The Experts: Technology
Watch your wallets: Cameras already do.

Richard Brosnahan
Inside Business
Monday August 26, 2002

In my neighborhood, the speed limit is 25 miles per hour. Good. People walk, run, bike and push baby carriages out there. Ninety-five percent of the people driving down my street agree that 25 mph is fast enough. The laws were written with safety in mind. We drive on the right side of the road. We stop at intersections with stop signs. If the laws are good, shouldn’t we ensure they are enforced? Wouldn’t strict enforcement enhance our safety?

More and more areas of the country are installing photo-radar devices. Such machines link cameras to radar guns, placed in inconspicuous places along roads. They can be manned or unmanned, as they shoot pictures of cars exceeding a specified speed. Authorities issue the owners tickets by mail. They can later fight the tickets in court. The ticket is issued to the car’s owner because the camera shoots a picture of the license plate, so the authorities can track down the likely driver.

Some cities are installing red-light cameras, too. They work in a similar manner, by shooting pictures of cars if they nose into the intersection after the lights turn red.

The devices that decide if a driver is breaking the law are made by several companies including American Traffic Systems. Lockheed Martin IMS, recently acquired by ACS State and Local Solutions, and Electronic Data Systems install and manage the Big-Brother machines. They cost bout $80,000 each.

Cities will contract with a company like ACS State and Local Solutions to do their monitoring and collecting. These companies will collect a percentage of the take from the issued tickets after they make their minimum fee. Percentages have been as high as 40 percent in some cities. There is a lot of money to be made with automated enforcement devices.

Washington, using the services of Affiliated Computer Services of Dallas, has installed a number of the red-light cameras and their revenue generation is astounding. In just two months, $40 million has been added to the city’s piggy banks. In New York City, the 30 snoopers generate 200,000 citations a year, according to the New York Times.

Most people don’t fight the tickets because it’s difficult. To obtain the pertinent paperwork for a violation in the District of Columbia, one must visit the ticket office and pay thirty bucks. Once you’ve obtained the paperwork, which should include the photograph of your car and the driver, you need to go to court to prove your innocence. If your car was speeding, but you weren’t driving, it’s up to you to prove it. If you didn’t break the law, but are still ticketed, you must prove it.

Many consider photo-radar and red-light cameras unauthorized government snooping. But you might be thinking that this sort of enforcement is justified because it makes roads safer.

Consider this. The speed limit on most of the federal parkways around Washington is 40 mph. Eighty-five percent of drivers on this road go 57 mph. As that speed has increased during the past 10 years, accidents have steadily declined. According to the Park Service’s own statistics, speed is a factor in only 10 percent of the accidents on highway sections now being monitored by photo radar. I know from experience that driving 40 mph on many sections of the George Washington Parkway makes you a rolling road hazard, due to blind turns and other traffic driving faster than you.

Statistics indicate that heavier enforcement not only fails to reduce accidents but in fact may increase them. In 1997, the U.S. Park Police issued 11,441 speeding citations and investigated seven fatal accidents. In 1999, they issued 7,996 speeding tickets, while the Parkway experienced a single death. This corresponds with other studies indicating that the greater the speed enforcement, the greater the chance for accidents – because motorists tend to watch for cops and eye their speedometers rather than the road.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety recently issued a report that showed the proliferation of red-light cameras has caused more rear-end crashes. Well, duh. Their associated claim that there are fewer overall accidents because of red-light cameras has been soundly refuted. Richard Diamond, a spokesman for House Majority Leader Rep. Richard Armey, R-Texas, an ardent opponent of the government’s use of traffic-photo enforcement, has examined the institute findings closely. He points out the status report stressed that the cameras made traffic “slower,” but not “safer.”

Recently, Maryland proposed lengthening its already existing photo-radar gravy train. The bill was killed twice. It seems state Sen. Walter M. Baker, D-Elkton, recognized the bill as “nothing more than another tax.”