July 16, 2007
Testing, Testing: Red Light Cameras Up
If you are worried about your privacy and tend to run red lights, stay away from the intersections of MLK and IH35, as well as 11th Street and IH35, in the coming weeks. Red light cameras have been set up at these two intersections for the city to test their effectiveness. While in the testing phase, the cameras will snap photos of the offenders' license plates, but the offending drivers will not be informed or ticketed.
The cameras will be tested for 60 days once they start up in a couple weeks. The camera installation and testing process will be paid for by the two hopeful bidders for the city's red light camera program.
Based on the results of the tests of these cameras, city staff may recommend further use for red light cameras to the City Council in late fall. Permanent cameras could be set up around town a little over a month from City Council approval. The records kept by the permanent cameras would lead to tickets being mailed to the owners of violating cars.
[ABJ: Red light violator cameras installed in testing phase]
[Grits for Breakfast on red light cameras]
Photo by Merrick Brown on flickr
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Good, I've been nearly annihilated by red light runners on the 35 frontage roads too many times.
Thank goodness! I work very near one of those intersections, and there is an accident at least once a week. It's ridiculous!
I hope these aren't used everywhere, or at least not 24/7, since there are a few lights that require running at night. I don't want to sit at an intersection for 5-10 minutes without another car in sight.
BTW, Is anyone else unable to log in?
Totalitarian by definition, red light cameras are a total invasion of privacy and y'all are eating this shit up.
So is it a privacy right to run a red light, or are you referring to your privacy inside of your car as you run the red light?
Because legally, you don't have either.
Privacy in public...hm. I must have slept through that class!
Feed me more...
You want privacy? Ride the bus.
How are these cameras invading privacy -- or, at least, invading privacy to a greater degree than a cop standing at a street corner and giving tickets to everyone that ran the light?
If you allow cameras to act as law enforcement officers in one area of the law, theoretically you can allow them for all others. Now it is red light cameras, next it is in parks, on sidewalks, and in all private businesses (bars are "public spaces," remember the smoking ban) catching your "indecency," or your jay walking or "public intoxication."
Cameras give the government one more tool for documenting your movement and location, but you're not a law breaker, so don't worry about it. Then again, neither were Jews during the 3rd Reich or Peasants in Stalinist Russia. Good thing the US Govt isn't like that...
Plus, red light cameras will be operated by the government's for-profit affiliates who BENEFIT from people breaking the law, not from detering law breakers.
They're categorically unconstitutional, since a ticket is, technically, an arrest, and in this situation you cannot cross-examine your accuser. At best, you'd be in a futile courtroom argument over the interpretation of a video, arguing with the people who initially determine how to implement the law in this new method of enforcement. Existence has already been replaced, to way too far a degree, by hollow images and a noxious variety of simulacrum. Let's leave traffic law to the cops.
Heyzeus, it's called Sesame Street. It's where most of us learned the really simply practice of 'looking both ways'. They're cars, not tomahawk missiles. Maybe your Mommy can hold you hand, if you really need to cross the street. Geez.
We could reduce public intoxication and drunk driving with cameras in bars. Cameras in cars could make sure you're wearing your seatbelt. Cameras in your bedroom could reduce adultery. The city council should run a pilot study with themselves, these cameras, and colon cancer.
Oh, you d'int.
Lawbreakers (red light runners) still have a right to privacy. Just because someone violates a law does not mean that they open themselves up to unjust search, seizure, surveillance.
Besides red light cameras are constitutionally and legally flawed. Running a red light is a moving violation, and as I understand it citations for moving violations must go to the driver and not the vehicle owner. This is the only instance where a ticket for a moving violation would be issued to the vehicle and not the person operating the car. In this case the vehicle owner is forced to pay for the ticket or prove their innocence to a court if they weren't driving at the time. This goes against hundreds of years of common law. There's actually a eccentric millionaire in Britain fighting red light cameras there solely on the basis that one has to prove their innocence when their car is ticketed using a redlight camera.
..."the terra-ists have already won"...
"Privacy" rights in public cease to hold any water once you lose a family member to a person running a red light to get to his/her cubicle before 9am for their 8hours of reading Austinist. RIP Suzanne.
Damn, "anonymous guest," you really put me in my place. Sesame street! Mommy! Zing! I won't say that I hope it's your loved one who's killed by the next person who runs a red light at high speed for his or her own convenience. No, I hope it's you.
Hey zeus (and other submitters whom Franklin would deny both liberty and security),
Having police sure has cleaned up crime in this country, I bet no one will ever run a red light now!
Smile people, you will all be on a terrorist watchlist soon!
Yeah, I don't see how red light cameras are a enormous violation of our privacy. Maybe because I walk/bike/bus anywhere I need to go. It sounds like you're all playing that card because you want to run red lights. I can't imagine why you'd want to do so, but these cameras will be a blessing if they only do one thing: get assholes to slow down for yellow lights instead of speed up.
People die, sorry. Zeus, Suzanne's family/friend. Red Light cameras won't make your friends live forever. Cars go fast. They hurt when they hit you.
Okay, I won't be anonymous. My name is Ben. And you're an asshole for wanting both government intervention AND me or my loved ones to die, simply for pointing out that you belong to a minority of people who have trouble crossing the street.
Seriously. I didn't express any wish for harm on you, just pointed out how ridiculous you sound.
No worries, "Ben". These cameras are designed to profit from red light runners as much as they exist to prevent them. So if Zeus has trouble, chances are he'll still get hit. And we can watch it on tv!
Ben, I don't hope you die. Most studies show that red light cameras reduce fatal accidents but increase fender benders. This is a worthwhile tradeoff to me and a lot of other people. I guess my point, if any, is that I don't want people to die when people run red lights, that we don't have an expectation of privacy to use our cars to run red lights on public roads, and that the slippery-slope privacy rights argument is a fallacy because there is no indication that cameras will ever be used by the government in our homes and private places like bars.
Room 710 would rather have tax money spent on synchronizing the lights in town, rather than this ridiculous current system of hodge podge traffic control. Just as there is no reason to set up red lights facing traffic on 1-way streets, there is no reason for the access road to not be complemented by lights that regulate the speed of traffic.
Forcing folks to stop at 12th St, 15th St., MLK, and Manor Road (just one of the many examples in this town)-- yes, 4 red lights on a stretch of road less than 1 mile-- will only encourage the anxious and impatient to run the occasional red.
hey 710, do you understand the complexities of signal timing? Really?
Maybe if you got your spoiled self out of the car and on your bike or bus you'd appreciate your time a little differently...
Well Beerland would rather people bike then be slaves to oil companies but that shit ain't gonna happen until we run out of fossil fuel.
[blockquote]People die, sorry. Zeus, Suzanne's family/friend. Red Light cameras won't make your friends live forever. Cars go fast. They hurt when they hit you.[/blockquote]
Cars shouldn't be going fast and running red lights though. Why have traffic signals at all if people ignore them? Hell, lets throw out all traffic violations. About 1st, 2nd, and 3rd degree murder. People die why try and prevent any. *shrug*
Well, Emo's would rather all those bike riding fools learn to practice what they preach and only ask for rights once they obey the lights. So I think red light cameras would be great, I think bikes should have to be registered too and be subject to ticketing as well. They break more traffic laws than any cars I see on the road and cause more traffic issues as well.
"Due to the fact that I thought this program had already been installed and implemented I have actually changed my driving habits."
Sounds ineffective to me.
Room 710 hates to burst the self-important bubble of the Austinist super passive aggressive anonymous posting contingent, but 710 actually walks around town a lot. Believe it or not, 710 is so environmentally conscious that one reason 710 has a car, is to transport broken down cardboard boxes to the recycling plant because this great, non-synchronized city of ours won't do that for us.
Room 710 would further like to advise the Anonymous Rambler that the complexities of light signal management have not been addressed by your wonderfully succinct and ignorant message. Light signal synchronicity is as difficult as turning off the lights at say, Midnight, and then starting them up again. Of course, Room 710 has been in town a long enough time to know that the placement of new lights do nothing but stop traffic (see Wilshire and Airport, for example). It's as if Brake Check controls this town.
I got a friend that got a ticket for riding his bike through Zilker after 10:00. I know another guy that got a ticket a couple of weeks ago for making a California stop at a stop sign on his bike. I bet proportionally, more people get ticketed on bikes than cars each year in Austin, you just don't hear about it cause bike riders aren't whiney little bitches like car drivers.
I can't wait to "borrow" my friends' cars late at night and run a bunch of red lights at intersections with red light cameras. Imagine the look on their faces the next week when they get 20+ tickets in the mail.
I just said that to get your ire up.
succinct rambler?
There is no universal definition or agreement among traffic engineers concerning a "properly timed signal." Rather, signal timing is a complex undertaking without a simple formula applicable to all intersections alike. Motorists approach intersections at different speeds, in a range of vehicle types, in varying weather conditions, etc. Signal change intervals are timed to accommodate the range of circumstances.
for example.
try wikipedia "signal timing" for an even more succinct version.
Emo's gets no opinion since Emo's got as much street cred as Stubbs now.
32: There are too many times when folks traveling in 3 different directions (S, W, E for example) are waiting for no one to go through the N green light, only to have the N light turn red once people begin to approach it. Light synchronization should cure that. Also, there isn't a reason not to promote driving at, say, 30 or 25 mph through certain stretches by having the lights be green at the proper time (as drivers approach the intersection) rather than at a given time, after people have been waiting at the intersection for it to change. Or at the worst time, which is as people approach it. This causes the excess speed on roads ill equipped for 45 mph driving.
31: There is a term for people like you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flaming_%28Internet%29. Pity that you think you're an original.
I am not surprised that the first batch are going up on 2 of the main entry/exit points of east Austin to Downtown.
Why not major central intersections with higher pedestrian and traffic in general such as 6th/Congress, 6th/Lamar, Lamar/Barton Springs, or how about on or near UT Campus?
This is just as more about establishing new revenue streams than public safety. It's a private entity wedging themselves into public money. The city council bought into the sales pitch for the money. The whiny 'government protect me' mentality (ignorance) pushes it right on through. If they were serious about public safety they would concentrate on I35 where the most people die and are seriously injured. Instead, they do the pilot study at an intersection (35 & MLK) with an unnecessary 'No Right on Red' sign. Cha-ching! Pathetic.
Here's a link to some studies. It looks like they all show that the cameras increase accidents. Woo-hoo! More accidents! Sounds like big money for the city, camera vendor and Wayne Wright. Can you feel the safety people?
http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/00/29.asp
oops that link was only to one study, here are 10:
http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/04/430.asp
actually they are the intersections with the most accident.
but it's good to be paranoid.
wait, east side + accidents? what are you trying to say, hmmm?
You guys that are a little weirded out about cameras watching your every move should've checked out Michael Sieben's "Smile Forever" that was held at the Art Palace a few months ago. The whole gallery was based around surveilence cameras.
http://www.msieben.com/detritus/images/smileforever.jpg
You can still buy the Smile Forever zine from his website msieben.com It's pretty interesting, especially if this topic truly gets you going.