@BlogKCThe KCMO City Council has approved a one year pilot project of red light cameras. 50 intersections will get the cameras, which photograph red light runners and result in a ticket mailed to the vehicle’s owner.
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It’s about time.
Edwardsville already has cameras at the I-435 and K-32 interchange.
I hope it catches buses. Those drivers seem to get away with all sorts of bad roadway etiquette. They must think they are so big that the world will wait.
Red light cameras don’t reduce accidents, they are abused by cities as a source of revenue, and they are taken as proof of guilt inspite of their history of malfunction. If the city wanted to make intersections safer, they should increase yellow lights and add a second or two of all lights red.
Drivers’ rights abused in a flash
D.C. Red-Light Cameras Fail to Reduce Accidents
Seriously, it’s about time we let the ever-trustworthy KCMO government/police use machines to monitor us 24-hours/day and collect an extra tax on car owners.
Red light running has been a HUGE crime problem in KC, with at least one or two people being injured over the last 25 years by people running red lights.
At least we can be sure that KCMO will spend this new tax money wisely.
Paging George Orwell…
http://www.photoblocker.com
If you don’t break the law, you would never know the cameras were there. And they may help track down getaway cars used in serious crimes.
“If you don’t break the law you have nothing to worry about” is the typical canned mantra of those who have no problems with the continual erosion of freedom in this country.
John up above is right, studies show that red light camera’s do nothing but line the pockets of the local government with dough. If they REALLY cared more about accidents they would increase the time on yellow lights. This is just a big joke all in all by some highly ignorant politicians..
I didn’t say “If you don’t break the law you have nothing to worry about”, but there is no excuse for running red lights unless you are driving a fire engine, and ambulance, or a police cruiser. Period.
Why won’t suburbs do something worthwhile? (Unlike what Edwardsville PD likes doing… sitting in a bar’s parking lot [which happens to be the same complex as the PD... but different building] trying to catch anyone walking home drunk… Mr Police Chief, you listening? Why are you still on the payroll?)
Erosion of freedoms, Scooter? Driving is not a right. Driving is a privilige that carries with it many responsibilities.
One should still have the right to travel freely without being spied upon. One should still have the right to due process and not an automatic presumption of guilt.
One cannot presume a sense of privacy while driving a car. Your simply barking up the wrong tree on this one, Scooter. I suspect that there will still be a certain amount of due process involved should you want to fight such a ticket. However, photographic evidence is gonna be pretty hard to disprove. Don’t run red lights. *shrugs* Unless you think that such a requirement is an abrogation of your rights as well.
Haj… Would you be willing to let a police officer personally assigned to you follow you around 24/7 watching your every move, ready to cite or arrest you any time you violate any law or ordinance? If you cannot truthfully answer yes, then you have no argument.
The police are not following you 24/7 by placing cameras at stoplights. It is no different than if police officers were stationed at each intersection to issue citations to those drivers that violate the red light as they are observed.
OTOH, what is your interest in violating laws so that you would be concerned should a police officer follow you around 24/7? Red light cameras are a long way from the kind of intrusive ‘Big Brother’ violation of your rights as you seem to want to suggest. We willingly abrogate our own rights all the time so that we can live in an ordered society, such as it is. Stopping at red lights is one of those times. Why shouldn’t we prosecute those who choose to violate such agreed upon rules?
There is no spying and now presumption of guilt. Photographic evidence is much more solid that presumption. All the cameras do is take a picture when someone is in the intersection during a red light. There is no recording or monitoring.
Besides, this is really simple. If you don’t break the law you don’t get penalized. It’s alarmist to charactize this as an erosion of rights. It’s simply a new technology for enforcing existing law.
Just about anyone breaks a law daily. Ever accidently turn the wrong way down a one way street and then catch yourself? Park too far from the curb or too close to a stop sign? Let a meter expire? Write a check the day before payday? Not list that money you won at the Ameristar on your 1040? Drive 1 mph over the speed limit? Urinate off the side of a trail while hiking in the woods? Give a friend or relative a tablet of a prescription painkiller? Pass on the right? Not get in the left lane when someone is changing a tire?
Every single one of these things is illegal and many of them could get someone killed. But we have a free society because of the fact that there isn’t some automated system in place dispensing citations at each and every violation.
John and Scooter J are right on. Like drunk driver checkpoints, red-light cameras are just an easy money-maker for city government. No one thinks running red lights is a problem in KC, but the police, city hall, and the red light camera company want to make some easy dough.
It cracks me up that lefties who love to rail against the government when someone like Blunt is governor nonetheless think nothing of faceless government surveilliance of the citizens. I guess someone needs to pay those consulting fees for that sewer project.
oh boo hoo… If the city can make money off of law breakers, more power to them.
You can screw them over by not running red lights or driving drunk. *shrugs* Is that so hard to do?
Get ready for an insurance premium jump. If you really want to know the truth about red light cameras, ask an insurance salesman. He will tell you that intersections with red light cameras experience a 40% increase in accidents. Mainly from panicky drivers slamming on the brakes to avoid the ticket. They get rear-ended and all our insurance rates go up. I would like to know who is responsible for bringing this abomination to the streets of KC. The city council approved it but someone came up with the idea and i want that guys balls on a falg pole.
If you get rearended for slamming on the brakes, then it is the fault of the person who hit you for driving too fast, following too closely, or both. Or are you saying its OK to run red lights? The cameras don’t get a salary like a live person, they are simply there to augment enforcement of the law more cheaply. I see nothing wrong with that.
Can you provide statistics to back up your assumptions, Squiddly? Not too mention how you’re all ready to condemn someone for an unrealized increase in your insurance rates. As for asking an insurance salesman… ha! The sales guys don’t know nothing and don’t set the rates. (But I don’t want to get started on insurance agents, I dealt with them for 20 years as an insurance executive.) People will have to remember that the yellow light means to stop, not to hurry up so you won’t get caught by the red light. All lights and intersections should be approched with caution. I suspect that any increase of rear-enders at red-light camera intersections will be a relatively temporary situation that will decrease as people learn and adapt to the conditions.
The point of the artcles I posted was that red light cameras are not an effective law enforcement tool. The are proven prone to malfunction, they are prone to abuse by the government seeking greater streams of revenue, and they don’t actually imporve safety (which I would guess is the whole point anyway). I have no problem with people being prosecuted for running red lights, and if the cameras were shown to work correctly and were proven to reduce accidents, then I would be in favor of them, but better solutions are available.
John, surely other solutions are available and nothing precludes these same alternatives from being employed. Can you be specific as to which alternatives you feel are being ignored because of the city’s experiment with red-light cameras?
Your sources are interesting, however, the Washington Post article does not seem to be a terribly definitive condemnation of red-light cameras and suggest solutions and changes to the red-light camera program to address the issues of concern without abandoning the project.
As for the photoblacker link… hmmm… I bet there are laws precluding you from altering your liscense plate especially with regard to an attempt to avoid the consequences of your actions in the violation of the law.
I remain unconvinced by the arguements against the use of red-light cameras.
i did provide stats but the admin decided to delete my post.
thanks admin, good lookin out there.
Ha! No more “night rules” driving of running red lights at vacant intersections. There’s more than a handful of times I pulled up to a red light in the middle of the night that had no traffic and an ungodly wait.
Normally, I have no trouble sitting and waiting, but when there’s a lot of street urchins milling about, I get a little uneasy when they start eyeballing my car. So I take off. I don’t have the luxury of driving in the nice JoCo streets. I have to drive through the ghetto to get to work. So at 2 am, I’m a little keen on keeping things moving. Apparently, so is everyone else.
When I moved to KC, I was shocked that you could treat red lights like stop signs. People said, “oh, that’s night rules KC driving.” That doesn’t seem safe, I said. “Wait till you watch a bunch of hooldums spill into the streets and start fighting. They do every summer, and you learn real quick not to hang around, red light or not.”
Sure enough, I was not disappointed.