On 10/15/2013 08:44 PM, Radey Shouman wrote:
Frank Krygowski writes:

On Monday, October 14, 2013 10:10:27 PM UTC-4, Nate Nagel wrote:

You're in the UK... don't know how it is there, but here things are
definitely predatory. Especially with the red light cameras, the yellow
intervals are often well short of the ITE guideline, giving you a choice
between panic stopping (and risking a rear-ender from the guy behind you
who's not expecting you to do so) and making an involuntary donation to
the highway fund.

Fortunately at least some states (VA for one) are recognizing this and
taking steps to keep the camera companies in check. (Oh, yeah, the
cameras are generally operated by private, for-profit firms.)

I happened to be browsing through some Ohio traffic laws. I found
that Ohio has a law that states that if a red light camera is
installed, the yellow light phase has to be exceed the normal
(standard) yellow time by one second. That seems fair to me.

That surely smells like a reaction to abuse, whether in Ohio or elsewhere.

Ohio is notorious for abuse of traffic enforcement in general (New Rome,
Linndale etc.) Don't know about RLCs in particular but there are still
periodic news "exposés" in many places around the country of a reporter
"discovering" that the yellow light timing isn't set to ITE guidelines
even when a state law explicitly states that such must be evaluated
before any RLC can be commissioned at an intersection.

And yes, Ohio is trying to clean up its act somewhat as for example the
village of New Rome was actually unincorporated (by the state, not by
consensus of the residents) about 10 years ago primarily due to its
abuses of traffic enforcement - a good portion of the town's budget was
coming from traffic tickets, and a large portion of said budget funded
the village's large (relative to population) police department... Too
little too late, as there's many of us who still remember the "old" Ohio
and just plain don't trust cops, or that attitudes really have changed.
But maybe in another 20 years things will be different.


And I don't have a problem with a private firm makes some money by
enforcing traffic laws. We can't afford to station cops at every red
light, or have radar patrols on every road, so we now have near-zero
enforcement, with predictable results: people who think it's their
constitutional right to disobey the laws.

Private law enforcement is a *huge* conflict of interest. If there have
to be speed cameras, they should be run by a government, and someone
should hold that government's feet to the fire to prevent
revenue-seeking rule changes.

Even worse, many of the private companies rather than getting a flat fee
per camera per day, are actually paid *per violation.*

nate

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