Police use redlight cameras for cash machines?

[Graphicd00d]

All these red light cameras do is fill the local coffers. Of course they will say it's for our saftey to have these cameras at first but it always gets abused.

"Those who would give up liberty for security deserve neither."- BF

 

[Graphicd00d]

Originally posted by: ElMono

the police have to be paid somehow to patrol the streets and make the city safe to live in.

They get paid with local/state taxes. Traffic tickets, parking tickets etc. is nothing but profit.

 

[Dissipate]

While government is not driven by profits, private industry is.

Now that is the FUNNIEST quote I have seen all day.

 

[phonemonkey]

There are tons of cameras in the Phoenix metro area (mainly in the east valley), and I haven't noticed any real changes in traffic patterns at the lights. I mean, yeah, you see less people running lights (sometimes), but I've also noticed that more people are getting in accidents at the intersections.

Apparently, it's not just me that's noticed that.

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On ABC's Nightline, police chief David Bejarano [San Diego PD] said that "it's true in a few intersections we found a few more accidents than prior to the red-light photo enforcement. At some intersections we saw no change at all, and at several intersections we actually saw an increase in traffic accidents."

An analyst with San Diego's Police Department traffic division, Elizabeth Yard, told the same story in an interview with the San Diego Union-Tribune: "I would have to say that the cameras themselves have not reduced the number of [injury] collisions that have happened at these intersections."

Also, Rep Dick Armey has expressed support in a totally automated ticketing system that would take the person out of the loop as far as sending out tickets.

In some cases, accidents at intersections have been shown to increase after the cameras are installed.

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Sure enough, when he opened the "intersection" to include crosswalks and 100 feet each side of them, rear crashes rose to a more normal share. Over this enlarged zone, rear-end crashes increased by 33 after red-light cameras were installed. At the same time, side impacts dropped 25 percent. Kadison concludes that the cameras merely trade one type of crash for another.

In Charlotte, North Carolina, station WBTV had this to say, "Three years, 125,000 tickets, and $6 million in fines later, the number of accidents at intersections in Charlotte has gone down less than one percent. And the number of rear-end accidents, which are much more common, has gone up 15 percent."
In Greensboro, the News & Record reports, "There has not been a drop in the number of accidents caused by red-light violations citywide since the first cameras were installed in February 2001. There were 95 such accidents in Greensboro in 2001, the same number as in 2000. And at the 18 intersections with cameras, the number of wrecks caused by red-light running has doubled."

The granddaddy of all studies, covering a 10-year period, was done for the Australian Road Research Board in 1995 (cameras went up in Melbourne in 1984). Photo enforcement "did not provide any reduction in accidents, rather there has been increases in rear end and [cross-street] accidents," wrote author David Andreassen in the page-one summary.