Cities around the country are ignoring state laws designed to curb the financial incentive for private red light camera contractors to generate the greatest number of violations possible. In Texas, for example, the city of College Station signed a deal to allow American Traffic Solutions (ATS) to operate red light cameras and collect fines on the city’s behalf. In return, College Station gives back to ATS a per-ticket fee that is capped at a rate of $4750 per intersection approach per month—in direct conflict with a state law that took effect on September 1, 2007.
“The city’s obligations and the total compensation paid to ATS over the course of this contract shall not exceed the total amount of civil penalties received from defendants,” the contract between ATS and College Station signed November 19, 2007 states. “All payments shall be processed in accordance with AXSIS-BPA Payment Processing Overview, as approved by contractor and city. E-payments shall be charged to the city at the rate of $3.75 per payment.”
The $3.75 per-ticket payment to the contractor applies to all violations paid online or by phone. Billing data obtained by local resident Jim Ash under an open records request show that ATS received a payment of $2246 for 599 tickets issued in the month of September 2008. This extra per-ticket fee accounted for twelve percent of the total ATS compensation for that month. Texas Code 707.003 not only prohibits such payment arrangements, it enforces the prohibition by invalidating any citation issued under an illegal contract.
“(b) A local authority that contracts for the administration and enforcement of a photographic traffic signal enforcement system may not agree to pay the contractor a specified percentage of, or dollar amount from, each civil penalty collected,” the law states. “A local authority may not impose a civil penalty under this chapter on the owner of a motor vehicle if the local authority violates subsection (b).”
So far the College Station cameras have caused an eleven percent increase in collisions. In response, the city will add more cameras according to a pre-established plan known as Phase 2.
“Hey guys . . . I was thinking if Phase 1 of our red light camera project isn’t successful, we could go to Phase 2,” College Station Mayor Ben White wrote in a May 2008 email obtained by Ash.
College Station is not alone in ignoring state prohibitions on per-ticket compensation. More than fifty California jurisdictions use cost neutrality contracts declared illegal by an appellate court in Orange County, but cities have successfully lobbied courts to keep these decisions unpublished which prevents them from being cited in a court proceeding for any purpose.
Maryland cities likewise have flouted the state prohibition on per-ticket compensation for contractors that operate photo enforcement programs by claiming that the contractors are not “operating” the program. In Virginia, the city of Fairfax adopted a cost neutral contract with Redflex in violation of state law.
Anyone who waits at a crosswalk to cross the street can see how traffic signals really operate and how drivers react.
When the light turns yellow engines are gunned so cars can make it through without stopping. Any stragglers stuck in the intersection when yellow becomes red are milliseconds away from clearing the road anyway. By the time the crosstraffic gets a green the inter is clear. It takes another half second for cars to venture into the crossing.
Real world intersection accidents occur when someone runs a light that is red already with cross traffic moving. A ticket does little to deter absent minded drivers that drive through red lights.
But of course this is common knowledge. Red light cameras are revenue generators because they are cheaper than stationing an officer at the intersection and the tickets can be obscene. 200-400 dollars is not uncommon plus 4-6 points towards walking. That is a bit extreme for getting caught halfway though a yellow light which coincidentally has gotten shorter in Washington DC.
Sorry, but if an individual is going to be accused of such an expensive ticket a cop needs to be on scene, pull the perp over and do it right. If the tickets were cheaper, and did not point the license, I think people would be more tolerant. It would be looked at like a parking fine, a reminder to be mindful of intersections and red lights. Instead it’s become a heavy handed revenue generator.
Now here’s the kind of thing that keeps me reading this site.
Good job.
AGAIN!
Again we see the “Published” vs. “Unpublished” court rulings to burry illegal government activities:
More than fifty California jurisdictions use cost neutrality contracts declared illegal by an appellate court in Orange County, but cities have successfully lobbied courts to keep these decisions unpublished which prevents them from being cited in a court proceeding for any purpose.
This says 50+ jurisdictions have lost in court but does not say how many times each jurisdiction has lost in court but keeps doing it anyway.
Cameras mean money; it’s that pure and simple. The jurisdictions will cage fight anyone attempting to get in the way of them harvesting the motorist revenue stream.
Red light cameras are revenue generators because they are cheaper than stationing an officer at the intersection…
If an officer must be stationed at the intersection to cut down on red-light violations, you have just been hit in the head with a brick telling you the traffic control is screwed up. No-cost light timing changes are begging, pleading to be implemented.
Cameras-as-the-solution is totally bogus. Here’s why: To ensure profitability, a certain number of tickets must be issued. To meet this quota, the signal timing invariably must be messed with (drastically shortened), which not incoincidently and not without consequence, places more cars in the intersection when the cross traffic is given the green.
When the next Peterbilt, not even trying to stop for a 2.7-second yellow, takes out rows 3-14 in a school bus given the green light way too soon, may it become totally clear the games they are playing to make the cameras profitable are dramatically increasing the chances of T-bone accidents, the most dangerous kind.
but cities have successfully lobbied courts to keep these decisions unpublished which prevents them from being cited in a court proceeding for any purpose.
This is misleading. A court determines whether or not to publish its decisions. If a court rules against a city, it’s not going to be sympathetic to the city’s “lobbying” to not publish a decision. There’s no conspiracy going on here.
In fact, decisions like those of the Appellate Division of the Superior Court in Orange County are rarely published. Nor should they be. Those decisions apply only to a limited jurisdiction. They are almost all fact specific.
If a case turns on a legal rather than factual issue, you can always make the same argument that won in one case in your own case. Whether that prior decision is published or not does not matter — the argument can still be made.
That being said, I’m gearing up to represent my wife in a red light case here in California. They fined her a ridiculous $436 for a “running” right turn on red. So I’m always glad to see comments like this on TTAC.
Even as public awareness of this practice becomes greater, more and more municipalities are getting in on the cash cow that is Big Brother traffic edition. A few states seem to have eliminated it in one or more forms, but it’s still out there and is a threat to many of us. Traffic cameras do not, regardless of what they want us to believe, contribute to public safety. They are for generating revenue, plain and simple. There was a study here done by one of the news stations about Dallas (TX) red light cameras, and they found that the yellow light interval was shorter on lights with cameras than on those without. Also, the amount of rear-end collisions at camera equipped intersections has gone up since the cameras were installed. Of course the DPD and Dept. of Public Safety deny that these findings are related to cameras. It’s all just a way to get your money. There is no money in hunting criminals like thieves or drug dealers, it’s all in traffic citations. Why not automate it and eliminate the cost of personnel? Until this battle is won, our rights are being challenged.
Tesla Deathwatcher says: This is misleading. A court determines whether or not to publish its decisions. If a court rules against a city, it’s not going to be sympathetic to the city’s “lobbying” to not publish a decision. There’s no conspiracy going on here.
Sorry, TD, it is you who is misleading. Yes it’s the courts who decide when to block the use of a court ruling as a precedence by declaring it “unpublished”, but they almost always grant the loosing party’s request. A situation when the winning party would request it be unpublished is all but non-existant.
When the losing party is a jurisdiction being pulled off a revenue stream, the judges will rule against them but are loathe to stop the practice. The original article is indeed correct.
This travesty of the justice system punts the injured party seeking justice back at the beginning of the line.
When you build your own case, notice how every piece you use from an “unpublished” case is thrown out, even though a judge or panel of judges in appellate or superior court has previously ruled in your favor on the point.
Also, understand the meaning of “published” vs. “unpublished” in the context of being able to use a ruling as a precedence, not whether or not it’s in databases and legal publications.
Yes it’s the courts who decide when to block the use of a court ruling as a precedence by declaring it “unpublished”, but they almost always grant the loosing party’s request.
That’s not true. I’ve practiced law in California for 25 years now. I can tell you have not. Do more research before you start talking about some conspiracy by cities to keep decisions like this California one unpublished.
I stand by my statements.
I stand by my statements.
My apologies for lecturing you. You are of course entitled to your views.
But I want to warn others of what I think is a misleading view of precedence and jurisdiction. Having done that, again, I’ll be quiet now.
I live in California and have witnessed the reaction of government to declining tax revenues: tax hikes and FEES. The fees are the killer.
I drive on the roads, too, and I value public safety, but a lot of what I’ve seen in the past couple of months is just attempts to justify budgets and shake out every nickle and dime from Joe Public.
It’s tiring to see when times are tough and people are barely scraping along (California’s unemployment rate is north of 10%), government reacts by finding creative new ways to extract money rather than provide for less (the way the rest of the world is operating at the moment).
@ tesla deathwatcher
Not as a test, but a point of information, what are the court levels you see as available to someone burned by a traffic camera?
Am I not correct you have a chicken traffic court, Superior Court, Court of Appeals, then State Supreme Court? In essence, it’s one court then three levels of appeals where no new information can be presented?
Am I not correct that at the Court of Appeals and Supreme Court level you can petition to have a judgment against you “unpublished” so that the lower courts do not have to follow it if you get hauled into court for the exact same offence? Superior Court is NOT bound by the Court of Appeals judgment against you, is it?
We’ve now seen two articles where the losing municipality has succeeded in getting the judgement against them unpublished so they can continue business as usual.
My point in highlighting this is that if you win then hear something about your win being unpublished, stop, turn around, and fight to have it published as hard as you did for the win.
Unless you do, your win is considered a one-off abnormality and they are free to continue their evil ways. Only by blocking the attempts to have it unpublished will you stop them in their tracks.
I’m no expert on traffic tickets. But here is what I know.
In California you can ask for a court trial instead of paying the traffic ticket. The case is heard by a judge or commissioner of the Superior Court. The result can be appealed to the Appellate Division of the Superior Court.
I don’t know, but suspect, that you can then appeal to the Appeals Court and then on to the Supreme Court. But I doubt if those courts are going to hear your case.
If the Appellate Division of the Superior Court rules against the trial court, you have won your case. Whether that decision is published or not means nothing. I have not seen any Appellate Division decisions published, and I suspect that they are not. No reason for them to be.
The California Supreme Court does occasionally order that one of its decisions not be published. That is when it does not want the lower courts to follow that particular decision. The court decides that, not the losing party.
I think your theory that the courts are conspiring against people by agreeing not to publish certain decisions is wrong. But you have forcefully made your point, and have said you stand by it. That may be helpful to others.
@ tesla deathwatcher :
Here are the facts:
1. The red light camera cases decided in the appellate division rely on general principles of law, not particular circumstances. E.g. the nature of contingent fee contracts, how to interpret the warning fee, etc.
2. Your statement that it “doesn’t matter” whether the decision is published or not is contrary to what the cities themselves argued in Supreme Court and Court of Appeal filings demanding red light camera decisions be unpublished, or else the world as we know it will come to an end.
3. The Court of Appeal ordered the Fischetti red light camera decision published. Then the Supreme Court unpublished it in 2009. The same Supreme Court in 2005 declined to overturn (i.e., upheld) an identical decision involving the same defendant.
4. Thomas Fischetti had to argue the exact same case four times because his case was unpublished in 2005. It’s an abuse of the state’s power to put a private citizen through that wringer. I suppose as a lawyer it would be bad for your business to eliminate redundancy in the system.
copies of the decision here
So if it isn’t a conspiracy — it’s just the ego of the Court of Appeal/Supreme Court not wanting the little courts to make any law — then the guys in the fancier robes are derlict in their duty by not taking one of these cases and making statewide precedent.
IN TEXAS A PEACE OFFICER MUST VIEW THE VIOLATION HE CITES FOR IT TO BE VALID HOW THIS SCAM IS FLYING IS BEYOUNG ME RED LITE CAMERAS ARE ILLEGAL