Lessons of high-tech traffic enforcement

On Gov. Pat Quinn’s desk sits legislation that, if signed, will allow Chicago to install speed-enforcement cameras in school and park zones. The city won General Assembly approval to modify its red-light cameras to catch speeders and, ideally, increase safety for pedestrians.

While it’s a city issue for now, the suburbs should take notice. Lawmakers would need to sign off on speed cameras here too, but with the door cracked open it’s a good bet an expansion eventually will be proposed in the suburban area. Given that vendor RedSpeed Illinois, which has cameras in about 60 towns, lobbied for speed cameras when they were proposed for the suburbs in the past, we may be hearing about them sooner than later.

And what if? Would it spark Round 2 of the outcry heard when red-light cameras began rolling? If so, we can only hope lessons have been learned.

Electronic enforcement has a place when public safety is improved. A red-light camera that leads to reduced crashes at an intersection may be justifiable. Were speed cameras to enter the picture, the same standard should apply: An increase in safety, supported by detailed research, is first — not revenue, profits or political pressure.

It’s been two years since a Daily Herald investigation showed some towns were raking in revenue for right-turn violations though studies had shown that right turns on red cause only a fraction of crashes. Schaumburg dismantled one such camera after determining the main service it was providing was the $1 million in fines to the village.

That revenue is alluring. In Des Plaines, cameras generated $370,000 in one year, and Winfield’s new budget is projecting more than $200,000 in revenue from its program. But it’s imperative that these towns and others monitor the safety statistics as much as their ledger books.

Elk Grove Village has begun doing that. In a letter to the editor of the Daily Herald, Mayor Craig Johnson used new crash statistics to defend his village’s use of red-light cameras. At one intersection, police found crashes had stabilized, and they removed the cameras. But a subsequent year of monitoring revealed that crashes had increased threefold without cameras in place. Such record keeping is a good start, but an even closer consideration of the data is needed, including the type and severity of the crashes.

There are many other ways of emphasizing safety over revenue, too. One, as in the city rollout, is a reasoned institution of warnings before the imposition of fines. Another, as we’ve said many times, is application of the technology in areas where the need demands it, not where the opportunities are most lucrative.

Citizens will accept the use of technology to enforce laws when it’s clear that safety and not revenue is the goal. As we ponder the possibility of speed-limit cameras migrating from the city out to the suburbs, that’s the key lesson officials should always keep in mind.