week that the U.S. PIRG’s report was shining national light on the industry’s
pitfalls, the city of Creve Coeur won a legal victory when the Missouri Court of Appeals unanimously upheld the legality of its red-
light violation ordinance.
A car owner, Mary Nottebrok, had challenged the law’s constitutionality and claimed it conflicted with state law. Her appeal is now expected to go to the state Supreme Court.
Creve Coeur has an interesting legal theory: The $100 red light–violation tickets are akin to parking tickets, in that a car owner is penalized for his or her vehicle being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Instead of your car having been parked at an expired meter, though, it has been found to have traveled into an intersection while the light was red.
Thus it is that running a red light—a traffic crime that can get one saddled with two points on a driver’s license in a conventional arrest—is merely a civil offense, subject to a fine in Creve Coeur and the many other municipalities with similarly drawn ordinances.
In other words, a city doesn’t need to prove that the owner of the car was even present when it ran the red light. This is essentially a moving parking ticket.
I’m no legal scholar, but having read the Court of Appeals ruling, I’d be surprised if the ordinance is overturned at the higher court. It appears that municipalities have found a smart legal strategy to get around the trifling detail that a car owner can’t even be placed at the scene of the crime, which—despite being a dangerous enough crime as to warrant the placement of red-light cameras—is now just a finable offense.
Call it a glorified parking ticket—a very expensive, glorified parking ticket.
In Creve Coeur and every other municipality, officials will undoubtedly insist that the outsourced cameras are about safety, not money. In fact, I’d be surprised if they wouldn’t be indignant at any suggestion to the contrary. And by the way, I believe that in many cases, they believe it: Most likely, they have been persuaded by their very polished camera vendors that this is about saving lives.
There are certainly exceptions to this, such as the instances cited in our 2009 article—and more recently in the U.S. PIRG study—in which cities have actually been fined for lowering yellow-light intervals for the specific purpose of increasing revenue. But locally, at least, give them the benefit of the doubt for good intentions.
Still, as we discussed in that 2009 article, the safety question is very unsettled. At the time, I cited a number of studies—and more have been published since—that have concluded the presence of red-light cameras causes enough motorists to slam on the brakes that rear-end collisions actually increase in significant numbers. The industry counters that right-angle (T-bone) collisions are reduced, however, and that these are the more serious accidents.
The counterargument to that counterargument is that the most effective ways of preventing right-angle accidents (according to national traffic engineers) are to lengthen yellow lights, to increase the size of the lights, to improve the visibility of the lights, and to employ such techniques as an all-red-light clearance interval, in which traffic is paused by red lights in all four directions for a few seconds.
When one reads, in places like the U.S. PIRG study, that the very camera vendors who talk the talk about safety are actively fighting against the imposition of such safety measures by states, it’s what poker players call a “tell.”
For the vendors, this has nothing to do with safety, and even if they go to the trouble of investing part of the hundreds of millions reaped from red-light tickets to hire lobbyists and others to assure anyone who will listen (especially politicians) that it’s about safety, that doesn’t make it about safety.
It’s about the hundreds of millions of dollars.
So is it possible that it’s about money for the out-of-town vendors, but still about safety for the cities with which they have contracted? And is it possible that these cities really aren’t in it for the money, even if they themselves make tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars from the camera program?
Yes and yes. It’s possible. But it’s not likely, and far too many local dollars are fleeing the state, in any event.
At the end of the day, red-light cameras—and to a lesser extent their speed-enforcement cousins—have created a new and most unhelpful use of technology: profitability that depends upon and grows with dangerous behavior by the public.
Try to find another example of that, in which an outsourced private company earns exponentially larger profits—through the public sector—based upon how often the citizenry dangerously violates the law. Is that a good model of governance?
The closest comparison to this would be the classic speed trap, wherein a little town like Rock Hill or Charlack builds its treasury by pouncing on unsuspecting motorists passing though town (often on streets with artificially lowered speed limits). But is the speed trap to be admired and emulated? Is this a good use of powerful new technology?
I don’t think so. But far more credibly, neither does St. Louis County Chief of Police Tim Fitch, a longtime critic of automated speed-enforcement cameras. Fitch hasn’t commented much on red-light cameras, but the approach he has taken to the speeding cameras could easily be translated to red-light cameras.
In July, Fitch publicly called out a local police chief for advocating new speed-enforcement cameras on Interstate 70 with this challenge: “Since traffic safety is the stated reason for the cameras and since this is not about collecting revenue for the city, I’d like your community to consider donating any new revenue generated from the I-70 speed cameras to a worthy charity.
“This clearly will prove to our citizens that the primary reason for the cameras is not the additional revenue the device will generate. To do otherwise will only enforce the public’s belief that police officers are in the revenue collection business for the city.
“The St. Louis community wants to believe that our law-enforcement agencies are conducting business with integrity and honor. Traffic safety, not revenue generation, is one of our principal missions.”
Amen.
I don’t know whether the charity angle is even possible for a municipality. Maybe the additional revenue would have to go to a school district or back to the taxpayers in some form of rebate.
But Fitch is onto something here. We know what the camera vendors are all about, but the only way to be sure that the municipalities are not in this game for the money is for them to give that money away.
It hasn’t happened yet.
Missouri should follow the lead of other states and cities, and take the one step that would correct the shortcomings of red-light cameras: It should get rid of them.
SLM co-owner Ray Hartmann is a panelist on KETC Channel 9’s Donnybrook, which airs Thursdays at 7 p.m.
