PIRG Report Cautions Against Red Light, Speed Camera Enforcement
Just as it looks like the Illinois General Assembly is poised to pass a law to enable Chicago to become the automatic speed camera enforcement capital of the U.S., Illinois PIRG (Public Interest Research Group) has just released a report detailing the pitfalls of such systems.
The group’s report, “Red Light Cameras Ahead: The Risks of Privatizing Traffic Law Enforcement and How to Protect the Public,” looks at the dangers these programs pose for municipalities, taxpayers and motorists. In many cases, Illinois PIRG believes revenue and profits often come before driver safety.
“Our report found that too many cities wrongly sign away power to ensure the safety of citizens on the roads when they privatize traffic law enforcement, said said Celeste Meiffren, Field Director of Illinois PIRG. “Nationally, automated traffic ticketing tends to be governed by contracts that focus more on profits than safety. That shouldn’t happen.”
Meiffrin is quick to point out that Illinois PIRG does not take a stance on whether or not traffic camera enforcement promotes safety.
“We really don’t take a stance on whether camera enforcement is a good or bad thing,” Meiffrin contends. “But in most cases it is not about public safety but about revenue. There are questions about the effectiveness of red light cameras but our report doesn’t address these issues.”
The City of Chicago has the largest automated traffic enforcement program in the nation with 191 red light camera equipped intersections and over 382 cameras issuing $100 tickets.
According to Illinois PIRG, 84 municipalities in the state have RLC programs making Illinois the state with third largest number of towns utilizing this enforcement technology. California comes in on top with 105 municipalities using automated camera traffic enforcement followed by Florida with 95.
While the group’s report is critical of automated traffic enforcement in general, it has guarded praise for how things are done in Chicago and Illinois.
“The good news is that Illinois and the City of Chicago have done a decent job of implementing protections for the public in these contracts,” said Meiffren. “We are lucky that Illinois hasn’t yet seen the controversy and lawsuits over red-light cameras found in states like Missouri and Texas. But looking at the growth of this industry around the country, we want to learn from problems elsewhere to prevent them in Illinois,”
Meiffrin says Illinois PIRG has been working on this study for about six months and the timing with the state legislature’s push for speed camera enforcement is serendipitous. However, Meiffrin has some concerns about Chicago pushing to change Illinois state law to allow for city RLCs to begin speed enforcement.
“It’s hard to know what the motivations behind it (the new speed camera legislation),” says Meiffrin. “It’s just critical the process is open form beginning to end, because there’s a huge potential for these contracts to put profits over public safety.”
PIRG’s report is also critical of the ease in which lobbyists move between jobs in government to positions representing RLC companies and influencing municipalities to adopt traffic enforcement technologies.
According to the report, RedFlex, the company that maintains Chicago’s giant RLC system, employed over 100 lobbyists in 18 different states nationally between 2006 and 2011.
“The industry’s business model depends on more governments adopting their technology and enforcing traffic laws in ways that boost the industry’s bottom line. In other words, when there is profit to be made from issuing traffic tickets, there becomes a lobby for creating more violations,”
continued Meiffren.
The study has several common sense solutions for government entities which are considering embracing automated traffic enforcement.
This includes putting public safety first, make sure contracts don’t contain potential conflicts of interest, avoid incentives to vendors based on volume of tickets or increasing ticket volume, allow a transparent contract process and always retain control over traffic policy including the ability to cancel a contract if the public becomes dissatisfied.
ANOTHER DASH FOR CASH FRAUGHT WITH WAY TOO MANY PROBLEMS ALL AGAINST MOTORISTS, KIDS AND CYCLISTS. Just because you call something a safety device doesn’t necessarily mean it is a safety device. Chicago’s red light cameras have never been independently certified for accuracy. The have been proven to be inaccurate shorting drivers of critical time to stop or go safely and then collecting $100 in the blink of an eye for it. In political double talk when they say the cameras are for the kids’ safety that really means the city has been “mismanaged and robbed blind” so it’s going to rob it’s residents and visitors blind as quickly as possible. This cash grab discounts multiple guaranteed Constitutional provisions just as the city does not recognize Newton’s second law of motion, “an object in motion tends to stay in motion”.
The city’s mindset thinks cars large trucks and buses all can stop at the same rate in ant type of weather. The city also perceives that everybody’s perception/reaction time is the same no matter their age or their visual capabilities are equal. On the matter of speed not all cars, speedometers and speed estimating devices are created nor do they operate equally. Good luck to the lucky ticket recipient who has no way to be sure of any of these variables. The thought that these speed cameras are going to recognize the differences in “school zone” in terms of proper days, hours whether or there are kids present or if school is in session seems highly dubious. Speed cameras will upset what little semblance of smooth traffic flow we may have. Traffic will constantly speed up and slow down in waves according to camera placement. Traffic engineers know disruptions to smooth traffic flow is a common denominator for increased street crashes. Just as with disappointing red light safety statistics, the city will camouflage critical safety statistics which will show no safety benefits to speed cameras as has happened in Arizona who pulled theirs out last July. The city touted a speed study showing safety benefits in Arizona which appears not to exist on the Internet.
Just as Chicago went into hyperdrive to lease our parking meters for the better part of a century so too have rammed automatic speed enforcement down our collective throats in Springfield in just 5 days. These bills have been pushed at a great-neck pace that the ink on the bill is hardly dry. The pace at which these ASE bills has been ushered through is an indicator of just how badly the city has been financially mismanaged and robbed. Promises of no cameras on the Drive and other places are empty and misleading, they can be changed as easily as the wind changes direction. Plans are to speed monitor the expressway leg to O’Hare which will move so slowly drivers run the risk of a parking ticket. Forget about making that flight on time. The outbound expressway leg will be equally as bountiful for the City’s Department of Revenue. The proposed speed vans will add salt to the wounds on incessant road taxation. Without proper information or training, vehicle owner victims will stand little if any chance in court of a fair hearing because the cameras and the chips are stacked against us. Ask yourself what happened the last time you were on a clear highway or surface street and drove the drove the posted speed limit. I bet traffic backed up behind your car demonstrating the natural speed of the road is the safest speed. But then it’s only a hundred dollars each time right? Cops as a rule do not like cameras, they make their jobs more difficult while promoting distrust of the police. Automatic Speed Enforcement will be the city’s giant “pothole” on the road to a better economy and safer city streets.