Reviewing Red Light Cameras And Reducing Accidents Film Studies Essay

Throughout most of automobile driving history, many drivers have gone to extreme measures in order to avoid receiving a driving citation such as: scanning the road sides or mediums for areas where police officers might be parked or hidden out of sight; using radar detectors in order to avoid speeding tickets; and for passing drivers who might blink their lights warning them that they are approaching a police officer. In the past, drivers would slow down at a red light just enough to make sure no police were around then continue on through the red light.

Those days are gone. Red light cameras are not a new invention and have been around for over 100 years. Traffic cameras were first invented at England in 1905(Windsor). Although they were invented in the early 1900’s, traffic cameras were not used in the open market unitl1965 (gatsometer). Traffic cameras are becoming more common every day. Police and communities all over the country are using traffics cameras to enforce traffic laws. “The most common use is to catch red light runners who cause crashes on roads that kill almost 900 people and injure an estimated 153,000 a year.”(azgohs).

Red light cameras are connected to traffic signals and to sensors that monitor traffic flow. When a vehicle enters an intersection after the light has turned red the cameras takes two pictures of the violation and records the speed, date, and time.  The first picture shows the car just on the edge of the intersection and the second picture shows the car in the middle of the intersection. Vehicles entering into an intersection when a light changes are not photographed (ibid).

In some states, the owner of the vehicle is fined not the driver. In these states, the red-light camera only needs to photograph the car’s license plate. In other states, the actual driver is responsible for paying the ticket. In this case, the system needs a second camera in front of the car, in order to get a shot of the driver’s face. A police officer then reviews the tape, prints offs the citation, and mails it to the owner of the car. Although the owner might have not run the red light, the ticket is still sent to the car’s owner, but the authorities have the information available if there is any disagreement down the line (Harris).

“Is it rational to fine the owner rather than the driver? Certainly so,” Chief Judge Easterbrook wrote in the Court’s ruling ( Murfreesboro Post). “A camera can show reliably which cars and trucks go through red lights but is less likely to show who was driving,” Easterbrook continued. “That would make it easy for owners to point the finger at friends or children – and essentially impossible for the city to prove otherwise. A system of photographic evidence reduces the costs of law enforcement and increases the proportion of all traffic offenses that are detected; these benefits can be achieved only if the owner is held responsible (ibid).” According to the Murfreesboro Post, “The Court found that imposing a fine on the owner of the vehicle rather than the driver not only ‘improves compliance with traffic laws’ but has the additional benefit of encouraging owners to take greater care in lending their cars.”

Tickets from red light cameras are somewhat different from being pulled over by a police officer and given a ticket. Unlike the ticket the police officer has given you, the ticket from the camera is considered a civil offense and does not go on your driving record. Tickets can be costly .According to cityofno.com red light running fines can be as high 100 dollars, where as speeding fines can range from forty dollars to two hundred.

Another difference between getting caught by a camera instead of a police officer is the possibility of the offense going on your driving record, which can run up the cost of his insurance. There are two options when getting a ticket from a police officer. The offender can pay the fine and have the offense put on his driving record or he can pay to go to driving school. Driving school sometime can cost more than the ticket but eliminates the offence going on the offender’s driving record. With a red light camera, one does not face these kinds of choices. Receiving a ticket from a red light camera is only a civil offence much like a parking ticket. The offender receives the ticket in the mail and has thirty days to pay it. The offender also has the option to pay the ticket online. When caught by an officer, running a red light is considered a criminal offense. (camerafraud.com).

Many people believe that red light cameras are an invasion of their privacy; that the government is just using the cameras as an excuse to invade their privacy, but this is not true. When a person obtains his license he agrees to uphold certain traffic laws. Red light cameras only photograph your vehicles license plate not the driver. They are not surveillance cameras and do not run constantly. The cameras are designed to capture photographic evidence of traffic law violations. They only take pictures of vehicles which run red lights. They do not photograph every car entering an intersection. The cameras are set up to allow those who are not breaking the law to go free and are not invading on their privacy.  Only drivers that violate these laws are photographed. However, when a law has been broken the camera is triggered.  The same procedure is gone through as when you are pulled over by a police officer.  He asks to see your license and calls in your plate number, basically the same thing that the camera does.  So if your rights are not violated when the police officer does pulls you over for a traffic violation, then they are not violated when the camera catches you breaking the law.  Those in favor of the cameras note that, “opponents of photo enforcement raise the privacy issue with the general public, but not in court. This is very likely because the law is well settled that there is no privacy interest in what is routinely and regularly displayed in public.” (Insurance Institute for Highway Safety).

When red light cameras are first installed, they generate a lot of money for cities; because of this many people believe that they are used only as a source of revenue. There will obviously be economic benefits to the city. The expected reduction in accidents and injuries in itself is an economic benefit.  However, once drivers realized cameras were installed and started stopping for red lights, revenues fell sharply, in some cases, costing more money than they earned. Cities that install traffic cameras as a revenue generator are installing them for the wrong reasons and will certainly be disappointed. Cities who install the traffic cameras to cut down on the death and injury rate at intersections find that they pay off in other ways. A Study was conducted in Baytown, Texas, to show the decline in revenue after the traffic cameras were installed. As a result of this study citations issued during The traffic cameras were installed in April the following are the citations issued: May- 1,096; June- 851; July- 739. As you can see there was a massive decline in the number of violations from May to July (Christian).

Not everyone agrees that the benefits of red light cameras outweigh their detriments. Opponents of red light cameras argue that they actually increase the number of accidents rather than decrease them. Studies show that while red light cameras decrease front-to-side crashes, they increase rear-end collisions. Drivers may unexpectedly slam on their breaks at intersections to avoid running a red light, giving other drivers little time to respond. But because the crashes prevented by the red light cameras tend to be worse than the rear-end crashes, researchers have found them to be a positive investment. According to a study sponsored by the Federal Highway Administration red light related accidents decreased by 25 percent while rear-end collisions increased by 15 percent (IIHS). Det. Randy Rhodes of the Baytown Police Department said, “When the yellow light comes on, people are coming to a stop. Before, you would see people hit the accelerator. A lot of people used to think yellow meant go faster. Now they’re paying attention to the yellow light. It’s safer to stop on yellow. Getting hit from behind is less risky than getting T-boned in the middle of the intersection” (Christian).

A sometimes fatal mistake many drivers tend to make when approaching a traffic light when the light is yellow, they accelerate on the gas speeding through the light as it turns red. This is a primary example of when red light cameras can make a difference. Once drivers become aware of the traffic cameras, whether by receiving a citation in the mail, by news media or by word of mouth, drivers start to slow down at yellow lights preparing to stop thus making the intersection with a red light camera much safer than an intersection without traffic cameras.

While there are many advantages for using red light cameras there are also disadvantages. Cameras are man made and therefore subjected to mistakes.  In the old fashion way (police pulling you over and writing you a ticket) it was up to the law enforcement official’s discretion as to whether or not you were breaking the law and deserving of a ticket.  Now it is up to a piece of machinery and that could lead to problems.  For the red light runners it is not too much of an argument.  If you ran the red light, then you are deserving of the ticket.  If you can go to court and prove that it was not your car or the light was not red then you get off.  But for the speeders it is a little different. If you are going 48 in a 45 zone breaking the law?  Usually in the old days, police would give you a little grace period; say 10 miles per hour over the speed limit.  The cameras hypothetically snap a picture if you are going any amount over the speed limit. Although red light cameras may be strict, they do not make mistakes in judgment nor are they prejudice as humans can sometimes be. If the driver feels wrongly accused he may go to court over the ticket. According to the National Campaign to Stop Red Light Running, “Savannah, Georgia has seen a twenty percent reduction in crashes and a 60 percent reduction in violations at intersections with red light cameras since Oct. 2003. Less than 1 percent of the 21,000 tickets issued have been appealed.”

Red light cameras can be expensive. The red light program generates slightly more in fines than it incurs in expenses. Thus, New York City is employing, at essentially no cost, a traffic safety method that reduces red light running and crashes. According to Sean Klein, the average cost of traffic cameras are 60,000 dollars, this includes installation, including detectors, equipment cabinet, and mounting pole. In New York City alone there are 150 cameras in use. With cameras averaging 60,000 dollars, New York has spent about 9 million dollars on these traffic cameras. But taking in consideration that traffic camera makes about 14 million dollars per year there is essentially no cost only profit to be made.(Thoman) According to the NYPD, a starting salary for a New York City police officer is 44,000 dollars per year while police officers with at least five years experience make over 90,000 dollars per year. There are over 30,000 police officers in New York City alone. With each officer making 44,000 dollars per year, New York City is spending over a trillion dollars per year to pay there officers and this is only if they are making beginners wages.

While critical traffic enforcement is being met more efficiently through technology, police can engage in other kinds of public safety efforts instead of watching for speeders or red light runners. This can be beneficial in small communities that may not have enough police officers to patrol intersections and large cities where the population density can make it difficult and dangerous to ticket red light runners.

Red light cameras seem to attract the attention of small communities looking to reduce their operating expenses. The system reduces the number of paid officers on duty, thereby decreasing the overhead expenses. The traffic cameras work 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with little or no maintenance. A single officer typically reviews the film footage before citations are mail to the offender.

While increasing the length of the yellow light is important and can reduce red light running, it alone is not sufficient for reducing the number of red light violations. Studies have shown that increasing the yellow light is not as effective as the red light cameras. According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, “yellow signal timing was increased by about one second at two intersections where red light cameras were installed. Results show that while increased yellow signal timing reduced red light violations by 36 percent, the addition of red light camera enforcement further reduced red light violations at these sites by 96 percent beyond levels achieved by the longer yellow signal timing.

Evaluating the effectiveness of red-light cameras at two intersections along Philadelphia’s busy Roosevelt Boulevard, researchers from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety separated camera effects from the effects of extending yellow lights to give approaching motorists more warning that signals were about to turn red (govtech.com).

Sometimes these two measures have been introduced simultaneously, which has caused confusion about their relative benefits. The new study reveals that both measures reduce signal violations, but it’s the cameras that make by far the biggest difference. They all but eliminated the signal violations that remained after yellow lights were lengthened at the Roosevelt Boulevard intersections (ibid).

“Violations virtually disappeared at the six approaches to the two intersections we studied,” said Richard Retting, the Institute’s senior transportation engineer and lead author of the Institute’s new red-light camera study. “This decrease in violations is all the more remarkable because the intersections were such high-crash locations. In fact, they had been identified as having some of the highest crash rates in the nation”(ibid).

Because of our nation’s economic struggle, red light cameras are not found in smaller communities but are prevalent in bigger cities. It is law enforcement’s hope that the widespread use of these cameras will curb the rising number of accidents and deaths that result from running traffic lights. Though red light cameras may continue to multiply, they will always be a controversy over who’s right and who’s wrong. By implementing these cameras country wide the United States would be a safer if not better place for future generations to grow up.