Avoiding Red Light Camera Tickets: Know Your Enemy
To my mind, the best way to not get a red light camera ticket is…to not blow through a red light.
The easiest and best way to do this is be more careful at intersections, slow down to a stop on the yellow, don’t try to beat the light, etc. This is the most obvious way to not get ticketed. But I have a few more suggestions to further insure you never receive those $100 red light camera tickets.
First, know where the red light intersections are located. Watch out for them in the towns, areas and neighborhoods you drive. Memorize them. Make note of them.
Here’s the current, most up-to-date list of red light cameras in Chicago.
Second, learn to watch out for the “Photo-Enforced” signs and for the cameras themselves in neighborhoods you only drive infrequently.
Third, assume ALL intersections have red light cameras. That way, you will always drive more carefully and be more watchful at traffic lights.
The rules of the red light camera
Finally, you need to know about how the cameras work so you interact with them correctly. In other words, “know your enemy.”
The other day, I spent time learning the details of red light cameras with Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) spokesperson Brian Steele. Back in 2003, CDOT originated the red light camera program and Mr. Steele was intimately involved with the program. These days, Chicago’s Office of Emergency Management handles the red light camera program. So, Mr. Steele knows quite a bit about how these damn cameras work.
Steele explained that red light cameras are not running continuously. They are triggered by an under pavement sensor, located at the white stop bar markings, before the entrance of the intersection. This sensor only becomes active when the traffic light turns red. NOT yellow, but full on red.
So, if you are already within the intersection when the light changes from yellow to red, you are safe–no ticket.
The red light camera does not trigger if you are already within the intersection when the light turns red.
Even if just your front wheels are past the white stop bar on the pavement, you are still safe as you are technically within the intersection, and can proceed to clear the intersection without being ticketed.
The under pavement sensor will only activate AFTER the light turns red.
This means, make sure you get your butt into the intersection while the light is either green or still yellow. Even if it’s just the very front of the car.
Or…stop at the entrance to the intersection BEFORE the light turns red.
“There is no gray area here,” according to Steele. “When you cross the stop bar (on the pavement) after the light turns red, the camera is triggered.”
Three seconds…only three seconds?
It’s important that you realize that the yellow light on all Chicago traffic lights have only a 3 second duration. Seriously, according to both Steele at CDOT and OEM, it’s only 3 seconds. This is not a long time. Think about that and drive accordingly.
Right on red
Steele also warned to be careful when making a right on red. He says many people get red light tickets and think the tickets are erroneous because they didn’t actually go through the intersection, but turned right on red. But according to Steele many people fail to actually stop first before turning right on the red. “As you know, Illinois law requires you to make a complete stop before turning right on red,” emphasized Steele.
So make sure you come to a complete stop before turning right on red, or you’ll get a red light camera ticket in the mail.
I fought the law…but the law won
Based on the details of the system and understanding how the red light cameras work, it’s not surprising that very few people ever beat a red light camera ticket. In most cases, when you get that letter with the bright red heading, you are guilty.
Fighting these tickets is nearly impossible. The video and photographic evidence is nealy impeachable. In addition, the success rate at red light camera hearings is not quite 2%. As opposed to 50-70% for regular parking tickets.
“Over the two years I was involved with the program, I only saw 4-5 errors during that time,” says Steele. “And it wasn’t a system malfunction but human error.”
That’s 4-5 errors out of tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of tickets that were issued. That’s pretty amazing.
Part of this success rate is because every instance that a red light camera is triggered, a human being reviews the incident and will only issue a ticket, when, according to Steele, “there is incontrovertible proof that a vehicle has gone through the intersection on a red light.”
We will get into details on how to contest red light camera citations and the few and only defenses that work in beating red light camera tickets in the future.
Special thanks to CDOT’s very kind Brian Steele who allowed me to waste nearly 45 minutes of his valuable time last week in researching this piece.
NEXT WEEK: Do license sprays protect you from red light camera tickets?
I have no plate on the front and back of my car. All I have is a registration sticker on my windsheild. i f the camera goes off, can they find me? i was driving my Bentley. Can they find me just based on the very few number of black Bentleys in my neighborhood?
geez Mike, pay the fine you cheap bastard, although I doubt they can find you to give one. Driving a bentely with no plates.. who the hell do u think u are.
I just got a red light ticket on north harlem. While doing research on this for court, I came across the above article on red light cameras. I am appaled by your lack of understanding, on the rights of people being violated, by the subsuquent court proceedings. I will state right here that I may have broke the law when I went through the intersection. But I should NOT have to give up my rights to a trial just so the city can generate some more revenue for flowers.
In cities across the country it has become more about making money and less about law enforcement and peoples civil rights, not to mention putting more citizens in harms way. In university studies, it has been found that accidents increase when redlight/speed cameras are installed at intersections. And that by increasing yellow light times accidents were significantly lowered! I love my town but this is just wrong. And this puff piece shows you have no intrest in real public safety.
Rico
PS Soon murder will no longer be a crime, we’ll just pay a fine, plus court costs and a cornners fee. Just as long as the city gets its share!
I’ve found it’s useful to look at the pedestrian crossing signs, as they’re timed to the traffic signals and most of them have countdown timers. They tell you how long that green light is going to stay green.
Perhaps Mr. Steele held back a few crucial details? At what speed is that under-the-pavement sensor triggered? It is obviously sensitive to a moving mass of steel. That’s why if you are not moving (stopped), nothing is triggered. The photos and video that they record to win their case carry the speed at which the violation happened. So obviously they are tracking it. If we could know the slowest speed that triggers the sensor, maybe a slow coasting into or even through the intersection once the light turns red, if below that speed, will not be registered? Just a theory. Obviously needs some (possibly costly) investigation.
The simple best safety method proven by countless studies,is to have a longer yellow light duration and a then a delayed green for opposing traffic which would end most red light running and increase safety issues NEVER RED LIGHT CAMERAS!
RED LIGHT camera safety studies all prove they do not enhance safety just give cities a right to print money from it’s resident victims.
Government at it’s worse using greed for brains.
If Chicago needs money then lower it’s spending and LIVE WITHIN IT’S MEANS LIKE EVERY CITIZEN AND BUSINESS DOES.
RED LIGHT cameras increase accidents and only bring in revenue at the expense of loss of lives and property, lost tourism money and upset voters. The poor time allowance intervals based on the speed limit are totally inadequate for the actual travel speeds and safety considerations, and you wonder why there is so much red light running.
3 seconds and many times less, does not even give a vehicle time to stop let alone a pedestrian of bicycle to cross the two lane intersections, especially large four and six lane intersections.
“Six cities busted for shortening yellow light”
http://www.autoblog.com/2008/04/14/six
Research has repeatedly found that the effects of posting lower speed limits, increasing enforcement activity and running public education campaigns are either short lived or nonexistent.
Setting speed limits at the nearest 5 mph above and calculating yellow
durations would eliminate all but the most egregious red
light runners. It would give us safer intersections more quickly and at lower cost than any of the alternatives; thereby serving the public welfare, the public convenience and the public purse all at once.
You completely shut your brain off when it came to the issue of turning right on red.
Think about it. Here’s a scenario, in sequential order:
1. Light turns red.
2. You approach light, and you STOP, BEHIND the bar where the sensor is.
3. Let’s say you even wait a couple of seconds. I CALL THAT A STOP.
4. While the light is still red, you see that all is clear, and you proceed to go forward and turn right.
5. Now you cross the bar where the sensors are, then you turn right, and as you do so, the camera lights flash twice at you as you proceed, then two weeks later, you get a ticket in the mail for almost HALF A GRAND.
6. This happened to me last week.
7. This is as flawed a system as it gets, where it comes to right turns on red. I always stop where I can SEE the white bar on the street; that puts me at about ten feet behind it. When I proceed forward, by the time of the first picture, I’m doing close to 10mph, the second picture, 16mph at 1.25 seconds later. I have recreated this scenario with a stopwatch many times over the last week, and the speed portion of the digital information is perfectly consistent with stopping fully behind that line, then proceeding with a right turn on red after a full stop. Yet the system says I now owe almost HALF a damn GRAND to the city, AFTER DOING EVERYTHING TEXTBOOK PERFECTLY RIGHT AND LEGAL.
Please tell me how the system performs even CLOSE to accurately in a situation like this? It could not be MORE flawed, in an instance such as this.
I have a question. I am a new driver and im not sure if i ran a red light or not tonight. See here is the situation, the light turned red so i stopped. I waited and the light turned green, but i saw a red light too so now im confused as there is lights for the turning lane too, so i may have mixed them up. anyway there is a camera at this intersection. If i did proceed on a stale red would it still trigger the camera? Would i have seen a flash? I didnt see anything. I just got really confused.
I would like to say first of all, traffic light cameras are harsh. I live in southeast Indiana and this is my second time in illinois. We have very few traffic light cameras in Indiana and I would like to keep it that way. I hate driving here! Its nerve racking, and very uptight. Do you see any real benifits from having the cameras? Just from my experience here I see them as more of a burden. But it may be because I’m not use to it
Andrea,
Sounds like a traffic signal malfunction. Every once in a while, I also have seen traffic lights with both red AND green on at the same time. It doesn’t happen very often, but I’ve seen it.
If you somehow were ticketed while it was red and green, fight the red light ticket on the basis that the signal was malfunctioning. The video show prove your case.
My guess is you did not get a red light ticket.
If you look at the sensors under the pavement, there are actually two in each lane. They are usually square cut outs in the pavement where they have placed a square loop of wire into the road. These loops use the change in inductance caused by a vehicle on top of them.
Since there are two, a foot or two apart, a moving car will trigger one sensor slightly before it triggers the second sensor. The time period between each sensor being triggered is directly related to the speed of the vehicle. This is how the system can tell if you have sped past the sensors or if you have stopped on top of both sensors right before the white stop line.
If I remember correctly, the sensors are actually right before and not after the stop line. Therefore it doesn’t matter what speed you are traveling, they will detect a cars presence while the light turns red and they will detect if the car then moves off of the sensor afterward, triggering the camera. These time periods are obviously very short but I’m sure the system is built to deal with fractions of a second.
I always wondered how the system reacts if say an 18 wheeler was rolling through an intersection as the light turned red, but that’s probably what they have human employees review the footage for.
Last week, I was going down a street and there was a lot if construction distracting me and the light switched from green to red, a few do that here, and I tried to stop but it would have been too late. Will I get a ticket?
Kayla,
Well…it depends on whether there was a red light camera at the intersection.
If so, maybe.
I stop rigtht before the intersection but crossed the white line sensor and the flash came up twice. I wait until the light change green before making the right turn, should i be concern about it?
Javi,
The answer is no. If you triggered the camera flash, but did not go through on red, you should be ok.