Stopping right-on-red tickets a start

Dan Duffy has felt the sting of finding a red-light camera ticket in the mail. More than once.

The freshman state senator from Lake Barrington wants to stop communities from penalizing those, like him, who are nailed by red-light cameras for failing to come to a complete stop before turning right on red.

Duffy tried to drum up support for eliminating red-light cameras in the suburbs altogether this year, but that effort stalled.

But neither the public ribbing he received when Democratic Senate President John Cullerton aired video of him making his right on red nor the failure to win over a majority has slowed him down, let alone stopped him.

In some towns, according to the Daily Herald’s 2009 Seeing Red series that examined the proliferation of red-light cameras, right-on-red infractions accounted for 90 percent of the tickets mailed out. At $100 a pop.

Duffy maintains right turns on a red light aren’t dangerous and cameras shouldn’t be used to catch those who roll through a turn without coming to a complete stop.

“You can drive from here to Mars and never be in an incident from turning right on red,” he said.

Many traffic experts shared Duffy’s view that the maneuver is not particularly dangerous.

Gov. Pat Quinn did sign off on some changes to the law this year that eliminates tickets for failure to come to a stop before a white line or crosswalk, but it did not address right-on-red infractions.

Some communities already ignore right-turn offenders, saying that’s not the point of the cameras. Carol Stream officials, for instance, are more worried about people plowing straight through intersections or turning left in front of other cars.

So are we. Yes, you should stop at a red light before turning. You should shoulder check and make sure you don’t hit any pedestrians. But the stated purpose of the cameras is that the threat of a ticket stops crashes. The statistical analysis of Seeing Red taught us arguments that red-light cameras do that are thin. Their primary appeal is that they produce a lot of revenue for their host towns (and the companies that own the cameras).

We’ve argued before that in order for the focus to be on safety, the state must regulate the cameras’ placement to intersections with a high rate of accidents rather than volume of traffic, statistics must show a camera is preventing accidents or it should be removed, and records must be kept so multiple offenders are dealt with appropriately. Without those measures, it’s clear that money is of greater import than safety.

There have been legislative efforts to mitigate the issues of red-light cameras, some good and some meaningless. Duffy has a solid argument that we hope in time others will come to appreciate.