"There is much more to red-light cameras than the political doublespeak of public safety. The cameras are extremely lucrative."

COMMENTARY

Morning: Proponents of red-light cameras are shooting for more than safe intersections

August 10, 2006

Michael Morning, Local contributor
Austin American-Statesman
Copyright 2006

I read with horror that Austin is considering placing red-light cameras at various intersections across the city. Not only are such cameras a violation of civil liberties and an unconstitutional privatization of the police force, but statistics from around the globe clearly show that they end up doing far more harm than good.

Red-light cameras are a fix for a situation that's not broken.

The writer of a recent editorial in favor of the cameras cited a handful of deaths supposedly attributed to Austin drivers running red lights. But, if we take a hard look at statistics, the number of deaths quoted is tiny compared to all other traffic fatalities, and cameras can never reduce that number to zero.

There is much more to red-light cameras than the political doublespeak of public safety. The cameras are extremely lucrative. Corporations such as Lockheed Martin set up and maintain the camera systems by contract and receive 50 percent or more of the fine from each citation generated by the cameras. This amounts to tens of millions of dollars per year.

But worse than that, such contracts typically include provisions that forbid any alteration of the length of the yellow light, which has been shown in numerous studies to almost eliminate injuries and fatalities from drivers running red lights.

Further, the companies typically handle all processing of the camera tickets, making them judge, jury and executioner of the law in blatant violation of most state constitutions that forbid the privatization of the police.

Worst of all, it has been proven in numerous American cities, Canada and Australia that accidents from rear-end collisions rise dramatically at intersections with the red-light cameras — actually causing more accidents and fatalities than before the cameras were installed.

Here are some sobering reports:

•The Burkey-Obeng Red Light Camera Study, the most comprehensive government study of accidents and red-light cameras, concluded that "the results do not support the view that red-light cameras reduce crashes. Instead, we find that RLCs are associated with higher levels of many types and severity categories of crashes."

•In 2005, The Washington Post wrote an investigative report studying the camera system in Washington, D.C., and found that the number of crashes at red-light camera intersections more than doubled. It found that injuries and fatalities climbed a whopping 81 percent.

•In 2005, an extensive study of all seven red-light camera programs by the Virginia Transportation Research Council showed an overall increase in injury accidents where the red-light cameras had been installed. Virginia has since banned the red-light camera program.

•A December 2003 study by Ontario, Canada, found that intersections monitored by cameras experienced a 2 percent increase in fatal and injury collisions. In fact, the noncamera intersections used as a control fared better than the camera intersections in every accident category.

•A 10-year study conducted in Australia on the correlation of red-light cameras and accidents found the cameras offered "no benefit."

Those statistics are not unusual.

This is a shame considering that merely altering the lengths of yellow and red lights could virtually eliminate traffic accidents from red-light running — without trampling civil liberties, without picking the pockets of taxpayers and without the resultant rear-end collisions.

So, if the issue is truly about safety and not about money, then the less costly and less controversial methods should be tried first.

We need to team together as a city and ban the use of red-light cameras or any similar system.
Morning lives in Austin.

© 2006 Austin American-Statesman : www.statesman.com