2/25/2005
Lights! Cameras! Fines!
Maybe I'm just a privacy kook. Maybe I've seen too many small towns that consider traffic-tickets as a vital part of the town revenue stream unrelated to traffic safety. Maybe I'm just certain that the lights will be used in conjunction with split-second yellow lights to snag more people and raise more money.
Many contracts give the company maintaining the camera a per-ticket cut. This creates an incentive to ticket in questionable cases. And if the camera is wrong, who will ever find out? There's an economic disincentive to fix it. There's even an economic -- and sometime contractual -- disincentive to improve the traffic engineering of the intersection.
(See Governing Mag. feature a few years back.)
Whatever, but I agree with House Speaker Allan Bense on automated red-light cameras. (Perishable link.)
Many contracts give the company maintaining the camera a per-ticket cut. This creates an incentive to ticket in questionable cases. And if the camera is wrong, who will ever find out? There's an economic disincentive to fix it. There's even an economic -- and sometime contractual -- disincentive to improve the traffic engineering of the intersection.
(See Governing Mag. feature a few years back.)
Whatever, but I agree with House Speaker Allan Bense on automated red-light cameras. (Perishable link.)
"I hate it. It will not go through the Florida House," Bense vowed. . . . "You put cameras at the intersection of First Street and Second Court and if you do real well, then why not put them at the intersection of Third Street and Fifth Avenue, and if that does well, they become cash cows," Bense said. "Pretty soon, perhaps jaywalking is getting pretty bad . . . I just think it's government intrusion in our lives."
