red light cameras

Chris Knight's avatar

Dear friends and family in the Greensboro, North Carolina area:

It has come to my attention that after an absence of several years, red light cameras are due to be installed again all over the city.  These first appeared circa 2001 and it was soon apparent that they were more a liability than they were an asset.  Well, not an asset to anyone but the city government and the company running the cameras (who got a healthy percentage of each ticket issued).

I could spend all day writing about why the cameras are wrong.  How they violate our rights articulated in the Constitution.  How it also seems that the intersections equipped with the camera have speeded-up the yellow caution lights so that there’s more a chance of running the red light and getting your car’s photo taken.  Volumes have already been published about how bad the cameras are and why....

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

Something very similar to this happened to me in 2002, but I don’t pretend to be an attorney so I couldn’t do it as awesomely kewl as Georgia attorney Regina Quick did in court this week. I had to speed through a red-light camera intersection in Greensboro ‘cuz the car behind me was about to rear-end me hard. A week later the citation came in the mail, and I didn’t think it was fair.

So I filed a subpoena at the courthouse in Greensboro to have the source code for the software operating the cameras be given to me, so that I could “cross examine” it. ‘Course, my real motive was to post it on the Internet so that better heads than my own could examine it.

Suffice it to say, my case was dropped like a hot rock.

At trial in Athens-Clarke Municipal Court on Tuesday however, it ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

If you can help it, I’d consider the town of Heath, Ohio to be a place to steer well clear of. That personal assessment comes after word that it’s newly-installed traffic-enforcement cameras have sent out more than 10,000 tickets after just four weeks of operation. With the tickets being $100, after camera provider Redflex gets its cut that’s $83,000 that the city government would put into its coffers.

As you can imagine (and you can see it in the comments of the above-linked article) quite a number of folks are honked-off about this. I would be too. Traffic cameras, be they for speed or at stop-light intersections, are not about enforcing laws for sake of safety. They are, first and foremost, a “revenue enhancing” scheme.

And these cameras are inherently not constitutional. We are supposed to have the right to face our accuser in a court of law, regardless ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour has signed into law a bill – which passed overwhelmingly in that state’s legislature – that bans those treacherous “red light cameras” at intersections. The new law sets a deadline of October 1st to have the cameras taken down.

I hope and pray that this will be an ever-increasing trend. Especially since some cities using the cameras have been found to be illegally altering the traffic signals so that the yellow light is shorter in duration, in an attempt to make more money from the cameras....

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

In August of 2001, I was p***ed-off enough about the “red light cameras” in Greensboro that I decided to do something about it. So I did some designin’ in Photoshop, took it to a Kinko’s and had it printed up huge and laminated, and for five hours in the hot sun stood next to one robosentinel that had particularly bothered me while holding a sign that read “SMILE: YOU’RE ON KOMRADE KAMERA!” Hee-hee-hee… got lots of supporters who honked in agreement as they drove past on Battleground Avenue.

So I think this next item is bigtime groovy…

Four people dressed as Santa Claus went around Tempe, Arizona a few days ago and put gift-wrapped boxes over three speed and red light cameras around the city. And for good measure they posted the video of their rebellion on YouTube…

It cannot be said enough: America is not her government. America is ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

Slashdot has a humorous story about high school students in Maryland who have targeted those “speed cameras” there for clever abuse. The kids are finding people they don’t like – such as their most-hated teachers – and using laser printers and glossy paper to create high-quality copies of their prey’s license plates. Then they scram past the cameras at excess speed with the bogus plates on their cars and make the teachers or whoever get slapped with a $40 fine a few days later! From all appearances there is no oversight or investigation: the fines get sent out automatically.

We should start doing this with the cars of a lot of busybody politicians and bureaucrats. What say ye?...

Read more