Red Light Cameras

At the end of today, New Jersey will become the 17th state to get out of the red-light camera business.

You may have seen such installations, like the one pictured on the right, near intersections in your town.

What they do is photograph cars moving through intersections or making turns after a traffic light has turned red.  The captured images are used to generate citations that are mailed to the owners of offending vehicles.

Five years ago Jersey adopted a tryout of the cameras in 73 locations statewide.  That tryout ends today.   At its adoption, local and state politicos extolled the cameras as promoting safe, more careful driving.


Do They Work?

This is the big question, and nobody knows the answer.  Some officials are convinced that the cameras reduced the number of traffic accidents, but many, many drivers love to hate them.

Here are the two main points people make when discussing this technology:

     -- Pro:  A few red light cameras in a given town cause a "spillover effect," motivating more cautious driving at all intersections in the same municipality.  Many police officers believe this is so.  They may be right.

     -- Con: Drivers fearing red light citations tend to brake suddenly at traffic signals, causing increased numbers of rear-end collisions.  This is demonstrably true.

Many opponents of red light cameras say that adding a second or two to yellow-light periods would achieve the same effect as using the cameras.  Who knows?

Yesterday I looked at reader comments following a local newspaper article on the subject.  Here are two that I found interesting.

     -- Con: "The vast majority of these cameras generate the equivalent of getting cited for going 36 mph in a 35 mph zone."

     -- Pro:  "I must say that this state is filled with some of the worst drivers I have ever seen.  It amazes me that people who are running the red lights have the gall to state that it is a money grab.  Of course it is, but you are breaking the law."
     I am personally agnostic on the red-light camera issue, but this second commenter makes two good points.  First, many New Jersey drivers are either blithering idiots or simply unwilling to drive by the rules of the road. (I go back and forth on which it is.)  And, second, red-light cameras generate good revenue for industry and government.

The Profit Motive

A red-light citation in New Jersey costs $80 to $85.  Companies that operate the cameras typically collect a portion -- as high as 50% -- of all citation money collected.

This is an incentive for companies in the industry to court business aggressively.

Chicago may have more red-light cameras -- 380 at 190 intersections -- than any other city in the country.  Just this month, a representative of one of the camera companies pleaded guilty to paying $2 million in bribes to a city traffic official in an effort to steer the Windy City's contract to his firm.

Another ex-employee of the same company claimed earlier that bribes were paid to traffic bureaucrats in 12 other states, including New Jersey.

Local officials also are suspected of liking the cameras mostly because they generate money automatically -- requiring no police time to write up the violations.

Efficiency

One claim that nobody seems to make is that New Jersey's red-light camera administration has been well run.

Several years ago, a state judge ordered one of the red-light camera operators to refund $4.2 million in fines collected on 500,000 violations because the yellow-light period at the affected lights was not set to state standards.  Each citation was reported to yield a $6 refund, which, if my calculations are correct, left another $1.2 million for the gallant trial lawyers who represented the aggrieved drivers.

Later, officials in three cities shut down their red-light cameras after concluding that the net effect had been an increase in automobile collisions.

In another unfortunate case, 17,000 red-light citations were ordered to be tossed because they had not been sent out within 90 days of the offenses.  Ninety days!

A few Essex County politicos are talking of reviving the red-light-camera experiment, but nobody else seems to have the heart for it.

And so New Jersey will be joining 16 other states that have concluded that red-light cameras are a safety idea whose time has passed.