Daily Herald opinion: Court ruling reinforces regulations that assure traffic cameras focus on safety

This editorial is a consensus opinion of the Daily Herald Editorial Board.

Shoppers at Oakbrook Center mall, as well as other drivers in the vicinity of the mall, got a bit of good news last month, courtesy of DuPage County Judge Craig Belford.

Siding with the Illinois Department of Transportation, Belford upheld an order requiring Oakbrook Terrace to shut off the red-light cameras at Route 83 and 22nd Street, across from the shopping center.

Technological advances that can monitor traffic behaviors are not inherently bad, but there's little evidence to show that, on the whole, cameras designed to capture red-light or speeding violations make roads safer and some - as officials from neighboring Oak Brook argued in opposition to the Oakbrook Terrace cameras - can actually increase the possibility of an accident.

With that concern in mind, the Illinois Department of Transportation required Oakbrook Terrace to produce a report on the impact of the Route 83/22nd Street cameras after one year and again after three years of operation. But, the agency said, when the one-year report arrived two years late and the three-year report not at all, IDOT revoked the permit. That led Oakbrook Terrace, where officials argued slow data reporting by the state held up the third-year report, to appeal to the courts.

Oak Brook officials argued all along that the cameras placed only on the Oakbrook Terrace side of the intersection served only to inconvenience, if not deter, shoppers at the mall and to produce revenues for the neighboring city. They also argued that the justification for the cameras was tainted by the guilty pleas of two public officials charged with taking bribes related to the cameras.

Such arguments cut at the heart of the controversy over technological traffic enforcement.

If traffic cameras can improve safety in specific locations, then by all means, using them makes sense. But we've seen all too often over the course of the past decade and a half that, rather than deploying cameras where they might do the most good, officials have placed them where they can produce the most money.

That kind of treatment breeds resentment toward legitimate traffic enforcement, raises serious questions about government intrusion and in many cases makes roads and intersections less safe.

As we noted some years ago when the village of Algonquin removed traffic cameras that were costing more to maintain than they were bringing in, the best way for motorists to free themselves of red-light monitoring is to adhere so strictly to regulations that the cameras lose their financial benefit.

That's an especially big ask at a busy intersection like the one in Oakbrook Terrace, which is traversed by millions of vehicles a year - and produced more than 230,000 lucrative red-light tickets over the course of five years. So, it's important that state and local regulators ensure the cameras are placed where they can provide a real benefit and require the documentation to prove it.

Belford's ruling upholds those important standards. It is not - and should not be - a repudiation of camera enforcement. But it does reinforce the foundation for enforcement that is realistic and safe.