5 ms·

Some Florida cities are living off red light cameras

46 points by geox 2y ago

Molitor5901 2y ago
A lot of small towns depend on predatory law enforcement, especially civil forfeiture. With depressed tax revenue they are incentivized to rake people over the coals. https://cei.org/blog/charlotte-area-police-departments-are-rolling-in-forfeiture-funds/ https://cei.org/blog/charlotte-area-police-departments-are-r...
- woodruffw 2y ago
  Civil forfeiture (and the police corruption it incentivizes) is indeed a huge issue. But I have a hard time getting similarly riled up about red light cameras (or speed cameras): the negative position here is that municipalities should just roll over when drivers want to drive dangerously on their roads, which doesn't seem right. (From one perspective, these kind of cameras prevent corruption: automated enforcement means fewer bored local cops trying to steal your money or pin whatever crime they can think of on you as you drive.)
  - lelandfe 2y ago
    I have lived in two cities that opted to remove their red light cameras. The negative position was an erosion of privacy.[0] I think it’s deeply uncharitable to frame it as “rolling over” on crime. That’s the same manipulative rhetoric proponents use to argue for gunshot detection systems. Safety and privacy are the dueling interests - not anti-crime and pro-crime. [0] Along with studies that found red light cameras increased accidents. I’ve seen studies in both directions, though.
    - woodruffw 2y ago
      To be clear: gunshot detection is mostly bullshit. By contrast, I don't think there's (substantial?) disagreement about the true-positive rate for red-light cameras: municipalities that tend to let people off do so not because the violation didn't occur, but because the violation was deemed subjectively to be insufficiently serious. (I believe strongly in personal privacy, and I don't buy the argument that red light cameras are a meaningful erosion thereof. Driving is a privilege that's extended with the expectation of safe behavior, which is why you're required to drive in a publicly identifiable vehicle with a government-issued license on your person. With that being said, I would happily support any local legislation that limits unconditional data collection from red-light cameras.)
    - jmholla 2y ago
      There are also many instances of yellow light times being reduced to make people more likely to run red lights, making what should've been legal, illegal and fining people for it. Further, they made the roads less safe since the safest thing to be on the road is predictable.
      - bolasanibk 2y ago
        Florida shortened yellow lights to increase red light camera revenue https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5707465 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5707465
      - roshin 2y ago
        if so, then that is bad. the solution isn't to remove red light cameras (which can save lives, by preventing drivers from entering an intersection with perpendicular cars), rather to standardize how long yellow lights should be
        jmholla 2y ago
        They were, but the incentive structure encouraged them to shorten those times. It doesn't help that in addition to what I mentioned above, many of these manufacturers work out deals with cities to get a percentage of these fines, resulting in an incentive for them to no eliminate false positives and find ways to fine more people, which is even worsened by courts often finding that such systems are infallible. I recall one story of a DUI being upheld against a person even when it was show that the device showing he was intoxicated was more than a year beyond its calibration date. My intended point isn't that red light cameras can't be done right, but that in reality, the incentives result in them not being done so. It's a near endless game of whack-a-mole to force their implementation ethically. There are some other threads here talking about changing where fines go that could get things on the right track, but there are some many other avenues pointed out in my comments and others that are potential for abuse.
    - beaeglebeachedd 2y ago
      Ours removed them after the guys who made and installed the cameras were caught ducking the process servers from triggering their own cameras and all involved were found to be hypocrites.
    - worik 2y ago
      > Along with studies that found red light cameras increased accidents Really? Perhaps a citation? I do not believe it
      - HPsquared 2y ago
        Causing people to panic and jam on the brakes, perhaps? Rear-end collision from someone who had been expecting to follow through the red light (with camera) ... Seems a rare combination.
      - woodruffw 2y ago
        There's decent evidence that red light cameras increase the total number of accidents, due to people suddenly stopping at yellows rather than blowing through[1]. At the same time, there's decent evidence that red light cameras decrease the number of fatal accidents, due to fewer people blowing through[2]. So the story is complicated: red light cameras seem to have a positive effect on the serious accident rate, but a negative effect on the overall rate. Municipalities could probably improve this by both doing a better job of signaling upcoming yellows and by redesigning roads to match the marked limit, rather than encouraging intuitive higher-speed driving. Personally however, I would take more fender-benders over more fatalities any day of the week. [1]: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/red-light-cameras-may-not-make-streets-safer/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/red-light-cameras... [2]: https://www.iihs.org/topics/red-light-running https://www.iihs.org/topics/red-light-running
      - adamomada 2y ago
        https://www.cbsnews.com/miami/news/doral-red-light-cameras-going-away/ https://www.cbsnews.com/miami/news/doral-red-light-cameras-g... Linked to in TFAYDR
    - ecshafer 2y ago
      My anecdata is when the city of Philadelphia put speed cameras on Roosevelt Blvd, a hellish road that had a speed limit of 45 through residential areas with 12 lanes and people regularly driving 80, with iirc 2 or 3 of the top 10 most frequent accident rate intersections in the country, driving on the road noticably improved and the average speed dropped a good 15 mph.
    - olliej 2y ago
      Isn’t the problem that many municipalities give different orange light times for signaled intersections for those with and without cameras, so causing more accidents (people hard braking unnecessarily), and then entrapping people (do you potentially cause a crash by hard braking or risk a ticket because this particular light has a camera timed to half the normal orange light timing?) If a municipality ever gives shorter times for lights with cameras the answer is very clear: it is about revenue not safety. There is no safety related justification that would ever say “the timing of a light is tied to income production”
      - paulryanrogers 2y ago
        There should be a national standard yellow light times, perhaps scaled based on the speed limit of the area. That way folks will develop an intuition that serves them everywhere. Ideally with a countdown signal like making the light smaller or a number of seconds. It's entrapment playing games with the timing to get more money from people, cameras or not.
        olliej 2y ago
        There are already documented/recommended timings for lights. The whole point that people are bringing up is that there are a large number of documented examples of municipalities explicitly giving intersections with red light cameras significantly lower orange light times than all surrounding non-camera’s intersections. More over these municipalities have a documented increase in collisions, but collisions don’t cost the municipality anything, they just add a greater tax (through increased premiums) to all the people living in them. I believe the correct course of action is cameras - red light, and speed, applied universally - however in the US where blatant corruption is legal it’s not reasonable to say “don’t break the law if you don’t want fines”, especially when again the whole reason this is up for debate is that timings for red light cameras are significantly shorter than non camera intersections. Eg what is legal in one intersection is illegal on the next and your only way to know is whether you get a fine in the mail. This all ignores the part where fine based penalties for a crime simply renders crime legal for the wealthy. Again, if the intent is to ensure safety there would not be a subset of society for whom the law functionally does not apply, but the intent is very clearly revenue.
- beaeglebeachedd 2y ago
  I passed through a town in Ohio and was cited to pay or appear to a mayors court. I looked it up and it was literally the mayor's court, and he was required to have something like one day of training. Immediately decided they'd probably just arrest me on some bullshit upon arriving and if not in a town of 100 or whatever there was no use arguing so I just paid. The map of the town was like one Podunk neighborhood plus like a 100 ft stretch of state highway gerrymandered in for ticket revenue.
sesuximo 2y ago
There should be a camera on every intersection
woodruffw 2y ago
The cities in question are really small towns: West Miami is about 7000 people, per the article. That makes the statistics a little bit less astonishing: these aren't huge towns or cities that are substituting red light tickets for proper local taxes; they're small bedroom communities on busy roads between nearby big cities.
- gruez 2y ago
  >these aren't huge towns or cities that are substituting red light tickets for proper local taxes; they're small bedroom communities on busy roads between nearby big cities Those aren't really contradictory. You can be a "small bedroom community" but still be "substituting red light tickets for proper local taxes".
  - woodruffw 2y ago
    Sure. And given that it's Florida, they probably are. But I still think the headline here gives a misleading impression: a town with a small tax base but a busy road is naturally going to get a larger fraction of revenue from a red-light camera than a town with a larger tax base would.
- zdragnar 2y ago
  No kidding. The article content really doesn't support the title at all. A town of 7000 people issued 3000 citations in a year, but the town itself has a major road in it connection other larger towns. Even given that, it isn't the largest source of income for the city (property taxes are #1). There's an easy way that the average person can fix this problem: stop driving through red lights.
  - shiroiushi 2y ago
    >There's an easy way that the average person can fix this problem: stop driving through red lights. That's hard to do safely when they shorten the yellow-light time so that you have no warning that the light will turn red.
  - 2y ago
readthenotes1 2y ago
I've noticed a significant uptick in the number of drivers busting through red lights in my town. I wish I thought cameras would help
hindsightbias 2y ago
Sleep town needs Waymo
nmstoker 2y ago
With greater transparency it would be interesting to see if rational behaviour kicked in, reducing fines. Anecdotally with speed bumps in my area, I've seen that people increasingly aren't being rational recently: five plus years ago the vehicles that would get in trouble were typically company owned/municipal vehicles - the prospect of damage to the vehicle didn't concern those who didn't own the vehicle and thus those were the ones being driven at speeds great enough to cause self-inflicted damage. However in the last few years, it's common to see people frequently trashing their own private cars, with scrapes due to going too fast, which you would imagine they don't want to do but end up doing by accident - the speed bumps are the same, so either the cars got worse somehow or the drivers did (more distracted/less attentive or simply a worse judge of speed/the physical environment)
mikeweiss 2y ago
In New Jersey a great example of this are the mobile DMV units... extremely small towns with no major highways invite the DMV unit in once a month to setup checkpoints to check car inspection stickers on local roads.. which then leads to full blown police stops and tickets for other violations. It's a huge monetary boon for the municipal budget for a town that other wise doesn't have an opportunity to pull cars over. It's all about the money and definitely not about public safety or emissions.
- woodruffw 2y ago
  Given that a NJ driver from a small town with an suspended license killed three people this past week with his car[1], I think there might be a decent public safety argument to be made here. [1]: https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/05/us/colears-hook-park-nyc-truck-collision/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/05/us/colears-hook-park-nyc-truc...
  - calpal 2y ago
    Depends. Like, I could see the argument made that these things get set up less in wealthier, white neighborhoods. Maybe I'm wrong, I'd love to be wrong! I just hate when we make it even more expensive to be poor.
    - woodruffw 2y ago
      > Like, I could see the argument made that these things get set up less in wealthier, white neighborhoods. I agree; there is absolutely selective and biased placement in many municipalities. That's another good reason to put red-light cameras on every light, and to turn traffic violations into a sliding scale based on income, car value, and other factors (like the car's weight, as a good proxy for the damage it can do to pedestrians or other drivers).
  - mikeweiss 2y ago
    Umm. What. 1. Mobile DMV units checks to see if your car inspection sticker is expired. It has nothing to do with DUI or DUI prevention. 2. Monmouth Junction is actually not a town but a census designated place in South Brunswick Township, a rather large municipality by NJ standards. 3. What on earth would a DMV inspection do to prevent someone who's license is already suspended from driving? Clearly they don't care and are going to keep driving anyway.
gleenn 2y ago
> Doral killed its red light camera program last year, after officials noted that accidents greatly increased at intersections where the cameras operated. This is crazy, I'm glad they are being required to open up more statistics on these because unpredicted externalities definitely make this go from a seemingly mildly unethical government behavior to a public safety issue. Cities trading revenue for safety seems extremely perilous.
- hysan 2y ago
  If it’s anything like where I used to live in NY, the instantiation of red light cameras were soon followed by much shorter green-yellow-red light timings. I wouldn’t be surprised if once the data is opened up, a correlation was to be found there.
- LeafItAlone 2y ago
  I have often heard that total accidents go up. But major accidents go down. They are replaced with and surpassed by minor accidents. If that is indeed true, what’s the needed replacement ratio to make it worth it?
aldonius 2y ago
Red light cameras are good. Minimal bias (fn) compared to an all-too-human police officer. And it's not like speed traps, where the posted limits are well below the design speed of the road. A red light is a red light! fn: We can argue the toss around discriminatory placement of cameras e.g. there's probably more of them in neighbourhoods with certain demographics, but there's a simple solution here: every signalised intersection getting a camera, or at least the top half by traffic volume.
- calpal 2y ago
  Do you have evidence that they conclusively reduce traffic incidents? I think the thing I get hung up on is that I don't know if we know they actually work. Intuitively, sure, makes sense, but maybe they are just costing drivers money but not making things safer.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- maxerickson 2y ago
  There's enough people talking about the timing of the yellow to sort of pause and consider whether a given red light is exactly the same as some other red light.
  - aldonius 2y ago
    If places are shortening the yellow light to juice camera revenue then yes, that's bad. America is the land of the lawsuit right? Surely someone - or the state legislature - could take action on safety grounds alone to ensure a reasonable minimum duration (adjusted for the speed limit) for a yellow light.
jessriedel 2y ago
Discussions on this topic generally degenerate into "If you don't want to pay fines, stop driving through red light" (i.e., cameras are cost-efficient law enforcement) vs. "Cities shouldn't use robots to extract huge dollar amounts from their citizens and travelers without having to look them in the eye" (i.e., massive income is prima facie evidence that the decision to install cameras is driven by revenue rather than justice) There is a simple change we could make that should have broad bi-partisan support that can cleanly make both sides happy: Local governments shouldn't be able to keep the revenue from automated enforcement cameras; instead, it has to be sent to another part of the government (e.g., to charity, or the federal parks department, or basically anywhere that isn't under the control of the city council making the decision). This removes the incentive for cities to treat violators of minor traffic laws like piggie banks, but they are still free to use cameras to economically enforce laws protecting public safety if they deem it prudent. Importantly, it also reduces the appearance of corruption, restoring some faith in local government. We all lose when citizens view the justice system as an extortion racket. (You could, and in my opinion should, extend this to all fines levied by local governments, but we could start with traffic cameras as a baby step.)
- SkipperCat 2y ago
  Agreed about where the funds should go, and I'd also add that all intersections with cameras should have signs telling people of those cameras to get them to slow down and stop running red lights. The goal of these cameras should be to reduce traffic infractions, not to profit from their proliferation.
  - notJim 2y ago
    I initially agreed, but then I had the thought that this would lead to people just knowing which lights have camera and being extra careful around those, while freely running the lights elsewhere. Imagine if we had a problem where a bunch of people were burglarizing houses, so we decided to declare specific enforcement zones where the cops were really on top of preventing burglaries. Would people be less likely to burgle, or would they just do their burglaries elsewhere? Instead, town-wide, it should be made known with prominent signs that traffic enforcement is in use, and ideally the cameras should move around, so that people can't simply adjust their behavior to compensate. In other words, your idea, but put that sign on every intersection.
nopmat 2y ago
I know someone in South Florida, who, while in a funeral cortege, was directed to go through a photo red light by motorcycle policemen managing traffic. Everybody who went through the red light was issued a ticket. The city learned of the error but instead of rectifying the error at the department, required the mourners to submit forms to have their tickets invalidated.
jtagen 2y ago
The solution here is to stop at every yellow light. If it's timed very fast, spend the entire red holding down your horn. Enough people protest predatory lights in this fashion, either it will get fixed or the local police will start shooting people who honk. I wonder how many people it would take to mark the route through one of these lights as blocked before mapping services route around them.
- bmelton 2y ago
  This seems... unsafe? I get that it isn't your fault if someone rear ends you, but the best advice I've ever hear on the roads was "be predictable." Stopping abruptly seems like a sure-fire way to cause an accident. I don't know if it is any more, but as I understand it, the white dashed lines in the road would become solid a certain distance away from the light. That distance was roughly calibrated to being the distance it would take for the average vehicle doing the speed limit to come to a stop safely. I was taught that if the light turned yellow and you were beyond the solid lines, you should come to a stop, but if you were inside the solid lines, you should proceed as if it were green[1]. This worked for a long time. Decades, before moving to a new area. I noticed that the newer area had stop light cameras, but I also quickly noticed that the lines didn't sync up to the lights. Perhaps there had been no effort to make them. Perhaps that was an older convention no longer followed. I don't know. But I miss having a reference for which way to handle coin-tosses without having to first become intimately familiar with the light's timing. [1] - unless of course someone in front of you were trying to stop
standardUser 2y ago
Sounds like a lot of these citations are for "right turn on red", which makes me wonder if some of these intersections could use better traffic lights, such a blinking orange right-turn light during off-peak hours. On the other hand, having a similar "right turn on red" law in California where I drove most of my life, I don't recall ever rolling through these. I might roll through an empty 4-way stop, but never a red light. I would sometimes make a quick and jerky stop-and-go for those right turns, but I have no idea if that's citable. I always tried to let the car 'fall back' from the forward momentum before accelerating.
silverquiet 2y ago
I would gladly pay tax dollars for engine noise monitors that hand out tickets. I have to imagine it's out there already but if not there's a startup idea.
howard941 2y ago
The new hotness is speed cameras in school zones. Article from when they were legalized: https://www.tampabay.com/opinion/2023/06/02/its-great-news-that-speed-cameras-are-now-legal-florida-school-zones-editorial/ https://www.tampabay.com/opinion/2023/06/02/its-great-news-t...
mrbigbob 2y ago
i honestly dont mind red light cameras per say (do think people should have the right to challege them bc technology isnt perfect all the time) but i absolutely loathe speeding cameras not that i speed much but i have witnessed too many accidents where a person is going the speed limit (maybe 5MPH over) and they quickly slam on the brakes and go 15 MPH under while the car behind them rear ends them
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

46 points by geox 2y ago

A lot of small towns depend on predatory law enforcement, especially civil forfeiture. With depressed tax revenue they are incentivized to rake people over the coals. https://cei.org/blog/charlotte-area-police-departments-are-rolling-in-forfeiture-funds/ https://cei.org/blog/charlotte-area-police-departments-are-r...

woodruffw 2y ago
Civil forfeiture (and the police corruption it incentivizes) is indeed a huge issue. But I have a hard time getting similarly riled up about red light cameras (or speed cameras): the negative position here is that municipalities should just roll over when drivers want to drive dangerously on their roads, which doesn't seem right. (From one perspective, these kind of cameras prevent corruption: automated enforcement means fewer bored local cops trying to steal your money or pin whatever crime they can think of on you as you drive.)
- lelandfe 2y ago
  I have lived in two cities that opted to remove their red light cameras. The negative position was an erosion of privacy.[0] I think it’s deeply uncharitable to frame it as “rolling over” on crime. That’s the same manipulative rhetoric proponents use to argue for gunshot detection systems. Safety and privacy are the dueling interests - not anti-crime and pro-crime. [0] Along with studies that found red light cameras increased accidents. I’ve seen studies in both directions, though.
  - woodruffw 2y ago
    To be clear: gunshot detection is mostly bullshit. By contrast, I don't think there's (substantial?) disagreement about the true-positive rate for red-light cameras: municipalities that tend to let people off do so not because the violation didn't occur, but because the violation was deemed subjectively to be insufficiently serious. (I believe strongly in personal privacy, and I don't buy the argument that red light cameras are a meaningful erosion thereof. Driving is a privilege that's extended with the expectation of safe behavior, which is why you're required to drive in a publicly identifiable vehicle with a government-issued license on your person. With that being said, I would happily support any local legislation that limits unconditional data collection from red-light cameras.)
  - jmholla 2y ago
    There are also many instances of yellow light times being reduced to make people more likely to run red lights, making what should've been legal, illegal and fining people for it. Further, they made the roads less safe since the safest thing to be on the road is predictable.
    - bolasanibk 2y ago
      Florida shortened yellow lights to increase red light camera revenue https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5707465 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5707465
    - roshin 2y ago
      if so, then that is bad. the solution isn't to remove red light cameras (which can save lives, by preventing drivers from entering an intersection with perpendicular cars), rather to standardize how long yellow lights should be
      - jmholla 2y ago
        They were, but the incentive structure encouraged them to shorten those times. It doesn't help that in addition to what I mentioned above, many of these manufacturers work out deals with cities to get a percentage of these fines, resulting in an incentive for them to no eliminate false positives and find ways to fine more people, which is even worsened by courts often finding that such systems are infallible. I recall one story of a DUI being upheld against a person even when it was show that the device showing he was intoxicated was more than a year beyond its calibration date. My intended point isn't that red light cameras can't be done right, but that in reality, the incentives result in them not being done so. It's a near endless game of whack-a-mole to force their implementation ethically. There are some other threads here talking about changing where fines go that could get things on the right track, but there are some many other avenues pointed out in my comments and others that are potential for abuse.
  - beaeglebeachedd 2y ago
    Ours removed them after the guys who made and installed the cameras were caught ducking the process servers from triggering their own cameras and all involved were found to be hypocrites.
  - worik 2y ago
    > Along with studies that found red light cameras increased accidents Really? Perhaps a citation? I do not believe it
    - HPsquared 2y ago
      Causing people to panic and jam on the brakes, perhaps? Rear-end collision from someone who had been expecting to follow through the red light (with camera) ... Seems a rare combination.
    - woodruffw 2y ago
      There's decent evidence that red light cameras increase the total number of accidents, due to people suddenly stopping at yellows rather than blowing through[1]. At the same time, there's decent evidence that red light cameras decrease the number of fatal accidents, due to fewer people blowing through[2]. So the story is complicated: red light cameras seem to have a positive effect on the serious accident rate, but a negative effect on the overall rate. Municipalities could probably improve this by both doing a better job of signaling upcoming yellows and by redesigning roads to match the marked limit, rather than encouraging intuitive higher-speed driving. Personally however, I would take more fender-benders over more fatalities any day of the week. [1]: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/red-light-cameras-may-not-make-streets-safer/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/red-light-cameras... [2]: https://www.iihs.org/topics/red-light-running https://www.iihs.org/topics/red-light-running
    - adamomada 2y ago
      https://www.cbsnews.com/miami/news/doral-red-light-cameras-going-away/ https://www.cbsnews.com/miami/news/doral-red-light-cameras-g... Linked to in TFAYDR
  - ecshafer 2y ago
    My anecdata is when the city of Philadelphia put speed cameras on Roosevelt Blvd, a hellish road that had a speed limit of 45 through residential areas with 12 lanes and people regularly driving 80, with iirc 2 or 3 of the top 10 most frequent accident rate intersections in the country, driving on the road noticably improved and the average speed dropped a good 15 mph.
  - olliej 2y ago
    Isn’t the problem that many municipalities give different orange light times for signaled intersections for those with and without cameras, so causing more accidents (people hard braking unnecessarily), and then entrapping people (do you potentially cause a crash by hard braking or risk a ticket because this particular light has a camera timed to half the normal orange light timing?) If a municipality ever gives shorter times for lights with cameras the answer is very clear: it is about revenue not safety. There is no safety related justification that would ever say “the timing of a light is tied to income production”
    - paulryanrogers 2y ago
      There should be a national standard yellow light times, perhaps scaled based on the speed limit of the area. That way folks will develop an intuition that serves them everywhere. Ideally with a countdown signal like making the light smaller or a number of seconds. It's entrapment playing games with the timing to get more money from people, cameras or not.
      - olliej 2y ago
        There are already documented/recommended timings for lights. The whole point that people are bringing up is that there are a large number of documented examples of municipalities explicitly giving intersections with red light cameras significantly lower orange light times than all surrounding non-camera’s intersections. More over these municipalities have a documented increase in collisions, but collisions don’t cost the municipality anything, they just add a greater tax (through increased premiums) to all the people living in them. I believe the correct course of action is cameras - red light, and speed, applied universally - however in the US where blatant corruption is legal it’s not reasonable to say “don’t break the law if you don’t want fines”, especially when again the whole reason this is up for debate is that timings for red light cameras are significantly shorter than non camera intersections. Eg what is legal in one intersection is illegal on the next and your only way to know is whether you get a fine in the mail. This all ignores the part where fine based penalties for a crime simply renders crime legal for the wealthy. Again, if the intent is to ensure safety there would not be a subset of society for whom the law functionally does not apply, but the intent is very clearly revenue.
beaeglebeachedd 2y ago
I passed through a town in Ohio and was cited to pay or appear to a mayors court. I looked it up and it was literally the mayor's court, and he was required to have something like one day of training. Immediately decided they'd probably just arrest me on some bullshit upon arriving and if not in a town of 100 or whatever there was no use arguing so I just paid. The map of the town was like one Podunk neighborhood plus like a 100 ft stretch of state highway gerrymandered in for ticket revenue.

sesuximo 2y ago

There should be a camera on every intersection

woodruffw 2y ago

The cities in question are really small towns: West Miami is about 7000 people, per the article. That makes the statistics a little bit less astonishing: these aren't huge towns or cities that are substituting red light tickets for proper local taxes; they're small bedroom communities on busy roads between nearby big cities.

gruez 2y ago
>these aren't huge towns or cities that are substituting red light tickets for proper local taxes; they're small bedroom communities on busy roads between nearby big cities Those aren't really contradictory. You can be a "small bedroom community" but still be "substituting red light tickets for proper local taxes".
- woodruffw 2y ago
  Sure. And given that it's Florida, they probably are. But I still think the headline here gives a misleading impression: a town with a small tax base but a busy road is naturally going to get a larger fraction of revenue from a red-light camera than a town with a larger tax base would.
zdragnar 2y ago
No kidding. The article content really doesn't support the title at all. A town of 7000 people issued 3000 citations in a year, but the town itself has a major road in it connection other larger towns. Even given that, it isn't the largest source of income for the city (property taxes are #1). There's an easy way that the average person can fix this problem: stop driving through red lights.
- shiroiushi 2y ago
  >There's an easy way that the average person can fix this problem: stop driving through red lights. That's hard to do safely when they shorten the yellow-light time so that you have no warning that the light will turn red.
- 2y ago

readthenotes1 2y ago

I've noticed a significant uptick in the number of drivers busting through red lights in my town. I wish I thought cameras would help

hindsightbias 2y ago

Sleep town needs Waymo

nmstoker 2y ago

With greater transparency it would be interesting to see if rational behaviour kicked in, reducing fines. Anecdotally with speed bumps in my area, I've seen that people increasingly aren't being rational recently: five plus years ago the vehicles that would get in trouble were typically company owned/municipal vehicles - the prospect of damage to the vehicle didn't concern those who didn't own the vehicle and thus those were the ones being driven at speeds great enough to cause self-inflicted damage. However in the last few years, it's common to see people frequently trashing their own private cars, with scrapes due to going too fast, which you would imagine they don't want to do but end up doing by accident - the speed bumps are the same, so either the cars got worse somehow or the drivers did (more distracted/less attentive or simply a worse judge of speed/the physical environment)

mikeweiss 2y ago

In New Jersey a great example of this are the mobile DMV units... extremely small towns with no major highways invite the DMV unit in once a month to setup checkpoints to check car inspection stickers on local roads.. which then leads to full blown police stops and tickets for other violations. It's a huge monetary boon for the municipal budget for a town that other wise doesn't have an opportunity to pull cars over. It's all about the money and definitely not about public safety or emissions.

woodruffw 2y ago
Given that a NJ driver from a small town with an suspended license killed three people this past week with his car[1], I think there might be a decent public safety argument to be made here. [1]: https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/05/us/colears-hook-park-nyc-truck-collision/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/05/us/colears-hook-park-nyc-truc...
- calpal 2y ago
  Depends. Like, I could see the argument made that these things get set up less in wealthier, white neighborhoods. Maybe I'm wrong, I'd love to be wrong! I just hate when we make it even more expensive to be poor.
  - woodruffw 2y ago
    > Like, I could see the argument made that these things get set up less in wealthier, white neighborhoods. I agree; there is absolutely selective and biased placement in many municipalities. That's another good reason to put red-light cameras on every light, and to turn traffic violations into a sliding scale based on income, car value, and other factors (like the car's weight, as a good proxy for the damage it can do to pedestrians or other drivers).
- mikeweiss 2y ago
  Umm. What. 1. Mobile DMV units checks to see if your car inspection sticker is expired. It has nothing to do with DUI or DUI prevention. 2. Monmouth Junction is actually not a town but a census designated place in South Brunswick Township, a rather large municipality by NJ standards. 3. What on earth would a DMV inspection do to prevent someone who's license is already suspended from driving? Clearly they don't care and are going to keep driving anyway.

gleenn 2y ago

> Doral killed its red light camera program last year, after officials noted that accidents greatly increased at intersections where the cameras operated. This is crazy, I'm glad they are being required to open up more statistics on these because unpredicted externalities definitely make this go from a seemingly mildly unethical government behavior to a public safety issue. Cities trading revenue for safety seems extremely perilous.

hysan 2y ago
If it’s anything like where I used to live in NY, the instantiation of red light cameras were soon followed by much shorter green-yellow-red light timings. I wouldn’t be surprised if once the data is opened up, a correlation was to be found there.
LeafItAlone 2y ago
I have often heard that total accidents go up. But major accidents go down. They are replaced with and surpassed by minor accidents. If that is indeed true, what’s the needed replacement ratio to make it worth it?

aldonius 2y ago

Red light cameras are good. Minimal bias (fn) compared to an all-too-human police officer. And it's not like speed traps, where the posted limits are well below the design speed of the road. A red light is a red light! fn: We can argue the toss around discriminatory placement of cameras e.g. there's probably more of them in neighbourhoods with certain demographics, but there's a simple solution here: every signalised intersection getting a camera, or at least the top half by traffic volume.

calpal 2y ago
Do you have evidence that they conclusively reduce traffic incidents? I think the thing I get hung up on is that I don't know if we know they actually work. Intuitively, sure, makes sense, but maybe they are just costing drivers money but not making things safer.
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maxerickson 2y ago
There's enough people talking about the timing of the yellow to sort of pause and consider whether a given red light is exactly the same as some other red light.
- aldonius 2y ago
  If places are shortening the yellow light to juice camera revenue then yes, that's bad. America is the land of the lawsuit right? Surely someone - or the state legislature - could take action on safety grounds alone to ensure a reasonable minimum duration (adjusted for the speed limit) for a yellow light.

jessriedel 2y ago

Discussions on this topic generally degenerate into "If you don't want to pay fines, stop driving through red light" (i.e., cameras are cost-efficient law enforcement) vs. "Cities shouldn't use robots to extract huge dollar amounts from their citizens and travelers without having to look them in the eye" (i.e., massive income is prima facie evidence that the decision to install cameras is driven by revenue rather than justice) There is a simple change we could make that should have broad bi-partisan support that can cleanly make both sides happy: Local governments shouldn't be able to keep the revenue from automated enforcement cameras; instead, it has to be sent to another part of the government (e.g., to charity, or the federal parks department, or basically anywhere that isn't under the control of the city council making the decision). This removes the incentive for cities to treat violators of minor traffic laws like piggie banks, but they are still free to use cameras to economically enforce laws protecting public safety if they deem it prudent. Importantly, it also reduces the appearance of corruption, restoring some faith in local government. We all lose when citizens view the justice system as an extortion racket. (You could, and in my opinion should, extend this to all fines levied by local governments, but we could start with traffic cameras as a baby step.)

SkipperCat 2y ago
Agreed about where the funds should go, and I'd also add that all intersections with cameras should have signs telling people of those cameras to get them to slow down and stop running red lights. The goal of these cameras should be to reduce traffic infractions, not to profit from their proliferation.
- notJim 2y ago
  I initially agreed, but then I had the thought that this would lead to people just knowing which lights have camera and being extra careful around those, while freely running the lights elsewhere. Imagine if we had a problem where a bunch of people were burglarizing houses, so we decided to declare specific enforcement zones where the cops were really on top of preventing burglaries. Would people be less likely to burgle, or would they just do their burglaries elsewhere? Instead, town-wide, it should be made known with prominent signs that traffic enforcement is in use, and ideally the cameras should move around, so that people can't simply adjust their behavior to compensate. In other words, your idea, but put that sign on every intersection.

nopmat 2y ago

I know someone in South Florida, who, while in a funeral cortege, was directed to go through a photo red light by motorcycle policemen managing traffic. Everybody who went through the red light was issued a ticket. The city learned of the error but instead of rectifying the error at the department, required the mourners to submit forms to have their tickets invalidated.

jtagen 2y ago

The solution here is to stop at every yellow light. If it's timed very fast, spend the entire red holding down your horn. Enough people protest predatory lights in this fashion, either it will get fixed or the local police will start shooting people who honk. I wonder how many people it would take to mark the route through one of these lights as blocked before mapping services route around them.

bmelton 2y ago
This seems... unsafe? I get that it isn't your fault if someone rear ends you, but the best advice I've ever hear on the roads was "be predictable." Stopping abruptly seems like a sure-fire way to cause an accident. I don't know if it is any more, but as I understand it, the white dashed lines in the road would become solid a certain distance away from the light. That distance was roughly calibrated to being the distance it would take for the average vehicle doing the speed limit to come to a stop safely. I was taught that if the light turned yellow and you were beyond the solid lines, you should come to a stop, but if you were inside the solid lines, you should proceed as if it were green[1]. This worked for a long time. Decades, before moving to a new area. I noticed that the newer area had stop light cameras, but I also quickly noticed that the lines didn't sync up to the lights. Perhaps there had been no effort to make them. Perhaps that was an older convention no longer followed. I don't know. But I miss having a reference for which way to handle coin-tosses without having to first become intimately familiar with the light's timing. [1] - unless of course someone in front of you were trying to stop

standardUser 2y ago

Sounds like a lot of these citations are for "right turn on red", which makes me wonder if some of these intersections could use better traffic lights, such a blinking orange right-turn light during off-peak hours. On the other hand, having a similar "right turn on red" law in California where I drove most of my life, I don't recall ever rolling through these. I might roll through an empty 4-way stop, but never a red light. I would sometimes make a quick and jerky stop-and-go for those right turns, but I have no idea if that's citable. I always tried to let the car 'fall back' from the forward momentum before accelerating.

silverquiet 2y ago

I would gladly pay tax dollars for engine noise monitors that hand out tickets. I have to imagine it's out there already but if not there's a startup idea.

howard941 2y ago

The new hotness is speed cameras in school zones. Article from when they were legalized: https://www.tampabay.com/opinion/2023/06/02/its-great-news-that-speed-cameras-are-now-legal-florida-school-zones-editorial/ https://www.tampabay.com/opinion/2023/06/02/its-great-news-t...

mrbigbob 2y ago

i honestly dont mind red light cameras per say (do think people should have the right to challege them bc technology isnt perfect all the time) but i absolutely loathe speeding cameras not that i speed much but i have witnessed too many accidents where a person is going the speed limit (maybe 5MPH over) and they quickly slam on the brakes and go 15 MPH under while the car behind them rear ends them

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