Photo tickets about cash, not safety
I must object to the idea of issuing tickets based upon pictures taken by traffic cameras and to the Herald's support for such an idea.
I have no problem with government cameras. I know I don't have any civil rights in public anymore, and I have gotten over it.
What worries me is that most of the tickets issued by these cameras seem to be for failing to come to a complete stop when turning right on red.
This is behavior that, although technically a violation of the traffic law, is not behavior for which a ticket would normally be issued by a policeman witnessing it.
He would use his judgment in deciding whether to issue a ticket and he would almost never do so unless a dangerous situation were created.
These cameras will never show the context of the behavior.
Why should we now automatically send people tickets for behavior for which an officer would almost never issue a ticket?
There is no incentive for anyone in power to use judgment when the camera shows that a complete stop was not made before turning.
It's a violation and a ticket, period, even if there was no harm done. Remember, we are talking about thousands of additional citations.
The sheer magnitude will not permit a meaningful process for challenging such a ticket. We need to get government out of our lives not find ways to get it more intertwined.
If there is no accident, who cares?
If there is, why not let the institutions we have in place for this purpose do their jobs?
We have an insurance industry and a justice system to handle the minuscule number of cases where there is a problem.
Cameras might provide excellent evidence when trying to determine fault if there is an accident.
But they should not be used to issue tickets for harmless behavior. It is not the function of government to inconvenience 99.9 percent of the people attempting to prevent an incredibly small number of unfortunate incidents.
When the worst happens -- when someone runs a red light and kills someone, it is front-page news. It is very unusual. But while lightning also strikes people and trees fall on them, we do not give people tickets for being out in the rain nor do we cut down all the trees.
The claim that improved safety is the purpose of these cameras is laughable. All these cameras do is provide another way to shift dollars from people to government and to the single company that makes the cameras.
It's just another tax. If safety is really the purpose, then I challenge the governments that have bought into this transparent marketing pitch to require in their enabling legislation a threshold number of injury accidents that would justify placement of a camera at any intersection, publication of historical statistics on accidents with injuries caused by the behavior these cameras capture for each intersection where cameras are placed, review of the statistics periodically and prompt removal of the cameras from those intersections where the number of injury accidents is not significantly reduced.
Otherwise, please, just leave people alone.
Richard A. Rosenthal
St. Charles