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Next time you run that red light, you might want to take the latte/cell phone away from your grill and smile big, cause you could be on not-so-candid camera. Actually, it’s only your license plate that gets photo’d, but you get the idea.
The real suck part about all of this is that if you let a friend borrow your car, you best write down the date and time, cause if you get a ticket in the mail, you’re gonna need some proof when beginning your tirade about your friend’s lack of responsibility.
But hold the phone, Nervous Nelly. It seems Operation: Red Light Running Camera Thingy (unofficial name) is just a 60-day trial to test the functionality of the process but police will not distribute tickets to violators.
The cameras, part of a 60-day pilot program approved today by the Austin City Council, will be installed at some of Austin’s busiest intersections beginning in February.
So it’s just a program to see if cameras will keep people from running red lights even though they won’t get tickets? What are we missing here? Where’s the incentive to not speed? Maybe we misread the whole damn thing. What say you?
To get an idea of where these cameras might be, check out a list of red light facts about the most dangerous intersections in town.
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No, they won't stop red light running - they're not really supposed to. Theyr'e a revenue generator. If they actually reduced red light running, the companies paying to put the cameras up wouldn't make any profits. I wrote more about this on Huevos Rancheros. Best,
That's absurd. Companies could just as easily make their money selling the physical equipment - even though today, as Scott says, most or all take a loss on the equipment in order to make money on the operations (through tickets). There's nothing magic about red-light cameras which makes them ineligible to be sold under a different type of contract - be it a flat operations contract (no matter how many or how few tickets) or a simple equipment (no contract) purchase.
I've also covered the contrarian position on my crackplog (link in sig).