Voters in Seven Cities Reject Photo Enforcement

Voters in eight cities and three states cast ballots on Tuesday to decide if red light cameras and speed cameras should be used in their communities. Seven of the eight races went against the use of photo ticketing.

TheNewspaper.com reports that Redflex Traffic Systems of Australia contributed at least $108,000 to the campaign for the cameras in Garfield Heights and South Euclid, Ohio. But the unfunded effort to put a stop to the cameras won 55% of the vote.

Local officials in East Cleveland, however, succeeded by using strong-arm tactics to badger voters into supporting cameras. Off duty police officers, in uniform and with their police cruisers parked on the curb, were ordered to go door to door to convince residents to vote to return the cameras. The mayor mailed layoff notices to 36 police officers and 14 firefighters saying the city would have to fire them if it lost photo ticketing revenue. This worked and the city got 54% of the vote, the only victory for the cameras on Tuesday.

Earlier this year, traffic cameras were voted out of Los Angeles, Houston and Albuquerque.

Valley Resident Comments on Globe Photo Radar

On Friday the following comment was posted to the March 30 blog entry Photo Enforcement in Globe Starts April 1:

I live in the valley and travel to Show Low several times a month by way of Globe/Miami. I usually stop in Globe/Miami to have breakfast and/or lunch depending on the time of day. Also trips to Roosevelt lake and the National Monument. Recently I received a photo ticket for allegedly driving 14 miles over the speed limit which is simply not true. I have been driving for more than 50 years and have never had a speeding ticket!

From now on I will simply avoid these two towns and use the route by way of Prescott. I have many friends that also use this route but made it a point to let them ALL know that Globe/Miami has become nothing but a speed trap for outsiders/tourist because the locals know where the cameras are and they are not the ones that will be paying these outrageous fines! All my friends agree and they will no longer take this route and will spread the word. I would have agreed to a $70 or $80 dollars fine to just make it go away, but $210.00 is nothing but highway robbery to say the least. BTW, if they think that they can extort this money from me, they will have to serve me, that is, if they can fine me. A letter in the mail will not due and I have filed it with my junk mail. Miami has become a ghost town and Globe is soon to follow.

New Law for Photo Enforcement Notices

As of today (Wednesday), photo enforcement violation notices in Arizona are required to say that you don’t have to respond and you don’t have to identify the driver in the picture.

Photo enforcement is relatively new in Globe and hasn’t stirred up much controversy, but it has been common for other cities to imply that ignoring a notice could mean trouble. However-- as reported often in the Phoenix New Times and other places-- the truth is that ignoring the initial notice only means the possibility of a ticket being served at your home. Having a server come out does mean an additional $25 fine. But if the server never comes, or if you don’t appear to be at home when the server comes, then the photo enforcement ticket becomes invalid. If you are served, however, you must then treat the citation as if it were issued by a police officer at a traffic stop.

Now Arizona law requires notices to say that the notice is not a court issued document; you are not required to identify the person in the photo or respond to the notice; and failure to respond to the notice may result in official service with an additional fine.

(New Times also points out that the new law also requires $13 of every ticket to go to a task force with a mission of "strict enforcement" of immigration and gang laws. If you oppose such "strict enforcement," this could be another reason to ignore a photo enforcement notice.)

Blog Archive: 'Photo' Radar Scam

(Originally posted October 22, 2010)

Ignite Phoenix #6 - "Welcome to Arizona, the surveillance state"

Presenter - Ross Trumble:

Photo Radar was forced on the people of Arizona, promising safer roads. Instead it made roads less safe, conflicts existing law, clogs up courts & frustrates citizens with a flawed state wide VIDEO RECORDING system. Lobbyists, missteps & broken promises from AZ Government have allowed it to continue, but a citizens initiative aims to eliminate it.

More info: camerafraud.wordpress.com

Photo Enforcement in Globe Starts April 1

The City of Globe announces that the Redflex photo enforcement cameras will be activated at 12:01am.

The cameras are located at Highway 60 and Ragus Road, the Highway 60/188 junction at Kaiser Crossing; Highway 60 and Main Street (Central Heights), the Highway 60/70 junction and Highway 60 at Third Street. There will also be a mobile unit that can be used in residential areas as well as on the highway.

There will be a 30 day warning period. Violators during this period will receive warnings by mail. After that, violators will be issued citations.

Photo Enforcement Ban in Legislative Committee

A bill to ban photo enforcement cameras is making its way through a legislative committee. The cameras have been controversial ever since Arizona became the first state to put them on its freeways. Many of the cameras were vandalized.

Last year Gov. Brewer did not renew a contract with Redflex, the company that ran the network of cameras along several Valley freeways. The state program was scrapped but several cities still use the cameras. Redflex is also the company that provides cameras for the City of Globe.

Opponents of the bill and supporters of photo enforcement cameras say the cameras reduce the number of crashes and fatalities.

Supporters of the bill who oppose the use of the cameras say the cameras are really only about money, and they even increase accidents.

AZfamily.com reports that the bill still has a long way to go before becoming law. But lawmakers say they do have enough votes to move the bill along to the next step.

Australian Newspaper Says 'Cameras Focus on Money Not Deaths '

The Daily Telegraph:

IT RIPS $6 million a year in speeding fines out of motorists, making it the NSW Government's No.1 weapon in enforcing its mantra: speed cameras save lives.
But The Sunday Telegraph can reveal the state's most lucrative speed camera in Cleveland St, Moore Park, is located -- not at an accident black-spot -- but on a stretch of road where there were just five accidents, none of them fatal, in the three years before it was installed in 2007.

And in evidence directly contradicting Government claims speed cameras are road safety measures, not revenue-raisers, 10 of the state's highest-grossing fixed speed cameras are at locations that did not record a single fatality in the three years before they were installed.

Yet the Government has failed to install permanent cameras on dangerous stretches where lives are lost and hundreds of crashes are recorded...

'This confirms what the motorists across NSW have suspected -- the Keneally Labor Government considers fixed speed cameras a revenue-raising machine,' Shadow Roads Minister Andrew Stoner said.

Meanwhile a man in St. Petersburg, Florida is starting to convince City Council members about the false safety claims of camera advocates:

When the City Council discussed installing the cameras earlier this year, Florell said he started reading the studies that were both for and against.

He noticed the ones that were supportive of the cameras were often financed by vendors selling the surveillance systems. He also concluded that ones critical of the cameras used methods that were more scientific and objective...

Echoing research done by the University of South Florida's Department of Health, Florell found that studies generally show intersections are more crash-prone with cameras.

In Chicago, crashes went up by 5 percent at camera-equipped intersections. They climbed by 13 percent in Costa Mesa, Calif., by 40 percent in Greensboro, N.C., and by 133 percent in Temple Terrace.

Here in Globe, newspaper quotes by the City Manager and City Council members suggest that nobody is even bothering to pretend that the cameras are about safety anymore. One Globe City Council member calls it an alternative to raising taxes.

For more information watch this video.

Also read Ten Reasons (+1) Speed Cameras are Lame

'Photo' Radar Scam

Ignite Phoenix #6 - "Welcome to Arizona, the surveillance state"

Presenter - Ross Trumble:

Photo Radar was forced on the people of Arizona, promising safer roads. Instead it made roads less safe, conflicts existing law, clogs up courts & frustrates citizens with a flawed state wide VIDEO RECORDING system. Lobbyists, missteps & broken promises from AZ Government have allowed it to continue, but a citizens initiative aims to eliminate it.

More info: camerafraud.wordpress.com