Saturday, February 6, 2010
Washington Freeway Speed Cameras to Begin Ticketing ( from theNewspaper.com)
The Washington State Department (WSDOT) will unleash its freeway speed cameras in the southwest portion of the state on Monday, September 15. WSDOT officials held a kickoff event in Chehalis on Friday to announce the date that ticketing will begin. The cameras will first appear in white Ford SUVs parked on the side of the road in a work zone on Interstate 5 south of Chehalis."Along with our Washington State Patrol partners, we place a high priority on highway safety," WSDOT State Traffic Engineer Ted Trepanier said. "The automated traffic safety cameras are just part of the highway safety program."This program is designed to generate millions in revenue from $137 citations generated by the fully automated vans. Washington officials neglected to mention that ATS, an Arizona-based vendor, is the primary partner in charge of all aspects of the ticketing process in exchange for a significant portion of the revenue.Washington officials also declined to disclose the speed at which cameras will trigger a violation notice. Instead, this will change over time to generate the precise number of citations desired, depending on the locations where the cameras operate. The WSDOT program may face significant political opposition if it continues to operate after voters adopt Initiative 985 (view detail in November. The measure will force cities operating local photo radar programs to turn over all revenue to a congestion relief fund -- preventing municipalities from using the program as a source of revenue. Five cities have already dropped photo ticketing plans as a result.Illinois was the first state to begin operating speed cameras on a statewide basis, followed by Arizona. Over the past five years, fatal collisions in Washington work zones have declined 41 percent without any photo enforcement.
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7 comments:
... The measure will force cities operating local photo radar programs to turn over all revenue to a congestion relief fund -- preventing municipalities from using the program as a source of revenue. ...
This is a good idea because it will shut up the mouthy fools who complain that the red light cameras are used by cities only as revenue producers.
As one of those mouthy fools -
You'll see the cameras pulled the second this happened.
Of course, since initiative 985 was defeated in 2008, unlikely that it's going to go into effect any time soon.
You're right about one thing, if such an initiative passed and they left the cameras in place, it would shut me up with regard to this argument.
Since there are actions that increase safety without automated ticketing that the cities ignore (lengthening yellows and the time the lights in both directions are red), I'll continue to believe it's mainly revenue enhancement until proven otherwise. Especially with the contract restrictions on lengthening yellow lights.
As progressive as I am, I'm really annoying conservative about the rules of the road. I drive the speed limit and don't run yellows, so the cameras are a non issue to me!
I do make the free lefts onto one-ways (even freeway on-ramps marked one way) which surprises allot of drivers!
I guess I gotta turn left whenever possible!
I don't run red lights either, but have watched the cameras at SK and Pacific fire on people making perfectly legal right turns on red and when the light had not yet turned red. They don't work. Interesting that the cited website (theNewspaper.com) is full of stories on problems with automated traffic cameras and jurisdictions abandoning them due to those problems.
Frankly, it's just too Big Brotherish for me.
And just for the record, no, I have not received a ticket from either a red light camera or a speed limit camera.
I thought the free turns on red lights are AFTER one stops, looks both ways and no oncoming traffic....yada, yada.....
( told you guys I'm weird about traffic laws!)
Mrs and I got a camera ticket because she was in the intersection when the light turned red. I took it to court just to test their case. Lacey's "star witness' wouldn't answer my questions about the website access being down...yadda yadda...but the judge ruled against me. I got 5 months to pay a $125 ticket.
Now here is the funny part. When I went to the courthouse to pay the forth time, the clerk said "we have no record of that ticket". I gave her three tries to get it right and gave up. I have the check sitting on my desk dated for that day, just in case the Arizona folks try to turn me over to collections. That was about three months ago.
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