Tag Archives: National Motorists Association
Chicago 6th Most Ticketed U.S. City
Group Believes Speed Cameras Will Make Ranking Jump
The Second City Is Actually the sixth city.
At least when it comes to speeding and traffic tickets, according to the National Motorists Association, a motorists rights organization.
In the NMA’s recently released bi-annual rankings of America’s top ticketed cities and states, Chicago comes in as the sixth most likeliest city to get a speeding or traffic ticket.
According to the study, Atlanta won the honor of being the nation’s top ticketed city, followed by Los Angeles, Dallas-Fort Worth, Miami and New York rounding out the top five.
From a state perspective, Illinois ranks a lowly 18th. Nevada, Georgia, Alabama, Florida and Maryland make up the top five states for ticket traps.
New Restrictions On Red Light Cameras Being Considered In State Senate
Bill Could End Camera Enforcement Of Right Turn On Red
Last year Illinois State Senator Dan Duffy (R-Lake Barrington) tried to kill red light camera enforcement statewide.
But Senator Duffy’s “ban the cam” bill ran into a roadblock of sorts.
Duffy’s bill ran afoul of Senate President John Cullerton, who co-opted the bill with the help of pro-RLC forces. President Cullerton actually brought in red light camera lobbyists in to help re-write the bill, watering the bill down to be nearly unrecognizable from its original intent.
In the end, the bill got passed as an “RLC reform” bill. A bill ironically, with next to no real reform in it.
But Duffy’s defeat on the issue has not deterred him as this week he tries to take on red light cameras again.
This time he’s attacking RLCs from a different angle.
A right angle.
Duffy recently introduced Senate Bill 26, a bill which would prohibit camera enforcement of right turn on red violations.
Brookfield Rejects Red Light Cameras
It didn’t even come up for a vote.
Monday, at the Brookfield village board meeting, trustees spent all of 15 minutes discussing bringing red light cameras to two town intersections, but decided not to go forward with a vote.
At the previous board meeting two weeks prior, the issue came up for discussion again after a full two year hiatus. While Redflex Traffic Systems was the original RLC suitor in 2008, upstart local camera enforcement company SafeSpeed, LLC was being considered as the vendor this time around.
While there was discussion about safety, revenue, and all the typical RLC issues, there were two out of the ordinary issues that killed the cameras.
The first was the additional cost necessary to upgrade the intersections according to IDOT standards in order to erect red light cameras to the tune of over $30,000 according to reports.
NMA Tries To Prod, Poke, Cajole, Coax & Pursuade The Chicago Tribune
Gary Biller seems frustrated lately.
Biller, is the head of the National Motorists Association, a motorist advocacy group that has been one of the leading opponents of red light cameras.
His group has been working for years to promote their message that improving traffic engineering and increasing yellow light times at intersections, can do a lot more to reduce red light running and hence, improve safety, than red light cameras can. And that’s without taking millions of dollars a year out of the pockets of drivers.
Biller and the NMA have put a lot of energy into trying to get the word out in Chicago, the red light camera capital of the U.S., by reaching out to the media.
In some cases, the message has been getting through to sympathetic ears in the media. But in the case of the Chicago Tribune, Biller has run into a wall of silence on this issue.
That’s why he’s frustrated.
Speed Limit Smackdown
Debate Over Boosting Illinois’ Speed Limit To 70 Heats Up
By Diana Novak
This story reported in partnership with Fox News Chicago.
Illinois lawmakers are preparing to consider raising the speed limit on highways outside of Chicago from 65 to 70 mph.
But two prominent national motorist organizations are at odds over the proposed bill.
One would think the AAA Motor Club and the National Motorists Association (NMA) want the same thing.
The NMA and AAA both claim support for drivers’ rights and member’s interests as the foundation of their organizations—but what happens when they can’t agree on what is best for their constituents?
The NMA has just under 100 of their few thousand members in the Chicagoland area, while the AAA has about 940,000 between Chicago and northwest Indiana, and 52 million nationwide.
Like parents arguing over what is best for their children, the NMA and AAA are throwing down over Illinois Senate Bill 3668, a plan to raise highway speed limits outside the Chicago metropolitan area from 65 mph to 70 mph. According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, Illinois would be the 34th state to implement such speed limit increase.
